[Note: the following was first published on Cent here]
I really liked the post fellow Centian @Arnorth24 made yesterday.
Not only was it their very first bounty post on Cent (which is super dope in its own right, cuz circular crypto economy) but it reminded me of when I first got passionate about Cent and how that eventually led to me joining the Cent Team.
A little over a year ago I came across beta.cent.co, a little known site that had launched on mainnet a few months earlier. It had just been included in a list of notable new dApps in the must-read Token Economy newsletter. I was hooked from my first visit.
For the next few months leading up to Xmas I became a Cent power user. I was posting all the time, and even used some of my earnings to attach a few bounties to posts.
And then on the plane ride back to Korea from the states on New Years Day, I penned my first blog post about Cent. It was way too long, but it was super earnest and encapsulated my passion for Cent perfectly.
After I published that article I posted a bounty seeking suggestions from fellow Centians for how @max and @cameron could improve the site. And I emailed the two co-founders. A couple times. No response.
Nonetheless I continued to use Cent and write more about it. Then one day I penned a few fictionalized pieces detailing the future I imagined Cent potentially creating for its users. I sent another email with a link to the twenty or so articles I had written about Cent by then. And this time I got a response.
After a couple of calls with the two co-founders, I was offered the chance to join the team. We threw a few numbers around before agreeing on a figure. Then after making sure I could get paid in ETH, it was official: I was now a part of the best team in crypto.
As someone with a non-technical background who works a full time job in corporate HR for a major Korean conglomerate in Seoul, the path to working for a crypto startup wasn't an obvious one. Were it not for my passion that I channeled into writing about Cent (which I still do btw - this is my 114th time writing about Cent) I never would've had this opportunity.
So @Arnorth24, I know you're looking for some potential side hustles or part-time gigs. But if my case can be any example or help to you (and anyone like you), I hope that you find something new that not a lot of people have found (yet) that you can get really passionate about it. Then you just need to pursue the hell out of it.
2018년 11월 4일 일요일
2018년 10월 29일 월요일
Fee-based Revenue Models on Web 3.0
So, let's say you're developing a DApp with a fee-based revenue model.
And let's say that your DApp actually becomes that killer app for crypto.
What would stop any other potential competitor from simply copying your product and eliminating fees?
And let's say that your DApp actually becomes that killer app for crypto.
What would stop any other potential competitor from simply copying your product and eliminating fees?
2018년 10월 28일 일요일
Startup Indecisiveness
In my last blog post I discussed the common tendency of people working for startups to criticise anything "corporate."
Now I want to take a quick look at a critique of startup culture as seen through a pair of corporate eyes.
If decisions at large, legacy corporations are slower to reach due to what are typically quite robust internal decision making processes, decisions at startups are lightning quick.
Due to the substantial investment (in time as well as money) that it takes to reach a final decision at large corporations, changing course after a decision has been made is very rarely possible - but it has been known to happen.
At startups though, while the ability to be quick and nimble in making decisions definitely has its advantages, the risk of the key decision makers flip-flopping and/or completely changing their minds after a decision was previously was made is very real, and if it is left unaddressed it is something that can begin to rot away the life force of a startups culture not to mention operational efficiency.
So what are some ways startups can avoid flip-flopping themselves to death?
Obviously accountability is important. The key decision makers should endeavor to keep themselves accoubtable and ask for help from others to keep themselves accountable for the decisions they decide to take. And actually that should probably pretty much apply to each member of a startup.
But beyond that, having a great memory and remembering all the little as well as big things that were already decided is, in my honest opinion, even more important than accountability. Because if you can't remember what you should do, how can you hope to hold yourself accountable?
And it's that attribute - the fantastic ability to remember seemingly sundry details - that seperates the operators of large, legacy corporations from average startup founders and employees. It's also an attribute that I am sure successful startups and their founders and early employees have.
Now I want to take a quick look at a critique of startup culture as seen through a pair of corporate eyes.
If decisions at large, legacy corporations are slower to reach due to what are typically quite robust internal decision making processes, decisions at startups are lightning quick.
Due to the substantial investment (in time as well as money) that it takes to reach a final decision at large corporations, changing course after a decision has been made is very rarely possible - but it has been known to happen.
At startups though, while the ability to be quick and nimble in making decisions definitely has its advantages, the risk of the key decision makers flip-flopping and/or completely changing their minds after a decision was previously was made is very real, and if it is left unaddressed it is something that can begin to rot away the life force of a startups culture not to mention operational efficiency.
So what are some ways startups can avoid flip-flopping themselves to death?
Obviously accountability is important. The key decision makers should endeavor to keep themselves accoubtable and ask for help from others to keep themselves accountable for the decisions they decide to take. And actually that should probably pretty much apply to each member of a startup.
But beyond that, having a great memory and remembering all the little as well as big things that were already decided is, in my honest opinion, even more important than accountability. Because if you can't remember what you should do, how can you hope to hold yourself accountable?
And it's that attribute - the fantastic ability to remember seemingly sundry details - that seperates the operators of large, legacy corporations from average startup founders and employees. It's also an attribute that I am sure successful startups and their founders and early employees have.
Corporate Mindset
[Note: this is the post for October 27 - posting was late on account of the stunning beauty of fall in Seoul]
A lot of people working in startup land seem to have an aversion to anything "corporate."
Corporate to many working in startups seems to be understood as anything that large and especially legacy companies do from an operational perspective.
The pejorative tinge that accompanies the corporate descriptor seems to stem from the belief that processes at such places needlessly slow down progress and/or exist for no real reason other than keeping the people responsible for them in a job.
In a word, criticising something as being "too corporate" is another way of saying something is inefficient.
Coming from a corporate background, the critique of corporations as slow to adapt or embrace change is directionally correct, but the absolute disregard for anything corporate is super short sighted.
One of the amazing thing about many - but not all - senior executives and operators at large, legacy corporations is their memory. They remember everything.
Now if you couple their amazing memory with their average 2~3 decades of experience, and if you are at all honest with yourself you should probably reason that they may know something you don't, and thus their way of doing things "corporately" may have some merit that you're missing.
Anyways, being open minded will provide you better opportunities for discovering better or at least interesting ways of thinking an problem solving. So be open minded.
A lot of people working in startup land seem to have an aversion to anything "corporate."
Corporate to many working in startups seems to be understood as anything that large and especially legacy companies do from an operational perspective.
The pejorative tinge that accompanies the corporate descriptor seems to stem from the belief that processes at such places needlessly slow down progress and/or exist for no real reason other than keeping the people responsible for them in a job.
In a word, criticising something as being "too corporate" is another way of saying something is inefficient.
Coming from a corporate background, the critique of corporations as slow to adapt or embrace change is directionally correct, but the absolute disregard for anything corporate is super short sighted.
One of the amazing thing about many - but not all - senior executives and operators at large, legacy corporations is their memory. They remember everything.
Now if you couple their amazing memory with their average 2~3 decades of experience, and if you are at all honest with yourself you should probably reason that they may know something you don't, and thus their way of doing things "corporately" may have some merit that you're missing.
Anyways, being open minded will provide you better opportunities for discovering better or at least interesting ways of thinking an problem solving. So be open minded.
2018년 10월 24일 수요일
The BOTI Bounty as a Growth Driver
Cent has done a lot of stuff in a short amount of time. It's proven that bounties aren't just for programers or vigilante types. And thanks to the Ethereum network, it has created a few unique bounty distribution methods (e.g. automatic, simultaneous payouts from 1~100 users that are payback resistant).
On top of that technical innovation an exciting emergent development appeared and has continued to persist and even grow over the past few months. This newly emergent "thing" has become a new user habit; a ritual if you will. It's something that I as the poster and other users as paid contributors/curators look forward to each week.
That "thing" is of course the BOTI, my weekly bounty that asks users to source, share and curate what they think was the best of the internet over the last week. The result of each BOTI is a super timely list of some pretty good and often delightful content from around the world.
Lists have always been a thing. Buzzfeed listicles are the most recent popular instantiation of the lists as a thing. But just think of the 10 commandments or equally ancient SportsCenter top 10 highlights or even elections which list up the most to least possible candidates as well as the common 'best of' lists that are as ubiquitous as air: lists have always been with us.
But for as long as they've been around, they've also always been local, individually or centrally determined and highly edited.
The list that comes out of the BOTI each week is global (users hail from 148 countries!), decentralized, and open to include literally any piece of content on the internet. And again, the result is not terrible; in fact, it's pretty darn good, all things considered.
That said it for sure could be better. The main limitation, though, to increasing the quality of the BOTI as well as broadening its application (becuase lists can literally be applied to *anything*) really comes down to the potential pool of contributors.
And while Cent has been growing its user base, the overall number is still relatively small. That is where Seeding comes in. Since that feature will coincide with the ability to make bounty-less posts, the potential base of users should increase as soon as or shortly after Seeding is introduced.
Aftet that happens, it's my belief that the BOTI, especially BOTIs or BOTI-like bounty posts applied on a broader basis, could potentially act as a lever that could accelerate user growth and satisfaction at a high rate. Maybe.
Nothing like this was ever possible before. And it's kinda crazy that this is even theoretically possible, since the result would mean that a large percentage of the world would begin receiving large amounts of crypto...
On top of that technical innovation an exciting emergent development appeared and has continued to persist and even grow over the past few months. This newly emergent "thing" has become a new user habit; a ritual if you will. It's something that I as the poster and other users as paid contributors/curators look forward to each week.
That "thing" is of course the BOTI, my weekly bounty that asks users to source, share and curate what they think was the best of the internet over the last week. The result of each BOTI is a super timely list of some pretty good and often delightful content from around the world.
Lists have always been a thing. Buzzfeed listicles are the most recent popular instantiation of the lists as a thing. But just think of the 10 commandments or equally ancient SportsCenter top 10 highlights or even elections which list up the most to least possible candidates as well as the common 'best of' lists that are as ubiquitous as air: lists have always been with us.
But for as long as they've been around, they've also always been local, individually or centrally determined and highly edited.
The list that comes out of the BOTI each week is global (users hail from 148 countries!), decentralized, and open to include literally any piece of content on the internet. And again, the result is not terrible; in fact, it's pretty darn good, all things considered.
That said it for sure could be better. The main limitation, though, to increasing the quality of the BOTI as well as broadening its application (becuase lists can literally be applied to *anything*) really comes down to the potential pool of contributors.
And while Cent has been growing its user base, the overall number is still relatively small. That is where Seeding comes in. Since that feature will coincide with the ability to make bounty-less posts, the potential base of users should increase as soon as or shortly after Seeding is introduced.
Aftet that happens, it's my belief that the BOTI, especially BOTIs or BOTI-like bounty posts applied on a broader basis, could potentially act as a lever that could accelerate user growth and satisfaction at a high rate. Maybe.
Nothing like this was ever possible before. And it's kinda crazy that this is even theoretically possible, since the result would mean that a large percentage of the world would begin receiving large amounts of crypto...
2018년 10월 21일 일요일
Mass Psychology is a Lukewarm Pool
It's kinda funny.
As I'm making my way through Ron Chernow's "Washington: A Life" I am constantly struck by the descriptions of the how most Americans felt about the Revolutionary War at any given time as it was going on.
Aside from the initial outburst of patriotism at the outset of the war, a majority of the American populace seemed largely indifferent, both towards the war itself as well as towards both the Continental and British armies.
People just wanted to get on with their lives.
Even at the height of American patriotism, the Continental Army was constantly fighting to hold onto or bring on a few extra mediocre troops.
When the troops were literally starving to death in cold, dreary Valley Forge during the brutal winter of '77~'78 - well after the initial patriotism at the outset of the war in '75 had subsided - the farmers living closest to the pitiful army didn't bat an eye at the death in front of them. Instead they tried as hard as they could to sell their livestock and crops to the British Army in Philadelphia for their solid sterling pounds.
The Revolutionary War ended in 1783 mind you.
But we know how the story ends: America wins its independence then charges up and to the right in the annals of world history.
What happens when mass sentiment turns lukewarm is the stuff that defines the direction that history heads and turns mere mortals into legends.
Amazon gutted it out and did innumerable laps in the Olympic sized pool of lukewarm human sentiment following the dot-com bust before ascending into the upper echelons of elite, global corporations.
And there are a few of us in the crypto-space who are doing what seem like Sisyphean laps in the same luke warm pool of public indifference. But just as Washington emerged victorious, and Bezos stands vindicated, Cent will take its place at the podium of human history and beam ascendent as a beacon of hope for everyone that wants to earn a life sustaining income from anywhere. That day will come. Soon.
As I'm making my way through Ron Chernow's "Washington: A Life" I am constantly struck by the descriptions of the how most Americans felt about the Revolutionary War at any given time as it was going on.
Aside from the initial outburst of patriotism at the outset of the war, a majority of the American populace seemed largely indifferent, both towards the war itself as well as towards both the Continental and British armies.
People just wanted to get on with their lives.
Even at the height of American patriotism, the Continental Army was constantly fighting to hold onto or bring on a few extra mediocre troops.
When the troops were literally starving to death in cold, dreary Valley Forge during the brutal winter of '77~'78 - well after the initial patriotism at the outset of the war in '75 had subsided - the farmers living closest to the pitiful army didn't bat an eye at the death in front of them. Instead they tried as hard as they could to sell their livestock and crops to the British Army in Philadelphia for their solid sterling pounds.
The Revolutionary War ended in 1783 mind you.
But we know how the story ends: America wins its independence then charges up and to the right in the annals of world history.
What happens when mass sentiment turns lukewarm is the stuff that defines the direction that history heads and turns mere mortals into legends.
Amazon gutted it out and did innumerable laps in the Olympic sized pool of lukewarm human sentiment following the dot-com bust before ascending into the upper echelons of elite, global corporations.
And there are a few of us in the crypto-space who are doing what seem like Sisyphean laps in the same luke warm pool of public indifference. But just as Washington emerged victorious, and Bezos stands vindicated, Cent will take its place at the podium of human history and beam ascendent as a beacon of hope for everyone that wants to earn a life sustaining income from anywhere. That day will come. Soon.
2018년 10월 20일 토요일
Notion - The Modern Workspace
There are so many tools and apps out there for the modern business. Like a ton.
It can be overwhelming to have to pick what tools and apps to actually use, particularly if you don't have any previous experience working in a modern business.
Prior to working at Cent I know I would've been hard pressed to suggest even one tool or app to use. But now I not only have two solid recos, but a pretty awesome workflow management process as well.
Outside of Slack, the workspace management app Notion has quickly become a core app for the entire Cent team.
Notion allows us to easily and simply save and track everything from meeting minutes to product suggestions to feature launch protocols and most importantly the daily tasks that each team member has.
Our tasks are referred to as '⚡Actions' and we strive to carry them out within a day. In ptactice that means that aftet we complete our action we set ot to 'Done' which disappears the task from our individual action column. If there is an issue preventing resolution within a day though, we say the task is 'blocked' which pings the relevant party so that we are able to clarify what we need in terms of support in order to get it done with and off of our list.
This is great for accountability and it's pretty simple. From a manager's perspective it provides a bird's eye view of the actions of your direct reports and lets you quickly see what actions are blocked so that you can formulate a strategy or solution to help un-block the action and get it done.
I really like it. In fact, I like the combo of Notion and our task management flow so much that I think I'll introduce it to my team at my other job where I am a global recruitment manager.
2018년 10월 14일 일요일
Numbers Always Matter
You have a vision. Or a dream. You're on a mission. That's all that matters, right? Focus on that and everything else will sort itself out, right?
Nope. Well at least not 99.9% of the time. It may seem old hat, but along with mission and product the numbers always matter. Always.
You can have the best interests of your users and the world at heart along with a product that is loved by many, but if, for one second, you try to delude yourself or the team into thinking that numbers aren't important, you're setting your project up for failure.
Numbers always matter. They matter for a few reasons. In the first place they keep you honest.
Ventures are usually born out of a dream to create something that doesn't exist. But all dreams end. When you wake up it's the numbers that help you check reality against your original dream to see what matches, what worked and what didn't so you can re-align your next moves into the future.
Numbers help you raise capital to continue your dream.
A growing venture is fueled by capital. Great leaders allocate part of each day to raising. Part of raising is knowing your venture's numbers inside and out, not because the numbers alone will be enough to get investors to write you a check, but because they enhance and support the story of how your product is changing lives and paving the way for a better future for many, many more people.
Know your numbers, or die dreaming.
Nope. Well at least not 99.9% of the time. It may seem old hat, but along with mission and product the numbers always matter. Always.
You can have the best interests of your users and the world at heart along with a product that is loved by many, but if, for one second, you try to delude yourself or the team into thinking that numbers aren't important, you're setting your project up for failure.
Numbers always matter. They matter for a few reasons. In the first place they keep you honest.
Ventures are usually born out of a dream to create something that doesn't exist. But all dreams end. When you wake up it's the numbers that help you check reality against your original dream to see what matches, what worked and what didn't so you can re-align your next moves into the future.
Numbers help you raise capital to continue your dream.
A growing venture is fueled by capital. Great leaders allocate part of each day to raising. Part of raising is knowing your venture's numbers inside and out, not because the numbers alone will be enough to get investors to write you a check, but because they enhance and support the story of how your product is changing lives and paving the way for a better future for many, many more people.
Know your numbers, or die dreaming.
2018년 9월 27일 목요일
What I do at Cent
Cent's new intern Damien has begun putting together job descriptions for each of the five member team.
I have copied below (with a few minor edits) what he put together for me describing what I do at Cent when it comes to managing community. Thank you Damien.
About Community at Cent:
The mission of Cent is to enable anyone to earn income from anywhere. Simply put, it’s the evolution of the social network into an income source.
My position provides the outside communication on our rapidly growing product. My role is to act as a voice advocating internally for the evolving needs of the diverse Centian community.
In addition I convey details of new features to the community, carry out productive conversations that influence product decisions and maintain an open channel of communication.
Our team sees Cent becoming a foundational, legitimate source of decentralized income for anyone and towards this end the community will help drive dApp value and I, as the community manager, will help the users thrive.
Responsibilities:
- Building and executing the strategy of project’s online footprint Initiating positive and supportive conversations inside the community channels such as forums, subreddits, and any other social groups.
- Monitoring and responding to conversations on owned channels such as the Telegram, Twitter, etc.
- Organizing the process of developer participation on owned channels (blog, social media, forums); finding topics and resources to answer popular topics; channeling information into documentation; and guiding tone and policy.
- Sorting, triaging and funnelling customer issues that surface in the community to the proper place and escalation path (documentation, marketing, individual developers); coordinating closely with various stakeholders.
- Regularly analyze and report community sentiment internally.
2018년 7월 30일 월요일
Bias for Quality
A common criticism about the writings of immature writers is 'over-writing'.
More mature writers tend to include only what is most essential or of the highest value in regards to what they're writing about. In terms of the quality of writing then, less is more.
The same critique can be applied to companies and businesses.
Companies that lack discipline tend to keep adding features, even if the earlier features still aren't quite right, on the one hand. On the other hand, truly successful companies relentlessly focus on getting each feature or function just right.
The exhaustive attention to detail for the sake of improving overall quality can be exhausting, and while advocating that more time be spent on an "old" issue may make you seem like you are fighting development, in the end it's always the right thing to do, because when quality issues arise later, you will be remembered as the one who initially pointed them out.
2018년 7월 10일 화요일
Germinating Ideas
New ideas are like seeds. You can try to plant a raw seed of an idea into the soil of open social discourse, but your chances of it taking root in conversation are slim.
You could try to germinate your idea: Talk about it, in short bursts, consistently over a period of time. Then when you see roots emerge you can pot it amongst a small group of like minded thinkers. Water it daily with conversation.
If it is a viable idea, it'll sprout in each of the minds of those in your small group.
The next step is when you think it'll be ready to go outdoors and get introduced to the world🌱
2018년 7월 8일 일요일
Getting Things Done
Thanks to a great share by Cam (for those of you who don't know he's the co-founder and CTO at Cent), I came across an efficiency hack that I can easily overlay on top of my note taking app of choice, Diaro.
In Matt Mochary's short but powerful 'Founder to Ceo' that Cam shared with the team, Mochary introduces the Getting Things Done framework espoused by David Allen in his book 'Getting Things Done: The art of stress-free productivity'.
Essentially this framework helps users simply categorize tasks into either daily or weekly review buckets. Next actions (i.e. short, atomic units if work), things you were asked to do by others and (my slight revision to the schema) things you asked others to do (instead of someday/maybe tasks) constitute the items you should add to the daily review work bucket.
In the weekly review bucket one should add agenda items for each person you plan on meeting with as you think of the item to talk about in addition to whatever projects or bundles of 'next actions'. The idea behind 'Agenda' is that you will be able to pull up that agenda list once you meet or call that person so you can discuss each agenda item all at once (as opposed to a spot-basis when you think of each item).
As you can see in the above screenshot I have added tags for each of those items (in addition to the team members that I know I will have things to talk about with) as well as a specific group called 'Get Things Done'. I did this so I can quickly bring up any items that need to get done (by selecting the group) and then if need be selecting each tag individually during either my daily or weekly review.
One super important tag that did not make it into the screenshot (or in Allen's official framework for that matter) is a tag labeled 'Finished' where I will tag every completed action, agenda item and talking point with as soon as they are completed so that I will have a running list of what I have actually accomplished.
Well, I officially feel like an old man now. Who gets excited about efficiency hacks? Anyways, I will put this bad boy framework to use beginning today, and hopefully provide an update sometime in the future about how it's worked out or not worked out.
2018년 6월 24일 일요일
Jobs: Work, Social & Play
If you've ever watched Madmen, or are older than 50, you know that the workplace used to be a place where work, social and play all occurred and co-existed.
Owing to multiple factors, not least of which being the great many abuses that took place in the name of "fun," play was the first element to be steadily extricated from the workplace. Professionalization is the euphemism that is often employed to signal this change, especially in startups that want to shed their "sophomoric" image and signal they have become a place totally focused on work and the generation of profits.
At most jobs today, regardless of what the leadership or PR departments might say, the demarcation between work and 'social' is also getting starker by the day. The work/life balance that most employees demand and many employers claim they provide speaks to this. That said, while it may be a shell of its former self, the social aspect of work cannot be fully eliminated from jobs that require employees to work out of physical offices.
The splitting of the constitutional elements of the workplace - work, social and play - as a way to create the purest form of distilled work possible would seem to have its apotheosis in gig economy jobs that have begun to come online over the past few years. In the so-called gig economy the job is work, and work is the job. It should go without saying, but the workplace-as-family has no home in the gig economy.
While jobs have been made play-less over the last half century or so, it's my belief that the social aspect of the office has made work bearable. The British and American versions of the classic TV show 'The Office' make this clear - in a very ironic way to be sure. But just try to imagine what the gig economy equivalent of 'The Office' would look like. If they made it about Uber drivers, for example, well, it'd just be fooking depressing.
And that's kind of the rub, for me personally at least, when it comes to the gig economy and its future prospects. Don't get me wrong, I absolutely think the gig economy is where the overwhelming majority of new jobs will be created heading forward. That said, I think it would be an incredible mistake to simply play forward the trend of the work maximizing and social/play minimizing workplace that originated in and has been propagated throughout the world by the West.
What if, instead, there was a way to bring the social and play elements - without their past problematic baggage that led to their respective minimization and extirpation from the realm of work - back into the gig economy which is the future of work?
What if, amidst the slog of isolating digital work, the gig economy worker could sit down at the equivalent of a digital bar and simultaneously tap into that social connection and lost play?
Furthermore what if that digital social and play facilitates, bolsters and contributes to digital work of that gig economy worker?
I am envisioning something along the lines of a digital weigh station (the evaluation centers of the quintessential 20th century nomadic worker, the trucker) that users will be able to use to verify certain basic or minimum requirements in addition to everyone's favorite local watering hole where digital laborers can connect and have a little fun. And that is exactly what I see Cent positioning itself as, all the while strengthening its vision of allowing anyone to earn money anywhere by providing their knowledge and creativity, Madmen style.
Owing to multiple factors, not least of which being the great many abuses that took place in the name of "fun," play was the first element to be steadily extricated from the workplace. Professionalization is the euphemism that is often employed to signal this change, especially in startups that want to shed their "sophomoric" image and signal they have become a place totally focused on work and the generation of profits.
At most jobs today, regardless of what the leadership or PR departments might say, the demarcation between work and 'social' is also getting starker by the day. The work/life balance that most employees demand and many employers claim they provide speaks to this. That said, while it may be a shell of its former self, the social aspect of work cannot be fully eliminated from jobs that require employees to work out of physical offices.
The splitting of the constitutional elements of the workplace - work, social and play - as a way to create the purest form of distilled work possible would seem to have its apotheosis in gig economy jobs that have begun to come online over the past few years. In the so-called gig economy the job is work, and work is the job. It should go without saying, but the workplace-as-family has no home in the gig economy.
While jobs have been made play-less over the last half century or so, it's my belief that the social aspect of the office has made work bearable. The British and American versions of the classic TV show 'The Office' make this clear - in a very ironic way to be sure. But just try to imagine what the gig economy equivalent of 'The Office' would look like. If they made it about Uber drivers, for example, well, it'd just be fooking depressing.
And that's kind of the rub, for me personally at least, when it comes to the gig economy and its future prospects. Don't get me wrong, I absolutely think the gig economy is where the overwhelming majority of new jobs will be created heading forward. That said, I think it would be an incredible mistake to simply play forward the trend of the work maximizing and social/play minimizing workplace that originated in and has been propagated throughout the world by the West.
What if, instead, there was a way to bring the social and play elements - without their past problematic baggage that led to their respective minimization and extirpation from the realm of work - back into the gig economy which is the future of work?
What if, amidst the slog of isolating digital work, the gig economy worker could sit down at the equivalent of a digital bar and simultaneously tap into that social connection and lost play?
Furthermore what if that digital social and play facilitates, bolsters and contributes to digital work of that gig economy worker?
I am envisioning something along the lines of a digital weigh station (the evaluation centers of the quintessential 20th century nomadic worker, the trucker) that users will be able to use to verify certain basic or minimum requirements in addition to everyone's favorite local watering hole where digital laborers can connect and have a little fun. And that is exactly what I see Cent positioning itself as, all the while strengthening its vision of allowing anyone to earn money anywhere by providing their knowledge and creativity, Madmen style.
2018년 6월 21일 목요일
Cent Updates About to Roll Out
We have a new update for everyone^^
It's been a busy week, and the time to roll out updates and new functions is almost here.
I'm really excited about the new functions that will be added today, especially the new logo, ability to tip in app and the social share widget that will make sharing great content from responses possible for the first time.
With each successive update that I've been a part of, I've found that more so than the headline additions or changes, it's the small changes or updates that leave me feeling most satisfied. This time the simple addition of showing lifetime earnings and total number of responses has me super stoked.
There are still a few last minute items to finalize so todays post will end right here. But check back to beta.cent.co in a few short days to catch all the new new [sic] we have for you.
2018년 5월 27일 일요일
Delight
There probably isn't a more overused word in the world of tech startups than the word 'delight' and all of its derivatives. And for good reason; if users aren't delighted using your product you will absolutely fail.
But what is delight?
There are a few products that I remember experiencing delight when I first used them: Nintendo NES, Gameboy, Tomegotchi, iPod Touch Mini, Facebook, Kakao Talk, avc.com, Twitter, Instagram, and most recently Cent.
The delight I experienced when I used those products could be boiled down to three elements: a laugh, a smile and a good feeling.
Each person will express these three elements in their own unique way - and completely different elements may constitute their own experiences of delight - but one thing is for sure, it can't be faked.
Fake delight will sustain you a couple days, weeks or maybe a month max. Genuine delight on the other hand, that shit is like rocket fuel. Months, years even in some spectacular instances, will seem to fly by while you continue to be delighted.
If you are working in a company that makes something that delights its users, hang on tight. And if you're worried that maybe you're the only one who is experiencing delight, make sure you distill the elements of your delight from the product down and then optimize and market for that/those elements relentlessly.
But what is delight?
There are a few products that I remember experiencing delight when I first used them: Nintendo NES, Gameboy, Tomegotchi, iPod Touch Mini, Facebook, Kakao Talk, avc.com, Twitter, Instagram, and most recently Cent.
The delight I experienced when I used those products could be boiled down to three elements: a laugh, a smile and a good feeling.
Each person will express these three elements in their own unique way - and completely different elements may constitute their own experiences of delight - but one thing is for sure, it can't be faked.
Fake delight will sustain you a couple days, weeks or maybe a month max. Genuine delight on the other hand, that shit is like rocket fuel. Months, years even in some spectacular instances, will seem to fly by while you continue to be delighted.
If you are working in a company that makes something that delights its users, hang on tight. And if you're worried that maybe you're the only one who is experiencing delight, make sure you distill the elements of your delight from the product down and then optimize and market for that/those elements relentlessly.
2018년 4월 26일 목요일
CoinJournal Article on Cent
It's been a busy morning.
Overnight, the wonderful Ian Demartino wrote a stellar article [link] on the goodness that's been going on over at Cent.
Cent's Twitter blew up, of course. Followers have (finally) crossed the 1,000 person threshold, and a whole bunch of noteworthy names like Liad Shababo (@L1AD), Dr. Corey Petty from The Bitcoin Podcast and Jake Brukhman have been showing love.
Being Centurion No.1 and a bleeding heart supporter of Cent for a while now, it is awesome to finally see others who get Cent like the whole team and I have.
Validation: It's so important to the future success of anything. Here's to much validation and greater success than any of us can even imagine.
2018년 4월 24일 화요일
Economically Active Users
Old metrics and terms are often applied to new sectors and industries at their outset since the language to properly describe the 'newness' of those sectors and industries simply doesn't exist yet.
Over time, however, as a new sector unfolds and people find their footing in it, new, more accurate terms and language develop to better describe the many new things that occur and take place within it.
For crypto, and Dapps in particular, I think that I might have stumbled upon the beginnings of a new engagement metric to describe the unique economic contributions and gains that Dapp users experience: Economically Active Users or EAUs for short.
Obviously the term is derivative of the commonly used DAU, WAU, and MAU metrics that attempts to analyze Active Users (i.e. those users that engage in some particularly meaningful action within a site or app) on daily, weekly, and monthly intervals that, in lieu of revenue, acts as a proxy for growth.
For Dapps like CryptoKitties or Cent, real live users are either contributing ETH, gaining ETH, or some combination of the two from day one. Even if revenue is being captured by this cohort of users, the contribution and gaining of value is a super significant metric to track on it's own, at least to me. Breaking this group of users out from traditional Active Users would provide a useful basis for many different comparisons.
One could track the percentage/conversion rate of Active Users to EAUs. Additionally, a standalone EAU metric would also help determine and track the average gains and contributions of users as well as the percentage growth of those gains and contributions of users on the Dapp.
Having such a clear view would make imbalances more apparent. For example, a ton of questions would start to flow if growth in EAU gains are outpacing EAU contributions relative to AU:EAU conversion on a Dapp, or if the contribution per EAU ratio remains small compared to the gains per EAU ratio.
From a product perspective, tracking Active Users, or those users who visit and engage in some meaningful action but gain zero economic value, against EAUs would be useful to see if previous assumptions placed on thresholds that limit reward payouts or subsidy distribution are too restrictive or not.
There is a lot more that needs to be fleshed out from this, and obviously Dapps that are able to track this metric should feel good that there is something that sets them apart from a traditional app, but I will leave this thought here, open ended, for now. Any feedback or criticism is more than welcome.
Over time, however, as a new sector unfolds and people find their footing in it, new, more accurate terms and language develop to better describe the many new things that occur and take place within it.
For crypto, and Dapps in particular, I think that I might have stumbled upon the beginnings of a new engagement metric to describe the unique economic contributions and gains that Dapp users experience: Economically Active Users or EAUs for short.
Obviously the term is derivative of the commonly used DAU, WAU, and MAU metrics that attempts to analyze Active Users (i.e. those users that engage in some particularly meaningful action within a site or app) on daily, weekly, and monthly intervals that, in lieu of revenue, acts as a proxy for growth.
For Dapps like CryptoKitties or Cent, real live users are either contributing ETH, gaining ETH, or some combination of the two from day one. Even if revenue is being captured by this cohort of users, the contribution and gaining of value is a super significant metric to track on it's own, at least to me. Breaking this group of users out from traditional Active Users would provide a useful basis for many different comparisons.
One could track the percentage/conversion rate of Active Users to EAUs. Additionally, a standalone EAU metric would also help determine and track the average gains and contributions of users as well as the percentage growth of those gains and contributions of users on the Dapp.
Having such a clear view would make imbalances more apparent. For example, a ton of questions would start to flow if growth in EAU gains are outpacing EAU contributions relative to AU:EAU conversion on a Dapp, or if the contribution per EAU ratio remains small compared to the gains per EAU ratio.
From a product perspective, tracking Active Users, or those users who visit and engage in some meaningful action but gain zero economic value, against EAUs would be useful to see if previous assumptions placed on thresholds that limit reward payouts or subsidy distribution are too restrictive or not.
There is a lot more that needs to be fleshed out from this, and obviously Dapps that are able to track this metric should feel good that there is something that sets them apart from a traditional app, but I will leave this thought here, open ended, for now. Any feedback or criticism is more than welcome.
2018년 4월 23일 월요일
All Time Highs
At Cent we just hit two major all time highs.
Firstly, we now have our very first user to be paid over $100 in a 30 day period. And all they did to get paid was respond sincerely to posts and help curate the best responses by sorting them.
Secondly, an all time high bounty of $250 is now live on beta.cent.co right now [link]. That is huge, *and* it's for a good cause. The bounty was set as a way to crowdsource action and attention to a proposed mining project in Alaska that could potentially threaten bears that inhabit the region around the proposed mining site.
There is no time to rest or revel in these achievements, however, since we are trying to fine tune the ICA (Iterative Comparison Algorithm) behind sorting as well as develop our next new feature set to launch sometime in May: original content publishing.
So keep your eyes on our project, because it's only a matter of time until we have our first Centian who brings in $1000 in a month.
2018년 4월 22일 일요일
Improvement
Cent has been on the daily road to improvement ever since the beta went live late in the Summer of 2017.
Everyday was a constant push for the team to tick the dial of progress forward one mark, but the pace of improvement kicked into high gear last Wednesday when the new sorting system, officially named ICA or the Iterative Comparison Algorithm, was pushed out.
It's crucial to mention that the new sorting system was combined with another new decision to limit the allocation of 80% of every bounty to the top 10 responses - previously every response was eligible to receive a portion of the bounty if it received any up-vote.
A very simple and basic metric - yet supremely important to the overall user experience - is the Leaderboard of the top 100 users based on their take home rewards over the last 30 days. Before the two changes mentioned above were introduced, the highest earners were bringing in $10~15, at most - it was typically lower for months.
In less than a week since ICA went live, the top ranked user @hint is just a few dollars shy of $100! And at the bottom end, only 6 users remain below the $1 threshold - but the 100th ranked user is at 92 cents, so that will change after the next bounty closes and pays out.
Make no mistake, this is just the beginning. There is a lot of room to improve and fine tune the ICA, let alone conceptualize, build out, and iterate the next new features (beginning with original content) that will be introduced into Cent over the next few months.
That said, improvements will continue to roll out at a quicker and quicker pace. They have to in order to get the fly wheel spinning quick enough to attract and entertain new users while keeping existing users delighted and engaged.
Everyday was a constant push for the team to tick the dial of progress forward one mark, but the pace of improvement kicked into high gear last Wednesday when the new sorting system, officially named ICA or the Iterative Comparison Algorithm, was pushed out.
It's crucial to mention that the new sorting system was combined with another new decision to limit the allocation of 80% of every bounty to the top 10 responses - previously every response was eligible to receive a portion of the bounty if it received any up-vote.
A very simple and basic metric - yet supremely important to the overall user experience - is the Leaderboard of the top 100 users based on their take home rewards over the last 30 days. Before the two changes mentioned above were introduced, the highest earners were bringing in $10~15, at most - it was typically lower for months.
In less than a week since ICA went live, the top ranked user @hint is just a few dollars shy of $100! And at the bottom end, only 6 users remain below the $1 threshold - but the 100th ranked user is at 92 cents, so that will change after the next bounty closes and pays out.
Make no mistake, this is just the beginning. There is a lot of room to improve and fine tune the ICA, let alone conceptualize, build out, and iterate the next new features (beginning with original content) that will be introduced into Cent over the next few months.
That said, improvements will continue to roll out at a quicker and quicker pace. They have to in order to get the fly wheel spinning quick enough to attract and entertain new users while keeping existing users delighted and engaged.
2018년 4월 20일 금요일
Authentically on Message
Authenticity: You know it when you see it.
I think that's how most people would describe how they judge whether something is or feels authentic.
It's hard to automate authenticity. Therefore, creating and sustaining authenticity requires a significant time investment.
Many may say authenticity doesn't scale. But Paul Graham advises new startups to do things that don't scale.
Sending bespoke thank you replies to new followers or users probably won't scale, but it will make users feel good.
Going back and forth, editing, tweaking, then re-writing a Tweet to make sure it only sends the message that you want it to probably isn't a scalable process per se, but when you finally find your authentic, digital voice, the clarity and impact with which you will be able to reliably communicate your message while sounding authentic will pay serious dividends on that major upfront investment.
Or at least I think so. Smarter people than I say so. So, let's hope so.
I think that's how most people would describe how they judge whether something is or feels authentic.
It's hard to automate authenticity. Therefore, creating and sustaining authenticity requires a significant time investment.
Many may say authenticity doesn't scale. But Paul Graham advises new startups to do things that don't scale.
Sending bespoke thank you replies to new followers or users probably won't scale, but it will make users feel good.
Going back and forth, editing, tweaking, then re-writing a Tweet to make sure it only sends the message that you want it to probably isn't a scalable process per se, but when you finally find your authentic, digital voice, the clarity and impact with which you will be able to reliably communicate your message while sounding authentic will pay serious dividends on that major upfront investment.
Or at least I think so. Smarter people than I say so. So, let's hope so.
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