Do distributed teams need new tools?

A question I have been pondering for some time now, especially since a lot of our portfolio companies are now distributed organizations… This tweet sparked a lot of thoughtful reaction and discussion. Here’s where things have landed at the moment:   According to the responses, entrepreneurs running remote organizations seem pretty happy with the current software […]

What incentives are best for decentralized platforms?

One of the major advantages of the blockchain is that token models make it much easier to incentivize users. For example, during the early days, you can hand out tokens to reward early users and solve the chicken and egg problem that so many social platforms face. With decentralized platforms, the value that is created […]

Optimizing the trade-offs between centralized and decentralized platforms

Decentralization maximalists argue that you cannot trust a centralized organization and thus, everything should be decentralized. And thanks to the advances in blockchain technology, that’s now technically possible. These proponents of decentralized platforms can offer up numerous reasons why the decentralized world is superior; the chief two reasons are avoiding censorship and eliminating the rake […]

Organization in a decentralized world – how will decentralized platforms be managed?

There’s a lot of excitement surrounding the decentralized Internet and cryptocurrencies. Technological advancements plus tokens are shaking up traditional business models, enabling organizations to emerge outside the form of traditional companies that we know of today. There’s great promise to build large scale platforms to run open source projects among other things. But how exactly […]

Blockchain’s impact on marketplaces: what’s the future for decentralized marketplaces?

Nearly two years ago, we published our first ebook, A Guide to Marketplaces. Towards the end, we touched briefly on emerging marketplace types and included decentralized marketplaces in the mix. At the time, OpenBazaar was still in beta. Since then, we’ve been closely following the evolution of blockchain technology and looking at the potential impact […]