Gradually I’ve had to accept a simple fact - I am not the norm. “Ordinary” people don’t sit around in the early morning, drinking organic earl-grey tea and thinking about the impossible things they’d like to accomplish, by pooling the funds of millions of strangers around the world. Or do they?I had a simple epiphany last week - what’s the largest example of social finance on the planet?(Hint: you’ll never guess.)

The stock market.

Oh, sure, no one thinks about it that way. But it’s true - millions of strangers, of disparate backgrounds and resources, pooling funds to drive forward the projects that they believe in. Now, their belief is a simple, one-sided thing: they believe the projects will make money. But that’s a good start, don’t you think?

What lessons could we draw upon from the history of the stock market, that might prove useful in moving forward the World’s first open “stake market”? According to wikipedia, trading was first institutionalized to manage the debts of agricultural communities, and then later extended to government debts as well. However, it was not until the Dutch East India Company issued the first corporate stocks and bonds in 1602, that the current form of the stock market was established, whereby common shareholders had interest in a share of the profits (or losses) of the business venture.

IANAH (I am not a historian), but this looks to me like a simple pattern of trust and reputation, extending from transactions with known and trusted locals, to the implicitly trusted “government” and then eventually to the anonymous “corporations”, lured by possibilities of greater returns.

Now here’s a subtlety that I may have been mistaken about when we first set out on this grand adventure - the Stock Market is driven by the sellers. In fact, the reality is that any newly launched security needs a “market maker” to create demand for it - literally, manufacturing interest. And so far, this has been proven out at BountyUp as well - our most active and successful early bounties have all been reverse bounties, started by those who intend to close them - in essence, driven by the sellers.

As much as this disappoints my philosophical desire to see buyers rise up and draw from the market, the goods that they truly want, I’m pragmatic enough to call a spade a spade. Expect to see more robust support for reverse bounties in the near future.

The Cheap Revolution: Top 20 Entrepreneurial Quotes

It’s always good to have that late-night reminder - that it was as hard as this for everyone else, too.

Blogged with Flock

Tags: inspiration, entrepreneurship

Along with Todd, I’ve struggled over the past few months to explain to people WHY, if BountyUp is such a good idea, it doesn’t already exist. And the answer seems to be “Market Coordination”. I found a great quote this evening (from “How to Change the World”, by David Bornstein) that illustrates this well, in the context of sending children from low-income backgrounds to college:

“Imagine that it costs $1000 to privde the guidance for a kid to get into college who currently has a 2.5 GPA and would otherwise become a parking lot attendant, which is fine, but does not fulfill her potential,” explains Furbush. “Say the kid goes to college and that $1000 investment yields a $500 net benefit for the firm which, five years from now, she’s going to end up working for; but, of course, we don’t know which firm that will be. Say $100 accrues to the high school which can brag about getting kids into college. Say $400 accrues to the city that wouldn’t have to pay to assist her and another $200 accrues to the college that’s paying people to find her, and so on, including tax collections, indirect effects on her peers, and most of all, the benefit to her wealth and well-being.

“What if it turns out that all those smaller amounts add up to a return to society well in excess of the $1000 that changed her life, but any single one of them wouldn’t be enough to economically justify paying to change her path? It’s hard for markets to arise when that coordination is difficult.”

In the context of this example, of course, it’s a leap of faith for any of those mentioned (organizations, the city, the future employers, etc) to contribute to such a program - since they have no way of knowing ahead of time if it will work. But in the case of a Bounty, no such faith is required. If it doesn’t work out - you get your money back. All that’s required is a temporary suspension of doubt.

Imagine that your pet project, is a donkey. Ornery, stubborn, and just way too used to being hit.How do you get a donkey to move? Folklore would suggest that you tie a carrot on the end of a stick, and dangle it in front of the donkey.

Your cash, is a carrot. It makes the donkey move.

If one carrot is good, more are better.

The Bounty is a piggybank, filled with carrots. (Okay, we’re dangerously mixing metaphors, here.)

And for some bounties, we crowd-source the donkey.

BountyUp is essentially a tool that facilitates collaborative commerce. Traditionally we have had private goods, which have a subjective value to us and to which we can also ascribe some sort of monetary value. Examples of this would be: an ice cream cone, a car, a plane, or a building; all of which we can define a value for, and then determine if we want to buy it or not.

On the other side of the spectrum of goods have been the public goods, for which we also have a subjective value, but which are too large or nebulous for us to accurately attribute a monetary value. Examples of these would be: clean air, a legal system, space exploration and parks. All of these are goods that we want, but nothing to which, as individuals, we are able to ascribe a monetary value. Traditionally, again, we have paid taxes and elected people who, presumably, know where these funds should be directed in order to meet the needs of the general population.

BountyUp has created one of the first tools for a marketplace that addresses what I’d like to refer to as “a semi-public” (or semi-private) good. An organization such as NASA that can define the success metrics of any particular task (in the form of a Bounty) and put money on the table, allowing any other organization to add to the Bounty. If NASA, for example, starts a Bounty for setting up a station on the moon, then anybody could contribute towards that particular success metric (designing a particular type of rover, or engine, or camera) and individuals or institutions can contribute, knowing that if the Bounty is not completed by a particular deadline, everybody gets their money back.

Or say you want a park with a place for your children to play. You might want to put 50 bucks down for a park with certain dimensions and a swing set. Well, people with children in your city might also feel that they would like to, essentially buy a park for 50 dollars. Get 10,000 people together, and you have a half-million dollar Bounty. A real estate developer can buy a piece of property, plant some grass, put in a swing-set - and collect the Bounty. What if the city put in the park, and collected the Bounty? They could even put some money towards a Bounty for a mass-transit system, or a sewage treatment plant, or anything else - and the people that value that, can contribute towards that Bounty. Crowdfunding as a fully distributed, decentralized method of acquiring semi-public goods - that, themselves, are crowdsourced for delivery? Yes, governments of the world… you too can evolve.

Inconvenience - Life Racing to Zero Impact

I wrote this as a personal blog, simply because I wanted to cast it around for feedback before making it any sort of official BountyUp project. Of course, I quickly realized I’ve got a lot more subscribers HERE than I do at my personal blog, so we might as well garner feedback here. What do you think - a reasonable idea?

Blogged with Flock

Tags: liferace, environment, inconvenience, carbon, bountyup

In some ways, it seems ironic that our businesses, which arguably have their entire basis in the idea that people working together are more effective and efficient than people competing, must nonetheless compete with each other.

Although it’s a shallow, meaningless moral victory, I take comfort in the fact that BountyUp was underway before the likes of Causes, Crowdfunder.com, or ChipIn made any appearance. It doesn’t give us any particular business advantage (we derive that from the differences in WHAT we do, and HOW we do it), but I sleep better at night knowing that we came honestly upon the idea.

Here are the pieces of the collaboration space:

• Ideation - Letting crowds of people come up with ideas
• Organization - The “Folksonomy”
• Voting - The traditional “wisdom” of crowds selects and/or refines those ideas
• Funding - Aggregating funds from the crowd (Crowdfunding)
• Fulfillment - Best/Cheapest vendor from the crowd (Reverse Auction)

Every collaboration project attacks one or more of these items. Spigit, for instance, has a great approach to Ideation and Voting. ChipIn focuses solely on Funding, etc, etc.

In the space that BountyUp addresses (Funding and Fulfillment, so far), there are really only TWO close competitors: Cambrian House (who also address Ideation and Voting), and Crowdfunder.com.

It is incredible how within the micro we can discern truths and patterns that help us make sense of the macro. Within the atom we can behold the universe and within the maturation of an individual we can clearly witness unfolding patterns of the evolution of human society. Do we not see in the individual how we begin as a single celled organism and begin to grow into a morass of undifferentiated cells subsequently evolving into organs that themselves create a higher level of organization in the form of organ systems? These organ systems, of course, then interact at a higher level of complexity and integration in the form of our bodies. What is remarkable is that at one level of organization it is virtually impossible to see the higher level if viewed from the perspective of that level alone. From the perspective of the lungs, the existence of a cardio-pulmonary system would not be easily apparent unless view that from a higher level of order. Is it really, then, that much of a stretch to imagine that there may be even higher orders of complexity? Is it possible to think that, just as the various organs form a larger collective with abilities that could far surpass any given organ in isolation, that as a human society we could actually form this sort of a higher level of functioning far surpassing the capacity of one individual? And that perhaps the magnitude of order that separates the functioning of one individual organ from the functioning of a human body could be mirrored with the functioning of the collective human organism?

As such…when we look at the evolution of a human from the selfishness of childhood into the impetuousness of adolescence and eventually into the maturity of adulthood, is it possible that human civilization follows a similar pattern? When we carry the selfishness of our childhood into our relationships as adults those relationships tend to be damaging and hurtful. As a human society, can it be said that we now need to shed ourselves from the selfishness of childhood, from the impetuousness of adolescence, and evolve into the maturity of the coming of age of human society? Can it be said that the parallel to the harmful selfish relationship of an individual adult can find its parallel in the relationship human society now has between nations and with the environment? I would say that our collective body has matured into an adult and it is now time to evolve emotionally as a human society. To transcend the limitations of narrow-minded nationalism and to break free from the shackles of conflict and competition as a means of progress. Competition is essentially a redundant method and yet virtually all of our systems are based on it! We create systems that ensure the inevitability of conflict and competition, but who is to say that this current system that was conceived in an era with completely antiquated assumptions has any value for our future civilization? Competition does not help the with the growth of society any more than our organs would help with the progress of our body by sequestering and hoarding plasma. This only makes sense if you really do believe that you are an island unto yourself…a belief that this little blogger clearly does not hold.

Democashy:

One dollar, one vote. We pretend that that’s not how our democracy works… but it is. Because that’s how our corporations work. Corporations control lobbying. Lobbying, and campaigning, controls elections and legislation. Legislation, and the fact that our “elected” representatives are beholden, not to their constituents, but to their campaign donors, controls the outcomes of our so-called democratic process.

Enter bountyup, stage left. It doesn’t change the system, it’s still one dollar, one vote. But it makes it public, it removes the veil. And in a small way, it levels the playing field. Now the underdogs can play, too.

Within the sphere of social causes, I’ve been mulling over the Inconvenient Truth. Specifically, the fact that the most compelling part of that film, is the slowly, but inexorably, upwardly mobile graph-line of our atmospheric carbon.And the shift in awareness that follows - when we measure it, we will change it.

Weight-watchers understands this as well as anyone.

As the idea of crowd-funding becomes more and more obvious (especially given the media-highlighted recent successes in prize-driven development), our competition emerges. And while many of them seem to have missed the point entirely, and no one has captured exactly what BountyUp has, they all have one feature that we’re lacking: the thermometer.

Originally I had stayed away from the meter on purpose, thinking that the idea of a bounty being potentially FINISHED at any moment was sort of exciting. But I’ve got it wrong - without a visible goal, people are hesitant to become involved. Reluctantly, I’ve added support for a “target amount” - and sooner or later, I’m going to need to add that all-important pretty little graphic.