One of the fun things I do is consult with a blockchain startup that is reinventing the future of work. As in, Harvard Business School did a full-on report — and part of a class — on this company. It’s called Braintrust, and it’s actually a user-owned talent-controlled distributed version of Upwork.
Long story short: employers get more because low fees; talent keeps more because … low fees; platform grows in ways that benefit the community because … it’s owned by the community.
Simple. And genius.
My most recent post for Braintrust is on an interview I did with Harvard professor Christopher Stanton, in which he illuminates six macro trends in enterprise, work, and talent.
From the story:
Over the past decade, a cloud-based app-enabled taxi service changed how you get from A to B. A marketplace for annoying tasks changed how you assemble IKEA furniture.
And particularly during COVID, a software layer over neighborhood restaurants changed how you eat at night.
But you could argue that as much as the on-demand revolution changed how we satisfy some of our most basic needs, it still hasn’t fundamentally changed the world of work. Over 80% of the employed workforce still has a full-time job with a company. And the vast majority of knowledge workers rock a standard 9-to-5 corporate job with a salary, benefits, a boss, and the occasional memo about new cover sheets on TPS reports.
(Did you get the memo, by the way? We’ll go ahead and make sure you get another one.)