Welcome One and All.

In each episode of the Future @ Work podcast, we here at Sprinter are taking you through some of the most fascinating trends, innovations, and opportunities emerging in how we collectively work together.

In this episode, “Managing client relationships as a freelance and agency,” you’ll learn how to effectively balance client needs and expectations.

• Scope creep can become a real problem for freelancers and agencies. Solve for it by clearly defining the goals of the engagement and its deliverables before the contract is signed.

• Understand that your client’s priorities could change as their business grows. It's up to you to stay adaptable and able to differentiate when the difference between scope creep and a shift in priorities.

• There are big differences in the experience of working with startups vs. large corporations. For starters, many corporations have “use it or lose it” budgets and will splurge for things startups will not.

• Things like initial discovery sessions go a long way in defining the needs and priorities of clients.

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You can watch the full episode here or read the full transcript below.

This transcript has not been edited — please listen to the podcast to confirm any statements made by speakers. 

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Brian Shields, CEO & Co-Founder of Sprinter: 

Hey everybody, welcome to the future at work Podcast. I'm Brian shields. I'm here with my partner Alex Ford. Carter. Hey, Alex, we're gonna talk Hey,

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Alex Ford-Carther, Chief Technology Officer & Co-Founder of Sprinter:

what's up, Brian? Welcome everybody to the show today in today's episode, we're going to be jumping into managing client relationships, both as a freelancer and as an agency owner. All right. So yeah, you know, we've had our agencies since what 2015? So I think this is a good topic that we can really dive into just kind of generally speaking, like, what are some some of your ideas on client? Management?

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Shields:

Yeah, well, I think right off the bat, you know, as soon as you kind of figure out, you know, what the client needs are, before you're even getting to the point of a contract, you need to kind of like, take that consultative sales approach, and really kind of like, suss out what the problems are that they're looking to solve, whether it's building a new product, or kind of like optimizing a existing procedure. And then what it comes down to is really kind of like drilling into, like, what's the actual scope of work. So I think that everyone knows, especially the Freelancers out there like that scope, creep can like really come and bite back at you. So you want to make sure that you're communicating the boundaries of the engagement, whether you're doing like a time and materials billing, or if you're just doing like a deliverable based contract, you need to make sure that you're communicating how long things are going to take, you need to make sure that you're not, you know, over promising and under delivering as the as a service provider, we also need to make sure that you don't allow, you know, the maybe the client's enthusiasm for the project, to kind of like allow them to kind of like, run away with a scope.

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Ford-Carther:

Ya know, from this aspect, like, setting, setting the project up early for success is definitely key. You can even go as far as setting it in your contracts and making sure that, you know, the client understands, you know, scope and statement of work and deliverables and making sure that that's properly set up with within your engagements. You know, so, you know, what are some ways that we've done in the past? Like, what are some of the things that we've done? for setting up specific engagements?

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Shields:

Yeah, I mean, like, we've, you know, over the years, we've kind of worked with every engagement model you can imagine. So I think that like, what we've done most successfully is having a few clear set deliverables, and then having some of the longer term engagements beside it kind of like a time materials basis, where they can determine what the resources are for their team, and figure out how long they're going to need to engage that team then figure out what they can accomplish in terms of like the overall like roadmap for their product and for their company. And I do think that one of the biggest things is making sure that you know how to handle like a change request, right? Because I think every every product roadmap will eventually have something come up that will change something in the roadmap. And that's like, why agile wins over waterfall, right? So it's about how do you make sure that when something comes up, or when something changes, or a pivot needs to happen, that you're able to roll with it and not have the entire roadmap collapse? Right? So it's, you know, how can you handle a change request to a fixed scope and make sure that you're able to do that in a way that's clearly defined in terms of time and budget for both the client sake and for the service provider.

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Ford-Carther:    

One thing that I think is hugely important is being able to properly estimate the time that it takes to complete specific work, whether it's, you know, doing a website, you know, breaking it down task, by task, on an hour by hour basis, will really help, you know, understand the full scope of things. And as clients say, Oh, well, I want to change this image. And, you know, I really liked this design when they come back and give you a change request, being able to make sure you can articulate, well, that's going to take four hours. And what we had scoped originally is going to take two hours. So do you want to swap that? And if so, then that's going to change your budget and potentially change the delivery date and the timeline of the specific project. So making sure that you can accurately estimate the time it takes to complete specific tasks within within a project is really going to help you align more closely with the client as change requests happen.

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Shields:  

And then maybe we could talk a little bit about, you know, when you're working, you know, maybe as a freelancer, maybe you're starting out kind of earlier in your career, like you're launching your agency and you're working with your legal counsel to kind of draft your documents like how do you make sure when you get to the scope of work, when you've got like your actual agreement with the contract with a client you're putting, putting putting the specifics for their project in? How do you kind of work with the client to make sure that you can clearly define kind of like the features, requirements and tasks of kind of what they're asking for?

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Ford-Carther:    

I mean, typically, we go through like a full discovery session. Every agency will do that a little bit differently. But we've We've tried a few, you know, ways to do it. But ultimately, we kind of will just do discovery first and usually build that as its own little separate standalone budget item. And then as you go through discovery, you know, typically clients will come with their wish list and you go kind of one by one and go through, you know, the specific requirements and build that out into more detailed documents. So the client could say, oh, I want a website with a slider on it. And then through discovery, you go step by step, okay, well, does this slider have images? Or is it sliding text, and then if it's sliding text, you know, or how many carousel items you want to in that particular slider, and does that slider then link out to anything like so then you really get into the nitty gritty details. And, you know, a client saying, oh, I want a slider on my website that, based on his very specifics, that slider could be a two hour window that it takes to build or, you know, 10 hour, because you might have videos, and you got to create the videos and optimize the videos, and you have images and optimize images. So there's a lot that goes into just having a slider on your website. And that's just one example. But as you can imagine, diving a lot deeper. Like, if you're talking about software development, or just, you know, really heavy duty, web development or engineering, like you can really get into some great variables between what the client expectation might be, and specifically, like, how long it might take for that particular project to be executed.

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Shields:  

Yeah, I think one of the things that we've learned over the years working with, you know, businesses from you know, like, you know, mom and pops and startups to, you know, like, fortune 500 companies, that is the idea of, not necessarily, but like, I guess the client bit, depending on their sophistication, terms of building software products, like they don't necessarily know what like a proper scope looks like, right. So if some people are coming in with a cocktail napkin, some people are coming in with like, you know, 25 Page bullet pointed, you know, like, you know, triple underlined, you know, you know, full scope that they've already worked through what, you know, maybe with a third party consultant or something like that, I think that one of the more difficult things for people to figure out how to do specifically is how to value the creative, specifically, you know, when you're working with design, and when you're working with video, specifically, I think it's difficult for people to figure out how to build for that, and like what that looks like. And so in terms of kind of, you know, taking the idea from like, concepts to like, you know, fully through, you know, a storyboarding and an animation or, you know, process or something like that, making sure that the clients can understand, like, how much time goes into that, and how many different people might be touching that project, is something that a lot of times people may be having these needs as a business owner, but they haven't actually had to, you know, end up producing video content before, you know, or something like that, or, you know, working with designers on, you know, creative campaigns, as opposed to, you know, just product design.

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Ford-Carther:   

Yeah, that's a good point, I think. Yeah, if you could, you know, if you're an agency, or if you're like a freelancer, being able to have some sort of documentation about your process, and like, you know, if you're a web designer, you go through wireframes. And then, you know, start with mood boarding, and then wireframes, and then low fidelity, imagery, and then high fidelity. And then like, you know, how many rounds of revision Are you going through, so like, articulating your process, and everyone's process typically is fairly standard, depending on you know, what type of creative you're creating. But going through that process, being able to quickly, easily articulate that to the client early on, I think is definitely, you know, part of, you know, putting in that work early to set, set that foundation, and then making sure that as the client relationship grows, like you can continue to continue to articulate that process. And make sure that there's still alignment within, within the client and your relationship. Because, you know, ultimately, they got to win, they may have one idea of how many hours something takes, but like, like you said, they've probably never done done it. And that's why they're hiring you. And so you've got to be able to, you know, not only for their sake, but for your sake, and not feel like you're getting cheated on the amount of hours that it's taking you to actually do the work. And, you know, as you grow in your career, as you build your agency, some of those processes will, you know, the timelines will get more refined, you'll get better at it. Something that might take you, you know, six hours early on in your career, like maybe now it takes you four or maybe you've created libraries of tools that allow you to expedite that. That process more quickly, but all Ultimately, they're still paying for your knowledge and understanding of what goes into that. So make sure that you can articulate that and how long it's going to take set those boundaries, set that timeframe. And then, you know, if it changes, that's okay. But you know, just being able to communicate that to the client as things go on.

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Shields:  

Yeah. And you also want to make sure you know that you're engaging with all the correct stakeholders at the client level. And you want to make sure that as their business grows, and you know, their business needs change, you're able to adapt with them. So you might have a, you know, a quarterly contract, you might have a six month or an annual agreement, but you want to make sure that as that business evolves, if it's like an early business, and it's growing, or if it's just a more established business that needs to change direction, you need to be able to kind of, you know, work directly with multiple stakeholders at the client level. And so I think one of the key things has always been transparency, and making sure that all of the different stakeholders are kind of on the same page with everything. So maybe we can talk a little bit about how the, you know, what we've done with sprinter has been able to kind of, you know, bring some transparency to the, to the process in terms of how like, the dashboards are integrated and everything like that.

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Ford-Carther:

Yeah. 100%. Before I jump into that, like, I'll give you a perfect example. Last week, I was on a call project we've been working on for quite some time. But just internally, they're shifting from like a b2c model more to like b2b. And so, you know, that shifts, the scope of the app that ships the scope changes the scope of their pitch, it changes the scope of their website looks like there's a lot of ripple effects that kind of go down as they evolve their business. And, you know, it's obviously for the better, I think, allow them to, to grow and scale their business, but then requirements changes, you're talking b2b, like, what kind of admin stuff are you going to need for potential business owners, as opposed to just, you know, one off customer, so like, as, as you evolve up in the agency, with the client, like, make sure you kind of reset and kind of go back to, you know, the structure and the process? And kind of keep going back to that and make sure that that that's still alive? To answer your question about sprinter? Yeah, no, we, we've thought about all this. And obviously, you can kind of tell like, we've made sure that our process is tight. And so taking what we've learned over the past, what, 5678 years, and even before that at our previous careers, and kind of dumping that into a software solution, and how we architected the system, you know, dashboards, timelines, you know, quick information about who's working on what allowing the stakeholders easy access into that, so they can then send that up to their, their direct reports, I think, you know, the transparency that you establish with a client initially, is going to kind of set that tone. And so with sprinter, like, we are really trying to help the agencies establish that transparency, and kind of build on the importance of that communication. So we've got, you know, direct chat built right into the platform, you can pull reports from a sprint by sprint basis, you can pull project reports. So everything we kind of built in there was really based on kind of the conversation that we're having today about, you know, client expectations, managing that scope, managing that process, and being able to provide both agency and client the information that they need to properly make scope changes, and do so in a seamless way. So if the client does decide, hey, I don't want this particular button or this particular feature, but I want this instead, you know, within our system, when you add new requirements, like you're alerted, of, okay, this is gonna put your budget out of whack. So maybe you should take this feature out, or you have to accept the new budget and accept that, hey, my initial budget was 100,000. And now it's gonna be 120. Like, I'm okay with that, because this is an important feature that as we continue to get market research that like this has to this has to be in the, in our product for us to be successful. Right?

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Shields:  

Well, and one of the things you were just talking about with, with one of the clients that we're working with, and how like their business model kind of changed to go, which is b2b, b2b, or b2c to b2b. And now they need to have more like admin level privileges. They need to have more stakeholder access, there's like an entire new user experience, like a new user interface to kind of architect we kind of dealt with that ourselves when we were building out the spectra platform. And we'd kind of initially built it for like the product managers and the consultants that are running, you know, teams that are providing, you know, small level solutions. Sure, small scale solutions. To, you know, their independent client base, and then we wanted to build it out for the people that are actually running larger agencies. And so like that we wanted that individual to be able to scale up to be able to have other people managing projects for them, and engagements for them with their clients, as they scaled their, you know, from an independent, you know, kind of individual, you know, you know, process to be able to scale that to an agency level.

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Ford-Carther:

Yeah, I mean, we really thought about, well, initially, like, we built sprinter for ourselves, right, like,

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Shields:   

a lot of our own problems away. Yeah. And then,

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Ford-Carther:  

you know, we, as we grew, we realized that, you know, a lot of as we kind of started talking to other other groups, like a lot of people had the same issues that we had. And so we don't have all the answers, but we feel like we built a solution for some of our problems. And if we could then let other people use that and in a way that they can eliminate some of their problems. And, and, you know, how, how we could scale and grow our business. And, you know, it was kind of a natural evolution, because we started working with a lot of agency partners. And can we talked about last episode, like going from in house teams to partners, and then, like, partner agencies, and then network model, like, as we kind of transitioned our model, like, once we started engaging other agencies and found new problems, like it was just a natural fit to kind of re architect some of the platform in a way that we knew we could kind of roll it out for other agencies and other other creatives to use the product in a way that, you know, we thought eliminated a lot of a lot of the friction. And I know, like, early on in my career when I was, you know, just building websites for one off folks. And, you know, I'm not the most communicative person, and I just want to build stuff, right, I just, like, Get out of my way, like, tell me what you want, I'll just build it for you. That's not really how everybody works. So like, if I had a tool like sprint early on, like, some of the admin stuff that actually has to happen in building and establishing good client relationships, it kind of automates that for me. So like the reporting, and like the feedback loops, and everything that kind of was, you know, not in my wheelhouse early on, and some of the mistakes that I made just as like a freelance, you know, web brand guy, right, like, we've kind of used that experience and built into the platform so that someone like myself, who, you know, are early on is just kind of getting started has a process in place, right out the gate, so they can not, so they can avoid some of that those misgivings if they're just kind of starting off in their own careers.

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Shields:

Yeah, well, like you said, I mean, like, at the beginning, it was like, Okay, we want to solve our own problems, right. And it was a lot about, like, automating back office agency operations, you know, so it was everything from chasing invoices to managing payroll, and managing your client contracts, and, and, and your buildings and everything like that. And so being able to architect all that into the platform, alongside all the file sharing, and chats, and you know, product management tools that you've already talked about, I think, like, it was really the idea of kind of, you know, like I said, automating the agency operations, so that, you know, the people who are in our position that we're running, these firms are able to kind of grow and scale their business with less friction and lower operating costs.

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Ford-Carther:

Yeah, so setting the foundation is important. That initial kind of engagement with a client, you know, obviously, sprinter, we've tried to make it really easy for folks. But the other tip that we have, that we want to kind of discuss today is like, what do you do when the client kind of goes off the rails to sort of say, or kind of gets out of scope? Like, talk tall? We got, we got plenty, plenty of stories. Yeah,

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Shields:

don't get in any specific details. But I do think that, you know, a lot of times, you know, people may have an appetite that's bigger than their stomach or a wishlist that's bigger than their wallet. You know, we've seen clients that have gotten in front of their skis gotten ahead of their skis a little bit in terms of their own operating budget. And that's typically the sign of a younger company, or a less experienced entrepreneur. You know, I think that a lot of times you get larger businesses that have, you know, kind of, like, use it or lose it corporate budgets that, you know, they may, you know, be spending a little bit more lavishly on things that are kind of like bells and whistles, and it's like distractions, and you're kind of like, this isn't actually something you need, it doesn't drive your business forward, but they don't care. It's something that they want. And you want to kind of keep them focused on like, what's going to help them build the product that's going to help them make money, right. And so I do think that it goes a little bit both ways, right? Sometimes it's, you know, they're wanting more than they can afford, or they're wanting things that aren't necessarily what the product architects would necessarily think are actually like the focus of the product itself. And so it's a lot about working with the client to figure out what's the business model, what's the product, right. It's like you always say it's like you can build The best piece of software in the world but it's like your those are those are your Nike shoes and they're in the box and they're on the shelf and now you got to still like run the business and sell the product and move the boxes of shoes. Right. And so I think it's a lot about making sure that you keep them on on target, and you don't let them get a little bit out of their own.

How to turn an idea into a business

In each episode of the Future @ Work podcast, we here at Sprinter are taking you through some of the most fascinating trends, innovations, and opportunities emerging in how we collectively work, together. This episode looks at the process of creating a business from a simple idea to a tangible reality, using Instacart, AirBnB, Sprinter, and others as case studies.

• Businesses are built around problems: problems at work, problems at home, problems at the supermarket. if you have a solution to some of the problems that people face day in and out, then you potentially have an idea that can be transformed into a product and, then, a true business.

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• The first question: Is this a problem just you have, or is it a problem for other people too? The answer to that question affects the total addressable market your service or product will be able to potentially reach. That leads to the second question: Are there other companies that have already raised money to tackle that same problem? 

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• Nowadays, there are more ways for entrepreneurs to answer those questions quickly, including conducting polls on Twitter or doing research into publicly available data on free sites like Crunchbase. When there are other tools or solutions on the market, entrepreneurs can ask: How are they doing at addressing the problem, and what are the sticking points for your potential users?

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• Ideas for solutions can come from a different industry or from answering a question that people haven’t yet thought to even ask (examples include Instacart, which allowed ordinary people to out-source the chore of grocery shopping to others, or AirBnB, which tapped into a previously under-utilized short-term personal home rental market). 

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You can watch the full episode here or read the full transcript below.

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This transcript has not been edited — please listen to the podcast to confirm any statements made by speakers. 

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Brian Shields, CEO & Co-Founder of Sprinter:

Everybody, welcome to the future @ work Podcast. I'm Brian shields. I'm here with my partner, Alex Ford-Carther. Hey, Alex, what are we gonna talk about today?

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Alex Ford-Carther, Chief Technology Officer & Co-Founder of Sprinter:

Today, we wanted to talk about problems, problems at work problems at home problems at the supermarket. How can we take these problems that everyone faces day in and day out, create solutions for those problems, develop products around those solutions, and finally, build a business around that product.

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Shields

So we're talking about having gone from a problem and you got an idea to solve a problem? How do we turn that into a business? Right?

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Ford-Carther  

Yeah, for sure. Yeah, the idea is that by the end of this episode, you'll learn exactly how to how to do this and how we did it multiple times throughout our careers. Very cool. So part one, number one, identifying problems. Yeah. Yeah, go for it.

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Shields  

Yeah, no, I mean, it's like, apples and apples, right. Like, everyone's got problems. So like, I mean, if you're a business owner, you got problems coming to from all sides, sales, marketing, Technology Operations, you know, you're probably dealing with your lawyers and your accountants at some point or another. And like, you know, figuring out how to streamline your business operations is, is going to be something where you're going to be able to find a technological solution, a digital solution to some of those problems.

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Ford-Carther  

So the question is, is this a problem that you have? Or is this a problem that a lot of people have, right? Yeah, being able to identify? You know, is this something that you can scale across multiple people? Or is it just something that hey, I've got this itch that I gotta scratch and nobody else has it?

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Shields  

Totally. And I think that one of the things just like you said, is like, is it a problem in your process? Or is this a oppresses problem for other people, right? So that's like, hey, there might be a, you know, off the shelf solution that you as a business owner aren't familiar with, you come to an agency, and you're like, hey, I want to build some software that does X, Y, and Z. And you're like, you mean Calendly. Or like, you know, you mean XYZ like, and there's already a tool that's out there that they're not familiar with. So I think that that happens a lot. And that's what I said, like, it might be that they have a manual or an analog process, or they have like a gap within their tech stack that they might be unaware of. And that's their problem. But if it's a problem for a lot of people, that's something worth actually building a software solution for, how

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Ford-Carther  

do you go about seeing if this is a problem that a lot of people want to fix? Or is it like something that's internal at your company, or just internal to you like, what what I mean, obviously, you can go out and Google stuff, but like, what is your process? What what do you think is the right approach to seeing if this is like a viable thing? Well,

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Shields  

there's two different kind of ways you can look at this, right? You can look at it from like a product design and development perspective, where you're thinking about this as like a user experience research problem. But you can also look at it as like a business owner entrepreneur perspective, where you're looking at this as like, what's the total addressable market? Right? Is there is there a serviceable obtainable market that I can go after, where I can make big money at this at scale, where it's worth going and raising capital from somebody to build the solution for this problem, right? Then if you're looking at it from like, a product design development perspective, you're really looking at it from that user experience research of like, okay, what tools are people currently using to solve these problems? And how are these tools failing to provide the solutions that they're looking for? How can we build a better mousetrap? How can we, you know, figure out ways to improve these tools or build better ones, to solve this problem in a new or novel way? I think that those are all things to kind of keep in mind when you're looking at defining what the problem is.

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Ford-Carther  

Yeah, one thing that, you know, we obviously have worked with a lot of different companies and kicked around for quite a few ideas on our own, like, one of the things that I do for research is just I go to CrunchBase, right, I go, I go to, you know, specific websites to figure out, you know, are there other people that are trying to tackle this same problem? Are there other companies that have raised money to tackle the same problem? And, you know, kind of digging deeper into the problem itself? Like, you know, going around asking people, you know, maybe you come up with surveys and send it out to your friends and family and see if that

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Shields  

one nowadays, there just be a couple of videos on tic tac, let the algorithm take it to the for you page for everybody and let it do its work? Yeah,

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Ford-Carther  

I mean, like, you know, throw a Twitter thread up there and see how many reactions you get and see if people are like, Oh, this, this is something that I faced. And this is something that I deal with. So like, I think there's a lot of resources now that probably weren't available. 10 Even you know, 510 years ago that can quickly help you identify if this is a particular problem.

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Shields  

How many people were really feeling the need to video call all their business meetings until COVID. Hit right like we already had FaceTime, right? Just no one used it, right? Like zoom solved a problem that we already had tools that it was already a solved problem, right? But no one was using it yet because they didn't have the need.

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Ford-Carther  

Right. So That's kind of, you know, problem versus knee, like, is it something that a lot of people are going to need? And a lot of it is, like, at what time? Are they going to need it? Like,

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Shields  

in terms of the market? Right? Yeah. I mean, it's, you know, it's like the old saying is, like, you know, being too early is is just as bad as being too late. Right. And I think that there's a lot of tools that had been built before their time. I think that's the kind of the the nature of the beast, if you're working with bleeding edge technology, you know, I remember playing with the Nintendo Virtual Boy in like, 92, or something like that. And it was like this big red headset and like, come on, wait, we're not even there yet. You know? So I mean, like, we got the Oculus, but like, that was 30 years ago. Yeah. So it's like, there's no shortage of, you know, attempts to solve a problem before the problem needs to be solved at scale?

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Ford-Carther  

Well, also, you know, depending on what industry you're in, and, you know, if you're, you know, looking at it from an industry perspective, like there's definitely industries that are ahead of the curve behind the curve when it comes to technology. And obviously, like these problems that we're talking about, we're we're looking at from a technology side, like how do we solve this with technology? So, you know, industry like healthcare, or logistics, like those are industries that are probably behind the eight ball a little bit, because there's a lot of bureaucracy and kind of people set in their ways, as far as like fixing some of those problems. But there's a lot of problems in those industries. But are people going to adapt new solutions? Or they just kind of kind of continue with the way the past? And so you not only kind of have to factor in like, is this a problem? But is this the right time for this? And is this going to be adoptable? As you know, if I tried to turn this into a business, so, you know, if you're forward thinking type person working in like a non tech industry, like, there's definitely opportunities for tech to solve some problems, but you've kind of got to look at a bigger macro picture to see if if people are ready for whatever you want to come up with. Yeah,

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Shields  

I mean, if you're kind of putting the entrepreneur hat on, right, and you're looking at this from a venture perspective, and trying to figure out like, you know, how big is this problem? You know, what's it? What's the, you know, the market size for solving it? You know, it's kind of like, you know, you can you can pick one or two, right? And it's either it's a big problem in a small industry, or it's a small problem in a big industry. And if you can get a big problem, big industry, yeah, there's probably already solutions out there, and you got a better mousetrap, right. But I do think that there, like you said, there's no shortage of industries that are still way behind the eight ball in terms of technological adoption. I think that it's a generational problem. I think that as the older generation starts to retire in the newer generations entering the workforce, and they're coming in coming out of, you know, they've had iPads and class, since they were in junior high. No one's going into those careers without like wanting a firm change in that, you know, technology investments that their companies are making. And I think that you're kind of already seeing that with some of the great resignation, people are coming back from COVID. And like, well, we're all working on MacBooks and zoom calls. And now like, we're going back into like, the, you know, there's not enough toilet paper in the bathroom for everybody here. And so I think that businesses kind of figure out how to how to adopt or adapt to keep their talent. But then you get all the actual, there's never going to not be analog industries, right? You're always gonna have somebody who needs to do work that is offline, right? And so it's about how you make sure that you're automating the processes at those businesses so that they can unlock human potential in a way that they're not dragged down by that bureaucracy.

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Ford-Carther  

Yeah, and as as kind of technology evolves over time, right. Like, I think, you know, some of the problems that you find are not just with, you know, the old way, but also might be with some of the technology that was already created. And like, people are using tech differently. So like, you know, an example is like Gmail and Google, like, people use Gmail and Outlook, but like, is there a better way to do email, and there's companies right now trying to solve like, the email problem, and so like, but email was just, you know, invented like, 1020 30 years ago. So like, it's like,

‍

Shields  

I mean, email, emails,

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Ford-Carther  

Boomer attack right now. Right? So you're, you're looking at, you know, problems, not just in like, analog, but also digital, and like, how do you solve for the speed at which people are using their devices? And, you know, now you're moving from desktop world to a mobile world? Like, how, you know, how can we solve problems that, you know, technology might have been architected for a desktop or like a old way of thinking, like you see companies out there that are just trying to speed up and solve solutions for small micro problems within their tech stack, but we'll give them an extra hour in the day. Right.

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Shields  

Well, I think that's a huge issue too, because I think that people you know, not just thinking from like a business perspective, but you know, a lot of consumer technology that's out there, you know, people didn't necessarily think, like Instacart Oh, that's what I really need somebody doing my shopping for you. It's like, yeah, everyone has like, Oh, if I had a genie they could grant me Three wishes, and I've never doing errands again is one of them, right? But then people were able to build those solutions at scale. And like I love when you use Instacart, it's like, oh, you've saved 15 hours using this app, you've saved 125 hours using this app. Like, that's a great, great little feature that they can put in and make everyone realize what they're actually solving in terms of that, like the ability to not waste time commuting anymore. Right with with the new software platform is being able to work with teams around the world to you know, for cost savings, I think that that stuff is all, you know, just the problems that can be solved at scale or, you know, can be tremendously valuable for both their business handyperson. Talk

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Ford-Carther  

to the talk to, you know, sprinter and how we kind of identified our problem. And

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Shields  

yeah, well, I mean, like, we talked about this, in the last episode, last two episodes about some of the problems that we felt that we were facing, as you know, as entrepreneurs, as agency owners, and then just working with a lot of other business owners, and you know, also just in our career working at, you know, corporations and other startups. I think that a lot of it was like, Okay, what tools are we currently using? To solve our problems? What do we not like about them? Like, why do we need to have three different tools working all needing to work together to solve a specific problem where we can build our own solution for it? And so a lot of what we did was actually kind of like looking at our own, you know, what were the what were the chinks? In the armor of our business? Right? And how could we, you know, kind of make sure that not we're not just relying on third party software tools to kind of patch over them. But we're actually able to build a stronger foundation from our business from the inside out, kind of going back to first principles like looking at like, Okay, what what do we need to run the business? Like, what are the things that drive the value for our clients drive the value for our shareholders drive the value for our stakeholders, and I think that, you know, making sure that people can kind of look at that holistically is is very valuable.

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Ford-Carther  

That's a great segue. So kind of part two of this kind of list that we're working off of today, finding solutions. So you kind of just talked about finding solutions, but like, if it's, you know, say you found a problem, like, what are some things and tips that you would tell someone as they're trying to? Okay, maybe I do you have a viable business with this solution that I'm looking to create? Like, what are some tips that you could give someone to, like, kind of get that process going from, you know, maybe a napkin into something that not building a product yet, but like some of that research discovery phase of getting that off?

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Shields  

Yeah, I think don't number one, like if you're if you're looking to engage like an individual, or, you know, freelancer or an agency to kind of help you solve these problems, I think you need to kind of come come correct, like, do your homework, do your research, come with some screen designs, even if they're, like, rough by hand, take photos of your, from your phone, and like, kind of do the paper version of what you want something to look like, right? Like, show me examples of other things that are out there that are kind of similar, you know, whether it's like kind of like a comparable product or comparable, you know, solution to the industry that doesn't solve the exact same problem. I think that you want to make sure that you kind of touched on this earlier, but it's like, you know, is anyone is this actually a problem? Or is this just something that annoys you? Right? If because if it's like, if it's an actual problem that's out there, like it would, there'd be someone already swimming in the water, right. And so you want to make sure that, like, someone's kind of looking after these things, I don't think people just trip and stumble over a billion dollar ideas, because, you know, a lot of problems do have solutions that are out there, that isn't, that might not be very good ones, right? You know, you get somewhere with a horse, but turned out you had to get wet if it was raining, you know. And so I think that a lot of times people will be able to find out solutions that they weren't necessarily aware of. So I do think that it's doing the research, seeing what's out there, but then also talking to people that build new products and build products for other industries. Because a lot of times there might be a solution to a similar problem in a different industry that you're not familiar with, because you are kind of looking at your what's out there with the blinders from your perspective from from your career and your work background.

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Ford-Carther  

Yeah, we've dealt with a lot of people that come to us with, obviously, experience in their realm in their field, but maybe not experienced in tech. And we've, you know, we've seen people come to us with ideas, and they'll say, oh, have you seen this, this and this, and this, because we were in the tech space, and we kind of understand, you know, what's already out there, and we kind of keep our finger on the pulse. But, you know, obviously, like, doing your own research, you know, I think common common phrase, but, you know, maybe you set up some sort of, you know, questionnaire or you set up some sort of like, you know, I think dummy website that like, actually, like get people interested or like, you know, I think there's some good examples of companies out there that without even starting to build something like we're able to capture an audience or capture like, some sort of data that was able to allow them to prove that this is a viable business and that there are people that want this and would pay for it.

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Shields  

And a lot of times you can do that without a heavy Investment technology, I'm pretty sure the MVP for Airbnb was an air mattress in a spreadsheet, you know, like, I don't think that like, you know, you don't need to, like a lot of times you your your your your super base level MVP is probably a questionnaire in a spreadsheet, right and like doing doing some surveys, do some research, you know, hey, if it looks something like this, that you could do freehand with pen doesn't need to look great. If it looks something like this, this is something you would use you can get, you can get the feedback from nothing, then go to an agency and say, This is what I want to build. This is the feedback I got, you know, what do you guys think? Can you do something like this are what what API's what might we use? What kind of building blocks can we bring into this to make this a reality?

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Ford-Carther  

Yeah, I think buffer is one of the tools that we use, I think when they started, they had like a single landing page and drove people to it and asked if they would use a service and got their email, and acted like it was a live service. But once someone put in their email, they're like, Oh, thanks. So we haven't built it yet, but we'll keep it on the list. So there's definitely, you know, things out there that, you know, you can start with, and there's obviously tools. You know, if you're like, like a lifestyle company, right, or like, community, if your ideas based on like building a community, like, there's already tools out there that will allow you to build a community, whether it's I don't even know, like Facebook groups or like Slack, Slack Discord server, communities, if that's the solution to your problem without building tech, right. And once you've established that, oh, I've got this community of people that would pay for whatever I build, like there's, you know, build the community first. And then you go back and build the software, if you think it's an actual viable business. So you kind of have to discern between, you know, is this a lifestyle thing? Or is it so like, a real long term business? Is this a million dollar business? Is this $100,000 business and based on what you come up with, like you might not want invest in tech, or maybe think that investing in tech will be the right answer.

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Shields  

When I think also, you might have situations where people have have a community and they don't know what the what to do with it, right. And so, you know, one of my favorite examples of that is pool suite where they had this community and they're like, Oh, well, how do we what do we do with it? Like, we got this music community, and they're all listening this all the time. And then they went out and created vacation launched like a sunscreen. And then they went out and you know, launched the pool suite, NF T's and they're now they're going into like, manna, Dow and like, they're going full blown web three. And that was all, okay, well, what's the problem that we can help these people solve? And at the end of the day, they're like, We just wanna help people party and throw a vibe. And like, you know, sometimes that's a problem for people.

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Ford-Carther  

Sure. What did we do? Was sprinter pre development of our platform. And like, post idea, like, what was that in the middle? Where we kind of, like work through what sprinter was gonna become? And like, how do we go about, like, seeing if this was like, a real thing?

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Shields  

Yeah, I mean, like, we, we saw a lot of problems with the tools that we were using, because they all seemed a little clunky, from what we were looking at from like, you know, kind of we both candidates, like a UX design perspective. And, you know, it was like, Okay, we got all these different tools, they're not great, we have to teach every client how to use 15 different pieces of software to properly manage their platform like they're there. All these dashboards are in different places like this is not ideal. We can grab screenshots from everything and throw them into a PowerPoint deck, I'm going to give a presentation. But this is like a lot of manual report generation. And it's like not the best use of everyone's time. And so there's a lot of things like that. But like we started, kind of we identified our problem early on. And then it was really about, we began like over the course of all of our client engagements, starting to kind of recognize how everyone was starting to see these problems in different ways from the client side. And we started talking more with our product managers and our designers and our developers and looked at how some of the tools that they were using, looking at some of the problems that they were having on their side of the equation, right, like, Okay, you guys are talking to the clients, you guys are hearing what they want. But then like, we're only getting it in documentation form, and it's not being perfectly captured or XYZ and like, how can we improve that process? So we really kind of looked at this not only from okay, we were the first were the product managers, then we were the agency owners, and then we were like, Okay, now let's talk to the clients and see what their pain points were. Now let's talk to the product managers that are working for us as agency owners, what are their pain points? Now let's talk to the devs, the designers, the marketers, the strategists that are working on these projects as well. Let's talk to the other agency owners that we work with how are they dealing with this? Like, what tools are they using? And then we kind of looking back and again being like Alright, now that we see this kind of problem from like a holistic perspective, now we can start to design the solution that can solve this problem for each of these different user groups.

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Ford-Carther  

Yeah, and even before we kind of started architecting, the software like we implemented some of that process and those learnings with the existing tools that we had, like we still had like different processes that we tried to implement, implement, that mirrored what we thought we were going to build in, in the software that we that ended up becoming sprinter. But the idea is that oh, you know, if we had the spreadsheets and this data, we could follow a process and establish, you know, if we had this chat feature in the platform, it would look like this. So we try to emulate the same experience using slack.

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This episode discusses some of the team’s top takeaways from the 2022 CV Summit in Zug, Switzerland.

• Sprinter got its start in Zug, Switzerland as one of the earliest startups incubated by the Crypto Valley Fund, which now has dozens of companies in its portfolio, making the city dear to Sprinter and its Co-Founders. 

• The CV Fund has expanded its footprint to include companies in Africa while developing the crypto ecosystem in places like Cape Town, a region that is ripe for blockchain innovation as it mulls Bitcoin standards and broader crypto currency adoption.

• Events like the CV Summit are a great opportunity for companies to build relationships and community, reconnecting and finding new ways to collaborate and work together while bonding over shared interests. 

• “It’s almost like a field house environment, where we’re all running our own races, but we’re on the same team,” as Sprinter Co-Founder Brian Shields puts it.

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You can watch the full episode here or read the full transcript below.

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This transcript has not been edited — please listen to the podcast to confirm any statements made by speakers. 

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Brian Shields, CEO & Co-Founder of Sprinter:

Hey everybody. Welcome to the future @ work Podcast. I'm Brian shields. I'm here with my co founder and partner Alex Ford-Carther. Hey Alex, what are we gonna talk about today?

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Alex Ford-Carther, Chief Technology Officer & Co-Founder of Sprinter:

So today we are going to be chatting about the CV summit and our recent trip over to Zug and

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Shields  

Switzerland. Excellent. Yeah. Always a great time in Switzerland.

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Ford-Carther  

Yeah, so just so for those who don't know, one of our investors, the CBBC, they typically throw an annual summit for just kind of crypto enthusiasts and kind of just folks within their, their network in the community. But this year, they did something a little bit different.

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Shields  

Yeah, no, it was really cool. So like, this was my third CV Summit. So I'd actually that's the first time we met all those guys in person was I think, 2017 on November 2017, maybe when they're 2018 18. It was 2018. In November, it was CV summit we met Yeah, Nikolai Lucas. And a lot of these guys started here. And what that what they're starting to kind of kick off in the Krypto Valley and Zook, and they launched the CV labs incubation program. And then we ended up participating in batch one of that, and we got to know a lot of people over in Switzerland and meet with a lot of other founders in the blockchain space. And we stayed in touch with a lot of them over the past few years during COVID, and everything like that, and like watching everyone cheering them on from the sidelines, was really cool. But the CB summit this year coming off of the pandemic, and doing like kind of like the virtual and online type versions for a bit, was getting everyone back together. And now that CB Vc as a fund is actually kind of grown and scaled up their operation over the past few years, they were able to add in a full day to the summit specifically for the kind of friends and family with the portfolio companies. So it was really cool for us. Because, you know, we knew the other companies from like the batch one of the incubation program, but that was only like the 10 companies and we all got to like live together in Switzerland and work together and get to know everyone really well. But now, you know, we just met another, you know, 25 different founders from other portfolio companies from across Europe, the US and Africa that they've invested in a lot of them doing like really, really cool stuff. So I mean, the the work that, you know, often Lucas and David had been doing in terms of the investment portfolio of there has been pretty impressive.

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Ford-Carther  

Yeah, I think, on one of their slides, I think their portfolios up to like 52 companies

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Shields  

to 55, I don't even know. But yeah, I've been moving at quite a clip, it's been impressive.

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Ford-Carther  

And so for our experience, and it was a little bit different for some of the other groups because batch one was pre COVID. So we were living there breathing there, we really absorbed kind of Switzerland and in crypto Valley and kind of made it a nice home for us for a while. Some of the other groups were remote, but their recent, most recent batch, which I think just graduated as part of the summit was they were also local versus virtual. So we kind of got to talk to different founders and kind of hear some of their different experiences through the program. And it was nice kind of being OG and

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Shields  

yeah, oh, yeah. Like we've been here a bit like, but it was cool. Like, yeah, it was, like you said, it was kind of like, you felt like the upperclassmen a little bit. Yeah, that's not to say that, like our company is bigger or stronger, or whatever than anyone else's, because some of these guys have scaled up very quickly and very impressive. But at the same time, it was like, it was always the first time here, like, I'll tell you where to eat, like, we got a good place to, like, we're gonna go here for dinner. And that's always fun. And then also, like some of the people that we've seen them kind of just staff up on their own operation, like, you know, they, they they rolled out into, you know, the, the CD labs program into Dubai with crypto Oasis, you know, they've got the CV lab, South Africa going on in Cape Town, and seeing what you're getting in the team down there have done has been pretty impressive.

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Ford-Carther  

Yeah, that was pretty cool to see, because they've been talking about, you know, the African footprint for a while. And obviously, crypto and, you know, is a huge opportunity within Africa. So they made a an investment to kind of move a branch of CB labs down there. So, you know, they've got quite a quite a crude on they're doing some cool stuff. And so

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Shields  

I think it's one of the things like, you know, you and I've, we've talked a lot for years about like, I'm basically can Africa superpole. And like I was telling them, like, I think you guys are doing this 100% Right. And like, just like we saw what they were doing back in 2018 in terms of like moving into crypto like this, then being bullish on Africa and moving down there. Like I think just like on a global macro level, like what's going on, just like you saw African economy kind of like leapfrog terrestrial internet and like broadband like and going right to like mobile commerce. I think you're seeing the same thing with crypto, like there's no euro for Africa, like there's, I think that there's going to be a big push for kind of like a Bitcoin standard developing there and like, continuing to develop the crypto ecosystem in Africa from Cape Town, but then also branching into some of the other markets down there where there's like really good technical talent and like strong economies and like some of these other countries. I think it's gonna be fascinating to watch what they accomplish over the next few years. Yeah,

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Ford-Carther  

one of the groups that was in our batch, I think it was math for money. Um, their founders were both from from South Africa and made the trek up to Switzerland and just being able to kind of chat with them, you know, a few years ago about kind of what they were doing, but then just gonna get in a general sense of what what that ecosystem was back in 2019, and kind of seeing it really start to grow and expand. I think, you know, we we've always had an eye on Africa. And we'd love to open operations over there, too.

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Shields  

Oh, yeah. That sounds great. Sounds like there might be a CV summit in Africa in coming up in March, I think so, six months away might be worth, you know, planning a trip down there.

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Ford-Carther  

Yeah. So just generally speaking, like, what was your just general takeaway from the conference?

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Shields  

Yeah, I mean, like, there's no better place to spend crypto winter than summers in Switzerland. It's kind of what I've learned over the past, you know, five years is that, you know, the innovation just continues, you know, builders build, you know, the, the pikers, leaving everyone who's just, you know, you know, right, and retail waves is in and out. And I think that's what we saw from the beginning. In terms of the crypto culture in Switzerland, it was It wasn't Burning Man, it was professionalized like these are these are bankers, and they know what they're doing. And like, they're, they want to build businesses, they understand decentralization in a way that I don't think Americans typically do. And I think that's because of the nature of the international culture within Switzerland, specifically, with like, all the non government organizations that are based out out of there, specifically in Geneva, but also like in Zurich, you know, it's not uncommon for businesses who have, you know, board members from all over the world operating in different countries and like having, you know, different subsidiaries and stuff like that. I think that that is one of the benefits for crypto businesses to you know, you know, operate with a footprint in Switzerland, we've certainly found a benefit to that. And I think that it's given us a global perspective, that, you know, companies that are just you know, building in the Midwest or in New York or San Francisco don't necessarily get, I think that it's, it's really beneficial for anyone building in the crypto space to really kind of get out of your backyard and expand your horizons.

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Ford-Carther  

For the listeners who don't necessarily know about kind of maybe quote unquote, Krypto Valley, like, what why is where they get the name from? And yeah, you know, what, what's the history?

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Shields  

There's a really good book out there by Camilla Russo called the infinite machine that actually talks about the founding of Aetherium. And the initial team like it was like photonic, and these guys all ended up going out to like Lubin, and Hopkinson and all these guys ended up going out to Duke and working with I think mme was the law firm down there. But they basically had to be like, okay, like, what is Bitcoin? What is a theory? I'm like, how do we do an ICO? And what does this look like? Are we setting up a foundation or a for profit thing or whatever, and they basically set up shop there, they had they rented this house, they called the spaceship and like, they all like live there is basically like a hacker house in Switzerland. And, you know, I mean, if anyone's looking for a place to have a hacker house in Switzerland, like we could talk about life, and Lucerne, which is a little outside of the Krypto Valley, and that connects canceled over but that's where we stayed this time because we stayed before and to get we stayed in Zurich. And so we want to spend a little bit more time over in the in the neighborhood canceling certain this time. So maybe we can talk about life in Lucerne about the place that we had, because that was a bit of a spaceship in itself.

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Ford-Carther  

Yeah, no, definitely. So just to give some context. So Shields, I flew over but then Vladimir, our product lead drove in stayed with us and then our head of marketing. He flew over to he was headed over to another blockchain conference stopped by so it was kind of the four of us just hanging out, getting a lot of work done, but just kind of you know, being in Lucerne, which is a is a jewel box when it comes so you're basically overlooking the lake and then the mounds are in the background and like everything's just quiet and quiet museum

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Shields  

that's kind of like this modernist building, but it fits in perfectly like it's like a flat with the horizon then you've got like the Kapil Berceuse, like the oldest wooden bridge in in Europe, and it's like over there on the river, got mount coladas up there. And like we hiked mount politesse during the CV labs program a few years you weren't gonna do that this

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Ford-Carther  

time. Definitely wasn't gonna do that this

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Shields  

time. Live to jetlag this year. But yeah, let me his girlfriend, like took the dog up there. He has a great town. Like if you're going to Krypto Valley, you know, definitely spend time and too but you know, if you're gonna, you know, stay, you can look, you know, stay either in lodestar in or over it. Yeah.

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Ford-Carther  

Well, geez, maybe kind of because you've been switched on a few times, you kind of talked about between Zurich, the UK and Lucerne, and some of maybe the surrounding cities, if you're looking at going there and then actually spending time in, in crypto valley to kind of immerse yourself into into the ecosystem. What would your plan be?

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Shields  

Yeah, no, I mean, I would hit all of them. I mean, like, honestly, like, I think that everyone should spend time in Switzerland. Like you said, I've been there several times. It's a it's a great place to do business. It's a great place to operate international businesses, but it's also a great place to vacation. I mean, I've been there with my family like I know you're gonna be going there with your family. And it's easy getting out. You find his RV flying to Geneva, the two major airports, but zoo itself it's like a 30,000 person town. It's quiet. It's super peaceful, it's calm, it's a lake, you know, on a lake with the mountains in the background, good schools, good businesses. But then it's you know, it's a half hour commute. So it's like a lot of people live in Lucerne a lot of people live in Zurich. And Zurich is certainly a larger city, it's in, you know, the most international city. Lucerne is a little quieter, but it's, you know, you're closer to the mountains. But then if once you get beyond that you can you can go all over the place and like, you know, if you want to, you want to take some good travel photos, go to Switzerland, there's not a bad angle in the country, right? So everything's gonna look good.

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Ford-Carther  

So specifically, and obviously, CB, DC, is there, the CV Summit, kind of maybe let's break down those three days that we were there. So the first day was, we talked about the Friends and Family Day, bunch of different startup pitches. And you know, I don't know, some of these companies aren't even startups anymore. They're, you know, a couple,

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Shields  

a couple of multimillion dollar rounds in there. Exactly. So pay attention should look at some of these guys.

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Ford-Carther  

So I think I think generally speaking, that was to two or three panels that day, and I would say I think they had 2525 of their 52 portfolio companies where they're pitching. So there was one man pitches that we we partook in and some of the other companies, and then the next day, was kind of a typical general conference schedule where you had the main kind of stage and theatres, but with, you know, speakers and panelists and whatnot, so kind of maybe talk about their friends and family day, and then maybe we'll jump into some of the takeaways from the bigger conference.

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Shields  

Yeah, sure. Like other friends and family day, it was definitely like, you know, kind of getting the overall update of everything that they'd been doing, we got to see introductions from some of the new team members on the CVC team, that have continued to kind of build and grow this operation, met a lot of the other investors in their fund as well. So the LPS were there as long as, as well, as you know, obviously, the founders of these different companies that you said, you know, two dozen or so that were from all over the world, you know, all over the world. So it's just awesome to see and like getting everyone together is great. And I know that meant a lot to your the entire team there to see just how successful everyone's been

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Ford-Carther  

one of the things that they did, I don't know if it's typical, some of the other conferences, but they had an app that they set up specifically to allow kind of engagement between the the attendees. So a lot of it was geared towards, like investor introductions. So we were able to probably secure five to 10 different meetings with potential investor groups or partners. They did it in a way where you booked the meeting and excessive efficiency. Yeah. And then like they had a table number, and you went to the table at a certain time and chatted up and I think they did a great job of

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Shields  

really, lord knows I played with enough conference. Yeah, and

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Ford-Carther  

it wasn't, it wasn't overkill, but it was enough to spur those conversations and get that engagement going, especially, you know, for some of us folks that came from out of town that might not have had some of those initial relationships. But I think, you know, between our investor group, David and Lucas, they kind of made sure we talked to the right people and the app that they set up, I think it was, generally speaking a great, great experience for us and, and a good opportunity to kind of expand our story and tell what we're doing. But also see if there was some people that are interested in in kind of helping us grow. Well, not

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Shields  

only that, it was great to be there, you know, in Lucerne with with Sergio with Vladimir Vladimir, his girlfriend and his dog chopper. But yeah, no, I mean, just in general was great. You know, I'm sure we'll bring on Sergio will bring on Vladimir will talk with both of them. And we'll chat a little bit more about our experience over there together. But yeah, just all told, you know, CV summit as always a great experience. It's been really good connections I think a lot of people are interested in in sprinter and what we've been building, so it's been really interesting to see them. Yeah, maybe we'll bring some of those people on as guests further on down the road.

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Ford-Carther  

Yeah, one of the things that so like, your first one was in 2018, right? Yes. And so now four years later, I don't know how much you remember. 20 You seem to have a pretty good memory. What do you think from a, like a panelist or like just a topics statement, then versus now? Like,

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Shields  

yeah, what's one of the things that was really cool this time was, you know, it's NF T's. It's digital art. Right. So they they had a really cool exhibition hall in the casino theater and to which is not like a casino the way we think of it as an American, you know, but it's like, you know, the auditorium, theater and everything. There's really cool, really good, you know, awesome digital art. They had some Metaverse stuff going on a couple of the portfolio companies or Metaverse companies. And you know, they're doing like YouTube for the metaverse is like really cool stuff. And be able to kind of experience some of that and see that see the NFT art but also some real world physical installations with digital counterparts was pretty interesting. And then again, just in general, the past few years, like the professionalization of you know, of defy and of, you know, kind of like, you know, you know, just take taking crypto seriously right? It's like there's a difference between the people it's like, you get crypto crypto folks on Twitter crypto folks on discord in crypto folks on Bloomberg, right like There's a different crowd out there. And I think Switzerland, as you know, kind of has a way of being involved in all of that. And I think it's really interesting to see from a cultural perspective.

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Ford-Carther  

Yeah, I would say like, just my thought on that is, like, early on 2018, we were first over there it was, it was a lot of regulatory, like, How is this all gonna work?

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Shields  

They figured it out,

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Ford-Carther  

they figured it out. So now it's more like utility, like, what are we gonna build? Like, how can we like, how can we how can we actually use this technology? Yeah,

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Shields  

and how can we use these technologies, you know, an interconnection fashion between, you know, layer one, layer two solutions, building bridges, multi Chain Solutions, I think like a lot of the stuff that's going on in terms of like custody is really, really interesting. And I do think that, you know, there's still big problems and crypto. And volatility I actually don't think is one of them. Like, I think that these problems are being solved. And they're being solved by people who are building actual solutions using Blockchain as the underlying technology to solve the problems for the people operating within the space, where it's not like blockchain is the solution. But blockchain is the tool that helps you build the solution.

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Ford-Carther  

One of the things we failed to mention, but I always want to give a shout out to CB lab and Cbc because they always do a good job of kind of creating these relaxed mixer environments. So after the friends and family, we all went over back to CB labs. And they had that which they typically do, they've got like, kind of this outdoor courtyard. Awesome. And so space track Yeah, they had a food truck that these hamburgers that they were, I mean, you know, I've had some good hamburgers and, you know, being in Chicago OSHA on the best burgers in the world. This food truck had incredible hamburger. And so just, you know, but saying line? Yeah, exactly. So but just being able to kind of stand in line and, and kind of in that relaxed environment, talking to some of the other founders. You know, I think we were, I met some a bunch of people from from batch four, because I think they finished just finished up. So a lot of them were kind of scared. So they're still sticking around, you know, got got to catch up with a couple of the people that were in, in our batch. And then, you know, from there we were, I was able to kind of make some connections. And I think we're all talking about getting in a telegram group for, for getting out to Lisbon later for the next conference, and so like being able to just use that as a platform not only to meet meet investors, but to kind of talk to other some of the other founders in the batch, which I mean, we've talked about, like, you don't necessarily, you know, if you're growing a business, like your heads down, and kind of, you know, unless you're kind of on Twitter, like just chatting with other founders, like not necessarily something you really get to do all the time. So being able to kind of just be in that same environment and kind of talk about their experience going through the incubation program, and kind of their just experience growing and building their own companies. I think it was a good opportunity for us and just shout out to see labs again for for creating that environment.

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Shields  

Yeah, I think it's rare. I mean, it's almost like a Field House environment, right, where it's like, we're all running our own races, but we're on the same team. And like, it was really cool. Like, I think that, like you said, everyone's got different products. Everyone's got different verticals that they're operating in, within within, but kind of like getting that friends and family environment together was really something unique. And I do think they do a really good job with that.

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Ford-Carther  

Oh, anything else you kind of want to touch on or kind of wrap up from CV Summit?

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Shields  

Oh, I mean, it's always a good time. Looking forward to the next one. Like I said, if they're gonna be doing one on Cape Town, we'll be there and otherwise, we'll see him in Switzerland soon. Sweet.

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Ford-Carther  

All right, well, we're gonna wrap for our little CV summit recap. We'll have some more information on that. Coming up, you can actually check out kind of a little bit of our story on our seat on CB labs and our experience there on our website sprinter IO. Follow us at sprinter Dow and jump into discord when you get a chance and kind of we got some alpha coming up. So we'll be able to kind of share a little bit of that and kind of some of the stuff that we've been working on so make sure you join the discord and follow us on our social awesome

This episode, “Your Guide to Web3 Conferences,” digs into how decentralized work is building a physical presence all across the globe.

Show Notes:

• Conferences like Permissionless, Consensus, and NFT.NYC fill a socio-technical need for the Web3 industry as a whole,  bringing a range of Web3 participants together to build an industry based on current market and community needs. Being in person adds a different dimension of excitement to the process of building a better web.. 

• Builders and developers have a larger presence at Permissionless. If you’re looking to join the space, this is an event that is more accessible for people who are newer to the industry and are looking to make their mark. 

• Consensus 2022 was a hit for big venture capital firms (VCs) and helped create a global crypto hub at the Austin, Texas event. Developers, builders, early adopters, etc., all joined in on the fun of music, food, and some Rainey Street shenanigans.

• NFT.NYC is an essential destination. The high vibe, fast pace of New York City makes each day, side event, and meetup you go to pleasantly unpredictable.
   

• Consider personally investing your time into communities that might also be involved in these things before attending events like NFT.NYC.This will set you up to make connections and be able to add value where it’s needed.

Full Transcript 

This transcript has not been edited — please listen to the podcast to confirm any statements made by speakers. 

Alex Ford-Carther, Chief Technology Officer & Co-Founder of Sprinter: 

What's up guys back at the future work podcast here with Brian. Alex on the mic, I just kind of want to touch on the end of conference season, we, you know, post COVID, and everybody's kind of back meet and meeting and mingling again. You went to, I guess three big conferences this summer Permissionless, Consensus and NFT.NYC, I joined you at Consensus, and we'll talk about that. Also NFT.NYC, why don't you kind of give listeners kind of a rundown on kind of the three, three different conferences kind of the differences between the two, or the three and kind of maybe talk a little bit about Permissionless. And we can talk more about the others?

Brian Shields, CEO & Co-Founder of Sprinter:

Sure, yeah. No, I mean, they were all great. And you know, at the end of the day, like you said, after COVID like everyone kind of retreated to you know, being online only in virtual for so long, like getting everyone back in person was great. I think all the conferences have significantly grown in size from the previous iteration. So, Permissionless in West Palm was awesome. It is like a great location because the weather was awesome. A lot of really good energy, it was kind of like a nice, like, well-contained space conference, like it wasn't too far. Like you could, you know, kind of jump from one event to the other ones and catch all the panels. Really, really cool stuff, you know, a lot of stuff focused on, you know, theory and, and, and kind of, you know, doubts and everything like that, and some good metaphors content as well. And then wrapped everything up for like a blog concert, which is awesome for everyone to follow that from my clubhouse to through Royal. It was cool to actually see his performance come through. And like that was a great way to kind of wrap everything up for Permissionless. So

Ford-Carther: 

you were there, right? Kind of right, as the market kind of, was on a downturn or had it already? I think it was, I think it was.

Shields: 

I think it was already down. Like, I think that we were joking that it was like, oh, a lot of these would probably be a little bit more fun whenever it had just like last, like, you know, taking a haircut at 

Ford-Carther: 

80% of their net worth. Yeah, what was it? What was the vibe, like, like,

Shields: 

It was great. I mean, like, I think that at the end of the day, a lot of the people that are attending these things are actually builders like I think that they're the people that are contributing in this space. I think that you've seen the evolution from these crypto conferences from you know, where it was like the software engineers or like the kind of like, you know, crypto pirates to you know, the bankers and now you're seeing a little bit more of almost kind of like traditional software, trade show environment, you kind of pop it up a little bit more, less. So Permissionless, but a little bit more Consensus were like kind of the exhibition halls were much more developed, you're seeing a lot more kind of investment, the creativity of the spaces. But you got some of the bigger players in the space industry who would have, you know, pretty well-developed spaces and exhibition halls where you like, you know, people were getting a lot of business done. So, it was pretty cool to watch. 

Ford-Carther: 

The permissions have any notable speakers or anything that you were able to attend or not so much. 

Shields: 

I was able to attend like a whole bunch of different speakers. Like I said, a couple on the regulatory side was really interesting. A couple of Ethereum developers talking about the upcoming merge was fascinating. And like, definitely dropped some alpha in that one. So that was a good one to entertain. But yeah, and then you know, we're able to connect with some of the guys from Switzerland, some of our friends from you know, Austria and like around Europe that we're all coming in because it's like they're not going to turn down a reason to go to Miami. Exactly. Or go to Palm Beach or a conference. So overall, that was pretty good. And then Consensus over in Austin was great, but it was hot. It was hot down there. 

Ford-Carther: 

Yeah. So, let's talk about Consensus. So, you and I both were supposed to attend Consensus. And I think we both flew out. Was it Monday or Tuesday? I forget which day was probably more about getting in there before the conference started.

Shields:

So it was the night before I got in late because I had, you know, travel delays. 

Ford-Carther:

So, all the time our planes where you got to tell the story, though. It was. So, my flight got in, I landed. I get a text from Brian, or he's on the plane and sending messages to me like, “Hey, like my plane is delayed.” I was like, okay, no big deal. “It's like, it's missing a part.” 

Shields:

So, like, we're sitting there, like, we're bored the whole flight. And so, it's me, it's February. It's a bunch of guys from Chicago all going down to Consensus. And like, we know that we see each other on the plane. So, we all board the whole plane and we're all sitting there waiting, and we're getting ready. You know, we're done, like taxying. “Hey, everybody, like we're going to have to get everyone off the plane. Like we're missing a part.” It's like, well, the wings are here. And they're like, “No, we got to make sure this parts here,” and it's like, well, first of all, like, I don't know how this plane got here. And like, I don't want to be this guy. But it's like this bird can fly. Right? Like this plane came here from somewhere else. This is fine. I don't want to say this is like a critical feather on this bird. But this bird can fly. So anyway, they get us all off. We have to just sit there, we're waiting. It's like an hour and a half go by like we're sitting in like we're just getting worked on like, yeah, we're all just sitting on our laptops and at the gate and then we're getting an announcement like, “Oh, we don't have any updates.” Now, all of a sudden, we see the pilots and the flight crew, I'll just leave and start walking down the terminal. Somebody got, and like, they're just not telling us. And then they're like, “We can't move the plane until this is figured out.” And so then like it was, you know, just everyone was a travel nightmare at that point. And so like, one guy couldn't make it at all, because he couldn't get there later. I didn't get there till like midnight, or whatever. So I gotta get into the hotel. It's after midnight. And just like I’m cool, like, wake up, like, I'll see in the morning, we'll have breakfast and like, we'll go hit this conference. Right, then you don't want to tell him what happens. 

Ford-Carther: 

Yeah, so…I was down there, I was, it was hot as hell down there. We were, you know, I was there Monday, checking out Austin, kind of getting set up for the conference, and playing gets delayed. So, I'm just kind of bumming around with a little work done and trying to meet a few folks. But then he gets in late, late, same night. And then the next morning, well, I get a text message from my wife saying the kids are sick in the hospital. So needless to say, I had to fly right back from Consensus. I never even checked into the conference, I think I went to the conference with Brian and then straight to the airport and hopped the next flight back. So, I miss Consensus, I don't have any stories to tell from all the fun shenanigans that went down or just all the kind of conference schedule. So, I'll have to lean on you, Brian, and kind of give that recap. But can I guess just talk us through Consensus a little bit? And it's obviously one of the bigger ones that's been around for quite a few years. And one that we've known about, and, you know, obviously being pretty early in crypto, I guess 2016-2017. You know, maybe talk to what Consensus was like versus, you know, Permissionless?

Shields: 

Yeah, it was definitely larger. Right. So just in general, Austin was definitely invaded by crypto pros. And like, it's not just crypto dudes on scooters. And like, Rainey Street was completely taken over. Like a lot of the local VCs were hosting events and like, they're like, you know, big old grant houses and stuff like that. And it was cool. But you know, it's a big exhibition hall. So, it's definitely on a larger scale, compared to Permissionless. I think that both programming was excellent. I think that Consensus was just, you know, it was physically more far-flung because of the size of the exhibition hall. So like, the exhibition hall itself was kind of like, you know, crypto science fair, as always, like, everyone's got cool stuff going on. And you're learning about all these interesting projects, like what people are doing. And that, you know, that's always great to see. But then, some of the stages that were, like, really, really interesting, speakers were all coming up. And they were like, kind of like at the opposite ends of this huge space. And so you'd actually kind of be like juggling, juggling a little bit of your schedule to try to catch them all, which was unfortunate. But I remember specifically, we saw this one guy sitting there, and he's talking about the Bahamas as like a place to build your businesses for you know, and how they're trying really hard to like, attract with business. And so they're talking to my friend, and I was like, Man, this guy's making a really good case for the Bahamas. Like, it's pretty cool. And then he ends up. So who is that guy? And it's like the Prime Minister of the Bahamas.

Shields: 

Yeah, no, he was a very impressive guy. But yeah, that was just the type of thing like, you know, you're literally getting heads of state and you're getting guys talking about their, you know, their Metaverse game project with their fantasy tokens, and then you get, you know, heads of state, you know, principals from law firms, like, you know, financial luminaries, and big bankers. So, I think that the caliber of the groups of panelists and speakers at both those conferences were fascinating. And they just brought a lot of really, high-level intellect and thought leadership to the space

Ford-Carther: 

Jumping to NFT.NYC because you know, different bear, I'll go on record, totally different vibe. You know, I think that I went in there with a kind of a different expectation, I probably should have done a little more research on my part. But, you know, New York is New York. And you know, we had to get there. Because, you know, definitely being in the space and kind of the NFT stuff that we're working on for Sprinter. It was a must, must-attend event for us. And, you know, a lot of cool stuff coming out of there. But definitely a different vibe than the other two conferences, you know, touch on that a little bit.

Shields: 

Yeah, one of the things that we saw was a lot more of the kind of game-fi space and like the NFT in-game development, which was interesting. And so like, we were kind of talking about how we could see that the NFT space evolving into kind of like games, toys, collectibles, you know, fashion music sports. So, it was just kind of like a scavenger hunt of like, what are you going to do next? Like he had doodles and gutter cats and everybody under the sun was doing something. We ended up on this some, you know, like rooftop, like penthouse parties, and like Hell's Kitchen and bouncing around Midtown, like all over the place. But it was really cool. And I do think that you know, between the stuff we saw like Rockefeller, and we recorded or sorry, Radio City Music Hall and the Marriott that was like the main event, host space. There's some great stuff on here we saw Spike Lee talking about like NFTs and films. And that basically goes off on like a tangent about the last time. 

Ford-Carther: 

Yeah, there's definitely some good stuff. I think my takeaway from NFT.NYC would be, you know, anybody listening that wants to go next year, it's like, you don't necessarily have to do the main conference, there's so many satellite events happening with, you know, various dials and communities. And then also, you know, just big, big organizations and investment groups, it's New York. So I think the one thing that, you know, I was in a little chat thread, and the running joke was NFT.NYC was figuring out where everyone else was at, and kind of if you're at the right or wrong party, or right or wrong event, so I think, you know, it was spread out everywhere, you know, you kind of could set your own schedule and go at your own pace. And, you know, I think, you know, based on whatever community you had, or whatever NFT you had, you're probably going to lean towards doing some of those events, we went to the billing style event, which was pretty awesome. And obviously, you know, other folks had big events like Bassy, and Doodles, and there was the Cool Cats exhibit, and I, everyone's partying. So, you know, if you're looking to kind of go there with the community, obviously jump in, in those discords, and maybe join the committee before you go next year. Or just, you know, check the list, and see if it's something that piques your interest to attend as far as events.

Shields: 

Yeah, definitely. I mean, I certainly think that you know, if you're already involved in some of these communities, you're gonna have a better time, like, at any of these conferences. Like because you know that these satellite events are happening, you have, like, you're already on the list, so to speak. But if you're new to this space, and you're not, you know, not actively engaged in some of those communities, like the, you're able to often attend them anyway, sometimes they're gonna be token gated, sometimes they won't be. So just because you're not an existing NFE holder, and not an existing member of some of those groups doesn't mean you can't go and check some of that stuff out, you might have a longer wait in line. And some of those would have a pretty big way, or you just won't make the cut. But that doesn't mean that they're necessarily always going to be closed events. So that is something to keep in mind. For people that might go in the 

Ford-Carther: 

Yeah, and maybe you can kind of jump in and talk about some of the link-style stuff, but I can kind of talked to one of the events that I went to. I'm in a little community a little, I guess, the air app, you know, Web2, 3, that they call it, you know, the project that Jordan, Jordan’s son, and whatnot are working on. And, you know, I jumped in that project at the man, you know, it's just obviously growing up in Chicago, you know, big fan, big fan of Jordan, and just kind of a basketball guy myself, and I thought it was a cool project, you know, to kind of see-through as far as you know, I like sports. And so, kind of seeing how that all worked out from like NF T's and sports and kind of how that works. So, it just so happened that the NBA draft was the same week as NFT.NYC, so we're already in New York. And by being a holder of the token, you know, they invited me to the NBA Draft. And, you know, obviously, me and some of the other folks that are in the community, so end up going to Barclays on Thursday night went to the draft and hung out, and met some people and they're all you know, that platform is built on Solana, allowed us a lot of folks work out of the same office that we work out of in Chicago. And so, I met some new people that I hadn't met before they were all Chicago based. And so it's a perfect example of in real life events that, you know, add a lot of benefit to me and add value to like a community holder of the token. 

Shields: 

Yeah, definitely. Like you said, we both went to the link-style event in Herald Square at the Five Iron so anyone who's listening who's not familiar, like, you know, Five Iron it's kind of like a golf simulator. And so, like this location, I like 2025 bays, maybe it was like probably four or 500 people at this event. It was great they rented the whole place out; you know, it was you know, we they had beer sponsors, there was food through the venue. Everyone's you know, meeting everyone, like everyone, for the most part, was from kind of across the country. And then obviously, there's a big east coast contingent because there are locals, but then links themselves like they've already gotten people you know, meeting up to like golf courses all across the country, they just did a link up in Chicago and like Philly, just the other day. And so, I do think you're right. Like, I think that a lot of people that are kind of outside of the crypto space that are kind of looking at these NF T's and looking at these, like, oh, no, it's about a community and they go, Well, what's that really mean? But they're like, these people are getting together in real life. Like, there are actually things that are happening. And it's like, this isn't like like, like future utopia or anything like that, like these are already, you know, digital communities that are like kind of getting together in real life.

Ford-Carther: 

Yeah, both groups are, you know, examples that are not necessarily like full Metaverse, like, they've got real-world use cases. You know, and obviously, groups like BAYC. And some of the more popular doodles are some of the more popular kinds of groups. You know, we probably get some people on that kind of talk to those experiences. But, you know, generally speaking, if you're looking at conferences and are looking to get into web three, jumping into one of these groups, buying the NFT for those groups, whether it's at the man or on open sea, and then you know, attending some of these real-world events is a great way to kind of get your foot in the door and kind of get your feet wet as far as you know what a Web3 experience could be like for you.

How we think about DAO Governance

In each episode of the Future @ Work podcast, we here at Sprinter are taking you through some of the most fascinating trends, innovations, and opportunities emerging in how we collectively work, together. This episode, “How we think about DAO Governance,” looks inside SprinterDAO and our overall vision for how decentralization can benefit end consumers.

• The DAO structure will soon be recognized as the most sustainable way to build companies.

• Sprinter will follow a method of progressive decentralization where, over time, control will transfer from our founders to the DAO. 

• All RUN holders will be voting members of the DAO.

• The RUN token and NFTs are non-security, non-currency, digital asset commodities that are your personal property.

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You can watch the full episode here or read the full transcript below.

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This transcript has not been edited — please listen to the podcast to confirm any statements made by speakers. 

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Brian Shields:, CEO & Co-Founder of Sprinter:

Everybody, welcome back to future at work. I'm Brian shields. I'm here with my partner Alex Ford. Carter. Alex, we're gonna talk about today.

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Alex Ford-Carther, Chief Technology Officer & Co-Founder of Sprinter:  

Today I want to talk about sprinter dough. Okay, first, I want to talk about why we started to doubt to begin with.

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Shields

Yeah, okay. Well, I mean, I think that you and I specifically, we've had a lot of conversations about this. For those of people that don't know, like, you know, we're 100% of the board of our company, you know, we built sprinter, it's, you know, we're Delaware C Corp, and now it's like, Okay, now, how do we actually set up the DAO? When why now, so, you know, we've both been in crypto now, for years, you know, you know, going back 2017 a little bit before that. And, you know, we've been kind of around the world on this, you know, we've been from, you know, Chicago, to Switzerland, to Ukraine, and back, you know, building teams are all over the place. And we kind of see a lot of issues with the kind of traditional model of just, you know, traditional venture backed go public, you know, you keep your super shares for the founders, they can control it forever, as you know, fucking space emperors. And I just don't think that that's really the best way for businesses to operate, I don't think it's the best thing in terms of sustainability. You know, we've talked about this, you know, my father ran his own business when we were and then he passed away when I was young. And it was kind of like, now all of a sudden, what happens to the business? And so I've always kind of had the idea of, you know, generational planning in mind in terms of setting up a business and operating a business. And so the idea of like, how can you make sure that when you build something, it can last beyond yourself, right. And so the best way to do that is to decentralize governance and to distribute control over whatever it was that you've built. And so for us, the the optimal way to do that is through Dow structure, and it's not, because it's the only option that's out there, by any means, you know, there's still a lot of uncertainty around it, there's still a lot of growing pains, we've seen a lot of problems and, and successes with other dials. And so we want to make sure that we are very thoughtful about how the way we set up this one, and that we're making sure that we can transition the governance of the Sprinter platform from a centralized corporate structure to a decentralized Dao model, and do that in a way that is transparent, that is supporting the early adopters, and early membership of the community in a way that encourages them to help support the, you know, the growth of the platform.

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And so, you know, we've looked at this, and whether you go internationally, and like all these different options, whether you structure or not. And, you know, for us, it was the idea of like, we think that what Wyoming's doing in terms of Wyoming LLC structure in the US, it works very well with what we want to do with sprinter, we'd like to keep this within the US regulatory structure, we think that that's going to be the toughest one to operate within. And so it certainly wasn't easy to engineer the entire platform to stay within the those bounds. But at the end of the day, like these are all rules and regulations that pre existed before crypto, right, so it's, uh, you kind of have to play within the sandbox that you got. And I think that what Wyoming's done is really smart, I think other states are gonna be following through. And so for us, it's making sure that we have the initial membership of the dial between the individual members and the agency members. And we're gonna do the allocation that Ron tokens, and that anyone who wants to purchase Ron tokens afterwards is also a member of that Dow. But what we want to make sure is that we can actually have some kind of governing commission elected by the community to take leadership over certain capacities, right. And so we want to have a nine person governing commission, where we want to stagger the term limits of each of those seats. So we want to have three seats with three year terms, three seats with two year terms and three seats with one year terms. So that way, every year or two, there's like a certain number of people that are kind of up for reelection. And then for us, as the founders that have helped launch this thing, we're going to be on there with some of our with Vladimir and some of the members of our team. But after a few years, we'd have to get reelected by the Dow to stay on that commission. So we want to make sure that like we basically have skin in the game, and we're not, you know, walking away, and everyone knows that we're committed in the long run for this project. But the same time, if we screw up, they can replace us. And that's how it should be right? It should be if we don't like the way that the CEO of Facebook is operating the shareholders and the board could replace them. And somehow we've had that broken in capitalism. And so I think that we need to make sure that we can actually let people have that kind of stakeholder control over over the system. And so for us it was do we give away control of the shares and the board of the company and then have to go public and do it all the VCs want in order to build this thing and take it up to the level we want to? Or can we just punk rock this shit go crypto, set it up with a Dow and like give it to the people. And at the end of the day, I think that's really what what we've wanted to do. Because we've built something that we think is a tool for people to kind of enhance their own freedom online in terms of running their own businesses, running their own client relationships, making their own money, and working with people all over the web. On the way that they haven't really been able to, with some of the disjointed systems that we've seen today, you know, we've talked to too many people that have, you know, they've got 20 different pieces of technology in their tech stack, or they're trying to optimize their business or whatever. And so for us, it was the idea of kind of like taking almost like the historical structure of like a, like a merchant guild, or like a carpenter's guild or something like that, and bring it into the 21st century in terms of technology, where it's like, now you actually have this die, where everyone has their own unique specialties. And they all have, you know, their maybe, maybe their technical, maybe their creative, but the idea is, like, all these people need to collaborate, you know, we've ever built the software project that didn't have creativity and technology, right. And so it's by bringing everyone together into into a data structure where people can have that data, they can elect a governing commission, that commission can contract with the accounting firms and oversee paying taxes and whatever they need to do in terms of operating that legal structure. But making sure that the community can replace the people on the commission, making sure that the Commission needs to be reelected, making sure that they need to be transparent and be reporting and everything can be kind of, you know, aboveboard, and and like I said, transparent for the community, we think is really important. So we've looked at how some other companies have kind of operated in the past, you know, we've talked a lot about buffer being like, you know, a year of radical transparency as a core core kind of tenant of the business. And that they, I think they they actually bought back their VCs at one point. And so it was, hey, we're doing so well, we want to run this business the way we want to, and so we're gonna buy it back. And we think that that's pretty, pretty cool. But then specifically, within, just like the Dow governance model is like, let it letting the users decide, letting the users vote, like the idea that good ideas can come from anywhere. And talents can come from anywhere tell it's not evenly distributed. And neither is the future. So just because some guy, some kid might be, you know, the far corners of the world, like he's got an internet connection off a hotspot on a cell phone, he can use a laptop, but he might be the next best coder on the planet. So how can we make sure that that person can operate on a level playing field globally? In an open market? That's, you know, that's that's borderless and isn't determined by a currency?

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Ford-Carther

Yeah, I mean, in 2017 DAOs weren't a thing. Really. Right.

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Shields

Yeah. Well, there was like that die was like, kind of kicked the whole thing off. But yeah, I mean, it was just getting going.

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Ford-Carther  

Yeah. And so but for us, it was always about opening up to the community. And we always talked about, you know, whether it be, you know, open sourcing sprint, or like, it was always about figuring out a way to give it to the community. So I think we can get around like, nonprofit structures and whatnot, but obviously, kind of as the crypto in the space evolved, and, you know, Wyoming started to kind of do their Dao thing like, now there's some structure around it. You talked about kind of the governance model that that you specifically want to implement. But, like, why that model and kind of maybe give, you're obviously a part of a couple of different dials in like, kind of talk to some different structures. But why we chose the governance model that we chose.

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Shields

Yeah, I think that So like you said, I'm a member of a couple of different DOAs. And so we've seen how they've structured their operations. Good. DOAs great ones. Great. Absolutely. And so like, a lot of them have, like, the, the natural governance of these individual communities has kind of grown organically, in a way that like, almost like you think about, like how society is organized, right? And it's like, if you jump everyone out, you know, a new island together, like what happens and like, you know, whether that's Lord of the Flies or loss, or like we could pick pick your analogy on that one. But the idea is, it's like, how can we figure this out? How can we communicate? How do we submit proposals? What's the proposal process? How do we approve proposals? How do we kind of advance the bill through committee to the to the floor and vote on it, right. And so we've looked at a lot of the different methods, we think that the most successful guys are the ones that are able to set up kind of like working groups and pods within the community to focus on or to do marketing, we're going to do social we're going to do in real life events, we're going to do merch design, like I think that that, from what we've seen across other communities has been the most successful operating model. But just in general, again, like making sure that the community can control the Treasury, I think is everything, making sure that if you don't want to be a member anymore, you can leave doors always open, right, and you can always come back. I think that's really important. And just making sure that everyone can kind of communicate, we can streamline those community communications is really important. A lot of dials, you know, obviously, Discord is pretty, pretty prominent, like groups also use telegram. But at the end of the day, it's making sure that people can communicate, and making sure that we're on the same page in terms of like, what the goals are.

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Ford-Carther  

So specifically, how the DAO is going to operate within kind of the ecosystem, kind of, I guess, talk to that there's obviously the platform and the Dow and the, the runtime, like kind of just walks on.

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Shields 

So I use, I've used the analogy that it's like we're creating, you know, Major League Baseball, and we just want to have one of the franchise teams, right? So it's like, at the end of the day, like the company that built the platform, we're setting the setting of this platform up or giving control of it to the Dow and then We're basically going to the company is just going to be a member of the community just like anyone else. So we're just gonna operate, we just want to play ball, let the kids play, right, we just want to play ball with everyone else, because we came up with the rules of the game, we want to make sure that we can all contribute. And so it's making sure that the Dow is the definitive voice of authority, right of the community, is the definitive control over the Treasury, and making sure that, you know, we as founders are just, you know, we start with a seat on the commission, but we have to earn it to hold it. And anyone else can take that seat, and that making sure that the company is treated just like any other agency within the network. And I think that that's really important. Because we, you know, we're not hanging up our spurs, like, we're still looking to build stuff for the rest of our careers. And, yeah, we're builders and operators by nature. So we don't think we're gonna be done with that anytime soon. But we want to make sure that, you know, everyone knows that it's like, we're not here to, to, you know, Zuckerberg lord over everything forever. We want to make sure that the DAO is the governance unit is the definitive voice of authority for the platform for the community, that there's that there's a clear process in place for community action, collective voting, and making sure that everyone who's a stakeholder in the community, whether you're a client, that dev designer, product manager, or an agency owner, everyone's able to contribute to kind of continue to operate the spectra network, build this sprinter platform in a sustainable manner.

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Ford-Carther  

We talked about last episode kind of the rewards and being a part of the community. So if you're a part of the Dow, you obviously don't have say so and kind of some roadmap items for the platform. How do you giving the community voting control and ability to kind of dictate the roadmap? How do you see that as a better user experience for? So making sure that the dowel can vote on and make sure that the user experience is what the doll wants?

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Shields 

Yeah, I think some things and the user experience it, like we talked about for years about how like, blockchain has got a UX problem, right. And so some of these tools, like tally and snapshot have really come along and made a lot easier for people to do to do voting. You know, you've seen some of these airdrop of governance, whether it's uniswap, or ens, kind of going through this process. So there's a little bit of a roadmap there already. And we're obviously you know, we have plenty of, you know, future features that we'd love to have get built out. So we're gonna be submitting those as proposals, just like any other member of the community can. So it's not that there's, it's not that it's done by any means. It's just that now it's like, there's so many different roles, we can go down with it. Like, we want to see what everyone else thinks we should do with it, right. And I think that that's really important, because at the end of the day, there is a wisdom in the crowd. And so it's not about dictating the roadmap, it's about informing the roadmap, and then it's about communicating from the users, to the product managers, to the designers to the engineers, right? It's like an office space. Right? So what do you do? It's like, I talked to the clients, because the engineers can't aren't good at talking to people, we want to make sure everyone's talking together.

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Ford-Carther  

Yeah, I mean, I've personally architected most of the platform, as it currently stands, and I'm super excited about kind of launching and then bringing the Dow in and, you know, having people say, Oh, this button should be here, you know, or we should change this user experience, because it can streamline this for this agency type, right? Like, I'm really super stoked about bringing more people into the into the mix to make sure that we are building a platform and a product that everybody can use everybody's happy with. But really, the whole point of sprinter is to make my job if I'm a designer, or engineer, if I'm an agency owner, I will make that person's job easier, right, and allow them to run their business faster, if you will. And so I'm super excited about, you know, giving it to the people, if you will, and making sure that we are establishing our goals and making the best product that we can, you know, we think that, you know, obviously has project management capability within the platform, but we really see this as operating system for the for the next generation, and how do we make sure that sprinter is the one that everybody chooses? And that's just making sure that we've got a lot of talented people within the network, a lot of talented people contributing to the Dow, we're then active in making sure that the roadmap and kind of the long term vision of of the platform and the network gets gets enabled in an act it so I guess, kind of, if I am part of the Sprinter dial, like, hey, how do I get access to it? But then like, you know, you've talked about kind of subsets like kind of how what does that structure going to look like? And then yeah, because kind of talked to that.

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Shields

Yeah. So again, anyone who purchases an NFT in the initial membership drive for either individual membership or agency membership is going to be able to get access to the run. Allocate Should at the airdrop, anyone else afterwards could just purchase the run token on a secondary market wherever they want or from an existing member. So then they'd be a member of the DAO and then the proposals would be hosted on the website, the voting will be done either snapshot tally, we'll just build it directly into the website. And in terms of the working groups, I think that we've got a couple in mind already, we might be able to do an entire episode specifically around how we want to kind of like roll that out. But kind of think of it just like if you were, you know, planning, planning a big event or you know, running a startup or a bands tour, or whatever, you know, you're gonna have, some people are gonna be charged operations or design or marketing or whatever it so we're kind of setting up those standard working groups, making sure that you know, as a team, you can kind of coalesce around the goal. Everyone can kind of, you know, define their own mission based upon their own skill sets and see how they can contribute. But the end of the day, we want everyone to be able to roll up their sleeves and pick up a shovel and get to work.

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Ford-Carther  

You've talked about the commission and governance, or the commissioner structure, kind of, I guess, specifically, give a little bit more details on I guess there's nine commissioners, right. And then there's voting for each one, I guess, how would I? Overtime? If I'm a member, right? How can I become a part of that like, well, great question would be some ways for me to then say, hey, like, I really like this, but like, I want to

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Shields

become I want to step up into a leadership role. No, I think that that's really important. So that's a that's a really good thing to talk about. So anyone who is a run token holder is going to be a member of the Dow you don't need to hold an NF t you don't need to have purchased an NF T in the early membership drive or on the secondary market, you could just hold the RUN token and be a member of the DAO you can vote, you can vote on the Commission's you can vote on the roadmap, you can you know, work on projects and everything like that. But you can't run projects without an individual or agency badge, or individual helmet or an agency badge NFT. And you can't run an agency without the badge NFT. And you can't run for a seat on the commission unless you hold one of those two NFT's. So if you're a run token holder, and you're an active member of the DAO and you start realizing, Hey, this is something that I want to contribute more of my time to, and this is something I want to be an active member of in a leadership capacity. And I want to get you know, beyond the commission, you would have to purchase an NF T from another member in order to do that.

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Ford-Carther  

And so other commission is like, do they get special voting privileges are like,

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Shields 

I think that were there, part of this is going to be set up by the DAO collectively after the allocation, because there's a lot of this that we can still kind of is up for discussion, I think that the best way to do it would be to have the nine different seats be filled in some capacity is similar to like a general corporate board where you have people with different backgrounds and skill sets, I don't necessarily think that the commission should be running the working groups, I think that they can be, you know, the pods can all have their own kind of Captain. Right. And they should be, you know, designated all within the community. I don't think that should be at the commission level, I think the commission should be more than those that are technical or, you know, from, you know, a financial, legal accounting, operating side of things they should be able to communicate with, with the accounting firms and the legal firms and stuff like that just to kind of be able to then translate, you know, accounting and legal ease back to the community to make sure that everyone's informed the general responsibility of the commission is really going to be managing the vendor relationships between the accountants, the lawyers, and any, you know, Treasury managers that they might want to bring on communicating to the, to the DAO, and kind of, you know, helping to, you know, organize the working groups. And so making sure that everyone's able to kind of, you know, work within that structure is gonna be pretty important.

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Ford-Carther  

So you just mentioned treasury management and bringing on folks kind of what is, what is the Treasury? Yeah, no, so that's, yeah, great. stablish? Like, why would we need a treasury manager? Right, like, Well, I

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Shields

think that we've seen with other dollars, and I think that this is news to a lot of the crypto savvy people that are out there. But like, if you have a, say you do a token sale, you have a Dao, you put it all into treasury, you got it all sitting in eath, and maybe eath, goes down 40%, or it's all sitting in XYZ token. And so you want to make sure that whatever is going into the treasury is actually going to be managed properly and effectively. I do think that while I believe the wisdom of crowds, sometimes you end up with camo, which is a horse designed by committee. I do think that there are professional fund managers that are out there, just like there are professional accounting firms and professional law firms and those should be engaged at that level to make sure that the Dow is responsible citizen within the broader community.

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Ford-Carther  

So the Treasury kind of, I assume that the Commission will be responsible putting for putting forth like a budget that is exactly one by the Dow and so the Treasury will be split between ongoing development of the platform marketing of the the platform and the membership base, what kind of what else would the Treasury

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Shields 

Treasury will really whatever that DAO chooses, go home at the end of the day. A you know, like, so the idea would be, you could almost look at it like an endowment to some extent where it's like, oh, let's just make sure the university doesn't, you know, keeps the lights on for a couple generations, right? And so it's like, how do you make sure that, you know, the commission is able to work with the Treasury managers, the accountants and the lawyers to be able to communicate to the community, the community can organize the working groups, they can, you know, set the budgets within those working groups, those budgets can then be submitted to the commission, who can then communicate with Treasury managers to you know, you know, you know, do all that, but a lot of that's going to be done strictly through voting. And just like, you know, click to vote type situation. So it's not going to be like meetings and meetings, like in a corporate structure, it's just making sure that we can kind of streamline that process for everybody.

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Ford-Carther  

And the initial Treasury is going to be set up through proceeds from the initial membership drive Exactly. And then we'll be continued to be filled through active sprints. And

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Shields

yeah, basically, the, the proceeds from the membership drive from the initial Treasury that will be governed by the Dow. And then every sprint that is completed by members of the Dow, there is a network fee that goes to that Treasury. And that happens, whether it's a token transaction or a Fiat transaction.

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Ford-Carther  

So the DAO and its members are incentivized to use the platform because more funds will go into the treasury, when more funds go into the treasury, we can spend that money in a way that's going to increase and grow the network.

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Shields  

Yeah, I mean, imagine if every member of if every Office tenant of WeWork was able to determine how they spent soft banks money as opposed to Adam Newman, you know, maybe they'd have a little bit of a different story.

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Ford-Carther  

And so is there any, like revenue share? I assume that if

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Shields

not, it's not a revenue share to token holders like this isn't? You know, it's not it's specifically engineered to not be a securities offering, like this isn't a currency, it's not a security, this is a non security, non currency, digital asset commodity is is your personal property. This is, you know, membership, you know, access and platform access with clearly defined utility that, you know, is for the users to actually utilize this token in its capacity as it was engineered.

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Ford-Carther  

Yeah, that's a lot to unpack, you do a great job, kind of just kind of clarifying specific governance, and the Dow structure, so just anything else you kind of want to unpack for anybody that's interested in sprinters the Sprinter down, but

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Shields

yeah, I mean, if you're interested in sprinter, you should go to sprinter.io. I'm going to spend that IO slash members. To learn more, you can sign up for the whitelist you can join our Discord. Learn more in there, we get a lot of information. I get a lot of information under resources on the website as well. You can learn more about the token economics you can learn more about the Dow governance you know, who spirituals for why it works, why people should use it. And then yeah, online, you know, follow us online on Twitter, Instagram, and Tiktok. Raw sprinter dial, you can find us on YouTube, we're putting all these videos up there, you know, we're trying to, you know, communicate as much as we can make sure that we can, you know, kind of get the story down so that other people can hear it and learn it and tell tellers right? So it's making sure that anyone who's interested can you know, find out the information they need so that we can kind of push this thing forward.

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Ford-Carther  

Alright, I think that's a wrap on this episode of future work. Thanks, Brian.

In each episode of the Future @ Work podcast, we here at Sprinter are taking you through some of the most fascinating trends, innovations, and opportunities emerging in how we collectively work, together. This episode explores the benefits of using Sprinter member NFTs to reward early network users and turn their software liabilities into valuable assets.

• Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) are records encoded on the blockchain, often denoting the specific characteristics of a virtual asset. Early use cases have focused around denoting unique and exclusive ownership of a valuable piece of digital art, music, or other items, with major household names from Coca-Cola to Nike launching their own collections.

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• The potential uses of NFTs are only just emerging, as smart contracts evolve to convey more complex characteristics and functions for digital assets. One such use case is demonstrated on Sprinter, where member NFTs are used as a form of tokenized software granting access to work opportunities and talent on the Sprinter platform.

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• Sprinter’s member NFTs are used to reward early adopters for their participation on the network, allowing them to “own” their seat at the table, which has various forms of utility and can be traded or sold to others for additional value when it is no longer needed. “If I got a hammer and a wrench, and I don't need the wrench anymore, I should be able to sell the wrench to somebody,” as Sprinter CEO and Co-Founder Brian Shields says.

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• Rather than offering traditional software licenses that charge monthly fees to users, Sprinter’s member NFTs turn liabilities into assets that can continue to accrue value for their owner over time. As the Sprinter community grows, the uses of those member NFTs will grow too, potentially granting exclusive access to community events and education opportunities. 

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You can watch the full episode here or read the full transcript below.

This transcript has not been edited — please listen to the podcast to confirm any statements made by speakers. 

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Brian Shields, CEO & Co-Founder of Sprinter:

Welcome to the future @ work. This is Brian and Alex. I want to know Alex, we're gonna talk about today.

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Alex Ford-Carther, Chief Technology Officer & Co-Founder of Sprinter: 

So today we're gonna be jumping into NFTs and specifically NFT membership. Okay? So not not your PNG PFP profile practice, but like how NFT can actually have some real utility. Not that those don't have utility, but how we can have utility within kind of more traditional space. So yeah, no, I mean, you know, obviously, Last episode, we kind of talked about how we were in crypto pretty early on 2017. You know, NFT's kind of exploded, and I guess 2021, you were you were kind of digging around in that space, kind of give us give us your take on NFT, ya

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Shields:

know, so, um, you know, just a little bit of my background jumped in kind of, like, a couple of weeks before, I guess it was like summer, yeah, July, July, August, something like that before, like, you know, the penguins hit the New York Times. And like everything started, you know, kind of blown up from there. I'm joined a couple of different dial groups got involved pretty heavily within a couple different discord communities, obviously, you know, the whole crypto Twitter crowd kind of jumped right in as well. And yeah, like you said, it was like, at first like art, and then it was like building out communities. And then, you know, when we were talking about like, some of the conferences that we went to in the other episode, you saw an NFT NYC like it really kind of growing beyond that, you know, where it's like, okay, like, there's like doodle exhibits. And like, it's kind of like the idea that there's like a Disney Store in Times Square, right. But it like, at one point, it was just like a cartoon of a mouse. And so it's like, interesting to see how NFT's have kind of grown beyond just kind of like crypto and kind of crypto as FinTech and moving more as to into kind of like a realm of like, crypto is culture. And so I think that's been really interesting. But like, at the highest level, like NFT, of any NFT, regardless of whether it's art or video, or, you know, software can access token or mint token or anything like that, the end of the day, and NFT is a software. So it's just, you know, the token itself is code. You know, it is a software that is, you know, encompassing the ownership of an asset. And that's kind of what makes it so interesting within like the art space, or the music space, or fashion or whatever. It's like the idea of actually kind of bringing ownership into the digital age and like ownership on the internet. And so I do think that there's a lot of misconceptions about NFT's and like, what they are and what they're limited to. But at the end of the day, it's kind of like, there are no limits on what software can do, like Software is eating the world, like we all know, this is happening. And what do you think about what you can do with smart contracts and like programming on Aetherium, or in any other, you know, kind of programmable blockchain, you're basically able to create these contracts, just as you would any contract in the in the traditional legal spent sense, you know, I can create a document that's going to entail ownership of a house or a car, or you know, a credential, whether it's a diploma or something like that. So I think that you're gonna see more and more evolution within the space in terms of what NFT's are beyond just digital ownership of an artistic asset. Yeah.

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Shields

I think that that a really clear example, for a lot of people to kind of wrap their heads around, if they're not familiar with the crypto space is probably links down. Just because it is basically a costless golf club, Country Club golf membership. And you can either get a membership for an individual community individual, like local membership or a global one. So if you think about how that could work, with a membership model, like a, like a Soho House, or like a we work, you might have access to a local facility, but you might then also have a membership that gives you access to all of this facilities around the world. So that's the type of thing where you're kind of seeing this kind of blend of virtual communities and real world activities in a digital membership, without necessarily fiscal ownership of any one individual space. And I think that's something we're gonna continue to see whether that's, you know, airlines, shifting their reward and your their, or their airline lounges over to like a tokenized membership model. We're just we're seeing that just like we saw an evolution where you started to see traditional securities and you know, stocks and stuff like that start being tokenized as well. So, you know, just, you know, kind of continuation of software eating the

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Ford-Carther

world. Yeah, I mean, someone we watch from time to time and you you've been a big fan of like Gary Vee, some of the V friends. I know, they did, like a big conference. But that's another good example of a membership model where you get access to real world events, and obviously, he's got his own big following so and then he also launched the restaurant off of that with a private membership that you can only attend the restaurant with lif t so there's definitely some unique, unique kind of business models popping up around NFT and just specifically memberships.

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Shields

And then also I think in the music side of things you're seeing kind of like the fan experience. So I know I think it was Kings of Leon did a whole you know, thing kind of fine what like Blauw really kind of like lead the way with some way you could do it and then a T space kind of like during like the early clubhouse era. But I know that Kingsley did something where you got like, you know, front row tickets for life at like any concert, you basically became like a superfan and like you're you get like the backstage VIP pass. And you're like, you know, you know, you know, the honored guests, anytime you want to go, you can bring your friends and like, I think that that kind of evolution of a fan experience is really, really exciting, not just within music, but in sports as well. So like the idea that like, you know, I got friends that are, you know, huge Chicago sports fans, right? And they like live and breathe this stuff. They go to all the card shows, they go to all the rookie camps, they meet everybody who's gonna get cut from the team and a couple of weeks and like they love it. And now they're bringing their kids and like this is going to continue forever, like it's not going to go away. But when they go to a Bulls game, the bolts doesn't know that the guy in 202, you know, 13, you know, whatever is the superfan. They just know that he bought the ticket. And so like, that's a way where you're gonna be able to see like, Oh, this guy checked in with his token when he entered the stadium, then they're like, oh, like you'll Mike and his daughter are like, they're like VIP guests. Like we should, we can upgrade their seats. So we can give them you know, excess food or stuff. Like put them on the Jumbotron, put them on the Jumbotron. Exactly. And that's the type of thing of like, oh, the cameras are going to know which seats have the guys with the token and like because you can kind of geo locate that stuff. And that might sound like that's kind of like a kind of like a future type thing. But like these, we're talking like crypto arenas, like FTX arena, like this stuff is already there. I think that like anyone who attended a Miami Heat basketball game, basically, we're getting like airdrops tokens. So like, I think that this is happening rapidly within the sports world, I think it's happening rapidly within Media and Entertainment. I think that the more downstream we are, the more upstream we get in terms of content creation, and the more creators that are aware of what you can do in terms of like ownership of your, your, your content, your IP, your rights, whether you're like a visual artist, and a concept designer working on like sci fi, fantasy, or, and you're creating characters and vehicles and creatures or whatever. Or if you're like a screenwriter, like chopping away your screenplay, like a Starbucks, like the idea of actually owning your asset, as opposed to needing to go through intermediaries like some of the agencies and stuff like that, that are out there. I think it's a really, really interesting, and I think that within Media and Entertainment, and sports and fashion, and like that kind of convergence of culture with technology and finance, is where we're gonna see a lot of innovation in the next few years.

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Ford-Carther

kind of sticking to technology. So you and I obviously run a software company, we've used a tons of different platforms, as we've built our company, and we talked last episode about maybe not not accessing, or reaping the benefits of kind of being an early adopter, talk a little bit about how like NFT memberships, and NFT's might change that dynamic as like new, as this kind of new wave of software, web three platforms kind of rolls out,

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Shields

ya know. So I definitely think it's a way for new technologies and new teams that are building these technologies to actually reward the early adopters in a way that hasn't really been possible for, like in that kind of like the traditional world of like ownership and like you'd buy stock in Apple, but then you'd you probably spend more money on Apple products than you ever spent buying Apple stock. But for the average American, the average consumer says the idea that, like you're not actually getting any sort of benefit for being a supporter other than you're getting the product, and that's fine. That's pretty normal. And that's how most of you know modern capitalism has developed over time, right. But now, when you're talking about software, and digital assets and ownership, the idea of being able to be recognized as that, you know, really contributed to the growth and the success and like the idea that like, you want to pass on the benefits of network effects to the help people who helped you build the network. I think that's something that's truly unique within like NFT software, you know, ownership models, whether it's an access token or a membership token. And the idea that, you know, the, the first, you know, 10,000 people who sign up for Twitter, you know, you know, when it was, you know, Ashton and Jack and like, ever had just like first name handles and stuff like that. Some of those guys actually did get a chance to join in like Ashton Kutcher, like they invested in like some of these early people.

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Ford-Carther

That's how you gotta have Ashton Kutcher money. Right? Exactly. Exactly. And

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Shields

like so you get a lot of these people and that's again, we're a culture is upstream of of everything, right. And so now that you're seeing again, with like, you know, people being able to build these tools and, and being able to recognize, Oh, these are the first 2000 People that downloaded slack, like we should give them slack for life. These are the these are the first 100 businesses that started using zoom with their clients at the beginning of COVID. Those are the most 100 important customers they will ever have. And the idea that there's not a good way to recognize tracking and reward the early contributors in software development because a lot of times like you're running gun, like you're building software, like your lean startup, you're moving to Agile like you're not necessarily thinking like oh, what's my 100 year plan for customer success, right? You're not sitting there reading a copy of br gas and like look learn, like the Disney model or anything like that. And so it really is like, how can you re architect the relationship between software developers and software users, both in like a b2b model, but also in the consumer model as well, where people can, you know, I've shared the benefits of the growth of a platform.

‍

Ford-Carther

You talked about kind of that community, you know, NFT memberships, you know, whether it's a PFP, or, you know, one of those be friends that we talked about, just generally speaking, like, the best ones kind of foster and develop that that community and that connection between the users and the people building the products? Do you see that as a positive? Or negative?

‍

Shields

I mean, I definitely think it's a positive. I think that the beauty is that because this is all, you know, we're talking about, like blockchain based crypto technology, a lot of it is in enables that relationship while still protecting privacy and anonymity in a way that it we're moving more toward treating the users as adults and equals and comparable stakeholders within a community. And I think that if you saw kind of some of the the web two companies, whether it's the Googles, and the Facebook's or Twitter's of the world, you know, treating all of the users as, as equal members of everything, like we'd see a pretty different last 10 years of Western civilization. And so I think it's really interesting to see kind of just how that's going to be changing with web three.

‍

Ford-Carther

So you and I've talked about this, so how do you if I have a new NFT project, that's a membership base, and it's important that the community is part of the growth? How do you balance? You know, adhering to what the community needs, versus making sure that, you know, the development of, you know, the roadmap and like, everything gets executed? And how do you kind of balance that need for collaboration within the community, but also, on the other side, and making sure that doesn't get in the way of, you know, the progress?

‍

Shields

You know, I mean, what's still the quote from Ford, right? If you ask people what they want, they would have said, a faster horse. And so I do think that there's, the wisdom of the crowd is a real thing, right, but you never underestimate the stupidity of people in large numbers. So I think that there needs to be like a kind of a balance. And like, we see this within some of the dollars that I've been a member of, and we've seen just, you know, evolve over time is like, this new kind of organizational structure of human intellectual capital and talent is kind of evolved. And so the idea of like, how do we make sure that there's kind of like an over overall driving vision, whether that's like a core team and like a supporting community, which I think is the more natural progression with a lot of these as they grow, it's gonna be like a handful of people working on something, then they start telling people about it, the more people hear about it, and that's going to be the natural evolution of a lot of these communities. But I do think that there's a reason that the fans don't write the scripts when it comes to like, superhero movies, right? Like, we're not actually all professional screenwriters. And like, we don't all like know, the best way to cast a role. You know, like, people didn't like Craig as Bond people didn't like, you know, Bale as Batman like, and then they went Sabol and then they all loved it, right? So it's like, there is like that kind of that balance, especially within the creative endeavors that we're seeing within like, 1000, like NFT stuff. But then software development is inherently a creative effort, right. And so I kind of firmly believe that I think that like good software does kind of fall like autour theory, like, you know, any sort of collaborative creative effort, whether it's, you know, cinema and or, or, or an opera or something like that more than when people are involved. But at the same time, someone's usually have the overall drive and creative vision.

‍

Ford-Carther

So we obviously have memberships as part of our platform. And one thing that we've discussed regularly is, is, you know, okay, what if someone doesn't want to use our platform anymore. And so, you know, for, for me, and one of the most important benefits is, is you're owning, you basically own the software license, and you own your seat at the table you own. You know, whether it's one, individual membership or agency membership, you own that, and you create value out of that you use it, but at some point, you know, we didn't want to use Slack anymore, we moved to discord, or we moved to telegram or whatnot. And then at some point, we just cancelled our Slack membership, right? And so we didn't get anything for it, right. And so for us, you know, what the NFT membership is in kind of why we kind of dug into that as a good model is, you know, when you're a member, you get value out of it, but then you can sell it to the next guy or the next girl and making sure that they can get value out of it on top of that,

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Shields

yeah, absolutely. The idea that like if I if I got a hammer and a wrench and I don't need the wrench anymore, I should be able to sell the wrench to somebody and if they want to pay a market price for the wrench, that's fine. And so I do think that like when you're talking about like a traditional b2b SaaS model Software as a Service, you're just paying X dollars per month per seat. Like you said, you're renting the software. And it's like, Listen, I don't know if you ever paid played Monopoly growing up, you don't actually want to be the tenant, you want to own the property. Right. And so I think that that's the big thing that people kind of fail to grasp around like the idea of like owning the software and like owning the software license, and so and then how do you balance that with collaborative collective governance of that technology? So you don't end up with like, you know, space, Lord Musk's and Zuckerberg like running the universe, right. And so I do think that that that's a thing that people need to kind of keep in mind about, like how that kind of brings people together.

‍

Ford-Carther

Well, you know, building on that, like, for us, and I've seen other other models where, you know, you could buy a piece of land in the metaverse and then turn it into a club or a hangout spot for you know, and then that you create value for that piece of, you know, for that particular NFT. And you can sell it at a higher at a higher premium. You know, for us, if you've got the NFT membership for, let's say, an agency, and you can do good work and bring on more people and hire more people, technically, you could sell that agency and that membership within the network, to somebody else who might want to come in and buy it up and buy your whole talent. One that

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Shields

kind of comes back to the idea that we've talked about a couple of times is the idea that like like, yeah, it's kind of like software as a service and software as a franchise, right? If we're bringing an ownership model into it, the idea that like you can actually have people that are you owning equally equal at licenses to a technology that they're able to run their own independent businesses with, and that, you know, it's their own balance sheet, they're running their own p&l, they're paying their own taxes, like they've, you know, that they're doing it all themselves, but they're using like a technology that other people collectively own. I think that that's definitely a big sea change. And kind of to your point earlier, like the difference between like renting versus owning, if you're an agency owner, and you're paying for Salesforce, or you're paying for Pardot, or you're paying for these different tools, that then you decide you don't need any more, they may you might assign like a 12 month or like a three year agreement, and then you don't want to pay for it anymore. Not only can you not turn around and sell your tool to another agency that might want to use it because you don't actually own it, you're just renting someone else's tool. Not only that, they're gonna try to lock you into like, oh, you sign this two year contract, and I don't care you don't want anymore, you're gonna have to pay us all this money to get out of this contract.

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Ford-Carther

I think Salesforce contracts are lifetime. Yeah, exactly. And

‍

Shields 

like, this is like the joke that like, people don't seem to really understand about, like, how technology was built over the last 2030 years, right. And like how it's like, kind of permeated the entire society where it's like the idea that like, Microsoft has you cradle to grave, right cradle to grave, like you are a Microsoft consumer, like they got if they didn't get you with like a childhood, you know, mommy daddy software for helping take care of the kids and like, you know, the, you know, sensors around the house or something like that they're gonna get you with the Xbox or they can get you with LinkedIn, they're gonna get you with the Microsoft suite. Like they're gonna have you your entire professional career for the like the broadest part of like the global economy. And similarly Apple stuff like this, like Amazon Apple, like you're putting it you're putting an air an air tag on your fucking kid. You know, you're not you're not letting your dog go somewhere. You can't track them on the iPhone. Yeah, no,

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Ford-Carther

my kids that they know Alexis name more than they know my name. So yeah, exactly.

‍

Shields 

It's like, you know, it's not it's not asked mommy asked daddy, it's okay, or go look it up anymore. So I'll just like ask, Hey, Google,

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Ford-Carther

yeah, can we buy stuff on Amazon, as you know, but it permeates throughout the whole, you know, industry because now it's just Alexa Amazon and, and like you said, growing up, like, by the time they're 20. Like, that's all they're gonna know. And

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Shields

if you take the average American consumer, the average income, like, you know, you know, 2.5 kids a dog in a white picket fence, kind of Americana. They're consuming all of these products, but they're not owning any of the underlying shares. This is like the whole idea of like, the stock market is actually only owned by a small percentage of people. And the idea of like, kind of, specifically within technology, giving people ownership of the tools that they use in everyday life, and allowing them to benefit from the growth and expansion of like other people using it, where it's like, hey, like, you can reward people for being a loyal customer. And there's nothing wrong with that. And the idea that more companies should and shouldn't be it, this isn't like a, like a low bar, you know, situation, right? And so I do think that people, as users of technology should be asking themselves like, okay, like, you know, how am I being treated? How am I, you know, being able to be, am I treated like a loyal customer where it's like, okay, like, you know, you're gonna, we're gonna take care of you for life as an apple consumer. Right? And, but how, right, okay, I can keep giving you money. You keep giving me new toys,

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Ford-Carther  

but like, just give me a good product experience. Brian, that's all like

‍

Shields

the idea of like, like, because it's like, there are Apple families, right? So it's like, we're not even talking like, Oh, they got you for life cradle to grave like we're talking like generational wealth is being transferred from consumers to technology companies that are owned by a small fraction of the economy of the of the population. And so the idea is that instead of everybody, you know, consolidating these tools and like, you know what happens when someone builds a good piece of technology, they go and buy it, right? Google bought YouTube, right? Facebook bought Instagram, these companies haven't built anything new or good in decades, right? It's literally been years, they just acquire businesses and rewrote relabeled them. And when everyone realizes that that's what they're doing, they relabeled the whole company. Right? And like, we've seen that over and over again. So like, that's just what they're gonna keep doing. And it's no different. And the reason why it's because it's bad PR, right? It doesn't matter if it's Google, or it's Facebook, or it's Philip Morris, right. When you don't like the when you don't like the narrative, you change the narrative. And now it's all on Facebook. So Metaverse company, it's arguably it always has been right. And it was just a landing page is the, you know, the lobby of the metaverse. But that's beside the point. The point is that you don't fucking own the metaverse, right? So like, all you're gonna do is you're gonna be moving from like, a serfdom, right? Oh, if the current model two continuation of that, where you're just gonna still be a tenant, you're still gonna be paying a rent for your software, you're gonna be paying, as a business owner, you're paying for QuickBooks forever. Right? Forever, as opposed to you bought it, and you own it. And that's how we used to sell software, you used to buy it and you owned it. And there weren't any other updates you have to buy, do you buy a video game, you have to get the DLC or whatever. But the idea is that like now, where the users are able to be a community that are collaborating with the product designers, the product leaders, that's where you can get that collaboration where you can kind of like really, you know, bring fire down from the mountain and give people something worth building. And so that's where it's not, oh, I'm buying this, I own it. And it's never going to improve. It's no, I bought the software license, I own this code. Now I can build upon it however I want. And other people can too. And then depending on how they're building it, how I'm building it, we all might be able to work together and build something great. I think that's what's really exciting about giving people ownership over the tools that they use, it's because it's I want to see what they can do with it.

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Ford-Carther

Where do you see, I guess, you know, obviously, we're kind of in this transition from web to to web three. You know, where do you see the web three kinds of SAS play the next three to five years?

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Shields 

Yeah, I mean, it's SAS isn't going away, right? Just like, yeah, like, you know, people still listen to vinyl. Like, there's always going to be an analog technology equivalent, you know, people still get, you know, DVDs in the mail from Netflix. Like it's still an option, right? Oh, yeah. And then some countries, I mean, like, we have a friend who made you know, his whole business model was basically second second market, DVD sales and like Eastern Europe and stuff, and Asia, right. So it's like, I think that there's always it's like, the idea that the future is here, and it's not evenly distributed, right. So I do think that you're gonna see, more and more new technology is being built within NFT membership model, not an interpreted necessarily how they fund the development of the technology, because then that's going to be, you know, security situations, but in terms of how they roll it out to their users, and how they reward the early users of their platform for being like a dedicated member of the community for helping to kind of evangelize the software stuff, like, I do think you're gonna see that becoming more and more prevalent within the technology space. And then in terms of beating entertainment, I don't think people have any idea how fast this is gonna move. I mean, like Ticketmaster is going to be doing the, you know, NFC ticket sales, like within the next year or two, at a grand scale, like this might have been the last Lollapalooza that didn't have a tokenized ticket system. I think that you're going to see that stuff happening across sports, at like, in the next three to five seasons of major professional sports leagues, that's going to continue to accelerate.

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Ford-Carther

Yeah, one of the speakers at the NFT WNYC. They were from with vivid seats or StubHub, maybe one of the

‍

Shields  

he was Ticketmaster. I remember. Yeah. He was Ticketmaster. Yeah.

‍

Ford-Carther

And he would, you know, I think he said that now. I think all 32 NFL teams are on their platform. If you

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Shields

run a major sports franchise, in any developed nation right now, and you're not looking at this, you are bad at your job, right? Like, you're just bad at your job, you should be paying very, very close attention. If you work at an airline or hotel right now. And you're not looking at this,

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Ford-Carther

you're bad at your job. Well, it's definitely gonna help reduce fraud. Oh, it's 100%. And

‍

Shields

then, but it's everything from like, Why do I have to get a new hotel key every time right? Like, you know, you see Marriott building digital keys into the bonvoy app. And like now, it's like a new thing. And so years, and they get around to it, but they're not going to wait to do it. Again, these legacy businesses, hotels, travel, transportation, these businesses are going to be so much faster to adapt to web three than they were like web one or web two. Right. And I think that that's why people are going to get, you know, Whiplash by how fast things are going to be changing. Because it's kind of like how you could look at like Africa, like broadly as a continent, basically skipped terrestrial internet and went right to mobile commerce. And like, I think that you're going to see that type of sea change happening within Web three as well, where it's going to be like, Okay, well turns out that people in other countries can build great software. It doesn't need to all be guys in Southern California. And you got the Sandhill Road crowd is no different than the Sunset Strip crowd where right where it's you get the people that a consolidation of of demographically similar people in a specific geographic region are basically controlling culture, and media and technology, as we know, broadly speaking around the world, and that's not going to happen anymore. Just like you're seeing Netflix buying shows from South Korea, and realizing like, oh, wait a minute, this is like a really good idea. Because other people can create great creativity and innovation and storytelling and stuff like that, I think that that's where it's really going to, not just like the whole, like democratization of capital that we hear about with crypto all the time, but like the democratization of culture, and moving more and more to a bottoms up. Situation in terms of like how media and technology promote culture and connectivity amongst people. But as opposed to kind of, it's gonna be more of like, I know, what's the dynamic I'm trying to think about like, as opposed to being pushed out from Southern California or Northern California, it's gonna be pulled from, you know, individual communities like from from the internet, I think that's gonna be something it's gonna be really interesting to see.

‍

Ford-Carther

So just to give our listeners a little background on kind of how our membership model so for Sprint's are the platform, we basically have an individual membership and an agency owner membership. So the individual membership is kind of just that if you're a professional, designer, developer, anyone that kind of wants to run or, you know, provide tech solutions through the platform and through the network and join, you know, a community of like minded individuals, like you would find out one, if you're an agency owner, maybe you've got two or three people you work with, or maybe you've got 100 people that you want to provide to the network, by the agency ownership, but it's no different than just being part of a professional club or professional network. But just with us, it's just a digital membership, right. And so you'd hold your membership and a wallet, you know, traditional eath, wallet, and then, so there's just kind of one extra step that you might have, other than signing up and putting your credit card information in. So you know, just kind of give a little bit background on that, and kind of our model. And if you want to add to that,

‍

Shields

well, yeah, like you said, you know, got the individual membership in the agency membership. And the individual membership is, hey, I'm a developer, I'm a designer, I'm a marketer, I'm a consultant, like I run a couple of projects, maybe I've got a full time day job. And this is a side hustle or nights, the weekends thing, or this is how I pay my pay my mortgage and feed my kids. But basically, you're like an individual contributor, you might have like a small team of people that you work with, you know, you're you're doing small to modest build projects, and you're not really taking on like huge, like enterprise clients or like large, medium sized business clients. And after the agency side would be like, you're an actual agency, like you either wants to build one, have one or look to acquire one and roll it on to sprint, or like as an operating system, which is probably a whole other podcast in itself. But basically, the idea is that you want to, you know, switch the rails upon which you run your business as an agency owner. So you want to instead of paying for 15 different pieces of software, you can basically rule that entire stack off onto a single platform, where you can do your, your voice, your video, your live chat, your file sharing, your task management, your time tracking your payments, you know, to your your team and to your subcontractors, and your vendors all flows seamlessly through the blockchain, where we basically eliminate accounts receivable for you as an agency owner. So there's a whole lot of reasons why if you're looking to either build an agency, or you're running one right now, or you're looking to acquire one, that would make a lot of sense to have that agency owner member membership, just sprinter. But if you're running your own little projects, you want to build websites, you want to run marketing campaigns, you want to manage social campaigns, like that's something that would probably be better for an individual membership. We do think that though, that is the best way to allow everyone to kind of have that token gated access to the community, where there's going to be, you know, you know, materials for in terms of like, you know, like, like training courses, you know, all the documentation for the platform, and on the engineering side of things, any sort of, you know, like brand guidelines, courses and training and anything that the community can contribute to help everyone kind of succeed

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Ford-Carther

outside of just access to the platform. And you talked about kind of training materials, what else told, told folks, what else we kind of have planned for the community and kind of how we envision kind of growing that and growing the network? Yeah,

‍

Shields  

I mean, as the community grows, the activities of the community grow with it, right. So it goes from, you know, kind of expanding from Hey, we're building an online virtual community and discord within the Sprinter platform to Okay, now you're doing virtual events, or you're doing voice voice chats and recurring meetups, and we want to start doing having more active presence at conferences and kind of having boots on the ground and kind of like being like local at scale so that we can kind of create an ambassador program for people to kind of be like their local spiritual rap, right? So it's like, you might want to be an individual member, you might be an agency owner, but the idea is that you want to kind of spread the word of sprinter in your local community, whether it's going to you know, parties tweeting incubators or accelerators, maybe your university student, maybe you're not, you know, maybe you're in business school, or you know, maybe you're just plugged into your local tech community or your local, you know, industry events or whatever you attend. We want to make sure that people are being educated, informed and entertained in terms of what they can do with sprinters so that we can kind of, you know, open up their minds in terms of what they could do with this technology.

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