In 2017, there was an estimated 582 million people globally starting or running their own businesses. 70% of people believe entrepreneurs are well regarded in society,65% believe it’s a good career path, and youth (25–34 years old) entrepreneurial activity is among the most active in all business development phases.
So, what is so appealing about entrepreneurship to this generation? Why are we fighting against corporations, dismissing the allure of secure jobs, comfortable pay packets and a clear promotion path, which was our parent’s generation’s aim? Instead we aspire to sleeping in a grimy, shared apartment, doing all-nighters and going ‘all-in’ to achieve ultimate success. To be rewarded not based on the number of hours we clock in at the office, but on the creation we make and the value it gives.
The Millennial Fear of Being Mediocre
Those are the key words which millennials strive for ‘value’ and ‘reward’. In the evolution of human needs, the privileged millennials in thriving countries across the world do not fear losing their basic needs — food, security, comfort — they fear being insignificant.
"We no longer fear losing our basic needs… we fear being insignificant”
The fear is fed everyday while we scroll through our social media feeds reading quotes of “Whatever the mind of man can conceive and believe, it can achieve” (Napoleon Hill) and watching Instagram Stories of our “friends” and “influencers” out there living it, while we wake-up feeling emotionally drained pushing ourselves to go to that unfulfilling job where we feel we are not giving our best and our reward fate is determined by someone else, our boss.
We fear someone else telling us who we should be and what we can achieve. We fear being told the hours we must sit behind our desk and the number of days where permission is granted for you to ‘be free’. And in those moments of freedom, we must achieve our potential — an endurance athlete, a world traveller, a best-selling author, a super-mum and all the other unlimited dreams we have for our lives.
We fear wasting our time, because as we are told ‘life is short’. We are taught it is all on us. If we succeed it is because we believed and persisted, but if we fail it is our fault.
We fear being mediocre.
Dreams of Glory
So we throw caution to the wind, and listen to Tony Robbins and Rachel Hollis and Tim Ferriss, and go out to get our dreams. We think big and then make it bigger. We create a vision board and set our goals. We create a ‘personal brand’ to show our ‘authentic’ selves. We read and we learn and we attend personal development conferences. And maybe we decide it’s time to start a business.
And good for those people that do!
I love those people. The dreamers, the ones who try, the ones who go for it, and some of them will succeed big and some of them will succeed small and some will fail but be ultimately glad they tried.
But it’s all ‘me, me, me’. What does this look like from the outside? What does this look like for society?
A Society of Loose Change
We end up with hundreds of small businesses. The 25 lawyer firms in your small town, the ‘uber of x’ and the ‘airbnb of y’, the accelerators and incubators, the small services firms, the thousands of blogs or apps.
And while each is trying to think big and compete against the other, they get lost and forget their vision of making something of value and instead just try to stay afloat and focus on revenue-generation.
Competing with the big companies can be almost impossible. The GAFA’s of the world have big budgets and can benefit from economies of scale and having top specialists. They can move faster by running multiple large scale projects at once or acquiring start-ups who have already done it.
So now we are left with two choices — join them or spend your life’s passion becoming them.
Until 2008, when another way born.
Blockchain — the Antidote to Entrepreneurship
Step in blockchain, or more specifically decentralization:
When I’m asked to explain blockchain in a few sentences, I give a different explanation each time. Sometimes it’s about removing intermediaries and a true peer-to-peer exchange, with a comparison to the internet. Sometimes it’s a secure database that doesn’t have a single point-of-failure. Sometimes it’s about the cost and speed benefits. But when people say “what’s the innovation?”, well then that’s the time to talk about the incentive model of blockchain.
While companies try to introduce new schemes which empower their employees and align the company vision with individual’s goals — working from home, more performance-related pay, a cool environment, merging work and play (company holiday anyone?), Bitcoin came up with an incentive method which truly linked value and reward.
Blockchains like Bitcoin use ‘gaming theory’. They have found a way to incentive people to be honest and disincentive people to be dishonest. Not through a person or corporation deciding the fate of a person’s action but through setting rules which if followed reward is given. It’s about community power. If an individual gives value to the community then they are rewarded, and that individual is also part of the community. Kind of like a co-operative.
It’s about community power
This is amazing for that millennial mindset; those who are willing to risk a steady paycheck to have their reward linked to their effort. And rather than having to become ‘entrepreneurs’ creating all the elements of a company from scratch - a vision, a product, a team - they can focus on the skills they are strongest at.
You can do it behind a computer screen or you can go to the thousands of meet-ups/hackathons/conferences. You can join a mining pool or set something up yourself. You can join a community that rewards tech skills like Bitcoin, or writing skills like Steemit, or actuarial skills like Etherisc. If you don’t like the rules you need to follow in order to be rewarded then you can petition a change, join another community or replicate open-source code to create your own community.
Let’s expand with some examples:
Etherisc is a decentralised insurance platform (currently it has Flight Delay, Hurricane and Crypto Wallet Insurance). It envisions many different parties having different roles in the community, from insurance firms to oracle feeds to actuaries. An actuary, for example, provides statistical probability of a future event occurring (such as a plane being late) and advises on the likely financial impact of these adverse events, allowing an insurance company to predict appropriate premiums and payouts. In the Etherisc ecosystem, anybody can be that actuary and provide predictions to the insurance companies in the system.
In order to make predictions the actuary puts down a financial stake (in the terms of Etherisc’s DIP token) and makes their prediction. If they make accurate predictions then they are rewarded with their stake back plus further tokens from the pool. If they make bad predictions then they lose their stake. This means that it would be costly for someone to make any uncalculated prediction as they would lose that upfront stake, but if they add value to the insurance firm and make good predictions then they are reward. This reward is based on preset algorithms - rules determining what ‘good’ and ‘bad’ is - not the insurance company arbitrarily deciding later.
So we see how unfavourable behaviour is punished, or disincentivised, and valuable behaviour is rewarded.
Another example:
Steemit is a social media and blogging platform. In this case, participants in the community can vote for content they like. However, rather than the traditional one vote per person, it is one vote per Steem token. You get Steem tokens by either buying them or by earning them by writing good content (sweat equity). Good content is recognised by the number of UpVotes your content receives. Hence someone who adds good content to the site will earn more Steem tokens and therefore can have more influence over which other content is more highly rated. You can imagine communities of shared interest developing from this, for example a social media for academics or one for pop culture.
Synergized Value, Distributed Reward
And so finally we have it. The opportunity for individuals to specialize and focus on their strengths, and to be truly rewarded on the value they give to the community. We move away from a competitive and fragmented success approach of having a world of many SMEs, to collaboration and synergies which can compete with the largest companies in the world while keeping true alignment of it’s ‘employees’ effort and the rewards given.
Through this approach, we can build communities based on value, not gender or race or location; reward based on value, not connections or wealth or showmanship; decisions made based on true democracy, not on a vote given years back decided on false promises.
Individual significance with community power. Synergizing value with distributed reward.
That’s the innovation.
What do you think? What other companies are achieving this vision? Is blockchain the answer? Love to hear your comments!