Dream (originally called Moneo) is an advanced marketplace for freelancing work that uses AI to improve projects. In their own words, “DREAM validates ideas and builds teams, enabling more projects and startups to succeed. Powered by AI, driven by real-world success.” They plan to distinguish themselves from entrenched industry leaders like Upwork and Fiverr by focusing at first on curating the best platform to hire blockchain-specific talent.
According to their whitepaper, they have had over $8 million of job postings, 6,000+ development hours and a tested and proven bitcoin escrow payment system that was successfully deployed on their platform. In addition, Dream has had a hand in multiple crowd fundraisers, platform initiations and development, and collaborated with hundreds of blockchain organizations and CTOs.
Building on the success they had with Moneo, Dream has envisioned an ecosystem where every project built using Dream contributes to the efficacy of their AI solution. This AI solution, called Dream Builder, is described in their whitepaper as, “an advisor, project manager, and team builder—guiding entrepreneurs through the exciting, yet treacherous first stages of building out an idea. The knowledge that was previously lost from project-to-project is captured and used to deliver qualified answers and validated solutions to clients.”
The way Dream Builder does this is to analyze the outcomes of projects built using the platform, then making recommendations for workers or freelancers who have been pre-vetted by their reputation platform, called Dream Reputation. Dream Reputation is another way that Dream differentiates itself and in the analysts opinion eclipses the value of more mainstream contractor marketplaces like Upwork.
Essentially, Dream lets contractors import their existing ratings and reviews from all the major platforms, making their reputations portable. Not having the barrier of building a reputation from scratch on an entirely new platform is a very savvy strategy and accomplishes two main things. 1. For contractors, not having to build a new reputation lowers the barrier to entry for joining the Dream platform.
This makes it more likely that there will quickly be a large amount of talent for hire on the platform. With more talent on the platform, customers are more likely to use it, creating a multiplying effect continuously making Dream more appealing to all parties. After contractors for a project have been suggested, machine learning modules suggest an optimal team structure for the project. If certain freelancers have worked together in the past (and had a successful outcome) they are more likely to be paired together.
Token
The Dream token is the lifeblood of the platform. According to the whitepaper, “The nature of the DREAM Tokens is twofold: they are a utility token that can be used to buy premium services and hire talent, and are also reward tokens that incentivize community members for Advisers using and growing the platform.” Dream tokens are used in every process from the payments to contractors to rewarding people for training the AI system. They also have plans to allow partners such as fundraising or legal platforms to offer their services in Dream tokens. Dream plans to use the token raise for three years of runway and to enable rapid growth.
The token distribution is as follows:
Token Buyers: 60%
Rewards Program: 4%
Founders 8%
Core Team: 4.7%
Advisers: 9.8%
Rewards Pool: 10%
Reserve: 3.5%
Team
The “Dream Team” so to speak is stacked with experienced talent.
The founder and CEO of Dream is Richard Foster. According to Dream’s whitepaper and Linkedin, Richard founded and raised funding for financially regulated payments company. He also has twelve years’ work experience as a Cisco CCIE freelance network architect in finance and energy in London. Virtually his entire career has been spent as a network engineer and architect, at huge companies like BP. He also seems to be a prolific fundraiser for all the projects he’s been involved with.
Dream’s CFO Amy Diez is an ACCA chartered accountant, financial modeler, and Management Consultant. She was formerly the Associate Director at KPMG London for 12 years. She was also previously awarded the Jon Lopategui Memorial Prize for Monetary and Macro Economics at Kingston University London, in recognition of excellent performance in the area of Monetary Economics.
The Development team is huge, with five blockchain developers working on the overall platform and four specialists dedicated to working on the chatbots used within the platform.
The marketing team is small to medium-sized relative to the size of the other teams but seems to have decades of experience in launching/marketing platforms of this nature.
The members of the advisery board that Dream has gathered are genuinely impressive. They include members of the Ethereum core developer team, Ph.D. specialists in AI, and several blockchain legal experts.
Verdict
I am extremely impressed with Dream. Not only does their platform seem incredibly well thought out, but they have already built the foundation of it with Moneo and had immense success doing so.
Although contractor marketplaces such as Upwork and Fiverr are entrenched, their core value proposition centers on the idea that contractors are willing to pay 20% of their project payments to Upwork in exchange for access to a large client base and a trusted escrow system. Yet over time, contractors find long-term clients and no longer need the security of Upwork’s platform. When that happens, they cannot take their reputation with them, locking them onto the platform.
If Dream were just a marketplace that solved the reputation issue, they would already be an interesting investment. But they appear to be much more. They are a platform for the blockchain era, using the technology to maximize efficiency. By using a crypto escrow system that they themselves designe, they offer flexibility not available anywhere else. In short, Dream is a next-generation platform that matches projects with workers and continuously improves itself from studying the outcomes of these pairings.
Risks
Upwork and Fiverr have huge brand recognition and it could prove challenging to earn the trust of contractors who rely on them for their livelihoods. -3.5
Allowing reputation portability is great unless the accuracy of ratings from other platforms is low. This would then throw off the accuracy of Dream’s recommendations. -3
Growth Potential
Dream has a highly qualified team that has already built and refined the core product. +4
They solve essentially every issue that contractors have with existing centralized platforms. +3
There is an unusually low fixed token supply which means that it takes far less capital going in to raise the price. +4
Their platform will continuously refine itself thanks to AI and machine learning. +3
Disposition
Dream earns a 7.5/10.
Although this rating is incredibly high, I believe in this case it is justified. Everything from the token economics to the quality of the team to the product they already have running smoothly begs the question why there is not more publicity around this project.
Investment Details
Token Type: Utility
Symbol: DREAM
Platform: Ethereum
Token Supply: 100,000,000
Available For Purchase: 60,000,000
Hard Cap: $33.4 Million
Pre-Sale: May 12, 2018 – May 18, 2018.
Public Sale: May 19, 2018 – June 15, 2018.
Jurisdictions Barred From Participating: Unclear in Whitepaper.
Website: https://dream.ac/
Whitepaper: https://tokensale.dream.ac/whitepaper/dream_whitepaper.pdf