8 years ago

Cal was was tired, but he couldn’t stop moving.

His dad had always told him to do one thing and do it well. The old man had chosen finance and really followed his own advice. Unfortunately, he hadn’t done more than that one thing well and the list of things he did do included drugs.

The inheritance money had more than made up for the loss of the man who had given Cal life.

Well, most days it had. Cal thought.

Their relationship had never been good. But Cal's promising university results had convinced his father to leave him in the will. Unfortunately, his education hadn’t left him with drive to tackle the sort of project his newfound wealth dictated.

His dad had hit big on a few early investments, and then had managed to avoid losing more than a percent or two during bad times. For most of Cal's life, his dad's wealth had simply grown with the market. As such, even after the estate taxes, Cal was looking at a bank account balance with multiple commas.

He had no idea what to do with it,but he just kept hearing his dad's advice: do one thing and do it well.

If only he knew what that should be.

He had had a number of his father's lawyers put together recommendations for the question. They had presented him with a portfolio of bullshit. Investments in fossil fuels, grocery chains, and train travel didn't exactly strike him as exciting. He was self-aware enough to know that he wanted to invest in something sexy: something that he could be proud of; something that he could be interested in; and something that he actually gave a fuck about.

So he had started doing his own research. That is when he found Julius Paine and his "Valuestream".

One of his frat buddies had brought it to his attention. The thing was odd at first glance. Paine claimed to be selling "a social network for doing work and getting the true value of it."

Needless to say Cal saw a lot of potential problems there. Like for one: who fucking decides how much work is worth? As far as his knowledge from his economics courses told him, no one was better at deciding that than the market and everyone who had ever tried to predict the value of work outside of market forces had failed miserably. Some had failed so badly they had driven their countries into recession, depression, or full-on currency collapse.

For another, social networks were for cat pics, porn, memes, and jokes squashed into a single frame. Who would honestly try to use a social network to make real money? Not ad money or breakfast-sandwich-for-two money but mortgage money and hosting-dinner-for-the-whole-family money? There was just an image problem there that Cal was having trouble seeing beyond.

For another, the site itself required users to create only a single ID over their entire lifetime. It remembered every post they took. The internet is supposed to be anonymous. No one that Cal knew wanted their online life to be durable. They wanted to go online and post troll shit and then go back and laugh with their friends about the silly thing they saw online.

When he had brought all these things to his frat buddy's attention, he had just told Cal to stop being a bitch and try it. So Cal did.

He made an account. He answered a bunch of questions about his knowledge, expertise, and interests. Then he clicked: find me work.

On the first day he did nothing other than answer people's questions. As the day went on the questions got more specific and more detailed. There were some he wasn’t able to answer. The site was finding his expertise. He looked at his balance at the end of the day and his hourly rate had surprised him. It wasn't money that meant something to someone in his current financial situation, but before his dad does the old man had insisted he work some 'real' jobs, so Cal knew that the money he cashed out after that first day was real money.

The second day was more of the same, bit he did a little better.

On the third, he got a few offers to go to job sites and make more per hour than he had yet. He didn't take any of the offers, but he used the info from the requests to make some inquiries.

The first job recruiter he talked to told him that the workers he brought in from the site made fewer mistakes and worked harder than every crew except his finest. He was a contractor building a strip mall and he had started finding new workers on the site a few years ago.

The next day spent a few hours answering questions before he got an offer from a startup. They were offering six weeks of paid training in their system and then a full time offer scaled based on his results.

The fifth day he stopped 'working' and started looking into what the hell this company was all about.

He started as he usually did: by calling his old buddies.

Most had never heard of it.

Two said they would never touch the thing with a 1000 foot pole. One of those said it was quote an abomination against Austrian economics unquote and Cal laughed struggled to stifle his laughter.

One said he had started using it last year and had made more money and had more fun than at any job he had ever worked.

One laughed, sent him a link, and told him to call back after he had watched.

The link told the story of Julius Paine, a somewhat renegade founder. As a teen his parents had encouraged him to file a patent on a smartphone app that detected blood pressure. Big pharma had bought it and Julius Paine disappeared from the public eye a few years. The broadcaster mentioned that Paine had attended university on the proceeds of the sale.

After graduating, he quickly used the last of his money to start a business. At that point, he released dozens of partial ‘designs.’ The video cut to an interview. Cal watched the young man tell his story: the sale of the patent; the company subsequently squashing the product (as was their legal right, he added); Paine’s anger and frustration; and then the thought: there had to be a better way.

“So I made one.” Paine said. “It’s a marketplace for ideas. A place where someone can get compensated fairly, both upfront for the work it takes to implement their work, and for the durable profits that their work can generate. Every act on my Valuestream is recorded, catalogued and weighed against the overall work that goes into completing the project or design. Every contribution is valuable and compensated.”

“Every contribution?” The interviewed asked.

“Every contribution. Edison said he learned ninety-nine ways not to make a lightbulb. If we are going to be efficient, we need to track the ways that don’t work too.” Paine responded.

“I understand that your have made a large contribution to this effort. Tell us about that.”

“After I sold my patent, I didn’t stop inventing. I just stopped publishing. What I’ve done is added a hundred partially completed projects to my Valuestream. I’ve invited contributors to complete the projects, spin them off into other projects, or generally use the work to create new value. My team does exactly what I said, we track contribution to each of these projects. Three have so far been brought to market. Those projects were selected by vote. So far they have more than paid back what was invested in them and they seem likely to contribute significantly to investment on future projects.”

“So you are taking a percentage.”

“A few percent of a profit-- the exact number is decided by the contributors to a project-- are rolled back into the fund that pays people for their work upfront. I personally am taking a percentage that is no different from any other contributor. We are equals on the ‘Stream.”

Cal stopped the video and sat, eyes unfocused, for a long time.

When he stood up, he had a plan.