The Ownership Economy
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Welcome to the Ownership Economy podcast, the podcast that explores the people and ideas that are utilizing technology, economics, and the law to reimagine how the economy can work for everyone. Here we connect with the entrepreneurs, investors, thought-leaders, academics, and politicians that are constructing a better economy, one based on broad-based ownership and democratic governance. Hosted by Martin Smith and Jahed Momand, two investors and operators that aim to use this platform to showcase the people and ideas that will shape more inclusive economies.
71 Episodes
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How do the worlds of cryptography, privacy, and AI relate? What is the promise of NFTs for building a user- and creator-owned economy? We dive into these topics and more with Ownership Economy Summit speaker David Pakman. David started his career in tech at Apple, and has been in venture capital for 20+ years at prominent funds Venrock and Coinfund, and was among the first VCs to realize what was coming in crypto and moved in early to back teams such as Dapper Labs, 3Box (Ceramic Network), and Rarible. David has been on the bleeding edge of the thinking in this space concerning user ownership of data, creator ownership and IP, and the building of an ownership economy.
In this episode, we are joined by Maryam Mazraei (“Maz”) and Eiman Soliman of Crowdmuse, a web3 protocol that brings together creators, fashion designers, suppliers, brands, and consumers, while redefining the incentives within the fashion industry to address its externalities. What sets Crowdmuse apart is its unique approach—it doesn't merely position itself as the "ethical choice"; rather, it integrates ethical considerations into the system's design. The platform delivers what consumers desire: remarkable, one-of-a-kind fashion and collectibles from their favorite designers. Simultaneously, it ensures that contributors and their contributions are transparently recorded on their smart contract system, granting suppliers the distribution they seek and affording brands the representation they crave. The result? A win-win situation where everyone involved is content. Tune in to discover the unexpected connection between a notorious apparel factory disaster in Bangladesh and an Art Basel fashion drop. Explore how web3 protocols, like Crowdmuse, contribute to making value chains more transparent and understandable.
Over the last 120 hours, a governance crisis the likes of which we may never see repeated happened at world-leading artificial intelligence company OpenAI, culminating in the firing (and rehiring!) of Sam Altman, with a tectonic shift in their governance in the space of a few days. In this episode we explore what led to this situation, how it could have been simulated ahead of time, and what you should do with your governance design if you’re thinking of starting a world-changing technology company, to ensure maximal flexibility and make governance an asset and not a liability.
Joining us for this episode are Dr. Michael Zargham, board member and PI at the Metagovernance Project, and Amber Case, entrepreneur, author, and founder of Superset, DAODAO, and other ventures. Both guests are principal investigators at the Metagovernance Project, a nonprofit foundation focused on building open-source tooling and protocols for a governance layer around the internet.
In episode 069, Jahed sits down with Dr. Astrid Scholz, ecological economist and social entrepreneur, to discuss how her career arc has cut across governance and ownership, and the resulting innovations she and her teams have delivered. Along the way, we cover ecological economics and how it values ecosystems and people in addition to profits, why the current org structures were not a fit for her and how she and her co-founders innovated on the Zebras Unite Co-op, and the innovation they’ve spurred to deliver more capital to social enterprises at every level, from idea to seed to Series A and beyond. It’s a valuable episode for any entrepreneur considering how to start a new venture outside of the traditional VC model.
In this episode, Martin and Jahed chat with Sarah Drinkwater, Founder and General Partner at Common Magic. Common Magic invests in European and US start-ups at the pre-seed and seed stage. In the conversation, Sarah walks us through her experience working with early stage founders who are using community engagement and incentive design as a core pillar of their growth. She makes a strong case for aligning returns with community health and growth. It’s a fascinating look at a fund manager building an edge across multiple sectors including open source software, developer tools, fintech, and more by focusing exclusively on the digital community. Please rate and review the episode if you enjoyed it.
In this episode of the Ownership Economy, Martin and Jahed sit down with Dr. Ellen Frank-Miller, the Founder and CEO of WORC. A social scientist by training, Dr. Frank-Miller details her research on how investing in people as assets is proven to build more profitable, competitive companies. This episode will be of particular interest to private equity investors, managers, and anyone who is trying to find a meaningful place to work. We hope you enjoy the episode.
In this episode of the Ownership Economy, Martin and Jahed connect with Anthony Cimino Head of Policy at Carta. The conversation discusses challenges and opportunities in the US policy arena to advance broad-based ownership. Anthony walks us through the history of current rules on the books at the SEC and IRS, why they need updating for the world today, and how his past as an operator in Washington, D.C. informs his current work and approach. Investors, start-up founders, and policy workers will all enjoy this episode.
In episode 065, Martin and Jahed chat with Drs. Jenn and Ilia Murtazashvili, from the University of Pittsburgh’s Center for Governance and Markets, and dive into the details of their new book, Towards a Political Economy of the Commons: Simple Rules for Sustainability. In the conversation, they cover the basics of what a commons is, what polycentrism is, and how property regimes and governmental institutions shape contexts and outcomes for commons-based governance. They conclude by diving into real world examples of functioning commons across the world, and touch on possibilities for governing the global environmental commons in the context of climate change. We hope you enjoy the episode!
In this episode of the Ownership Economy, Martin and Jahed connect with Adam Jackson, the Co-Founder and CEO of Braintrust Network. The conversation begins by discussing how to jumpstart network effects in marketplaces using blockchain technologies and marginal stakeholder incentives. Adam then discusses what decentralization really looks like within a web3 labor marketplace, and offers clues and insights for founders considering building in the space.
In episode 063, Jahed sat down with Camille Canon, founder of Apiary.xyz, and previously founder of Purpose Trust. Camille pioneered the Purpose Trust, a trust built for non-charitable purposes, that creates alternatives for SMEs looking to exit their business whose only option before was PE. Camille talks us through insights learned in the legal engineering of purpose trusts, and how she backed into the real problem—governance and decision-making. We round out the pod by covering a case study of Apiary in action with Radicle DAO, using their tools to help Radicle understand their stakeholders and radically change their decision-making structure for more alignment and quick execution.
In this episode of the Ownership Economy podcast, we welcome Dr. Corey Rosen, a champion of employee ownership. Dr. Rosen dives into the shortcomings of the current ownership model, marked by opaque practices and short-term horizons. The conversation shifts to Employee Stock Ownership Plans (ESOPs), outlining their benefits, limitations, and reasons for their non-dominant representation in the economy. Dr. Rosen discusses strategies to increase employee ownership, such as contractual preferences, taking companies private through ESOPs, and leveraging policy ideas like the Employee Equity Investment Act. This episode is a concise guide to understanding and fostering an equitable ownership economy.
In this episode of the Ownership Economy, Jahed and Martin welcome back Nathan Schneider, a thought leader who enlightened us on the intricacies of platform cooperatives, DAOs, and the burgeoning Ownership Economy in our 2021 conversation. In this episode, we catch up with Nathan to understand the remarkable transformations that have swept these spaces over the last two years, and how these shifts have influenced his perspective. Together, we dissect Nathan's profound assertion about the dire need for democratic financial mechanisms analogous to venture capital and a supporting software stack for enhancing democratic governance. We further analyze Nathan's provocative piece on creating a robust policy platform for DAOs, its crucial importance, and how Section 230 has shaped the digital world. This discussion delves into the unique features of network-native organizations, and issues of transparency, sufficient decentralization, and participant control within the DAO space. Our conversation culminates with an exploration of Nathan's vision for DAOs: a tool to pivot the online economy away from digital feudalism towards shared ownership, fostering a culture of effective self-governance in our communities and governments. Join us for this riveting conversation as we journey through the evolving contours of the digital economy and governance.
In episode 060, Martin and Jahed sit down with Dakotah Apostolou, CEO of Cohere Network, to learn how Cohere is expanding access to the real estate asset class by tokenizing equity in a global co-living network. In the conversation, we cover Dakotah’s background training as an architect at Taliesin, The School of Architecture started by Frank Lloyd Wright, and how the built environment can be leveraged for better social, environmental, and governance outcomes by leveraging existing legal structures such as the LLC and combining them with blockchain tools to enable liquidity and optionality for network participants. It’s a fascinating experiment showing how one can use a fully-compliant legal approach to enable broad access to equity, and enable optionality for nomads, retirees, and anyone looking for more meaning and flexibility in their living arrangements.
In this podcast, we explore the evolution of the social contract between employers and employees, discussing how the traditional framework has remained relatively unchanged since the early 1900s, while loyalty as a core belief has largely eroded in modern times. With a predicted 50% of the US labor force participating in freelance and gig work by 2025, the conversation delves into the challenges faced by the employment industry, such as market and technology fragmentation, and the need for interoperability.
In episode 058, Jahed & Martin sit down with Tyler Morrey of Upside Cooperative. In the conversation, we cover how difficult it really is for companies to share their equity with a large number of stakeholders, the state of the art for equity ownership for SMEs, ESOPs, and legal structures, and the innovations that Upside Cooperatice is unlocking by making legal innovation broadly accessible with the Hedera blockchain and ecosystem. We hope you enjoy the episode.
In this episode, Jahed sits down with David Dao, founder of GainForest and PhD candidate at ETH Zurich, to discuss how GainForest is blazing the trail for valuing natural assets with bottom-up participation of land stewards. In the conversation, we cover what ecosystem services are, how they contribute to the economy, various ownership and property rights regimes for them, and what an equitable future looks like if we value ecosystem services inputs to global GDP. We also touch on data ownership, governance, and provenance. We hope you enjoy the episode.
In this episode, Martin and Jahed speak with Raphaël Haupt, co-founder and CEO of Toucan Protocol. In the conversation, they cover the historical arc of the carbon markets, how we got to the market we have today through greenwashing and in some cases fraud, and what Toucan is building to enable transparent and auditable climate finance at scale. They touch on the recent Verra controversy, and how Toucan is building tools and financial infrastructure to help registries, marketplaces, brokers, and corporates understand what they are buying so that they can finance the economic system change we need to power through this century’s energy and environmental challenges. We hope you enjoy the episode.
In this episode of the Ownership Economy podcast, Martin and Jahed speak with Zoe Schlag, a co-founder and Managing Partner at Common Trust. Zoe has spent her career as an entrepreneur and investor. Prior to Common Trust, Zoe served as an Entrepreneur-in-Residence at Eric and Wendy Schmidt’s family office, where she designed and led their Shared Ownership investing. Before that, she was a Managing Director at Techstars, a global venture capital firm, where she led Techstars’ first impact fund and accelerator program. In the conversation, Zoe Schlag walks us through her learnings as an entrepreneur and investor and the evolution of her thinking on shared ownership. The conversation discusses in detail the concept of Employee Ownership Trust and Purpose Trusts, an entity type recently used by the founder of Patagonia to transition his company to steward ownership. As always, if you like the episode, please subscribe and rate us.
In this episode of the Ownership Economy, we connect with Nick Ducoff, currently a partner at G20 Ventures. Nick started his career as an attorney and quickly shifted into entrepreneurship. We discuss his learnings as an entrepreneur, investor, and DAO contributor and how these roles have impacted his view on creating value. As Nick is currently investing in ventures in the Ownership Economy, entrepreneurs and investors will be particularly interested in this episode. Nick will also be in Austin for South by Southwest 2023 through Monday if you would like to meet him. If you are interested in other takes on investing in this market, check out Episode 21 with Julia Lipton from Awesome People Ventures.
In episode 053, Martin and Jahed sit down with Sean Lee, co-founder of Odsy Network, the access control layer for blockchains. In the conversation, Sean covers his extensive experience in the space from working in the early days of the open source economy, realizing the need for economic support and incentive design, and shifting toward web3 models as the CEO of Algorand Foundation. Sean gives an intricate view of how governmental regulatory regimes are looking at crypto, from Singapore, Japan, and China, to Switzerland and the US, and how decentralized asset custody and permissionless yet safe access control can work with these new regulatory paradigms to the benefit of users and asset originators.
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Great podcast, brilliant insights from Julia, thank you.