Simone Cicero:

Hello, everybody. Welcome back to the Boundaryless Conversations Podcast. On this podcast, we meet with pioneers, thinkers, doers, and entrepreneurs, and we talk about the future of business models, organizations, markets, and society in this rapidly changing world. I’m Simone Cicero and today I’m joined by my usual cohost, Stina Heikkila. How are you Stina?

Stina Heikkila:

Hello. Happy to be here.

Simone Cicero:

Today, we are also joined by Spela Prijon and Sascha Kellert from the OwnCo team. Spela Prijon has been active with startups for a long time as a founder and a team member. Most recently, she was Head of Customer Experience at Ledgy, leading the implementation of multiple types of equity plans for hundreds of startups, from seed stage to IPO stage in different jurisdictions all over the world. And it was with such an intimate understanding of the processes of sharing ownership that she Co-founded OwnCo together with Sascha, who isn’t the podcast today, and Harry Wilson. Sascha is a Serial Entrepreneur who studied systems theory at Cass Business School in London with a thesis exploring how to design viable businesses using patterns and blueprints from nature. Over the last decade, he has been developing practices and tools for the alternative ownership economy while building his two last VC-funded software-as-a-service platform startups. Hello, both of you.

Spela Prijon:

Hey!

Sascha Kellert:

Hey, guys.

Simone Cicero:

First of all, we said a little bit about who you are and your work with OwnCo, but maybe for the audience, it would be great to tell a bit more about what OwnCo is and maybe also a little bit of the story. The evolution that brought you to the product as it is today and offering the functionality that the product offers today.

Sascha Kellert:

So OwnCo is a solution for companies that are looking to share ownership, most broadly speaking. Right. And what we’ve built is an easy way for you to share ownership of any company or project with any contributor that’s not just an employee. That works really well for startups and larger companies like enterprises. We came to this personally from the alternative ownership scene, seeing that Corpse and DAOs don’t really work out. Yeah, we’ve been building a company for a year and a half. Happy to sort of expand on where we are today and where we’re taking it. And maybe Spela can say a few words because she’s come from a different kind of space to OwnCo.

Spela Prijon:

Yeah, that’s true. That’s true. There’s a triangular coverage alternative ownership Web3, and then I just come from straight up cookie cutter startup equity sharing. So that kind of combines all of the research that has been done about ownership sharing and we kind of combine it in one platform so it allows for all of the industries to benefit from the learnings or why I actually wanted to work with Sascha. I think it’s a pretty interesting story because he was already out there, he was already researching how to set something up as a company that allows that for other companies. And I was in consulting, helping companies set up their equity plans. So it sounds quite different, but at the same time because I was so close to all of these decisions and how do you share ownership and how do actually people that receive it feel about it and what is the actual outcome? There were quite a few disconnects. And so being so close to it, I was looking for ways to make it more powerful because if you think about it, equity is one of the most powerful things you can own. And so I actually reached out to a common colleague of ours, she works in VC. And I said, what can I do? I have so much interest in bringing equity more forward, making it to help level out the playing field for everyone. And then she said immediately thought, Sascha, talk to him, he’s revolutionary, work with him. And we met, we exchanged ideas. And I think it was in the first call that just clicked. We have to do something that brings ownership forward and it’s not just stuck in this equity loop that it oftentimes gets stuck in.

Simone Cicero:

So why is this ownership economy so important? And what was your contribution into fluidifying it, essentially the ownership economy was there. We had competitive. But what did you bring to the industry? What did you bring to the ecosystem in terms of maybe we can explore a little bit the type of ownership that can be shared or why and how you made things different in terms of how easy you made it. For example, what kind of target context for the applicability of these techniques.

Sascha Kellert:

So I think we connected the dots a couple of years ago between cooperatives and existing alternative ownership models, like the purpose model, the traditional co-op and then the DAO space, decentralized autonomous organizations and the traditional startup environment where you do share ownership already, but typically only with high level people in C-level. And we saw sort of a common thread there and things that were good and bad about each one, right? So co-ops being a little bit too rigid, the one member, one vote system might not be perfect for every situation. DAO’s being super revolutionary, but not really easy to adopt because they operate in a legal gray area. Tokens security tokens still to this day being very difficult to adopt. Even if we had regulatory clarity. And then startups not really going all the way with how they share ownership, it’s typically reserved to some Senior Staff Developers. When you look at those three and put them together, then you see, hey, if you take the best from all those three worlds, you can really rethink ownership and redesign ownership and build something that might eventually lead to a different way of organizing. Like this new Blueprint, which is essentially the vision that we’ve been driven by, right? We want to reinvent this basic construct that our economy is made up of like the legal entity, right? And what we found now is what we call credits. And credits are basically ownership credits that any company can issue. And these can be issued by connecting them to your existing systems. Once you have done that, you can issue credits for actions from contributors. Just to give you an example, like we have a fitness chain in LA. They want to get the best trainers to work out in their gym and they can’t do that by just giving the money, right? So they need an ownership backed incentive. And this is essentially what a lot of companies that we work with today use OwnCo for to share ownership in a more fluid way that doesn’t need tokens and that doesn’t require just traditional equity, right? So these trainers go into the gym, they work out in that gym, they get credits through OwnCo. And these credits are then backed through our system using a legal bridge with exit proceeds. So in the event of this fitness platform selling to some larger company, these trainers who’ve loyally worked out in that gym get exit proceeds through the credits, right? And that’s just one use-case where you can drive engagement and loyalty using credits. And it works better than traditional equity because you can’t exactly connect your carter maybe Spela can say something on this to sort of performance-based ownership. And you can’t exactly use tokens or security Tokens either. It’s too tricky and it’s legally still a gray area. So this credit system is basically what we’ve built and it’s super fluid and we’re onboarding more and more companies that use it for different use-cases.

Stina Heikkila:

I was curious to know because you said DAOs are difficult to adopt and I understand that it’s related to the tokens and that gray area, what are the things of why are DAOs difficult to adopt? And what are you addressing there in those difficulties or is that the main aspect?

Sascha Kellert:

I think there’s a couple of issues we see it started out with and still is probably the biggest issue, the regulatory lack of clarity, right? Is it an association? Is it a legal entity if you bridge it into the real world, is it still a DAO like dogmatically? Looking at it that way, probably not. And then you have more technical issues like governance. How do you they haven’t figured this out because governance of this whole monolithic DAO typically doesn’t work out either, right? And then people are like, oh, we’ve got voter apathy. Then it’s just also a user experience thing, right? I like to say that you’re not going to get Nike to switch to becoming a DAO and adopt quadratic voting and their board meetings. It’s just not going to happen. So we think our thesis of change is just a different one. We think these big monolithic companies are going to decompose into smaller micro companies. And I know Simone, you’re a big sort of believer in that right? With a higher model and like Boundaryless Organizations. And these micro-companies we think, will use credits to semiautonomously manage their ownership and resources. So a Nike department might break free from the mother and start initially is connected to Nike still because Nike shares exit proceeds with that sales team or business unit. But then over time they can break free and they can manage their own credit cap table which was initially funded with Nike exit proceeds or Nike revenue share. And now they can then start to move on chain and recompose as DAOs, right? So I think the future of DAOs is not these big monolithic things, but like networks of small micro-companies. So I think that’s the issue with DAOs as they are today.

Simone Cicero:

What are the elements that OwnCo makes programmable and distributable? So are we talking about traditional equities or rights on future revenues or are we talking about revenue sharing? Are we talking about decision rights? What are the kind of tokens of organization that can be distributed through OnwCo?

Spela Prijon:

We call those assets. So when we say that we are sharing ownership, we put a bit of an asterisk next to it and we say ownership of any company asset. So it’s not just equity, it’s actually exactly what you listed, including some membership loyalty points and so on. So if we look at maybe a marketplace and a platform that is currently using OwnCo they are where they are because of a community or they want to be somewhere and they need a community to help them get there. And a sticky point that makes the community decide to continue being associated with the company. So with the platform or marketplace is a tricky one. So how do you convince someone to remain with you in your community? And even further, how do you ask them to help you grow? This is where this agnostic asset approach comes into play because not everyone is excited about getting cash compensation. Some contributors want exit proceeds. But what we’ve also found through our research is that a lot of them like the governance and the membership tokens of appreciation. So this is where they get to decide what are they going to redeem it for and how are they going to utilize their voice that they were all of a sudden given. And then if you put all of these things together, you create a relationship. So to boil it down, what OnwCo is trying to do is act on the interaction layer. It all comes down to the interaction and whichever interaction fits at that point in time for the company and the contributor.

Simone Cicero:

Okay, so just as a way to underline for our listeners, did they get it? Well, that through OwnCo you can distribute equity rights, let’s say. So you spoke about exit proceeds, for example. We’re talking about governance rights. So participation to decisions and things like that. You spoke about membership. So something like loyalty points or whatever we consider at this different level, can you also distribute more, like direct access to revenues?

Spela Prijon:

Yeah.

Simone Cicero:

Okay. And that’s also part of the possibilities.

Sascha Kellert:

On one side, we take what used to be just a share in a company and we break it into atomic parts, right? And then those become programmable and manageable. You wouldn’t be able to do this with traditional equity. And this is where Spela mentions the interaction layer, right? So now you can really connect it to things that are valuable and that aren’t just done by people in an employment contract. Like we know work is changing. Organizations are more boundaryless. You need something more flexible so that’s on one side where you can share revenue, you can share upside. And on the other side, we’ve really boiled it down to like four use-cases that are applicable to every company out there. And every ownership sharing scenario, we believe fits into one of these four. Right? And that’s sharing upside. All of these sit under sharing ownership. They’re sharing upside. That means long-term enterprise value. You can share now using our system, then you have status. Ownership is status. So let’s say you’ve been a loyal sort of contributor and you’ve earned credits. Now you can convert this into status inside of that community, right? You’re the top delivery rider or you’re the most friendly delivery rider, right. And you get a badge for it. The third one is influence, right? Ownership is influence. So the more you’ve contributed to value, the more influence you get. Right. So if you’ve been, again, like a heavy user, you log in every day, you contribute to the good of the community and maybe to the bottom line, you get more credits. And really credits, you can escalate your influence inside the organization, right. So there might be some votes and decisions that we’re taking that are sort of at the strategic level that you only get access to and a voice in if you’ve earned enough credits. And this is completely different way of doing governance based on contribution to value. And then the last piece is redemption out of the four. And redemption, what we mean by that is credits can effectively this is the future of ownership because credits can now become anything. You can decide to convert your credits into a T-shirt like merchandise or into a take rate reduction, right? So I’ll give you an example. We have a law community that we work with. It’s 240 lawyers. They basically have a website where they get leads for new business, right? And how they get these leads is with content where they explain NFTs Web3 projects. And that drives traffic, which drives business, right. They actually talk to the lawyers and say, hey, if you write content, that brings us new business and traffic. Yeah, you can earn credits. And we’re not going to pay you for writing that content. But the credits you get, you can convert into reducing the take rate that you pay to us for the next deal that you get through our website. And that’s like the redemption use-case where you can earn credits and now you can redeem them into discounts merchandise, any existing loyalty points, or maybe even an ERC20 token that sits somewhere else and is managed by someone else. So that’s sort of the four main use cases to sharing ownership.

Simone Cicero:

Thank you so much for making clarity. So again, for our listeners, we’re talking about upside, status, influence and redemption. You spoke about the legal breach, right. So my assumption is you seen this possibility to take equity and unbundling it into these four elements and then you have to decide how do you do that? How do you make it legal? I know that you have played with both the technological side by integrating Web3, and on the other side, you also have been doing a lot of work in legal compliance, especially for European and US loaves. So maybe you can give us an overview of answering questions like Is on Colleague, can I use it as a company and how does it work and why Web3? Because I don’t see the Web3 element from your website. So let’s maybe break down this more enabling work that you have been doing.

Sascha Kellert:

Yeah, maybe I can talk about the general idea behind legal bridges and then Spela can talk about how it works and how we make it work with customers. What is a legal bridge? A legal bridge is basically a traditional contract. Right. And how we look at this is as follows. You want to share ownership, then take a traditional contract that grants economic benefit or ownership to someone else. Right? Now, our insight was, hey, if you use equity for that, it gets really complicated because you have to register it as a security. So how can you going back to these atomic parts of ownership, how can you maybe share ownership in a different way? Options are the original tokens, so there’s no need to have a security token per se. There’s no need to have an ER20 token, at least initially. Instead, you can just use an option that is a contract that’s been around forever. It’s legal, it’s compliant, it’s tried and tested. Right? And what we’ve done is we look at those options contract and we split it into two parts. One is the property rights, which is that needs to be anchored in the existing legal and financial system. It needs to be enforceable. You need to be able to bring your claim. So you keep that off-chain, you keep that inside the real world, so to speak. And the second part is the procedures. Right? So how do you distribute votes? How do you distribute revenue? Right?

This is not the enforceable claim. This is how you make it modifiable and programmable right, which now you can see already, this is probably then smart contracts and tokens and like digitalization, right. So this is how we think about every legal bridge. It has these two parts, the property rights that need to be embedded in the legal system, and the programmable piece, which is where we tap into what Spela said earlier, the interaction layer.

Spela Prijon:

There’s a very important discovery that we’ve seen in the last few months, especially you have legal contracts, but there is another layer that is in between the company and the contributor, which is the trust layer. So even though we’re always operating based on documents, it’s important to have the trust layer as an actual layer that is accounted for in conversations. For example, when we work with clients, we have the contracts and then we have the implementation of an ask. And then you get so you ask for something from the community, they do it, and then they get something in return. That’s the flow. And in the time between you ask for something, they do it, and then it’s given as a reward. There has to be the trust layer. So even if there’s all the contracts in the world, if they don’t trust you, that you’re actually going to in the end give them what you promised, none of the contracts in the world are going to help you. So we’re trying to build that into the company as well, which is where we did see the potential for Web3. So if you want to have something trustless, then you need that. But I’m not sure if it’s the right time to immediately go into that. I think Sascha can explain what the current private node situation is. We could explain that, but I think the next thing that was kind of in the question, I can go a little bit kind of like Sascha explained property rights and then programmable. Specifically with equity, you have two parts that are important in every equity document. The first one is who gets the control rights, and the second one is who gets the financial upside. And essentially by choosing the instrument, Visa RSU, we’re saying, no, it’s not both of these. We’re promising one of these, the financial upside. So already that removes a lot of complexity. So the only thing they’re getting is exit proceeds through financial upside that just happens to be attached to share price. That’s the template that we provide to all companies. It has been reviewed multiple times by our lawyers, their lawyers approved. So it’s just sitting there waiting to be executed for a client. If I go back now to a TLDR version, a client signs up. They want to create an action where they need help. They say, we will share ownership. None of the contracts have been executed yet. They just say, we will share ownership. The community starts working on it, and once the actions are complete. Then the company says, okay, now we distribute the thing that we promised. So this area in between is the trust. That is very important. And then it’s just backed with the documentations that are actually legally enforceable.

Simone Cicero:

Right. And Visa RSU, it’s a Victor share option plan plus. 

Spela Prijon:

Restricted Stock Unit. It’s a US version. Yeah.

Stina Heikkila:

How do you organize your customer, like, your research around each use case? Because I’m assuming that each use-case is quite not use-case. Sorry, each client is quite unique in the setup. So what’s your process for understanding your clients needs and iterating constantly on your framework? 

Spela Prijon:

In the beginning, what really kind of happened was we just went into it and then we slowly gathered some hypotheses and then we just kept comparing what actually happened in the call to what we are trying to achieve. Because it’s such an early stage, there are two parallel thoughts that need to be going through our minds. One of them is, what do the clients want? And the second one is, what do we know that is going to be good? And you can’t just completely trust the client. You have to be opinionated enough to lead them towards an actual successful result. And I think this is where we came up with these use-cases. So to get to these four use-cases, we were also reading online. We had what is that guy, Sascha, that was I don’t know. He was writing about network effects. And there are basically three ways.

Sascha Kellert:

Sameer Singh. Yeah.

Spela Prijon:

So all of these things were helping kind of create hypotheses and then test them. And that’s how we came to the fore. And in the end, we just have a templated workshop. So all clients go through a workshop. With Harry and I, we have it in two parts. One is more philosophical. Where do they want to go? What is the progressive, decentralization path that they can embark on? And what is the first, next step that they can actually achieve? And then we step into the numbers once we decide which asset are they first going to share? Not in total, but first we make sure that it is financially sound. Does it make sense if you share 10% of the company? As a pilot, I think that’s a bit too risky. So we make the calculations, have a recursive loop that then tells us the answer to how much to who, when, what is the total.

Simone Cicero:

Can you maybe just jump into a few examples? I’m interested in exploring the Edgy’s here. Right. So maybe you can do a couple of two or three examples of Edgy-cases that can tell our listeners what is the spectrum of organizational use-cases that you have been dealing with? So you already mentioned a fitness organization that empowers trainers to gain some equity, semi-equity rights for exit proceeds. Is there maybe something else that we can use to stretch the edges of this scope of applicability.

Sascha Kellert:

Sure. So what I keep finding surprising is that I’ve been in this space for years and years, right, and OwnCo like a year and a half now, there’s more and more companies that come to us that want to share ownership that we didn’t expect. So we had like a corporate bank, we’ve had an out of home care business that’s struggling to keep talent in a freelance sort of setup. We’ve had NASDAQ-listed biotech company come to us. What we’re seeing on a macro level is like the demand for shared ownership is really picking up and it might be a commercial incentive, commercial motivation, it might be moral. There’s more and more of that. And for us at OwnCo, what we find interesting are basically two primary segments. One is like, how can you grow better by sharing ownership? And the second is how can you reward contributors and engage them longer by sharing ownership with them? So maybe Spela wants to say a few on the first segment how we can sort of help startups grow better. But I think if you want to talk about the Edgy’s, the most sort of interesting use cases that we haven’t come across until recently are in the enterprise segment. So I’ll give you one example. There’s a biotech company in the US speaking with, they want to share ownership with their indirect channel sales, right? So they’ve got products they want to sell and they sell them through doctors. In order to be able to do that and to get maximum sort of results, they’ve realized, hey, we can’t just reward the channel the way we’ve done in the past, we can’t just pay the money and basic sales commission, we actually want to have them participate in the upside using restricted stock units. That’s a really interesting example and that’s the first one we’ve seen of that kind where an enterprise has actually looked at sharing ownership using RSUs.

Simone Cicero:

So basically what I perceive and I want to transmit to our listeners is that to share ownership, you don’t need to build a DAOs and get crazy around Web3, right? There are enough legal structures that you can use already, this company OwnCo has made the heavy lifting of kind of understanding how this works, making the hard work of making the legal artifacts very easy programmable. Okay? And so can you maybe spend a couple of words on why a new team, for example, should go the OwnCo way versus the pure Web3 way and what kind of continuity there is between the two? Because I recall I spoke with you, Sascha, in the past and we spoke about how OwnCo can also be maybe the first step and then can evolve in a full-fledged Web3 or blockchain-enabled perspective if needed. Like for example, for tradability and all the rights that come with fungible and non-fungible tokens. So maybe you can kind of explain a little bit these elements.

Sascha Kellert:

Yeah, we have spoken about a lot in the past. Some of the initial hypotheses we had around the benefit of blockchain and the utility of it were actually not confirmed. So our initial back end just to take a trip down memory lane was a private node setup. Right. And we thought, hey, we take companies from their incorporated setup, put them on a private chain, which is proof of authority, so it’s somewhat mutable, and then you move them to mainnet. We thought that was a solid path and that’s not really worked out for us because companies didn’t see the benefit between like a private node and just having a classic Web2 database right. With Credits, which is what we have today. And from there now, you can go and use our existing Web2 backend or the Web3 backend if you want. But the Web2 backend just as easily allows you to make that jump on chain because you can just convert that credit economy, which you’ve launched now, into a DAO economy, or ERC20 tokens and do whatever you want with them, right? 

Spela Prijon:

I think there is a natural progression, just as you stated. So if we combine the natural progression with also what Sascha said, that Nike is just not going to wake up and do quadratic voting, we see the future that Web3 enables. Specifically in the trust layer and autonomy layer, we see that, that is the way that hopefully the world would work and organize itself. But currently it unfortunately is not the reality. So if we want to meet the customers where they are at, we have to start with Web2, show the benefits of the credit system and then show them the next step in benefits, which is all of a sudden you can kind of lift your hands up and the system is still going to work. And you can achieve that with the Web3 strategy.

Simone Cicero:

Does the Web3 element connect with your ideas around how multiple organizations are supposed to interact at some point? Because I’ve captured this idea that you’re talking about an evolution from big organizations into smaller units. So how does this connect with your Web3 long-term thesis?

Sascha Kellert:

Yeah. Simone, you and I think are both equally excited about boundaryless organizations, network organizations, right. And especially like some version of the higher model being like the future. And I think this is really only achievable on chain, where you have intra unit contracts, where you have incubation contracts for these micro-companies or micro-teams. And ideally, what we’ve built with OwnCo is like a first step in that direction for companies to then organize in that way. And that’s really not going to be possible without smart contracts, without tokens. Hopefully we’ll get there and we can turn our system more and more into that kind of solution where you start with Credits and then over time, you. Have maybe two teams inside of your OwnCo account and you allow them to incubate as a DAO on-chain. And the legal bridge just becomes a way to have that DAO be compliant or you have trades happening between these teams. But all of this is like future stuff and baby steps that’s only going to be possible. Yeah, baby steps only going to be possible token

Simone Cicero:

How do you see this technology that you develop? Because it sounds like a technology essentially, right? It sounds like some easier user experience you built to make something that already exists more affordable for organizations, more easy to engage with. Right. So how do you see this technology playing out in terms of, for example, evolving this into an API, seeing OwnCo being integrated into other products, moving at I would say a lower level of the value chain. Because at the moment, if I want to use this technology, I need to have an account, I need to use OwnCo stack. So do you see evolving this product more as an API that maybe can be integrated into other products? How do you see that?

Spela Prijon:

First of all, our thesis or belief is that the future is embedded rather than solo products, especially when it comes to something as vital or core as sharing ownership of something. So if you’re sharing ownership of a platform, why would someone log into a separate platform to see ownership in the other platform? It’s funny when you say it right. So that’s the first thing and the second thing that that does and allows for. We are dealing with quite a few foreign concepts. So equity is not very familiar to people, revenue sharing, maybe loyalty points, but who knows? And so we have to make sure that all of these concepts are presented at the moment where they count. So let me give you an example. When we ask companies what their goals are, they have a way of getting to that goal. So we want to achieve, I don’t know, 100 million ARR. How do we get there? Oh, one way is to refer we name that action and contribution, goal and contribution. But the way we explain it and the way it’s presented in the product, it’s almost like an OKR system because that’s what people understand and know. So we’re always finding concepts that are perhaps a bit new and novel, but we need to put them and represent them as something that people already know and that’s easily and best done within their own platform. So if you do something, you get an award for it. It has to be right there. It can’t go out of it.

Simone Cicero:

I perceive you guys are kind of exploring the future of employment or the future of collaboration, so making it much more Liquid right now. We’re used to companies having to hire people or maybe having shallow relationships based on trade. Just you do some work, I pay you, which is at the other side of the spectrum and it seems like there is a lot more we can program in a collaboration between one organization and one individual, I guess also between two organizations. So another question that I have is do you see onco technology being used to create incentives between two institutions, two organizations, not from one organization and one person?

Sascha Kellert:

Yeah, I mean, I see on call being used in every company and lots of potential, but I think that’s the immediate next step. So we have some freelance agencies where the initial design we had inside of our app is like Spela said, right, you have goal and contribution. Right? So get me ten more customers refer like ten users, right? And people started looking at the interface we’ve built and this sort of hierarchy of goal and contribution and they were like, hang on a minute, I’m a freelance agency, I can use this for my client projects. I can just say this is my Nike design challenge and the UI design is a goal and I will invite a contributor to this goal now and once they’ve completed it, it can be used as sort of almost like a bounty system. And then from there, this is your point. Now this UI design team can now interact with another UI design team on OwnCo, right, and create a relationship between them. Or the idea we’ve heard is why don’t I give them credits and they can then start organizing as a company, right, where a group of five people that were just contributors to some design project are now sort of using OwnCo clicking a button and becoming a micro-company. And then once you have several of those on the platform, you’re really looking at changing freelancer to freelancer interactions, but also groups of freelancers or micro companies and how they can work together on the next project. That’s something that we’re super excited about beyond just taking existing companies and helping them share ownership. But once we have these contributor profiles and projects on OwnCo, things really start to get interesting in terms of like trading between them and collaborating between them using credits.

Simone Cicero:

From what I perceive here, we’re talking about a company that is developing something that wants to be a modular technology, so something that you can program anywhere. There is a relationship between two nodes. What do you want to distribute to these four dimensions? Upside, status, influencer, redemption between two nodes. You can do this kind of dynamic contracting as a module, let’s say, as a functionality that you can embed whatever you want in general, in organizational agreements, what is OwnCo’s own differentiation, defensibility thesis. So how are you going to create network effects or this is going to be at some point a commodity because I can imagine someone else coming up and say doing the same bridge, legal bridge work you’ve done. Essentially you can maybe double click also into what is your business model, for example, in relation to this. How do you monetize, how do you differentiate over the longer term?

Sascha Kellert:

That’s one of the big challenges for all of us at the moment. Right? Like product modes are almost nonexistent at this point and most technical innovation just helps entrench incumbents. The big players, whether it’s AI or like Blockchain tech, it’s good for the big ones. It’s really difficult for small companies to create and maintain competitive advantage. I don’t think that excluded from it, but the solution we’ve built is still fairly complex to sort of make work in the long run. I guess it’ll be a question of how well can we serve our customers, what’s the value we can actually offer and maintain? And yeah, everything else can be copied. You can copy the legal bridge, you can copy the design. The front end isn’t rocket science, but I think it’s really the interplay that we enable and all the knowledge that’s flown into how you get companies to start sharing ownership. And that’s not yet visible in the app, but the future will tell. I think it’s going to be something that spreads and hopefully, more and more customers will flock to us instead of building it themselves.

Simone Cicero:

Totally you have some locking network effects here to set lock-in defensibility at least. But yeah, it would be interesting really to understand what kind of smarter network effects and defensibilities can be built. Do you guys have anything else that you want to stress to explain to convey more deeply why your work is relevant, and why a company should use it?

Spela Prijon:

I have one that immediately pops up. It’s actually just a use-case, a case study from a client. They are called the World Freestyle Football Association. If you haven’t heard of them, look them up. The backstory is just fantastic. And why I’m mentioning them here is the way they decided to run an organization of that size really shows that in the future it’s possible to give power to more people and equalize the playing field. So what they’re doing is they have their organization, they have people that are key stakeholders, but then they have hundreds of thousands of participants that they rely on as an organization to run events, to come to the events, compete in the events. And it’s a sports business. We know the kind of reputation that sports businesses usually have and they’re really fighting hard against that. They can bring that change into the world through OwnCo. So the privilege that we get to participate in someone changing the world just by allowing them to distribute the power that they hold as an organization, so they are actually executing governance transactions through OwnCo. This is going to spread to their entire community. It’s going to be thousands of people making decisions together.

Sascha Kellert:

Yeah, and it’s a great example of what happens when you really break ownership into the categories we talked about earlier. It doesn’t have to start with equity upside. You can start by sharing influence. And I think in the end, how I personally define ownership is nobody really wants to own because it means you have to take care of things. You don’t want to be a steward, ask the billionaires or the people that are actually controlling things. What you want is control. You want control over a system and its resources. Right? And I don’t necessarily need to hold equity for that if I get the benefit anyway, right? So I think the end goal when it comes to sharing ownership should be distributing control over resources and systems.

Stina Heikkila:

Can you share with us? So outside of everything around your amazing product that you’re building, what are some of the breadcrumbs that you would leave with the listeners?

Spela Prijon:

We are in a very morally heightened situation. If we think about Ownco as something that potentially goes and rolls out into the world. And usually founders have that vision that it’s going to become a global organization, it’s going to do something good for the world, for me personally, what I found, and maybe other entrepreneurs will find the same. In those moments, it is super important for me to ground myself in what I believe, in what is good ethically, morally, and so on. And that usually I can achieve through just reading a very simple book of the Viktor Frankl. Everyone knows that the Man’s Search for Meaning rereading that takes you out of turbo capitalism, puts you back into, okay, let’s think a little bit. Ten years down the line, are we messing up the world with this? What can we do that’s good while still making good business?

Sascha Kellert:

That’s super cool. I’ll double down on the book recommendations a little less more technical. So there’s one book I recommend to everyone who’s like working in alternative ownership. It’s a systems thinking book and it looks at network organizations and it’s called Systems Thinking: Managing Chaos and Complexity. I do not have an affiliate deal with any of them. I just love the book. It’s amazing and I highly recommend it. It’s really a good piece of work.

Simone Cicero:

Thank you so much both. I think we succeeded to explain in an accessible way the work that you have been doing. You’re making sharing ownership easy, and accessible by leveraging what’s already there without the fuss and without the unnecessary sometimes fascinations about Web3 and Blockchains and so on. Ownership economy can be attractive and important on its own. It doesn’t need a detect, let’s say, frenzy element for it. So anybody that it’s really into embracing these paradigms because can just look into your product and see how easy is to engage with these possibilities. So thank you so much. It was great to have you. I hope you also enjoyed the conversation, both of you.

Sascha Kellert:

Absolutely. It was amazing, to be honest.

Simone Cicero:

Thank you so thank you so much.

Spela Prijon:

Thank you very much. It was very nice to meet you both as well.

Simone Cicero:

Thank you, Stina. Of course. 

Stina Heikkila:

This was really great 

Simone Cicero:

For our listeners, ass always. If you go to www.boundaryless.io/resourcespodcast, you will find the transcript and you will find all the references. And until we speak again, I recommend you to think boundaryless.