How to make Blockchain good: the Mom.life model
Right now, there is a tremendous amount of excitement around the transformative potential of blockchain — and for good reason. Lower-cost payments, immutability, transparency, security: these are among the many topics driving the current conversation about how blockchain and cryptocurriencies will change the world. Those of us involved in the industry sleep soundly at night because we know that what we’re doing is good and right for the world. Except, is it? Is working on a project that makes an existing system more efficient still so good when the beneficiaries of that efficiency are the same ones who most benefited from centralized systems past? Personally, I don’t think that this is particularly good or bad on its face, but I do think it misses the bigger opportunity for blockchain to genuinely change the conversation and elevate those most in need.
There is no question that the transparency and accountability offered by creative applications of blockchain will transform industries such as energy and healthcare for the better, and demonstrate the utility of blockchain beyond black-market Bitcoin. I’d like to look beyond this immediate utility, however, to a place where charitable and altruistic spending, and for-profit investment are entirely aligned.
When I first started talking to investors while working on startups in my early-twenties, I was struck by the responses I found while advocating for charities and NGO’s. I was an effective salesman, and generally speaking, people would be receptive about what I was pitching them. They would support the cause, the structure, the team, the vision — but they would ultimately and invariable they ask the question: “can I get a tax write-off for this?” Now, I wasn’t asking for huge amounts of money, so why, I thought, was this such a sticking point? Obviously I understood the value of saving on taxes, but surely someone who made half a million a year could afford $2500 for a cause they believe in. The more I studied which kinds of giving were tax-deductible, and which were not, the more arbitrary I found the whole thing. I asked some of the investors about this, and the answer always came back as some version of: “well I do support it, but why make a charitable decision that doesn’t also benefit me, when I could make a financial decision that does?” Basic, I know, but it struck a chord with me that even something as comparably insignificant as a couple hundred dollar tax write-off could be the difference for hundreds of thousands getting to people that need food, clothes, and education.
Ten years later, I find myself managing marketing for a social network that brings together pregnant women and young mothers. Mom.life was built as a walled garden where these women could intimately share the most joyful, painful, trying, and rewarding times of their lives. Now, you may be questioning why a 30 year old single man with no children would find himself in such a position. Don’t get me wrong, you could do much worse than advocating on behalf of economically challenged single mothers. However, the honest, and perhaps somewhat more selfish reason I proudly hand out cards branded with “Mom.life,” is that we’re doing something genuinely different with the online activity of our users. Mom.life is using crypto to create a system in which our users are able to monetize the entirety of their online activity to generate considerable income opportunity for themselves, powered by a native token.
To see how we’re doing this, you first have to understand that effectively all of your current online activity — browsing the web, liking your friends photos on Instagram, writing blog posts, watching Game of Thrones, reading this article — is worth money, and someone is already paying for most of it. Every time you see an advertisement, someone is paying for you to see it. Every time you chat with your friends on social media, your actions can teach someone more about behavioral trends that will lead more products to be purchased, shows to be watched, and candidates to be voted for. You, however, are almost certainly not being paid for any of this work you’re doing.
Young mothers, generally speaking, are the most valuable single demographic for consumer brands, as they account for up to 80% of household spend decision-making. These users individually, as well as their aggregated behaviors, are extremely valuable to these brands. Our system will pay moms directly with our token for their content contributions, invitations, and activity that helps to grow Mom.life. At the same time, they can choose to directly monetize their in-app activity and data via interaction with brands; everything from viewing advertisements (the same way you probably are right now on this page somewhere) to sharing data generated by their activity. Users have complete control and ownership over what is sold to brands, and are the direct beneficiaries of those sales. Our users can then spend our token between themselves, or on products from our brand partners. Moreover, our tokens represent a direct economic stake in Mom.life that embodies the value sum of their online attention — something that until now has not been value they could enjoy. This economy will be one that mothers are building for themselves, while creating value for Mom.life and our investors in the process.
To do this, we had to structure this economy in a sandbox where we can control the toys. Whether acting selflessly or selfishly, the only ways to earn tokens in our sandbox are by doing things that benefit the community as a whole. In so doing, we’ve created an economy in which greed truly is good. A system in which investing in those who are most in need is not only the ethical model, but the most profitable model as well — where the users at the bottom and investors at the top share success together. This, to me, is the greater promise of the crypto-driven, decentralized economy. Virtually everyone in the world is already creating value for someone, and a system in which every individual can enjoy the entirety of value they create is one that can genuinely change the conversation.
“Working in blockchain,” however, is not enough to make this happen. It will take a proactive initiative to engage communities that have been ignored by legacy economies to rewrite the playbook. There are many in this industry who genuinely want to work for human good, but most of us have seldom worked outside the communities of the privileged. The Mom.life model has proven to me the opportunity of bridging ‘for-profit’ and ‘for-good.’ And for those working in Blockchain who still believe that hedge funds and private equity is where the big money of the future will be, say “hi” to me on your way back to economy class… the poorest women of the world won’t be so for long, and I’ll be investing in them.
