Honā Quietly Launches Public Beta
The social accountability platform opens its doors wider to the general public
During the global pandemic of 2020, we stumbled upon an idea that seemed to hit it off real well with both our prototype users and Silicon Valley billionaire, Tim Draper. The basic idea was that you commit to something, you bet some money on completing it with a friend, then get it back if you succeed. Otherwise, you lose it (and can choose how). In Q3 2020, we pitched our version of the idea with Honā. We won 1st place judge’s choice and secured a pre-seed investment from Draper U Ventures.
Fast forward a few months later, we’re now ready to move from private beta to public beta. This means that those who signed up to our waitlist, or signup from here on, will get instant access to our beta site via email.
Alternatively, you will be invited in via existing users.
🏔 The Big Picture
When we originally pitched Tim Draper, we wanted to see if our idea alone could hold ground, without relying on the buzzwords of “blockchain”, “Bitcoin”, or any other crypto-related jargon (although we had every intention to build a system that leveraged micropayments, a public ledger, and smart contracts).
Luckily for us, we were able to.
This meant that we could focus on solving our users’ actual problems, while relegating Bitcoin technology as plumbing in the background.
Here was the problem and solution statements at the time of pitching:
Problem: Decreased motivation, lack of accountability, and workplace distrust is negatively impacting remote-working entrepreneurs and professionals
Solution: a simple, yet fun accountability app
Mission: 1 billion honored commitments
As you can see, no mention of any crypto jargon.
This was intentional, because ever since 2013, we’ve observed how crazy amounts of money has been raised by hood-winking ill-informed investors about what blockchain can actually do. Not inherently wrong, just commonplace when it comes to the crypto startup world.
When building a platform called Honā (which is a play on the word “honor”, but partly means “to become” in ancient Sanskrit), we wanted to start showing that a strong business/product could be made by taking the slower, yet “honorable” path. The name of the company is the value we try to anchor in ourselves.
As such, when it comes to our platform, we want to help people honor commitments (which includes goals, habits, etc.), while simultaneously leveraging technologies that encourage truth, honesty, and transparency (e.g. BitCoin-based technologies).
Our hypothesis is that by leveraging such tools, we can also start to shift the behaviors of users towards more honor and integrity in their own lives. By rewarding such behavior at a micro-level, it will lead to integrity at higher levels (with proof of actions to match).
Ultimately, we’re laying the foundations for a true “Proof of (Actual) Work” reputation system.
♟ The Strategy
In order to achieve our 1 billion honored commitments goal, we want to explore micro-payments and micro-commitments. As such, our Product Roadmap flows in the following manner: Individuals > Teams > Communities > Enterprise.
You’ll notice that the last stage says Enterprise. The reason for this is because we can see a pathway that helps enable more remote workers, an increasingly growing population, get more done but through organizations that are impacting millions elsewhere.
“According to Upwork, 41.8% of the American workforce continues to work remotely. Although an estimated 26.7% will still be working from home through 2021, 36.2 million Americans (22% of the workforce) will be working remotely by 2025. This is a staggering 87% increase from the number of remote workers prior to the pandemic!” [source]
From a business standpoint, the Enterprise route is the most profitable for our particular niche.
However, before we get there, we are going to release to the Consumer market, so we can test, prod, and optimize. Once we are confident with what we’ve built there, we’ll start enabling Enterprise level features. We are already in talks with some corporate HR departments.
This path we’ve outlined is similar to how Slack grew, but we’ve researched and identified all the failings of past products who’ve tackled similar problems to ours.
What differentiates our approach, however, is our focus on micropayments and community.
🧑💻 Initial Development
Below are the steps we are following for our initial phase of development:
- Lay solid foundations
- Build for our target audience first (so remote-working entrepreneurs & professionals seeking better accountability; non-Bitcoiners)
- Start with a hybrid-approach (to help transition non-Bitcoiners over time)
- Building together in public to build a stronger sense of community (hence this article)
The above is a community-driven approach to building on top of a blockchain-based product. While all the basics of building any product or business applies, we are being intentional about the community aspect because our most favorite products often enable a strong sense of community. And if you can build a productive community from the get go, it sets the culture for the platform ongoing.
As such, we began testing with users who were already part of a previous community we had been running for the last 5 years. That’s how we knew what we were doing “worked” at a foundational level, but are now simply productizing the accountability methods we refined over time.
In terms of our “hybrid” approach, this means that we have laid platform foundations that allows for payments in both traditional (e.g. credit card) and non-traditional (e.g. BSV) payments. This approach allows us to “train” our users without forcing change down their throats.
Over time, however, we will have a platform whose data is transacted almost entirely via micropayments.
We’re starting in a hybrid manner so we can show non-Bitcoiners, over time as we build together, why our future vision is the no-brainer when it comes to data ownership, privacy, and security. Something that is becoming increasingly important as people learn more about their data rights.
We believe there’s still around 10–20 more years for the world to get used to the idea of data + micropayments, so our plan is to watch and adjust as the market matures. Patience is a virtue.
⛔️ Challenges
When we started building the platform, we wanted to setup non-custodial multi-sig escrows (i.e. have it so that whenever someone stakes money against a commitment, it gets stored on-chain, and not in our wallets).
Little did we know that in the BSV ecosystem, very few digital wallet providers had actually solved for this (or are at least working on it, but not yet ready for what we need it to do).
This meant that some of what we wanted to do, needed to be put on hold until this became ready. So we are currently in talks with multiple providers, working together to get this sorted ASAP.
Scripts and algorithms around the functionality itself, in relation to how we uniquely process commitments in-app, are ready to go.
➡️ Next Steps
Now that we have soft-launched, our aim is to get to 1,000 true fans within the next few months. This is not just signups, but active users who keep coming back over and over again to invest in themselves and their commitments reputation (thus paying us too).
Notice that our mission is 1 billion honored commitments, not just 1 billion commitments. This ensures that our team is aligned in helping our users succeed with completing their goals, habits, etc. It also allows us to deep-dive into the realm of micro-commitments, in order to achieve our mission.
Of course, since we are still in beta, there will always be bugs to fix. So please report them in-app as they pop up!
Here are some of the things we have in the product pipeline:
- Ability to split staked $ to multiple parties (inc. charities)
- Smart-contract-based commitments
- “Chain teams”
- Reputation algorithm + rewards system
- External integrations (e.g. Twitter, Slack, etc.)
- … and more
For now, have fun with what we’ve created thus far, and let’s work together to build the world’s most honorable commitment platform.
🛡 Signup to Honā here: hona.io
