Future of Work Taking Flight
How SkyLights (YC S16) Intends to Reward Workers Using Quidli
About SkyLights
SkyLights is a technology company bringing cinematic VR to in-flight entertainment. Providing airlines with an end-to-end experience (content, hardware, and distribution), SkyLights invests heavily into ensuring its solution is in line with the high expectations of its premium client base.
Prepping for Take-Off
Like many startups, SkyLights, founded in 2015, started with little money and no workforce. But thanks to a dynamic work-for-equity system, they aggressively hired talent despite having little cash; and eventually attracted backers such as Y Combinator. The company is now aiming to solidify its position as the new standard for premium passenger entertainment.
Challenges Going Forward
However, there is a significant difference in distributing equity to stakeholders at an early stage vs. doing so when a company is more mature and there are institutional investors onboard.
Whereas early-stage SkyLights was a bootstrapped startup that managed their ownership equity via an Excel spreadsheet, the now global expansion faces the challenge of bringing scalability to this structure without sacrificing the flexibility and fairness that dynamic equity brought in the beginning.
Additionally, while employees enjoyed the idea of earning ownership equity according to their contributions in theory, the reality is that there’s low visibility on how or when their shares are distributed. This is where Quidli can help.
Skylights x Quidli
Full disclosure, I’m a co-founder and former CTO of SkyLights. I left (in good standing) with the aim of creating a blockchain-powered tool to allow startups to accelerate despite having no cash. Therefore, it was only natural for SkyLights to become our first client.
“Quidli is an exciting tool because it allows us to incentivize our employees as real stakeholders so that we can accelerate while keeping a low burn-rate”
— David Dicko, SkyLights CEO & Co-Founder
Given the success Skylights experienced using equity as compensation, David Dicko, CEO and co-founder, already understands the benefits that can result from “paying” employees in equity. He also understands how complicated such a system can be due to financial and legal frictions. For example, reconciliation of constantly changing accounts is particularly painful.
What Quidli offers SkyLights is a full turnkey solution — a user-friendly interface to manage and split ownership equity as necessary, with advanced features that bring added flexibility to distribution. A process which was increasingly difficult to manage at scale is now quickly, effortlessly, and transparently performed on a single platform; all workers, from full-time employees to freelancers, can be easily mapped out, tracked, and rewarded according to their contributions.
And with flexible equity, SkyLights can continue to be financially agile like a startup, confidently using their unlocked liquidity to lower their burn-rate and maintain a work environment where employees are also co-owners.
Interested in Quidli?
Does equity-as-compensation and or Quidli seem like solutions that can help your venture or company take off? Get in touch with us via any of our online channels or send us an email at hey@quid.li to learn more about our current offering and to see if it’s right for your organization.
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