From West to East: Transforming Emerging Markets with Mesh Networks and #Blockchain
As I head out across the blue on my way to Singapore, then further East to meet with our team in Bangladesh, I finally have a moment to catch my breath and reflect on what we are trying to do with RightMesh — and to a greater extent, with the transformation that is happening to the world around us.
Just as I am travelling from West to East, so too are Western dollars about to flow along the same routes to the emerging economies in the region. The same is happening in Europe, but over on that side of the planet, the routes are North to South.
One of the questions we are asked frequently is, “How will RightMesh tokens flow into the hands of the consumers in these emerging markets?”
It is a fair question. After all, our initial target mesh users are those Android-wielding consumers from countries like India, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Philippines, rural China, and really throughout the entire region. We are also interested in growth in Latin America, the Middle East, and Africa.
And while I will answer this question below, I wanted to first relay a story to help harden the argument I am about to give.
A few years ago, I was at an event in Vancouver and I had an opportunity to chat with the octogenarian entrepreneur and billionaire, Jimmy Pattison, who is one of Canada’s more famous business leaders with holdings in everything from consumer goods and groceries, to media, to even the Ripley’s Believe it Or Not franchise, believe it or not.
The event was a celebration of leaders within the Vancouver business scene, the annual honouring of the Top 40 Under 40. I happened to spot Mr. Pattison — as he has earned the right to be called — alone at a shrimp table, so in one of my few outward displays of fandom, I went over and introduced myself.
After a little small talk about the event, his business endeavours in his early days (my grandfather had been one of his first fleet customers 50+ years previously), and a lot of shrimp for both of us, he let me in on two of his many business secrets. First, he was at the event to provide support to one of his mid-level managers who was one of that year’s recipients. And second, he had just arrived in Vancouver after his 6th transcontinental flight that week.
I asked two naïve questions in response to these revelations: with tens of thousands of employees under his purview, why was he back here that rainy night for this particular employee, and why was he travelling to the “East” so frequently (he defined East as everything East of the Mississippi)?
It turns out, that both answers were easy for him to share: “First, celebrate the wins of your team. Every one of them is important,” [Though in typing this, I suppose this could be both applied aptly to the team and to the wins]. “And secondly, I travel back East so much because that is where the people are.”
In business, it really is that simple. Treat your team well, honour all wins, and take your business to where your customers live.
With that wisdom tucked safely into our consciousness, let’s once again address the questions on so many contributors’ minds: “How will you get RightMesh tokens into the hands of your target consumers?”, and “What does this have to do with society’s economic transformation?”
To the former, our distribution model is about empowering western businesses — app developers, brands, businesses, marketers — with the tools they need to address the largest demographic shift the world has ever seen. There are 2 billion unbanked people in the world today, mostly in emerging economies. There are also 3.9 billion people who do not presently have connectivity, and billions more who are under connected, once again predominantly in emerging economies. There are billions of people moving from rural environments to urban environments, even though these booming cities do not have the ecosystems to support such an influx.
And what do these billions upon billions of people do when they get to the city? They are joining the consuming class. And in so doing, they are buying smart phones (often for the first time) and are hungry for digital consumption of all types: entertainment, music, games, videos, education, news, and socialization — all under a communications infrastructure that cannot cope with the demand.
In other words, just like Jimmy Pattison and his “East of the Mississippi” philosophy, RightMesh is helping western businesses go where the people are.
We fundamentally believe that a connected world is a better world, but to connect the world, we first need to have applications incorporate our RightMesh SDK. Yes, we are building some apps ourselves; however, we will not be able to build a diverse enough set of apps fast enough to address all user needs. Furthermore, we will get much greater velocity if we could retrofit any of the millions of existing applications already being installed to become mesh enabled. Likewise, if we can convince many of the world’s 12 million plus app developers to start building mesh-enabled apps, then the rate of which we can increase our density will skyrocket.
You see, every app integrated with our mesh SDK makes a more resilient network for the next app developer, and so on, and so on. Every node, regardless of app, creates a pathway to connect and route data between nearby users. As a result, not only do we get to capitalize on the network effect of the apps we are empowering, but a stronger, larger network for all participants is created with every app installed.
A few of the networks we plan on building in 2018/19 include an App Distribution Network (where we empower our RightMesh Internet Connected Nodes become independent app distributors); an App Updating Network (where apps and devices can be updated from trusted peers on the mesh); and an Ad Distribution Network (where apps can be monetized and cached for local dissemination).
What each of these networks has in common is they are methods for western dollars to flow to the emerging market consumer. An app creator in Silicon Valley or Scandinavia wants to identify and distribute free-to-play/pay-to-win apps to smart phone users. They don’t really care where the consumer is, as long at the monetization metrics are healthy (e.g., the average price of a cost per install advertisement to reach an Indonesian Android user is ~$0.74/install).
Concurrently, a consumer brand company trying to gain awareness in Latin America is having to rely on traditional marketing methods, losing out on a lot of the effectiveness, measurement, and performance of digital/mobile advertising. When the consumer is not connected to the Internet, or is browsing the Internet with images turned off to preserve data and bandwidth, the effectiveness of in-app advertising is muted.
We all live together in a global market, where the trade and communication barriers that have been built over the last century are falling down, despite the efforts of those who are trying to build bigger walls. Building bridges between buyers and sellers just makes sense. And if that means micro transactions between Tunisia and Toronto, powered by crypto transactions and blockchain, then that just accelerates the pace at which the world becomes smaller and more intimate.
It is a change that is happening much faster than anyone could ever have predicted.
As the world grows closer together, I believe we will find more similarities than differences. Having dollars flow from West to East does not mean that one hemisphere loses and the other gains. Instead, it is about raising everyone up, regardless of the borders that defined where you were born. Or as Jimmy Pattison told me over shrimp those many years ago, everyone is important.
