Meet the Fledge — How One Community is Getting Creative with Pepo Conversations

Jerry Norris at The Fledge took Pepo’s new video reply solution and ran with it to accelerate his community.

The Fledge describes itself as “a one-of-a-kind radically inclusive Ideation Space, Maker Space, Incubator and Accelerator on a mission to create opportunities to pursue happiness.” Jerry says he immediately saw the potential in Pepo’s micro-transactions and has been getting creative, especially since we launched Pepo Conversations last week, where persons posting a new video can encourage others to reply.

Jerry and the community at The Fledge asked users to donate Pepo coins via video replies to help fix up their food startup kitchen. Suddenly, they had people they’d never met before giving to The Fledge, which is housed in a former church in Lansing, Michigan. Jerry then took those donated Pepos and offered them as a bounty for anybody who could show “before” and “after” videos of their labor in the kitchen, and he even asked others on Pepo to follow up with tips for a job well done.

“It is kind of difficult to shift Bitcoin around because there’s a fee and you can’t really do 50 cents’ worth. But the Pepo micro-transactions are amazing to us because it’s so quick, so easy to understand,” Jerry says. “Facebook or Twitter may have taught us about likes, but Pepo is helping us to monetize and understand all kinds of creative uses with these micro-transactions.”

It has been inspiring to see all sorts of micro-communities spring to life on Pepo. So we reached out to Jerry to hear more about how over a dozen members of The Fledge have jumped into the app so actively, even hosting a live Pepo meetup. This is part of a series highlighting the ways the people shaping the crypto movement are taking advantage of Pepo, whether it’s to create micro-communities, showcase markets expertise, advertise job openings, debate the latest crypto controversy or just tell the tale of that Baltic islands kayak trip.

Since we launched Pepo a few weeks ago at Ethereum DevCon5, early users have created thousands of original videos and sent tens of thousands of peer-to-peer decentralized token transactions through the app. Pepo, where users make short videos and reward each other with tokens of appreciation, is the first crypto-powered app approved by Apple for in-app purchases of tokens and cash-out options.

The Fledgehad been considering their own coin for a while. But they quickly realized the opportunities in Pepo, especially with the cash-out options where the tokens can be used for, say, transportation to help somebody in their community make a meeting at Alcoholics Anonymous or with their parole officer, Jerry tells us.

“This Pepo, there’s something big here,” Jerry says, noting how the app has raised awareness of crypto, blockchain, smart contracts and micro-transactions. “It has also made us reflect on our business model canvas looking for holes that Pepo might be able to fill.”

In what Jerry says is a “crusade for Pepo adoption,” The Fledge is looking to persuade local coffee shops to take Pepo and have landlords offer Pepo bounties for house repairs. “You see a lot of smiles on our faces when you see what we can do with Pepo and what we are trying to do with it.”

And Jerry delights in the crypto movement’s diversity, so evident across Pepo.

“You can get business advice on one video and then watch some kid doing a kick flip on his skateboard on another,” he said. “To us, that’s exciting, that’s diversity of thought and I think that’s going to make us all creative. I see strength in this community.

We do too! You can join in and be a part of Pepo. The app is available for download now in the Apple App Store and Google Playstore.