The Ownership Economy

In this podcast, we explore the evolution of the social contract between employers and employees, discussing how the traditional framework has remained relatively unchanged since the early 1900s, while loyalty as a core belief has largely eroded in modern times. With a predicted 50% of the US labor force participating in freelance and gig work by 2025, the conversation delves into the challenges faced by the employment industry, such as market and technology fragmentation, and the need for interoperability.

In episode 058, Jahed & Martin sit down with Tyler Morrey of Upside Cooperative. In the conversation, we cover how difficult it really is for companies to share their equity with a large number of stakeholders, the state of the art for equity ownership for SMEs, ESOPs, and legal structures, and the innovations that Upside Cooperatice is unlocking by making legal innovation broadly accessible with the Hedera blockchain and ecosystem. We hope you enjoy the episode.

In this episode, Jahed sits down with David Dao, founder of GainForest and PhD candidate at ETH Zurich, to discuss how GainForest is blazing the trail for valuing natural assets with bottom-up participation of land stewards. In the conversation, we cover what ecosystem services are, how they contribute to the economy, various ownership and property rights regimes for them, and what an equitable future looks like if we value ecosystem services inputs to global GDP. We also touch on data ownership, governance, and provenance. We hope you enjoy the episode.

In this episode, Martin and Jahed speak with Raphaël Haupt, co-founder and CEO of Toucan Protocol. In the conversation, they cover the historical arc of the carbon markets, how we got to the market we have today through greenwashing and in some cases fraud, and what Toucan is building to enable transparent and auditable climate finance at scale. They touch on the recent Verra controversy, and how Toucan is building tools and financial infrastructure to help registries, marketplaces, brokers, and corporates understand what they are buying so that they can finance the economic system change we need to power through this century’s energy and environmental challenges. We hope you enjoy the episode.

In this episode of the Ownership Economy podcast, Martin and Jahed speak with Zoe Schlag, a co-founder and Managing Partner at Common Trust. Zoe has spent her career as an entrepreneur and investor. Prior to Common Trust, Zoe served as an Entrepreneur-in-Residence at Eric and Wendy Schmidt’s family office, where she designed and led their Shared Ownership investing. Before that, she was a Managing Director at Techstars, a global venture capital firm, where she led Techstars’ first impact fund and accelerator program. In the conversation, Zoe Schlag walks us through her learnings as an entrepreneur and investor and the evolution of her thinking on shared ownership. The conversation discusses in detail the concept of Employee Ownership Trust and Purpose Trusts, an entity type recently used by the founder of Patagonia to transition his company to steward ownership. As always, if you like the episode, please subscribe and rate us.

In this episode of the Ownership Economy, we connect with Nick Ducoff, currently a partner at G20 Ventures. Nick started his career as an attorney and quickly shifted into entrepreneurship. We discuss his learnings as an entrepreneur, investor, and DAO contributor and how these roles have impacted his view on creating value. As Nick is currently investing in ventures in the Ownership Economy, entrepreneurs and investors will be particularly interested in this episode. Nick will also be in Austin for South by Southwest 2023 through Monday if you would like to meet him. If you are interested in other takes on investing in this market, check out Episode 21 with Julia Lipton from Awesome People Ventures.

In episode 053, Martin and Jahed sit down with Sean Lee, co-founder of Odsy Network, the access control layer for blockchains. In the conversation, Sean covers his extensive experience in the space from working in the early days of the open source economy, realizing the need for economic support and incentive design, and shifting toward web3 models as the CEO of Algorand Foundation. Sean gives an intricate view of how governmental regulatory regimes are looking at crypto, from Singapore, Japan, and China, to Switzerland and the US, and how decentralized asset custody and permissionless yet safe access control can work with these new regulatory paradigms to the benefit of users and asset originators.

In this episode of the Ownership Economy, we connect with Professor Jan Eeckhout, a macroeconomist and labor economist and a Professor of Economics at the University of Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona, Spain. Professor Eeckhout is the author of The Profit Paradox, which explores the secular trend since the 1980s in a consolidation of corporate power in the United States, its impact on labor and market competition, and the implications for modern democracies.

In episode 050, we sit down with Tim Rann, Managing Partner at Mercy Corps Ventures, and dig in to his background building businesses across Afghanistan, Cambodia, and other locales, and how he’s applying his insights in development finance to impact investing at MCV. We cover the opportunities for uniting impact with digital product design, how Tim and the team are thinking of impact with respect to climate and financial resilience, and how LPs are thinking about crypto projects and impact. This is a great episode for founders and LPs curious about the investment opportunity in open source protocols built with the developing world in mind.

In episode 049, Martin and Jahed sat down with Erin Grover, who formerly worked in international development in Afghanistan and India, and in investigative journalism, who transitioned into working in web3 in 2016. Erin covers her work on the ground with suppliers as diverse as farmer cooperatives, textile cooperatives, and the governments she worked with to sponsor blockchain projects for traceability. She also covers many real world examples to demonstrate how blockchains can bring accountability, transparency, and ultimately even higher revenues to stakeholders in multi-sided marketplaces.