A recurring theme on this show has been creator and user empowerment—more specifically, how founders can build scalable businesses that don’t just extract value from their users, but instead, allow them to directly benefit from the value they help create. In the past, web2 gig economy marketplaces have had to be extractive—imposing higher take-rates and lower payouts seemed to be the only way to stay in business. Many of them still struggle to be profitable. However, our guests for this episode are using web3 to build a radically different alternative. Gabe Luna Ostaseski and Adam Jackson are the founders of Braintrust—a decentralized talent network like Upwork or Fiverr that is user-owned and redistributes its value back to its participants. It’s still early, but the talent on Braintrust has already been hired by the likes of Nike, Porsche, NASA, and Goldman Sachs. In this conversation, we talk to them about: Why they think our current way of building marketplaces is broken What led them to founding Braintrust The practical challenges of running a decentralized talent network; and  Braintrust’s vision for the future of work We hope you enjoy this conversation as much as we did! 

In this episode, we were joined by Erik Forman, the co-founder of The Drivers Cooperative, a driver-owned alternative to Uber and Lyft. Erik spoke about how he got interested in the labor movement, his experience organising workers, what it means to be a socialist entrepreneur, and what a modern labor movement could look like in today’s platform-dominated economy. Erik has a deep understanding of labor theory. Besides being an entrepreneur, he has organised labor movements on the ground as a union organiser. He also teaches labor studies at SUNY Empire’s Harry Van Arsdale Jr. School of Labor Studies. Erik was a great guest because he truly bridges the gap between theory and practice. Hope you enjoy this conversation as much as we did! 

Nathan interviewed Li in this special episode of Means of Creation, where she talks about the $110M fund she recently raised with Jesse Walden and Spencer Noon of Variant. If you’re an avid fan of the show, you may have noticed how the podcast’s focus has shifted from platforms in the passion economy to user-owned networks within web3. In this episode, Li talks about how her passion economy thesis converges with Variant’s ownership economy thesis—a crypto enabled future where consumer technology products are owned by their users, who contribute so much to their value. Li also talks about her personal journey into web3: what prompted her to go down the crypto rabbit hole, and the mental models she uses when investing in the creator economy’s web3 future. This is an episode that promises to intrigue crypto maxis and skeptics alike! Hope you all enjoy it.

Packy McCormick, author of Not Boring, one of the most widely-read analysts in tech. His newsletter now has more than 75k subscribers and he's raised a fund to back startups he finds interesting. In this conversation, we focus on how Packy went from crypto-skeptic to writing a post almost every week about crypto. We also talk about where power will accrue in the web3 value chain, the tribal nature of many crypto projects, and the possible deep connections between the idea of a 3d "metaverse" and blockchains. Enjoy!

The hype around crypto-native communities such as Loot and Nouns DAO have taken over all our Twitter feeds. But how do these communities arise and gather momentum? Our guest this week, Patrick Rivera, gives us an inside look into the social and financial motivations driving some of crypto’s most prominent communities. Being a part of these communities is so compelling, because according to Patrick, they are “a combination of a social hangout spot, an intellectual challenge, and a way to make money.” Patrick’s position has helped him get in early on these trends, and understand the importance of being a part of these communities from day one. He is a Product Engineer at Mirror—a crypto native creative suite, with crowdfunding & publishing tools for creators. Mirror is backed by some prominent investors such as a16z, USV, Variant Fund, and Li herself!  At Mirror, Patrick’s role involves working very closely with creators to design and ship new features & launch new crowdfunding campaigns. We spoke about how Mirror is powering the convergence of  crypto and the creator economy, and how crypto-native projects are rewriting the playbook around raising capital and launching products. Patrick believes that more projects will take this decentralized, bottom-up approach in the future—giving everyone the opportunity to invest in projects they care about, right from the get go.  We hope you enjoy this conversation with Patrick as much as we did! 

The creator economy is in constant flux, with DAOs and NFTs currently having taken centre stage. Our guest this week, Kyle Chayka, is uniquely positioned to understand these shifts. As a writer covering technology and culture, he is simultaneously involved in three very different worlds: He is a contributing writer at The New Yorker, a legacy media organization, he writes his own newsletter Kyle Chayka Industries on Substack, and he also publishes a newsletter about entertainment called Dirt, which he crowdfunded by selling NFTs via crypto publishing platform Mirror. Kyle's first-hand experience publishing his work through legacy media, centralised platforms, and decentralised networks made for a really insightful conversation! We spoke to him about: How platforms exercise control over their creators and users today His own experience launching an NFT powered newsletter; The commercial incentives and cultural dynamics powering DAOsHow algorithmic platforms mediate culture  We hope you enjoy this conversation with Kyle as much as we did! 

In an increasingly platform-mediated world, platforms have outsized control over their participants—whether that’s app developers in the creator economy, or rideshare drivers in the gig economy. We’ve been trying to understand how this can be changed for the better—how platform participants can be made rightful stakeholders; bridging the gap between labor and capital. Our guest today, Jason Prado, is at the forefront of that effort.Jason is the Head of Product for The Drivers Cooperative, a driver-owned ride sharing platform based in New York. The Cooperative is a worker-owned alternative to traditional ridhsarding platforms like Uber and Lyft. Jason joined the Cooperative after working for big tech companies like Facebook and realizing that his interests as a worker were not aligned with his employers. The Drivers Cooperative now has over 3,500 drivers and 30,000 users on its platform, and has garnered vocal support from prominent political figures like AOC. Our conversation with Jason dives into the history of the labor movement, the ideological shift that made him leave big tech and join the Cooperative, and what collective action looks like in today’s platform dominated creator and gig economies. We also discuss: How The Drivers Cooperative came into being The challenges of running a participant-owned business How Web3 could potentially solve these challengesWe hope you enjoy this conversation as much as we did! 

Within traditional games like RuneScape and World of Warcraft, there have always been vibrant economies where players buy, sell, and exchange in-game assets. But these traditional games are also closed ecosystems—none of them let players transfer assets across different games or exchange their in-game assets for money. Blockchain-based games totally disrupt this model. Not only do they make in-game assets transferable across games, they enable players to sell these assets for cryptocurrencies like Ethereum or fiat currencies like the US dollar. This has caused a radical shift—unlike traditional games, players can actually earn a sizable income by playing blockchain-based games. And this is not something that is restricted to early adopters in the developed world—many players in the developing world are earning more than the minimum wage in their own countries. Gabby Dizon, the co-founder of Yield Guild Games, is at the forefront of this play-to-earn movement. Yield Guild Games helps players by financing their entry into blockchain-based games where they can start earning an income by playing video games. In this conversation, Gabby helped us understand just how significant of a shift this is and how a play-to-earn model will help foster an emerging creator middle class. We also spoke about: - The metaverse, and enabling upward social mobility through blockchain based games - The details of the play-to-earn model of gaming and why it is important for developers and players - Gabby’s own NFT collection, and the psychology powering in-game economies We hope you enjoy this conversation with Gabby as much as we did! Music by Keizo Fish

here’s a shift afoot at Twitter. The long-time microblogging platform has recently made a series of moves to position itself beyond just tweets, including acquiring the newsletter company Revue and introducing tools to help creators make money on the platform. When Twitter acquired Revue, the company declared that it was making a “better home for writers,” apparently doubling down on its mission to help people create and share content with a plugged-in audience. But are we ready for longform Twitter? Nick Sallon, Twitter’s Head of Longform Content, thinks so. We recently talked to him about all these changes at the company. We also discussed: Revue’s editorial philosophy Twitter’s value proposition to writers The archetype of a Twitter-native creator Twitter’s longform content strategy going forward We hope you enjoy this conversation with Nick as much as we did! Music composed by Keizo Fish

You can watch this episode on YouTube or listen to Means of Creation on your podcast app of choice.