Hello Colab Tech enthusiasts,

This blog post aims to provide an overview and historical background of the birth of Collabberry—the compensation tool for collaboration and cooperation.

Everything started at an event I co-hosted with the Mycelium Hub, where we had a small group of participants. Together, we engaged in deep, co-creational brainstorming sessions exploring sovereignty and collaboration. It was here that we explored the idea of revenue-sharing networks—a network of projects that share profits to collectively build and fund other projects.

At EthIstanbul, together with a friend, we developed the Pie Slicer, aiming to be the start of such a network. However, we soon realized that there were many unclear and unsolved issues in this ambitious project.

I applied for the RnDAO’s fellowship program to research some of these problems. With the support of RnDAO, we narrowed down the problem to Compensation in early-stage teams, which is one of the many challenges that need to be resolved for a network like this to succeed.

During the three months of the research program, RnDAO shared their compensation strategy with me, based on Daniel’s research on the topic. This was a significant boost for the research.

Exploring decentralized solutions and strategies for non-hierarchical teams to manage compensation, I delved deeply into peer-to-peer assessment-based compensation, as well as models like the Pie Slicer for managing ownership. I also explored Self-determination theory, analyzing the environment needed for a collaborative and motivated team.

If you want to learn more about the findings, check out the paper I wrote as the last milestone of the fellowship program.

After the fellowship concluded and I presented at demo day (see the recording here), I joined RnDAO as a venture, which was the first step towards making our ideas a reality.

Now, two months later, we have achieved several significant milestones:

1. Our first contributor, Cansey, is now officially part of the team. With extensive experience in branding, UI/UX, and frontend development, he discovered Collabberry through RnDAO and joined us, selflessly offering his help. Some of his excellent work can be seen on our X account.

2. We have secured our first grant from Questbook, which provides the necessary resources for developing the first version of Collabberry.

3. We built a no-code prototype using Google Forms and Sheets and will start testing it with the RnDAO team next week. Stay tuned for the outcomes of these tests.

4. From day one, we have been practicing what we preach. We'll be using Collabberry’s model for compensation within our internal team, even before the technology is fully developed. Stay tuned for a series of blog posts that will describe our process, and share the highs and lows.

Collabberry was quickly established and continues to grow every day. We’re excited to share our progress, advancements, and challenges with you as we build in public and learn from one another.

Let's build the future of Collaborative Technology together.

Love,
Milena (@migrenaa)