Aug 24, 2020 · 40m · top-founders
BrainTrust is Fiverr Owned by The Talent via Crypto Token
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gold bands on the timeline = statements, start to end. Hover to read, click to jump. CC turns on captions
Braintrust co-founder Adam Jackson discusses how his decentralized, user-owned talent marketplace disrupts traditional freelance platforms by offering zero fees to workers, fixed-supply token incentives, and community governance.
How this conversation actually went
Every chapter scored 0–10 on four independent dynamics. Hover any point for the reasoning behind the score. Nathan holds 37.7% of the talking time here. How this is scored →
Nathan as informed peer 5.4 Guest teaching 5.1 Guest disagreement 2.5 Nathan pushing back 4.3
speaking balance: gold is Nathan, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 28:29 Adam slams gig economy exploitation and billionaire founders
Jackson forcefully attacks corporate marketplace platforms, citing studies showing lowered effective wages and wealth extraction by San Francisco founders while drivers live in poverty.
Hardest push from Nathan ▶ 26:40 Nathan calls out contradictory profitability claimsNathan immediately catches the mathematical conflict between claiming the company is profitable while generating $75k in annual revenue against an $85k monthly net burn, pressing Jackson to admit he is burning capital.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 17:13 Adam explains public goods and tokenized open networksJackson dismantles standard Delaware C-corp equity paradigms by using Ethereum and DeFi protocols to illustrate how developer studios create decentralized public utilities.
Nathan holds their own ▶ 14:16 Nathan dissects the $83M valuation cap anomalyNathan uses his extensive venture deal literacy to challenge an unprecedented $83M cap on a $6M note, correctly pinning that Jackson's own fund set the non-dilutive terms.
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
| Chapter | Topic | Nathan as informed peer | Guest teaching | Guest disagreement | Nathan pushing back | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Talent Sourcing, Enterprise Rates, and Disintermediation | 6 | 5 | 2 | 5 | Nathan drills into the unit economics and pricing models of Braintrust, pressing on whether talent can be poached off-platform and comparing it to fraudulent ICO models. Jackson clarifies that transactions remain in fiat and the token is purely for governance and incentive alignment. | |
| Fixed Token Supply and Blockchain Smart Contracts | 6 | 6 | 1 | 4 | Nathan probes the tokenomics, comparing the model to EOS dApps and questioning who controls issuance ratios and dilution. Jackson explains the Solidity smart contract mechanics locking fixed supply and automated treasury issuance. | |
| Seed Round Valuation Cap and Crypto Network Economics | 7 | 5 | 3 | 7 | Nathan expresses disbelief at the $80M valuation cap on a $6M convertible note, calling it the highest cap he has ever seen and noting VC valuation insensitivity. Jackson explains crypto network pricing and discloses that his own fund led the round. | |
| Token Distribution Philosophy and the Public Goods Model | 5 | 7 | 2 | 5 | Nathan asks what investors are actually backing if the network is user-owned and decentralized. Jackson educates him using the Ethereum public good framework and explains how for-profit dev entities function. | |
| Connector Program and Dynamic Algorithmic Referral Rewards | 5 | 6 | 2 | 3 | Jackson details the connector program and algorithmic surge referral incentives. Nathan recognizes the reverse surge pricing concept while Jackson contrasts programmatic rewards with traditional VC rent-seeking. | |
| HostGator Commercial Break | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | This is a solo sponsor read for HostGator by Nathan, containing no guest interaction. | |
| Operating Expenses, Lean Headcount, and Platform-Driven Operations | 7 | 5 | 3 | 6 | Nathan challenges Jackson's claim of profitability against a reported $85k monthly net burn and $75k annual revenue, forcing Jackson to clarify that he means runway to profitability on the seed round. Nathan also inquires about the contractor vs full-time headcount breakdown. | |
| Critiquing the Gig Economy and Aligning Platform Value | 4 | 7 | 6 | 2 | Jackson delivers a passionate critique of predatory gig economy platforms like Uber and DoorDash, arguing tech is trivial and network participants deserve the equity value. Nathan mostly listens and agrees. | |
| SAFT Agreements, Token Cap Table, and Path to Decentralization | 7 | 6 | 3 | 6 | Nathan asks how someone could consolidate power nefariously and pushes on SAFT conversion mechanics if network launch value underperforms the cap. Jackson explains SAFT structures, decentralized token cap tables, and references Compound Finance. | |
| Token Credits, Governance Voting, and Community Ownership | 6 | 5 | 2 | 4 | Nathan questions how 1,200 people have earned credits when job volume is lower, prompting Jackson to outline non-transactional network contributions and voting mechanics. | |
| The Famous Five Rapid-Fire Questions | 6 | 4 | 4 | 5 | Nathan conducts the Famous Five, sparring briefly on Jack Dorsey's fiduciary duties and federal monetary policy stimulating equities while Jackson advocates dumping all public stocks. |
Statements from this episode (29)
Jackson: Braintrust charges 0% fees to talent and 10% to clients
“We charge a flat zero percent fee to the talent side, so talent can come in, set their market rate, and earn a hundred percent of that rate, and then a flat 10% fee to the clients.”
Jackson: Braintrust targets multimillion-dollar enterprise projects over competing with Upwork
“We're not trying to disrupt Upwork or Fiverr. Those are sites where you get a logo or a website We're looking to build large, you know, and facilitate building large software platforms, big, big projects, multimillion dollar projects that could never touch a m…”
Jackson: US Freelancers on Braintrust Charge $100 to $200 Hourly
“Most people's market rates are between, you know, in the U S it's going to be more expensive between one and 200 dollars an hour in other places around the world. It'll be cheaper than that.”
Jackson: Braintrust Charges No Off-Platform Hiring Penalties Due to User Ownership
“The reason we charge very low fees and no penalties for leaving is because we're actually owned by our users. So it's not just me and a couple investors, our users actually own the network. So we're fine if people get plucked off.”
Jackson: User-owned networks will outgrow founder- and investor-owned networks
“My co-founder and I, Gabe, we firmly believe That user owned and controlled networks will grow faster and be more valuable than founder and investor owned networks.”
Jackson: Braintrust will launch with fixed cap of 250M tokens
“We're going to start with an initial, initial supply of two hundred fifty million tokens. We can never print it anymore.”
Jackson: User-owned marketplaces could not exist without blockchain
“And that, that's why this is a new business model that couldn't have been done before blockchain tech.”
Jackson: Thousands of Contributors Are Earning Credits Converting to Braintrust Tokens
“We've, we actually have thousands of people working toward earning credits that will convert into our token, right? So we just keep track of them in a database. But these are people that are developers, designers, building the, you know, marketers, people maki…”
Jackson: Braintrust Protocol Purchases Tokens on Open Market for Referral Rewards
“The protocol will actually buy 10,000 dollars worth of Braintrust token on the open market, And send it to you in the form of token. Now, so then it, so it doesn't matter what the price of B trust is, right? If the market determines that, right? So you may get…”
Jackson: Braintrust raised $6M on an $83M token valuation cap
“Last year, in 2018, we raised six million dollars. It's on a convertible instrument, so it hasn't been priced yet... The cap is 33 cents per token, and so times two hundred fifty million, so about an eighty-three million dollar network cap.”
Jackson: Braintrust will never conduct an ICO or sell tokens publicly
“Well, so, I mean, to be really clear, we'll never do an ICO, right? We're never going to sell tokens to the public. We, the only way you can get our token is to earn it, is to help us build the network, right?”
Jackson: Braintrust is raising new capital and is already profitable
“We, we're working on another round right now. We're just kicking it off where we'll raise from some more VCs not a ton of money, by the way, because the project's actually profitable already.”
Jackson: Braintrust will not facilitate secondary trading of its token
“We, we're not an exchange. We're not going to facilitate buying and selling of our own token. It'll be on the exchanges to pick those up and create secondary liquidity if they so choose.”
Jackson: Braintrust pays 1% referral fees for clients and 0% for talent
“It's, you actually get no percentage for preferring talent. Cause we have a lot of talent. You get one percent referring clients”
Jackson: Porsche is a major customer on Braintrust
“Porsche, the car company is one of our big customers on BrainTrust.”
Jackson: Distributing network value to contributors over VCs is the fairest model
“The value of the network is then given programmatically to whoever helped us build it, right? Like not some employer, not some, you know, stooge VC, you know, sitting back collecting all the value, right? It's the most fair way to build a two-sided marketplace…”
Jackson: Braintrust will reach ~$2M in GSV in 2020
“GSV is our main KPI. We will do something around two million bucks this year in 2020 of GSV.”
Jackson: Braintrust will reach 60 to 70 active clients by year-end 2020
“Today we're at about probably two dozen active transacting clients. It'll be 60, 70 by the end of the year.”
Jackson: Braintrust signed NASA as a platform client
“So if you're going to bring Nestle or Porsche or even NASA, we just signed a couple months ago.”
Jackson: All Braintrust engineers and designers are platform freelancers
“I'm the only I'm the only technical person. So I'm the chief architect of the token and the platform. All of our engineers and product managers and designers are freelancers on brain trust.”
Jackson: Georgetown Study Shows Gig Economy Lowered Minimum Wage to $5
“Like the gig economy, all the gig economy did was effectively lower the minimum wage from 12 bucks to five bucks. That's Georgetown did a study on that.”
Jackson: One-Third of Uber Drivers Live at or Below Poverty Line
“Meanwhile, a third of all Uber drivers live at or below the poverty line.”
Jackson: Marketplace Value Lies in Network Liquidity, Not Easily Replicated Code
“Like, the value of a network Is it's people? Where are the drivers? Where are the riders, right? That's the, if we were to steal Uber's database, that's the value. Uber app, we can knock that off in a weekend.”
Jackson: Braintrust allocates ~60% of tokens to users, under 15% to founders
“It'll be something like 60% plus or minus of those token that of the total token supply. We're giving them to the users through that referral engine. Mostly that I described earlier, the founders and I, we have it's sub, I think it's sub 15%.”
Jackson: Marketplace tokens are worthless without real users and GMV
“Tokens don't matter. If a marketplace doesn't have users in GMV, then it just doesn't matter, and it goes to zero.”
Jackson: One Braintrust token will equal one network governance vote
“It's going to be useful in the future because one token equals one vote on our network.”