Well, I mean, obviously not BTC now, but I’ll get to that.

Back in 2012, at the first startup I joined out of college, New York Natives, a digital publication [intended to be a kind of franchisable, hyperlocal version of VICE, basically] — I suggested that we supplement intern wages by listing a public-facing BTC address on the website, calling for the good people to chip in some crypto to show some appreciation to our starving-artist interns.

This was self-interested on a couple of fronts.

1] I was an intern at the time, and

2] I was an idealogue, and wanted to spread the crypto gospel — constantly scheming ways to advertise and incentivize adoption of BTC, to get it to at least $10k/BTC, building a radically decentralized global marketplace as a result, etcetera, etcetera.

The idea was shot down for a million good reasons, but, dear god, that would have made an amazing story, for my fellow team of interns to become sleeper millionaires from a 5+ year old half-joke digital tip jar.

Recently, when thinking about the structure of standard remuneration for sales people — ie. base salary [enough to live on] + performance based compensation in the form of sales commissions — I was reminded of ‘The BTC tip jar.’

I think I’d like to revive the concept.

Operationally, I like to design communications & collaboration systems to function on the same principles as a technical development team. Pointing, sprints, bug reporting, the whole nine — all easily apply to marketing, design, sales, ops, support, research — everyone. Similarly, I am a fan of the performance-based remuneration, normally reserved for sales teams — to apply venture-wide.

Now, structuring this so that it feels like an incentive to think and work like a founder — a la equity / options — and not a pressure-cooker, quota-oriented, culture-killing system — is key.

There was this scene in As Good As It Gets [1997] — basically only this scene I remember from whichever sick day I watched it on TV back in middle school — where Jack Nicholas’ character, a mildly unlovable monster struggling to navigate the world with both grace and crippling Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, went to a restaurant and ordered a meal.

He began the meal by placing 15% of the total cost of his order on the table in cash. He then informed the waitress that as a result of any acts of perceived superb service, he would be adding to the cash pile to reward the above-standard service — but for any mistakes, he would equally subtract from the pile.

This sociopathically bold move stood out as hilarious to me. I am, however, also reminded of it, as a cautionary tale, any time I am working on building incentive systems, reviewing tokenomics structures, or writing up an offer letter for a growing team.

Here’s why.

What I also remember about this particular scene, is that this caused his server to become exponentially more self-conscious, causing her to make more and more ‘egregious errors’ — all the while, Jack Nicholas calmly, disappointedly, withdrawing the tipping cash from the table, in time with each slight infraction— until she had a breakdown — and he was thrown out of the restaurant.

The moral of the story here, is that, while radical transparency is great — when applied in a kind of homo-economicus unnaturally normative exchange — it not only bums everyone out, but can also have dramatically disincentivizing unintended consequences.

Let’s take this concept one further.

In the notorious socio-economic example of the Israeli Daycare Centers — which, briefly, started charging parents a fee for picking up their children late, actually saw a dramatic uptick in late pickups, having created a product line where there had previously only been a cultural-community disincentive available — designing incentive systems needs to account for more than just time-value ceteris paribus.

…30 min pause to google this economics concept I use all the time, but don’t know the term for, where samartitans are, in some instances, less likely to help their ‘fellow man’ [ie. changing a flat tire] when remuneration is introduced — than in instances where assistance is offered out of pure good will and a re-enforced sense of community, tribe, etc…

Alright, we’re calling this one ‘The Holo Dilemma’ — as props to Matt Schutte for reminding me of the Israeli Day Care example — and as none of my econ-geek friends seem to know of a term of art for that.

Between social and monetary currencies — it’s not always clear what the optimal exchange or UX needs to be in order to incentivize your desired outcome — between single actors, or en masse [or between single actors, en-masse].

So, how do we set this culture-preserving, performance-incentivizing, cryptocurrency-fueled tip jar system up?

Now, any good system doesn’t just stop short at sustainability, but goes on ahead and positions itself for true scalability — so this needs to have a justifiable budget and ROI.

Luckily, I have a handy-dandy ‘Justification Calculator’ for the job. The ‘JC’ simply needs a few data points to get started — ie. the team involved, the percentage of their time spent on this initiative, relative to their time-value, the funds & otherwise unseen expenditures or opportunities [Bastiat econ FTW], etc.

So let’s start with a simple, testable MVP here, where we can take an educated guess at what externalities, positive and negative, this system might produce — with a manageable set of variables to isolate, swap around & hone with.

Alright.

Let’s say we’re aiming to make the smallest business able to compete on remuneration with the larger fish in the enterprise sea. So, assume the internship wage is $13/hr — the NY minimum wage — where a crypto-tip jar could really, impactfully, not only supplement a competitive wage, but also incentivize the kind of sweat and innovative work of a vested early employee.

Now, the highest paying internships cap out around… $40/hr [assuming a 40hr work week]. So, $27/hr+ for 3 months = … about $13,000.00 per intern for the Summer. Let’s say we’re taking in a couple growth interns, a dev, a UX, and a couple data interns — so a team of 6, at around $78,000 of crypto we’d like to have on hand for the tipping system — at the high end.

So, let’s say we instate a point-system to positively re-enforce behaviors and achievements — and let’s say that point system… Yeah, so we’d have to take, say $75,000 as the total allocation of the chosen cryptocurrency at the start of the Summer [always $75k current value, to incentivize people joining sooner — while the buying power to Satoshi is likely higher [*before the year 2020–2021 [**opinion not investment advice]].

Let’s say that gives us…1,449,122,807,020,000 Sat. Let’s then divide that by the 90 days of the internship, and get… 161013.645224 Sat per day [209317.738791 Sat per business day]. Let’s say we expect an excellent intern to achieve 20 points per day, then that’d be…adjusting across 6 interns…1341.78037687 Sat per point.

The beauty here, is that all interns exceeding these baseline expectations, means that the organization’s growth, product and operational goals are being buoyed beyond our and our investors’ expectations — and, with an OKR driven point system that is built around achieving multiples on our HCVA — it’ll always be worth paying for.

Also — In case it needs to be said, the reason we’re not just giving USD for points here, is to leverage, not only, the transparent, trustless ledger and accounting system of cryptocurrencies — but also to engage in some early-days excitement of value for money — in more of a belief in real value, over a speculative bent, ideally.

One other fun aspect here, is, as the organization that I’m thinking this through for, in my nonexistent spare time [personal life? What that?], focuses on enterprise technology market research — with a utility for institutional investment — we can also foster a visceral engagement into the research as investing in B2B blockchain technologies, by trading their earned cryptocurrency, using the market-beating edge of the research we produce into the coming [12–36 months out @ ~35% better rec performance that NASDAQ] trends in vendor technologies and enterprise sub-sectors.

Nothing better than an organization that eats its own dog food.

One interesting consideration for the fund-allocation, would be to say… Let’s say that each department/domain lead can volunteer up to $25k from their own budget [covering 2 interns] for the system — or especially consider, as I am planning to do for my own test, just funding the experiment from one’s own salary.

Similar to how Nietzsche’s theory of eternal recurrence prods us to think of how our decision making, moral and/or experiential, would change if each moment we lived were it’s own eternity…

ie. If your life were looped infinitely, then every moment would be lived infinitely — and wouldn’t wasting time or doing things you felt badly about, etcetra — be intolerable? Therefore, you are incentivized to live morally and fully — in every sense of the terms — for your own eternal edification.

…then you might think the selection process for interns, in this example, would be heavily affected by this investment being felt at the hyper-local level.

Not only would you attract interns who valued a meritocratic experiment over security, but also, you would feel the investment into this asset personally. I’d think that might set your sights to potential leaders for your organization, as you’re personally banking on their value-add as a contributor to your venture’s worth, over the hunt for just an extra set of hands on deck — which many internships are relegated to.

Another apt analogy here, less of a stretch than the Nietzschean one, I promise, would be Milton Friedman’s, ‘The Four Ways You Spend Money’. [Sourced the following quotation from here.]

1. You can spend your own money on yourself. When you do that, why then you really watch what you’re doing, and you try to get the most for your money.

2. You can spend your own money on somebody else. For example, I buy a birthday present for someone. Well, then I’m not so careful about the content of the present, but I’m very careful about the cost.

3. I can spend somebody else’s money on myself. And if I spend somebody else’s money on myself, then I’m sure going to have a good lunch!

4. I can spend somebody else’s money on somebody else. And if I spend somebody else’s money on somebody else, I’m not concerned about how much it is, and I’m not concerned about what I get.

This highlights a problem that becomes very obvious with how centralized systems tend to operate — the feet are far from the fire — and so, both attention to budgets and quality let slip.

It was thoughts on the need for a bit of radical decentralization here that first lead me to discovering BTC, and recognizing the Blockchain [and similarly decentralizing technologies] for what potential to improve access to and management of everything, from banking, to governance, to data production and consumption, etc. etc. that this operational / technological paradigm offers.

I remember first noticing how important the use of metaphor was, as a kid, for communicating ideas really effectively, very quickly.

Pull from common examples, or tangible examples in nature, to do the heavily lifting in pattern matching a new idea for yourself, or to audiences of the uninitiated to whichever niche concept, around which you’re wrapping your, or the group’s, arms .

As such…

One of the first thoughts I had, with regards to the visceral optimality of decentralized systems — back when I was marooned in Art School, to study economics and figure out just what had caused this whole Housing Crash on my *own [*independently, but 100% supported by podcasts, and student economics & political groups available at nearby schools, think tanks & conferences, etc.], was in taking the example of CIP.

CIP, or Congenital Insensitivity to Pain, is a disorder that prevents your brain from receiving signals that you are experiencing pain.

Here, you are agnostic to, for example, leaving your hand on a hot oven’s burner — until or unless other, far more latent sensors alert you that something’s off — ie. the smell or sight of your destruction — possibly minutes later. This disorder is rare, but comes with a very high and tragically young mortality rate.

Now. Taking a note from Nassim Taleb’s definition of a Stoic…

“…someone who transforms fear into prudence, pain into information, mistakes into initiation, and desire into undertaking…”

…we can at least see, through this lens, that, among other critical functions — pain notifies us, helps us to rapidly re-calibrate damaging actions — towards more fruitful, or at least less painful paths.

Your nervous system and ability to feel pain, hyper-locally, are constantly informed and reactive — even before cognizance of the cause, effect and best plan of action, can possibly be set into action, top-down, from the center of that nervous system. Similarly, decentralized systems design for as many nerve endings to be as autonomous and incentivized towards optimal sensitivity as possible.

You want stewardship, accountability, rapid-response, constant information and feedback — and you want this to be physically, technologically, economically, and operationally enforced.

So, finally, how do we apply this thinking to our tip jar?

Issues to consider when aiming for the optimization of operational performance, culture, retention, and lean functionality — via gamified remuneration.

I know.

Let’s step back and consider the difference between OKRs and KPIs — particularly to which you’d want to tie a performance based digital asset reward system.

Objectives and Key Results. [I] Think of OKRs as mission statements — the lighthouse[s] towards which the venture navigates. Profitability and market penetration thresholds — milestones that either define sustainable scalability — or trigger the next lead-investors’-defined terms for an additional round of funding — whatever the goal for existing is — and whatever keeps the lights on.

**GROWTH.
**Revenue : +20% y/y
Market Saturation : 10%
User Retention : 85%
CLTV : +1000% CAC

**PRODUCT.
**Velocity : 15pts/wk/team member
IPS : +150%
ROI2 : +500%
Rework Level : -30%

**OPERATIONS.
**HCVA : +200%
CUR : 90%
DIFOT : 80%
Team Churn Rate : -15% y/y

Etcetera.

**Key Performance Indicators. **KPIs are the tools used in the venture’s navigational path towards its OKRs. Pulse checks — data points and listeners for those data points.

12 enterprise sales this month is not the OKR, 80% y/y retention and 20% y/y growth are more appropriately those overarching OKRs. Snagging 12 sales per month may achieve that trajectory, but if the quotas become myopic towards means over ends — then you might see some high churn in usership, or even your ability to retain talent.

Say your team has been unintentionally incentivized, via an operational culture that confuses KPIs — which check health & test assumptions — with OKRs — which define the healthy organization, to take shortcuts to hit large quotas, fast.

Your sales team may operate here with a kind of tunnel vision to achieve short-sighted quotas, their commission — potentially by overpromising services, thereby shortly losing their clients, burning out, bailing, and permanently damaging your organization’s reputation on both sales and recruiting fronts.

Between the two, it’s clear that what we don’t want is to confuse pulse checks, our KPIS, with health, our objectives — or to optimize for targets that are meant to triangulate where you are, your pace, your ability to judge healthy pace, discover corollaries for success and failure —in order to achieve your OKRs.

As economist Charles Goodhart would warn, “When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.”

Astro Teller, Google’s Chief Innovation Officer, has spoken brilliantly on this topic. From gamification that takes into consideration those that will aim to game-the-game — to highlighting the importance of discovering points of failure in projects and project management, the man has definitely influenced my operational thinking.

Killing bad ideas sooner than later. Wasting time is the axiomatic sin. Time, while we exist on this mortal coil — in a linear paradigm, without any clones or uploads or anything — opportunity, and potential are our most precious resources [says the person who’s never really had to fight for food or water].

To invest time, resources, and energy into any thing or initiative that will bear no fruit — is a phenomenon to be hunted and eliminated as fast as possible, and with constant vigilance.

With that in mind — it’s unexpectedly important to design for and reward structured pessimism. What can go wrong? Why won’t this work? Is this worth our time? Is there anything more important we should be doing? Define importance. Define time value.

Normalize all the questions until the gauntlet that is trying to break all ideas, becomes as objective as possible — and either kills the time-wasting culprit, or hones the worthy effort into its strongest iteration.

Gamifying innovation. Why is it so important to protect our time with this constructively-critical pipeline of doom? Because our capacity to invent, improve, and innovate reality-augmenting systems and technologies — acting as an elevator from the floor of natural reality to the plane of our pluralistic platonic planes — is too important to waste on an unchecked Schrödinger’s cat of opportunity cost.

We have entire swathes of the economy dedicated to maximizing this potential — GTD to Scientology, the angels of our better nature, together with the devils of our innovation-generating laziness — constantly pulling us to get more and better things done, faster. From setting deadlines and announcing goals [ensuring humiliation if missed, at best, and professional ruin, at worst], to placing bets on our own achievement — we try to game ourselves as much as we do the systems we create and interact with.

Leveraging these inclinations, let’s gamify a culture of innovation.

Need a good design proposal for a new feature? Ask for 30 low fi proposals. The designer will likely have one or two in mind that they like — and generate distinct enough iterations that they view as filler to meet the quota — but it is far likelier that they’ll stumble upon a new idea — or new facet — that is superior to whatever first hunch would have been delivered, in hi-fi — than the first stab being best — or even gives enough time to circle the concept for the discovery of a fatal flaw with the whole concept.

Now to figure out how to keep this effort collaborative & healthy v. competitive and cannibalizing…

Culture strength and stability are some of the largest looming concerns when devising a performance based remuneration stream — I reckon.

One cultural bar I always like to set, is that — we don’t work for one another, we work alongside each other, and we work for the mission. The CEO has certain domains for ultimate decision-making & accountability — and so does the Office Manager, and so does every intern. We all own certain tasks, responsibilities, and attributable contributions.

In that vein, incentives should speak to the health of the organization, directly, synchronously pushed-towards. We can start by attaching basically cash rewards to things we want to see happen — so, kind of the opposite of a behavioral-curbing tax.

This may have terrible unintended consequences, but it’s a testable variable, and, with weekly KPI-checks and honing — nothing should get too far out of hand.

Eg. NOTHING-PERSONAL / WIN-WIN CULTURE DIRECTED AT OPTIMIZING OUR TIME & RESOURCES. Pointing in ratios.

• Completing Assigned Tasks : .1

• Participation in a meeting [max meeting duration 30min] : 0.1

• Approved contribution to documentation : 0.1

• Flagging Problems : 0.25*

• Verifying Problems : 2**

• Killing a Project : 5***

• Pitching Solutions : 0.25****

• Verifying Solutions : 1*****

*Submitted in fully-fleshed format in project mgmt board [defined, categorized, tagged, assigned, weighted, prioritized, etc.]
**ie. Run through Justification Calculator
***Problems verified resulting in decommissioned project
****Submitted in fully-fleshed format in project mgmt board [defined, categorized, tagged, assigned, weighted, prioritized, etc.]
*****Solutions verified result in fully realized project, prioritized in backlog

etcetera.

This whole idea was revived the other day, when discussing how to attract the best interns, without having to bash on the single lever of upping our burn-rate alone.

So, how can this operation at least pay for itself?

Initially? I’ll just front the fund for the first batch. Prove or disprove ROI for the concept.

Then?

Short term : Incentivize contribution to growth goals
Long term : Invest in retention

Eg. REWARDING VESTED ACTION. Pointing in ratios.

• Referring Users : 0.25*

• Referring Users that are appropriate & convert : 5**

• Signing an offer letter : 50***

*Traceable [email intro, affiliate link, etc.] & accounted for
**Tracked from referral to sign-on via CRM
***Must receive full time offer letter in order to sign — can’t just write & sign your own.

etcetera.

This is pretty simple. Tasks are entered in our project management board, TipJar tasks [TJT] are tagged as such. Team leads review and verify the work, as part of the regular project management protocol.

For accepted TJT tags delivered, and we use, oh, I don’t know, Segment or Zapier + MongoDB or Humongous.io, + etc. etc. to send the entrees and verified TJTs to a public ledger [even a view-only google sheets would do here, any edits can be attributed tracked, reversed, etc.].

Verified tasks are pointed according to type, automatically. We can either then have team leads manually purchase tokens at the end of each day — or spend one afternoon rigging up a simple chron-job to automatically trigger transactions in real time.

The latter is likely preferable-in order to tie a real sense of urgency to the work — to take advantage of crypto-market timing [not in any way insinuating investment advice or alluding to likelihood of any growth in returns over time relative to the purchasing or use of any digital asset.]

Betting on your own success, and the success of your team. This idea was rounded out in a recent conversation with a friend, Nick Barone — of BOUNDLESS MIND. The thrust of the concept is as follows.

We can use a simple Slack integration, like Polly, to conduct polls, where we quantify our ideation, and attribute votes to participating team members. If each vote costs, say, 1 point — then we can create a idea futures for plotting where our strategies come from, how they can be better self-edited, and implement voting-to-find-the-most-successful-solutions, vs. voting-to-be-nice.

If team leads select a pitched solution, then those points-staked are matched by our TJ reward pool — ideas not accepted go back into the TJ pool. All must vote once per team-relevant poll.

Eh, worth a shot.

BTC is just too expensive for microtransactions right now.

There’s really only one cryptocurrency appropriate for a culture-centric reward system such as this.

Let this friendly game of ÐogeBall begin.

1 like = 1 prayer

In all seriousness, I’d post the first iteration of real ÐogeBall rules & actual metrics/KPIs I’m working with, but they’re very project-specific — so just DM me for those.