I came across this interesting tweet from @ibdknox https://twitter.com/ibdknox/status/1458099415462318080?s=20 I do hope that with a focus of a tool connected to the web3 environment there is a chance to have a better discussion about what value acutally means. It is really a complex negotiation: how transparent should a tool be? How changeable to still gain traction? How can you as a creator help individuals to create value and or even groups? The larger PKM/Personalised Information trend we are seeing, I think is no fluke. People are trying to live the good live, it may start with having all your information or a reasonably size of it at your own disposal, for introspection. From these patterns can emerge : "Oh look I'm binge consuming information" - How do other people deal with this? Can I have a meaningful discussion about this with other people? Its a Meta Reflection on many levels and people navigate in their own ways towards it but I believe its really they are looking for "the good way of life". web3 is a huge as in humongous experimentation space, e.g. people thought prediction markets would work, but they didn't. They tried and are trying and will try crazy things. Its a very interesting substrate for stories and memes. (https://blog.simondlr.com/posts/infinite-stories-in-blockchains ) As such its as much about your "tool" what you will provide as it is about "the way" you will choose to interact with said ecosystem (token, voting, proposals, DAOs etc...) So in some sense people are in deed looking forward to have a conversation with you through the medium that is your tool and said "way" of interacting with people. Interesting times ahead for tools for conviviality :)

This is a conversation happening in a much bigger way than just tools for computing. In many ways the poster child of modern banking and one of their prophets on how to solve climate change ask the question about value. I stay part of this community because I think it has critical insights on the tools that will help us have that conversation more effectively and equitably. This twitter post is one example. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000py8v/episodes/guide

To answer @ibdknox's question, I would try and backdoor into corporations like Slack did, and then sell premium apps/add-on packs for the platform

the app store approach is very alluring, but the problem is that takes a long time for it to ramp up enough to actually be sustaining. From the folks we talked to while exploring that for LT, it’s on a 5+ year time horizon.

The other end of the scale is to just pitch straight at some corporation with deep pockets where you think you can make a difference, and see if they will fund it in house to start with...? What's the most valuable Excel spreadsheet in the world? Probably inside Goldman Sachs, WLRK or the US Treasury or something. Ask to replace that 😅.

Late to this convo, but we’re considering some very similar problems with similar goals. We decided to make a centralized “account” system, so any community can host their own account server. Individual apps can connect to multiple different account servers at a time (like an email client). Then, additional functionality like talking to remote systems go through the account system through to agents on the host machines (e.g. like pulling data from an Oracle DB behind a firewall or ripping a DVD on the external drive in your HTPC). We help enterprise customers onboard through deploying an on-premise account server and we “sell” per seat for the enterprise’s account server (which has tools for data usage auditing, administration, and access permissions). While we’re already able to operate in a single tenant mode on your personal computer, we have deferred on completely decentralized usage until after we’ve captured market. Then, the model just becomes selling the administration and support tooling like maybe mongoDB/CockroachDB do.

I thought a bit more about this and another good resource for this topic is the "The Web3 Sustainability Loop" - by Trent McConaghy from Ocean Protocol, I hope thats useful for you @ibdknox: https://blog.oceanprotocol.com/the-web3-sustainability-loop-b2a4097a36e

Thanks, I'll give it a read

On the web3 side, as far as I understand your communities’ token basically becomes a platform-local currency, much like shares in a traditional company. Except in this case your users have a direct way to build up their own ‘sweat equity.’ The more valuable experiences people have using your platform, the more the valuation of your token increases. The strategy (as with any startup) then becomes about how & when to create liquidation events for your token, i.e. exchanging it for other more fungible kinds of value (eg USD).

"more valuable experiences people have using your platform, the more the valuation of your token increases" — like network effects or multilevel marketing.

Yep, or company valuation, or reputation in a community.