INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
Solving complex data-driven problems requires a lot of teamwork
But, of course, teamwork is typically restricted to companies where everyone is working under the same roof
While distributed teams have become commonplace in tech startups, taking that to the next level by linking up disparate groups of people all
working on the same problem (but not in the same company) has been all but impossible
However, in theory, you could use a blockchain to do such a thing, where the work generated was constantly accounted for on-chain.That’s
In practice, there’s now a startup that claims to have come up with this model
And it’s raised funding.Covee, a startup out of Berlin, has raised a modest €1.35 million in a round led by LocalGlobe in London, with
Atlantic Labs in Berlin and a selection of angels
Prior to this, the company was bootstrapped by CEO Dr
Marcel Dietsch, who left his job at a London-based hedge fund, and his long-time friend, Dr
Raphael Schoettler, COO, who had previously worked for Deutsche Bank
Jochen Krause, CTO, an early blockchain investor and bitcoin miner, and former quant developer and data scientist, respectively, at Scalable
Capital and Valora.What sort of things could this platform be used for Well, it could be used to bring together people to use machine
learning algorithms to improve cancer diagnosis through tumor detection, or perhaps develop a crypto trading algorithm.There are obvious
benefits to the work of scientists
They could work more flexibly, access a more diverse range of projects, choose their teammates and have their work reviewed by peers.The
platform also means you could be rewarded fairly for your contribution.The upside for corporates is that they can use distributed workers
where there is no middleman platform to pay and no management consultancy fees, and access a talent pool (data engineers, statisticians,
domain experts), which is difficult to bring inside the firm.Now, there are indeed others doing this, including Aragon (decentralized
governance for everything), Colony (teamwork for everything) and Upwork (freelance jobs platform for individuals)
All are different and have their limitations, of course.Covee plans to make money by having users pay a transaction fee for using the
They plan to turn this into a fully open-source decentralized network, with this transaction fee attached
But Covee will also offer this as a service if clients prefer not to deal with blockchain tokens and the platform directly.Dietsch says:
“Covee was founded in the first half of 2017 in Berlin and relocated to Zurich, Switzerland late 2017 where we incorporated Covee Network
Moving to Switzerland was important for us because it has one of the oldest and strongest blockchain ecosystems in the world and an
excellent pipeline of talent from institutions such as ETH Zurich and the University of Zurich
The crypto-friendly stance of the country means it has all the necessary infrastructure as well as clear regulations for token economies.”
