Narrative is building a platform to support modern businesses who want to buy and/or sell their data assets

Narrative I/O

The goal of this article is to offer insights gained from my journey in developing products that seamlessly blend platform requirements with AI models. In this narrative, I share our journey in crafting solutions that blend AI prowess with user-centric design, aiming to mitigate these repercussions. This piece serves as a valuable resource for those seeking to delve into the intricacies of the user-centric product development process, providing a solid foundation for understanding the importance of user-focused strategies in the realm of AI-powered products. In the face of industry upheavals impacting the internet sector, I led an initiative bringing the privacy and control of user’s data in their hands with the use of AI. I spearheaded an initiative focused on the challenge of fading signals fed to AI models. This problem arose as a consequence of external changes within the industry that had a profound impact on the entire internet sector. Recognizing the magnitude of the issue and its direct implications for our sustainability, we committed to solving it. Time was of the essence in maintaining our competitiveness in our business domain. To navigate this endeavor, we began by conducting an extensive industry and market analysis. We evaluated various approaches, including building a solution from scratch, acquiring existing solutions, or waiting for the landscape to evolve. After assessing our core competencies, we determined that building a pioneering solution was the best course of action. Discovery Workbook The first crucial step was to identify the users most significantly affected within the ecosystem. We meticulously examined how these users, spanning from individuals to businesses and enterprises, would be impacted by the evolving landscape. Building on our technological capabilities, we formulated a set of hypotheses, assumptions, and identified unknowns. Our goal was to validate these assumptions and unravel the mysteries surrounding the problem. With well-defined discovery objectives in place, we embarked on the user discovery process. We explored various user segments within the ecosystem and pinpointed the specific job roles we needed to engage with. Meeting requests were sent through sales and account teams, and in some cases, questionnaires were distributed via marketing. During the interviews, we primarily listened to our customers. We sought to understand their perspectives on the industry's impending changes, how these changes affected them, and any steps they had taken to address the challenges. This process was an ongoing effort, involving multiple customer interactions and meticulous documentation of insights gathered. Through these interactions, we identified those customers who were particularly concerned about the problem and recognized them as potential early adopters. We also amassed a wealth of insights, ranging from nuanced details to the prevailing industry jargon and essential features for future solutions. Armed with validated assumptions and insights into previously unknown areas, we refined our solutions, ensuring they aligned with our strategic thinking and business priorities. Showtime We maintained an open feedback loop with customers willing to join us on this problem-solving journey. This phase endured as the longest, during which we built, tested, and sought continuous feedback from our customers. We integrated with a partner customer to validate data signal feeds, conducted use case testing, and performed comprehensive analyses, including offline and experimental assessments. Throughout this process, we grappled with the challenge of balancing technological advancements with user empathy. One poignant moment was realizing that even the most sophisticated AI algorithms can't replace the human touch in understanding user needs With our key performance indicators, guardrails, and the feedback of early adopters in mind, we gained the confidence to launch a closed beta version of the product. Subsequently, we expanded the offering based on the insights gathered. The expanded launch was accompanied by an array of go-to-market activities, including webinars, panel discussions, and testimonials from our early product users who championed our solution. To conclude, The journey of building user-centric solutions amidst industry flux embodies a methodical approach steeped in understanding and addressing user needs. Our commitment to solving the fading signals challenge stemmed from recognizing its profound impact on our industry standing. Through extensive research and a user-driven process, we navigated uncertainties and validated assumptions, culminating in a product aligned with user expectations. The feedback loop with early adopters was instrumental in refining and expanding our solution, ensuring a successful launch. This experience underscores the importance of a thorough, user-focused approach in navigating complex industry changes to deliver impactful solutions. Reflecting on this journey, our success underscores the power of user-centric innovation in navigating industry upheavals. As technology progresses, our commitment remains: to deliver solutions not just for today but to anticipate and address the evolving needs of users, driving meaningful change within our industries. As you embark on your product development journey, remember: technology is transformative, but its true power lies in serving the needs of users. Embrace a user-centric mindset, and witness how your solutions revolutionize not just industries but the lives of those you aim to impact.

Melding AI with User-Centric Platforms: A Journey Through Industry Turbulence

The story of why I moved to Taiwan, launched a crypto startup and how this country is pioneering the future of cryptocurrency. Imagine living on an island that is not only advancing the adoption of cryptocurrency and blockchain technology, but is actually pumping millions of dollars into seeing this nascent industry prosper. Welcome to Taiwan, a nation state in Asia that will soon be the crypto capital of the world. Serious about innovation, Taiwan is a hotbed for tech startups focusing on blockchain, AI and IoT. There is now a proliferation of major startup accelerators and incubators that are making this a reality. This includes startup super-hubs like which will spawn 100 startups and expedite the overseas expansion of 300 over the next three years. Taiwan Tech Arena per year Blockchain and AI alone are growing at such a fast pace in Taiwan that AppWorks, one of the , recently announced that it will now focus on these two game-changing technologies. With a total network valuation of US$ 3.6 billion and a devoted to investing in these startups, there has never been a better time to launch a startup in Taiwan. largest tech accelerators in Asia solely US$ 61 million fund With some of the world’s top technical universities such as National Taiwan University (NTU), there is no shortage of talent. NTU is ranked among the top 1 percent (94 out of 28,000 universities around the world) globally. Taiwan’s overall literacy rate is now among the at a mind-blowing 98.7%. top in the world Its hard to believe that this level of innovation and talent can come from such a tiny island. If you want to do the math, the cities of Shanghai, Delhi and Tokyo have a population larger than the of Taiwan. each entire country Not bad for a country with only 23 million people. 🇹🇼 Taiwan is Entrepreneur Friendly A cafe in Taipei that accepts Bitcoin, Ethereum, Ripple, Litecoin, Bitcoin Cash. I didn’t expect that becoming an entrepreneur in Taiwan would be so rewarding. I thought that it would take years until I got to the point where I was comfortable becoming a resident. Little did I know that less than a year later I would learn to speak basic Chinese, get awarded the Taiwanese and based on my passion for merging the fields of artificial intelligence and cryptocurrency. entrepreneur visa launch a startup After exiting my last startup in the United States I decided to throw a dart on a map of the world so-to-speak. The sky was the limit. I wanted to live in a city that ranked high in terms of people-friendliness, open-mindedness, great food, non-extreme climate, transportation, bike-friendly, environment, hi-tech and relatively low cost of living. Originally from Washington, DC, I and Taipei, although not the top in category, came out at the top based on my main criteria: ran the numbers every overall What I found here was a very modern city that not only met the criteria above but is extremely under-rated. When I tell folks back home in the US that I now live in Taiwan most of them have never heard of it before. A scenic view in Hualien County, Taiwan. Even my mom asked me — “ ?” Many foreigners have never heard of Taiwan, this tiny Chinese-speaking nation right across the pond from China. It is perhaps best known for its modern cities, traditional Chinese temples, hot springs resorts and dramatic mountainous terrain. Having lived in other amazing cities like Miami, Berlin, Barcelona, Istanbul and Ho Chi Minh City I feel as though Taipei has the right mix of all of the above. oh, you mean Thailand When I found out that Taiwan is not only cryptocurrency friendly but is actually leading the effort in groundbreaking blockchain and AI startups — that made this place seem too good to be true. I needed to talk to more people and ask more questions. I was hungry for more. A typical night market in Taiwan. I Decided To Meet Taiwan’s “Crypto Congressman” a parliamentary congressman here in Taiwan was dubbed the “Crypto Congressman” by Vitalik Buterin, founder of Ethereum. Jason is an outspoken proponent on blockchain and crypto particularity on self-regulatory organizations (SRO). His SRO guidelines are basically a set of principles explaining how cryptocurrency exchanges should regulate themselves. Jason Hsu I had the opportunity to speak with Jason here in Taipei at the (one of Asia’s largest startup hubs) and he’s quite a character. What I admire about Jason is that unlike a typical politician who attempts to dictate what we can and cannot do, he practices what he preaches and has an entrepreneurial mindset. Taiwan Tech Arena Jason recently launched the “One Crypto World” (OCW) initiative — digital tokens to be distributed among global thought leaders in the blockchain space. The supply of OCW is limited to only 1,000 tokens. OCW is issued via ERC-20 and contains no value and will not be traded on exchanges. “One Crypto World is more of a badge than a token, acting as a proof of support to policies, initiatives and legislations that I am pushing forward”. -Jason Hsu There are several world leaders that he’s given the limited token to thus far including the mayor of Seoul. Blockchain pioneers such as Jason’s buddy Vitalik Buterin will be getting one as well: Jason Hsu pictured with Ethereum co-founder, Vitalik Buterin at Jason’s Legislator desk in Taiwan Jason, originally from the FinTech sector, is leading the effort to transform Taiwan into a “Blockchain Island”. Currently under development is a “special economic zone,” an initiative that is bringing 200 global blockchain companies to be headquartered in Taiwan. He is also working with local blockchain startups in developing a digital identity solution called “Taiwan Global ID,” which will let citizens have their visas on the blockchain. Blockchain has an immense opportunity to disrupt the FinTech industry. The timing has never been better in fact. Before I moved to Taiwan to launch , my last startup was also in the FinTech industry, an AI-based virtual assistant that . AlgoHive helps Americans prevent medical debt The combination of machine learning, blockchain and investment creates the perfect storm and opens the door to many new products and startups from to to emerging new crypto asset classes like that the visionary and I are proposing. crowdsourced prediction algorithms decentralized exchanges fractional ownership tokens Gauthier Zuppinger Once a society learns that it can benefit from a new technology and how it can help make their lives better, safer and easier adoption will follow. Taiwan’s Innovative Virtual Currency Trading Rules Similar to stock markets, cryptocurrency trading is made possible by exchanges. Taiwan’s digital currency exchanges are in their infancy and its daily turnover currently pales in comparison to its neighbor South Korea: NT$12.5 billion (US$406 million) versus Taiwan’s NT$100 million (US$3.25 million). Upon closer inspection however Taiwan’s average daily stock exchange trading value is around NT$140 billion ($US4.5 billion) which is similar to South Korea. This means as crypto-friendly policies continue to be successfully passed in Taiwan there will be a tremendous asset imbalance providing an opportunity for wealth to be diversified from traditional stocks to virtual currency. Speaking at the Global Blockchain Smart Application Forum held recently in Taipei, David Pan (CEO of ACE Exchange) reported that the Taiwan government has regarded digital currencies as a kind of commercial merchandise and has thus allowed initial coin offering (ICO) launches. In addition, the government has been active in pushing for self-regulated practices by operators of digital token trading houses while also moving to build related supervision mechanisms. This means that Taiwan is on-track to becoming a global leader in cryptocurrency governance. The Future of Cryptocurrency and Blockchain in Taiwan Nothing is perfect. Taiwan certainly has its share of hurdles ahead. Many challenges still stand in the way of greater blockchain and cryptocurrency adoption. Issues such as crypto price volatility, nefarious ICOs, crypto exchange hacking and frivolous blockchain use-cases certainly do not help matters. A major thing going for greater adoption is the fact that blockchain brings increased transparency, security, privacy and decentralization to today’s very static world. Looking forward here are a few initiatives that Jason and other blockchain industry leaders are currently exploring for Taiwan: Decentralized prediction platform for share market, politics, etc. Decentralized patient record management Proof of ownership for digital content Digitalizing assets: improvement of anti-counterfeit measures Providing digital identity that protects consumer privacy Decentralized Internet and computing resources to every home and business Digitalizing company incorporations, transfer of equality/ownership and governance Digital security trading:ownership and transfer Digitalization of documents/contracts and proof of ownership for transfer Smart contract IT portal executing order fulfillment in e-commerce and manufacturing Proof of ownership and marketplace for sales and purchases of digital assets The only way to push audacious initiatives such as these forward is to demystify blockchain and cryptocurrency. To do this we need to change the narrative from geeky tech-talk to concepts that most people can relate to. This means . In other words we need to ask ourselves what real-world problems could blockchain technology solve? What are the advantages of a digital currency compared to traditional assets like fiat money, gold or stocks? falling in love with the problem and not the solution The good news is that a lot of smart minds, not just in Taiwan but all over the world are working tirelessly to figure these questions out. Once a society learns that it can benefit from a new technology and how it can help make their lives better, safer and easier adoption will follow. Let’s help make that happen. If you found this article to be helpful please Clap (up to 50 times) and share to help get it in front of more smart people like yourself. If you would like more information on entrepreneurship in Taiwan, blockchain or cryptocurrency please follow me here on Medium. If you want to be a part of Project AlgoHive, a crowdsourced cryptocurrency prediction startup you can check it out here .

Taiwan: The Next Crypto Capital of the World

In this post, our gaming community discusses their favourite Telltale games. We cover our favourite Telltale games alongside the ones we want next. slogging This Slogging thread by Jack Boreham, Limarc Ambalina, Mónica Freitas, Sara Pinto, Adrian Morales and Jose Hernandez occurred in slogging's official #gaming channel and has been edited for readability. Jack Boreham Nov 30, 2021, 1:26 PM What are the best Telltale games? Limarc Ambalina Nov 30, 2021, 2:30 PM A question close to my heart. So my favorite still is Walking Dead Season 1. Nothing beats that yet IMO. IT exists alongside the real walking dead timeline and is complementary to it. You even get to see a character or 2 from the tv series in the game. And everything was done masterfully: the story, the choices you get to make, the soundtrack, THE SOUNDTRACK, the art style, the atmosphere. Everything was done so well. Mónica Freitas Nov 30, 2021, 2:47 PM Jack Boreham It appears to be "Tales From The Borderlands." I found a fun article about telltales games you should play before they disappear. Have you ever played any of them? https://www.pastemagazine.com/games/telltale/telltale-games-ranked/#1-telltale-s-the-walking-dead Limarc Ambalina Nov 30, 2021, 4:24 PM For me, #2 would be a toss-up between Game of Thrones or Wolf Among Us. It is so good. I hope the new telltale game finishes it because it's really good. You feel like you are making decisions in the world of GoT!!! Limarc Ambalina Nov 30, 2021, 4:26 PM Wolf Among us is so unique, and the world is so cool: the fairytale creatures and characters we all know and love: cinderella, sleeping beauty, the big bad wolf, and more, are all taken from their fairytale worlds and now live in a Gotham-like city and have to live among normal people. They resort to crime, prostitution even. It's such a unique story and setting. I recommend it for anyone who likes visual novels or adventure games. Jack Boreham Dec 1, 2021, 7:14 AM Limarc Ambalina, all great games. Surprisingly I've never actually played a telltale game. What do you like so much about them? The art style? The live sequence driven narrative? I've seen walkthroughs of the walking dead one, and I loved the look of it. Jack Boreham Dec 1, 2021, 7:16 AM Mónica Freitas never 😂, but I think these could be games for you. I've heard all of these games have great stories. Are there any that catch your eye? Limarc Ambalina, I remember watching the walking dead game on Youtube and being fearful for what might come next, for I think her name was Clementine? She seemed like a relatable character just trying to make her way in a zombie-infested world. Limarc Ambalina Dec 1, 2021, 8:01 AM Hey Jack, for me, it's mostly the story. I play games mostly to experience great stories, and these games are all stories. The gameplay is to help you get more immersed in them, but the stories are strong enough on their own, in my opinion. I love the art style and the music and voice acting are just superb. Telltale deserves more love than it gets. Limarc Ambalina Dec 1, 2021, 8:01 AM I would even say the Walking Dead Telltale game had a better story than the tv show did Mónica Freitas Dec 1, 2021, 12:37 PM Jack Boreham, I'd try the "Strong Bad’s Cool Game for Attractive People." Getting points for verbal abuse seems quite enjoyable when I'm in a bad mood 😂 Sara Pinto Dec 1, 2021, 4:25 PM Jack Boreham I don't think I've ever played Telltale games as well, but I think I would enjoy them.  I like the concept of being divided into episodes. Which one do you think you would like to try? The Game of Thrones one seems interesting! Jack Boreham Dec 2, 2021, 10:23 AM Limarc Ambalina, that's a hot take. I think many people would agree with you. It's a shame the zombie market is so damn saturated; I think it could do with another series. Did it end well, or was it anti-climatic? Mónica Freitas sounds like my kind of game as well😂. Sara Pinto, I think I would try the Batman games. I love Batman, so that it would be right up my alley. 🔥 2 Jack Boreham Dec 3, 2021, 11:10 AM Blake Cram  Nicolas Ng Allyson Blinkhorn Jose Hernandez? 😄 Adrian Morales Dec 3, 2021, 5:18 PM I have only ever played one TellTale game before, and it was The Walking Dead Season 1, which Limarc Ambalina already mentioned. But I will reiterate that it is a masterpiece. I have come back to it frequently throughout the years, and no game tugs on my heartstrings as much as that one. Jose Hernandez Dec 5, 2021, 1:15 AM For me, it would have to be the Batman telltale game. It puts more focus on the character’s detective skills and lets people play as Bruce Wayne. Which sounds kind of boring, but it's pretty interesting. Limarc Ambalina Dec 6, 2021, 5:18 AM Nice Jose Hernandez, I completely forgot about that one. I’m playing it right now and can agree. It immerses you in Gotham in a special way. Jack Boreham Dec 6, 2021, 11:01 AM Jose Hernandez, I agree!! Adrian Morales Dec 7, 2021, 3:43 PM There are so many great X-Men characters and a ton of untapped potential to make compelling TellTale style stories within the X-Men universe. Jack Boreham Dec 8, 2021, 6:06 PM X-men would be incredible. An avengers one would be good too!

What are the Best Telltale Games?

A story about the enormously destructive power of this thing 👉* Gather 'round and let me tell you about that time my teammates and I took down one of the platform's most critical services. For the sake of narrative, I’ll name my coworkers S (senior) and M(middle), but I changed the dates and some of the technical details in an effort to keep it as anonymous as possible. T’was a lovely Thursday afternoon at the end of July, 2016. Weather was milder than the days before and my teammates and I had just moved into a new space in the office. Life was mostly good. The week before had passed without the presence of our most senior dev, S, but me and M had managed to complete some tasks on our own. Those changes had some pretty heavy stuff (new database fields, new endpoints) so we decided to wait for S's review before we merged them. Database changes and migration scripts In the meantime another dev reviewed the changes and mentioned that the operations in our scripts could be a lot of work for the database server and may keep it locked for a while. So he suggested some alternatives. migration If you don’t know what a database migration is, it’s a series of SQL scripts that — when executed sequentially — create the whole database schema from scratch (tables, columns, default values, constraints, etc.). Usually they run on every deployment, but only if there’s something new to apply––that is, a new migration file. We didn’t want to run our change as a migration because then it would be executed by our continuous integration system and completely out of our control. We had to run it manually. So first we sat down with a replica of the production database and started playing around with queries trying to find the most efficient alternative. This was a fun while, the 3 of us trying to guess what would happen when we ran each script line separately. Would it take long? Or run instantly? And why? Where should we set the default value to prevent new entries from breaking it? Showtime! It was 5 PM and we were finally happy with our query. It did everything in the right order and didn’t really lock down for very long. We sent a ticket to the infrastructure team to run it directly on our servers, since obviously we didn't have credentials for that. You’ll see in just a moment. exactly why Infra was diligent about this. They’re a busy bunch, it’s okay if they take a while to do stuff. But not this time, this time the ticket was closed before I could blink twice. really Everything seemed ok. It was almost the end of the day so we split into our own desks and finished some tasks. Some minutes later, a member of another team came by and asked me if we were changing stuff on because it was throwing some errors. This hit me like an ice-bucket-challenge: that feature Oh no, I mean, yes… we f***ed it up. Can you guess what happened? I know it’s harder to find omissions than to find mistakes, but I think you could be able to know what we needed to do (and didn’t) without knowing the service, the feature, or the query. If you do, scroll to the bottom and comment it, I’ll trust you’re not peeping below this photo 👇 Photo by on 胡 卓亨 Unsplash Alright, if you have no idea what could have happened, that’s OK too. I feel I should have known, because this happened locally during development like . And I had been starting a very similar feature on my own that day and dealing with the same error. a million times Ready for it? Reality hits hard We added the column in the database, This resulted in the backend not knowing WTF to do with it, and throwing errors on 😱 but we never merged the code that handled this new data. all GET requests Now, this might not have happened in some languages, which probably would have discarded the extra data and moved on. I shouldn't disclose any more information about this, but I’ll say that we were using a technology that’s not as about rogue database columns, it demands that you tell it how to handle everything it receives. chill Not merging the code wasn’t the problem though. Here’s when our little evil villain comes in: meet * 😈 malefic, echoing laughter See, all of our retrieval queries were using the * (known as an or ), to bring back every field that it finds. This was the day I learned . asterisk star this is a very very very bad idea If we had had a list of the fields to retrieve instead of * nothing bad would have happened. But we didn't. And all of us 3 knew it. It just slipped our minds 😰 The real, real problem OK but, we’re humans, right? We make mistakes. No-one can keep all of the codebases in a system in their working memory. This is why we have tests. Not because our code is fragile and error prone, but because our minds are. And it’s our minds that create the code. So the problem wasn’t really that we broke it. The problem was that . no alarms went off We had production tests, but they weren’t notifying anyone. We had error alarms in the logs, but they weren’t monitoring the thing that caused the most errors. We had end-to-end tests, but they were disabled and marked as “broken”. This is what was truly unacceptable 🍋 Epilogue Ultimately, though, it was a big opportunity for learning. You never learn as when you f*** up. That’s a lesson that never leaves you. as hard So, for you children out there, here’s my list of learnings from that day: use * in a query in your code. Even if you have to write all the column names, it's better like that. NEVER, I MEAN NEVER Be scared of database changes, may fear guide you into caution. When you introduce a database change, make sure all the code is already in place and that it can handle the previous db state, and the one after the change. Have happy-path tests in place on production for your critical features, working and notifying the right people. Test database changes as they are impacted and monitor the logs for a couple of minutes later (depending on the amount of traffic that you get). as soon Aaand brush your teeth before you go to sleep. 🙂 This is a story told by the less experienced and knowledgeable of its characters. If you have any input about it, to add to or correct what I say I would really enjoy reading it

A junior, a middle and a senior dev walk into a bar and they order an ALTER table

David Copperfield: Chapter 55 - Tempest

After serving as CEO of a successful software company for over 20 years, Ted has recently raised $5 million via token sales to create a user-generated content network where the members rule and are rewarded. : What’s your background, and what are you working on? Davis Baer My name is Ted O’Neill and I am currently CEO of and co-CEO of . Social Strata Narrative I started Social Strata over 20 years ago when I created a message board application called the Ultimate Bulletin Board (“UBB”). It was the most popular way for sites in the mid to late 1990s to build communities. We transitioned from a downloadable software product to a SaaS solution over the years and our current community platform is called . Social Strata is unusual in that we bootstrapped from Day One and have never taken any outside investments. Our customers include Walgreens/Boots, Pinterest, and Dun & Bradstreet. Hoop.la My other company, , which I will focus on for this article, was launched this year. Whereas Social Strata is a B2B SaaS company, Narrative is focused on building a consumer brand. With our many years building platforms for user-generated content, we wanted to create the ideal content engine, one that could be completely managed by the people using it. Narrative We’ve had front row seats to the changing way online content and communities function over the past two decades and have worked with literally thousands of companies. With Narrative, our goal is to focus 100% on the people consuming, creating, and curating content, to design a network where the members have complete autonomy, where all actions are transparent, and where the revenue generated by the network is given to the members as much as possible. We also fell in love with cryptocurrency and blockchain as agents of change — great equalizers that perfectly fit with our goal of democratizing content. And thus, we created our own cryptocurrency called NRVE (“nerve”) that will serve as the currency of Narrative. We bootstrapped the initial alpha release of Narrative, but last March we raised approximately $5 million via a token sale, and that has helped us to continue the development of the project. The Alpha only supports one component of Narrative, but a more complete beta is coming very soon. What motivated you to get started with your company? For my first company, Social Strata, the primary motivation was to improve the way people communicated online. Back in 1996, I was fascinated by the fact that I could talk on bulletin-board systems with people across the world, but the technology was very clunky. The UBB software I created made it much easier to have online conversations and also made it easy for any site to add that functionality. Narrative is the latest extension of that goal to improve communication online. This is a more ambitious project, however, because it is more about creating a true content economy. I think we all know now that online content and communities are important, but no one has yet devised a model that truly benefits the actual content community. We’ve seen top-down control over online content. My goal is to create a true meritocracy and prove that you can have a content network that is self-governed. I want content creators to be rewarded like never before, but also make sure that everyone involved is incentivized. What went into building the initial product? Because so many of us from Social Strata were involved with Narrative, the initial build process was amazingly quick. We’ve been developing enterprise-class applications for a long time so we can go from concept to reality faster than most teams. We were also able to leverage a lot of the tech from our Hoop.la project to jump-start things. We actually created our initial alpha in about 6 weeks time, which is kind of incredible when you consider that the Alpha included an balloting system, auctions with eBay-style bidding, commenting, and appeals. The interface was rudimentary, but it all worked and has remained very stable throughout the alpha period (going on six months now). How have you attracted users and grown your company? We have a team of about 15 or so now. We’ve also been pleasantly surprised with the interest in the Alpha. After all, we are a content platform but in the Alpha you cannot actually create any content. :) We have this concept called “niches” in Narrative. A niche is a unique subject that anyone can post to. It’s important that they are unique so that no two niches are alike. Each niche has an owner, who will profit from the niche, depending on the popularity of the content in the niche. The Narrative Alpha is focused only on building out these unique subjects so that by the time we launch the beta users have a large number of niches to post to. And we’ve seen amazing interest in acquiring niches. Over 600 niches have been purchased so far and over 2.5% of our token currency has been spent by users acquiring niches. That’s over 1.2 million NRVE that have been spent. And the best part for our community is that all of the currency will be disbursed through our Network Rewards pool once the Beta goes live. We’ve been focusing on social media to drive interest. There has been some paid promotion, but the majority of it has been viral. The nice thing about our model is that because our niche owners will earn revenue, they are incentivized to help get the word out about Narrative in general. The more you can turn your customers/members into advocates for your service, the better, of course. We’ve been thrilled with the response so far and we think it bodes well for when the complete platform is available. What’s your business model, and how have you grown your revenue? For Narrative, the business model is truly unique and would not have been possible prior to the advent of cryptocurrency. For our model, all incoming revenue goes into a giant pot that we call Network Rewards. Then, each month, we take the proceeds from that pot and divvy it out to our members, based on the positive contributions they make. 85% goes to the members and the remaining 15% goes to our company. Thus, we can never earn more than 15% of the total revenue generated by the network. This does a couple of things: It aligns our interests with our members. We all profit as the network succeeds and our members are incentivized even more than we are to make sure it does. It forces us (the company) to spend thoughtfully and to live within our means. We cannot milk all of the revenue from the service and that expense of our members. The thinking behind this from a corporate standpoint is something I call . Evergreen Capitalism Crypto helped solve our biggest problem. As an infant social network, we know it will take some time to build a proper audience. So, how can we support the ecosystem properly in the early years, before we have the market share to bring in substantial revenue? The answer was to have a large amount of our NRVE cryptocurrency minted after we launched, and have it minted directly into our Network Rewards pool. That way, as the NRVE tokens increase in usage, the rewards pool will have a growing value, even in the early days. With our Network Rewards model, we reward the content creators (they earn the most — 60%), niche owners, niche moderators, the elected Tribunal, voters, and all members who earn activity points. A Narrative member may have many roles in the network and can be compensated for all of them. As long as you are contributing, you can be rewarded. Contrast this with most social networks, where a giant middleman makes all of the rules, takes all of the profits, and ultimately exploits its users. What are your goals for the future? The immediate goal is to release our beta. When that happens, people can finally start posting and consuming content on our network. We are projecting a release before the end of the year. After that, we will be rolling out more features for Narrative and ultimately adding support for more languages. (The initial version will be English-only.) Each language we add will be a separate instance of Narrative, each with its own unique content, niches, members, etc. Our 2-year goal after the launch of the beta is to have 500,000 members. If we are successful, we also expect to be a Top-10 cryptocurrency one day. (Our goal is to be the first currency anyone thinks of when they think of content.) What are the biggest challenges you’ve faced and obstacles you’ve overcome? If you had to start over, what would you do differently? The biggest challenge for Narrative has been the cryptocurrency market volatility in 2018. The market has been down for most of the year, which has made it much more challenging for us to budget and plan for the future. Keep in mind that the money we raised in our token sale in March was cryptocurrency, so having to manage those funds has been much more difficult than we ever could have imagined. The other challenge we have had is marketing a project that does not exist yet. Narrative’s model is so revolutionary that we want to spread the word well before launch, but when users can only see one component of the system, it can be challenging to get them to see the big picture. We’ve focused on social media marketing, identifying users who will most likely benefit the most or those who might be disgruntled with current services. Have you found anything particularly helpful or advantageous? I think we got a little lucky with the timing our token sale. We managed to raise $5 million, but if we had waited even another month, we might not have been successful at all, due to general crypto market troubles. A pessimist might also say that had we held our token sale a few months earlier, we might have raised much more. :) We’re located in Charleston, South Carolina, not exactly known as technology hub, but we’ve actually seen it as a big advantage in many ways. It’s a lot easier to network in a smaller city, to find good people and contacts. And we’ve been pleasantly surprised by the quality of talent in Charleston. Another helpful thing, however, was having Brian Lenz, our CTO from Social Strata, move out to Charleston to join us on this endeavor. He wears two hats now, like I do, with roles in both companies, but his commitment to Narrative has been instrumental in bringing the project to life. Having a team you can trust is critical to success. Finally, having my wife, Rosemary, so involved in the project has been critical. She serves as co-CEO for Narrative and she’s a much better leader than I am. A lot of people think it is crazy to work with your spouse, but it works well for us. Having achievements we can both relish in, and completely understand, is kind of cool. What’s your advice for entrepreneurs who are just starting out? Make sure that you absolutely love what you do, or what you are trying to accomplish, because it’s a huge challenge launching a business. If you do not have unshakeable belief in your project, don’t bother. Assuming you have the passion for it, the my advice is: Be very conservative with how you spend your money (even if you get VC money) Hire only the very best people and, if you make a mistake, let them go quickly Be involved in all aspects, but let your key hires take the lead on their areas of expertise Figure out very early what your key metrics of success are and execute on those relentlessly Don’t let the naysayers bring you down, but listen to your most trusted advisors Focus on doing what’s best for your customers I’ve been a CEO for over 20 years now and I’ve had my share of ups and downs along the way. Ultimately, being a leader, and especially a CEO, can be a very lonely experience, if you let it be. No one is going to pat you on the back, no matter what you do. No one cares how much stress you are under. But on the flip side you will change lives for the better if you succeed and there is nothing more satisfying that seeing your vision brought to life. And finally, try to make time for yourself and your family. It can be especially challenging in the early days, but as you build your team, carve out that time. Where can we go to learn more? To learn more about Narrative, please visit our website at You can get on the waiting list for the alpha… and remember that the alpha is not too far away now. You can also stay up-to-date on our blog at or via Twitter at https://www.narrative.org. https://blog.narrative.network https://twitter.com/narrative_hq This interview is brought to you by , a tool to schedule and automatically repeat your posts on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, and Google My Business OneUp

Founder Interviews: Ted O’Neill of Social Strata and Narrative

First and foremost, I learned that writing is incredibly difficult 😂. But it’s the rewarding kind of hard. It made me respect everyone who puts out a piece of content, especially quality content. I started writing my 7 months ago and I’m embarrassed to read the first 50% of my articles. They’re bad. I’m at the stage right now where I know it’s better than it was but I still have a long way to go. newsletter Why I write and what it’s been like Writing is a full-time job. I didn’t realise how much information I have to consume. It requires hours of reading and listening just to write a short piece. When I have conversations, a part of my brain is automatically searching for topics and patterns I could explore in writing. Most of the writing process is unconscious. I put in as much info as I can and at some point, a piece appears in my conscious mind. The hard part is translating from the unconscious to the conscious. Investing time in writing something that not a lot of people read puts things into perspective for me: attention needs to be earned and the only way to earn it is to keep showing up. English isn’t my first language and expressing myself in a second language is hard. I’ve always suspected I have a brain condition too that makes it difficult to express myself properly even in Lithuanian. It feels like I’m thinking one thing and when it comes out, it doesn’t match what I had in mind. It’s also a (fun) struggle between expressing myself and figuring out what my readers find interesting. Sometimes I write something that I find interesting and the response is meh. Other times, I’d write something boring and people love it 🤷‍♀️ Another struggle is putting my thoughts into a coherent narrative. I think I have opinions and points of view until I need to express them in a way that others can understand. My writing is personal and reflects whatever I’m thinking about/going through. I’m afraid of being misunderstood/rejected/taken for a lunatic because I have quite a different view of most things that are not mainstream. I write in short form when I haven’t developed the idea fully. Long-form writing is harder but could also derail into waffling too much. You know what they say, if you can’t explain something simply, you don’t understand it. Writing is hard. But: The most annoying thing about writing in the social media age is that most people have an attention span of a goldfish (including me). We are conditioned to seek feel-good content. It’s a generalisation, but my fear is creating the entertained-and-scroll-away type of content because it has no lasting value. At the same time, I’ve got to play the game. Sometimes I re-read what I wrote and it’s at best sub-par so I don’t publish it. If someone read it and thought: “Wow that was a waste of time” I’d be disappointed. When I read something I published and think ‘That wasn’t good’ I feel annoyed that I wasted someone’s time. Someone said I’m too harsh with myself regarding this, but I think high standards lead to quality output. I saw the perfect quote describing this: A skill I’m cultivating is saying the same thing in fewer words. When I speak, I’m over the top and use a lot of adjectives and exaggeration whereas great writing is simple. I also run on emotion in my daily life, so writing makes me turn on the logical part of my brain. The hardest thing so far is connecting two seemingly unrelated topics and finding core principles around them like good writers do (my favourites are and ). The more patterns a writer identifies, the more relatable the piece feels to a reader. Morgan Housel Paul Graham Receiving feedback is both flattering and valuable. Flattering because someone took the time to say a kind word. It’s more touching than I thought it would be. Feedback is valuable because it helps me see what people find interesting but it can also be distracting because everyone has their preferences. Final words The world is divided into two: producers and consumers. I’m convinced that in the age of AI, automation and virtual reality, people will consume more content than ever. The ones who create content will win. I have a long way to go but god knows I’m not giving up. I choose to be a producer! Also published . here

15 Lessons I've Learned As a Full-Time Writer

In the last 24 hours, I’ve had seven different coders — other than the first one who sent me the story idea in the first place — take a crack at the survey’s . The results are wholly infuriating: three found the same thing my original source, where the data inputted into the survey was flushed out on “Submit.” UPDATE: page code Three more said I was full of it (and most used the term that I abhor: ‘fake news’), and sent along screenshots of the Development Console showing the data was captured correctly and passed on to the server. Example: Okay. Fine. There was one theory that the original survey, which was posted on GOP.com, was then hastily thrust over to DonaldJTrump.com, and all of the necessary query hooks weren’t added onto the backend. (For those less tech-inclined: the transplanted code wasn’t properly installed.) However, someone else found the survey to work fine on both servers. Then, there was the developer who found the results are POSTed to the secure DJT server, and that the server is ignoring them and redirecting to the “contribution” page. “So: the data transmitted to the server. But it appears that the server is not actually that data (except possibly the logs). Most definitely it isn’t putting it in a database for careful consideration. It seems weird to think that they wouldn’t be holding onto that information for further mailing purposes, but maybe they just aren’t interested in anybody who isn’t willing to pony up cash the first time. is recording “So: Yes, the web page transmits the data. But the server is responding with HTTP 302 (REDIRECT) which basically means ‘go somewhere else.’ It usually means that the data isn’t being processed, but without the server-side code it’s impossible to tell. “Smoking gun? Yes. Bullet hole? Nope.” That slight pop you just heard? That was my brain, leaking out of my left ear. Even if the data is being correctly mined, I have zero faith that dissenting opinions are being taken seriously with this survey. has given really solid reasoning on But when the results are really inconsistent from attempt to attempt — even when seen in the span of five minutes… I just don’t know. Katie Wohlgenant why we should stop taking the Survey. That said: don’t let it be said that I want to spread a false narrative. I’ll leave that to other people in the 202. please Here’s the original story, as published: I was chatting with a web developer friend earlier this evening, and he stops in the middle of the conversation. “Hey, you know that Accountability Survey the GOP is hawking? It’s a fraud.” Media I’m not surprised by the statement, but my friend isn’t given to hyperbole. “How do you mean?” “The thing only exists to raise money for the party coffers. No one sees the polling data, because it’s never sent.” After I stop laughing, I ask him to explain it to me. I’m technically inclined, but I have a feeling I’ll need Cliff’s Notes for this one. He busts out a series of screenshots from his development console, which he had running while taking the survey. “You can do this yourself — fill out the survey, but don’t hit ‘Submit.’ Open Chrome’s Developer Tools, and select Network (to get the network activities). Then, back in the browser window, submit the survey. “This shows the order of requests — the first five are the important ones. “First, you’ll notice a curious thing — a POST (the form submission) is cancelled. “Now, the POST before it was accepted and redirected. POST request contains your contact information. That “The POST that was cancelled? That contains the survey data — basically, throwing it away. “And, lastly, there’s a redirect that goes to the donate page.” I was a little taken aback with the brazen nature of it. “You’re telling me the whole thing is a Trojan Horse to get people pissed off enough to want to donate to the GOP war chest because they don’t trust the Liberal Media?” “Hey, man… it worked for the televangelists.”

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