Today, I am happy to announce the official launch of Untitled INC. We are a network organization focused on the distributed economy and blockchain space. Over the past year, we assembled a great team of driven individuals, learnt to collaborate in a decentralized manner, and worked on several projects in the field.
Now, we feel the time is right to tell you more about us. So, let me introduce you to Untitled INC.
The Beginnings
It all started with a Slack channel. Sometime in spring last year, a real-world network of various people, all of whom engaged in the blockchain and decentralization space, decided to form a group to exchange knowledge, collaborate on projects and work towards common goals. As a first step, we set up a workspace on Slack.
Within less than two weeks, we had assembled a group of roundabout 15 individuals who were all excited to build something — and willing to invest into doing so. It quickly became clear that we had a strong and complementary set of skills and experiences:
Oliver, who has 20+ years of experience at the frontier of innovation and transformation from roles in consulting, startups and the industry; Karl-Michael, a startup and venture capital pro; Daniel, who has been active in the cryptocurrency space for years in many capacities; Andranik, one of Germany’s leading academics in the blockchain space; Frank, a seasoned entrepreneur and developer (he already built trading AIs back in the 80’s!); Peter, a founder, strategy consultant and, among other things, builder of the world’s largest (pre-)accelerator; Simon who had considerable success as an autodidact investor in several asset classes, including crypto; Nikola, a lawyer, entrepreneur, lecturer, technology consultant — and our hub in Tokyo; (another) Daniel, who has deployed large-scale, real-time billing systems and huge databases that process millions of transactions per day at various companies.
I could go on but I assume you get the picture: our group combines many relevant experiences, all levels of seniority, and of course a lot of enthusiasm for blockchain. There’s one thing we’d like to change going forward though: the lack of women in our group. We are still open for new members and would be very happy to have some of the great women in blockchain, who we know exist, on our team.
Together, we explored what projects we considered worthwhile. We had several live workshops (thanks Oliver for being a great host!), countless calls, even more Slack conversations, talked to many people from the blockchain community, and worked on first client projects. Through that process, a clear vision emerged:
We want to assemble some of the most talented people in the space and form an engaged network which creates real value for every member by functioning as a launch pad for a variety of projects in the decentralization and blockchain space.
The Untitled INC Setup
How we operate
Under the hood of Untitled INC is a community of by now 25+ people who are all heavily involved in blockchain. We exchange our knowledge and use the community to organize projects. Based on that community, we built Untitled INC as a network — you could also call it a decentralized organization — that functions as a hub for our endeavors.
We think that this open approach makes a lot of sense. The blockchain space — by which I refer to distributed ledger technology (DLT) in general — is highly dynamic and demands a diverse skill set. Moreover, the field is still in its early days and rapidly evolving. Therefore it’s hard to predict with precision what’s going to work. Hence, we wanted to maintain flexibility, optionality and room to test and learn. Decentralized organizations like Untitled INC, when well designed, provide this high degree of flexibility.
The famous tech phrase eating your own dog food influenced our decision as well: by building a decentralized organization, we are practically forced to tackle and solve some of the challenges that arise from decentralization. Hence, we are internally consistent and a sandbox for our own experimentation at the same time.
What we do
Right now, there are two lines of activity that we are pursuing in different team configurations.
For one, we are working on our own blockchain-centric products. The first two are already in the pipeline. I won’t go into detail here, but stay tuned for more information in the upcoming weeks. Additionally, we are offering our services to companies and organizations who need help with their blockchain-related projects. As our team has a lot of experience in business consulting and professional services, this came as a natural decision.
By working on our own projects in the space (aka getting our hands dirty), we collect invaluable first-hand experiences that our clients benefit from. And by working with a diverse set of organizations, we can learn a lot in a broad array of fields. Know-how which flows directly back into our own projects.
Last but not least, we are going to regularly publish our latest thinking and experiences on our blog (which you can also find on Medium).
What to Expect
The blockchain space is highly dynamic and many smart people are active in it. While still in its early days, the technology and its underlying ideas have the potential to impact the larger digital ecosystem and economy immensely. We are very bullish on the future of decentralized systems, network organizations, and the distributed economy. Thus, we want to actively contribute to the space and further its development.
But not everything is rosy at the moment. One important issue that we set our eyes on: The overall ecosystem is far from mature. Professional standards and ethics are often questionable. That isn’t a secret and only individuals interested in maintaining the current hype for personal gains would disagree. It’s definitely not a healthy situation. Worst case, it could lead to a major setback for the entire blockchain and decentralization movement.
While we certainly can’t change the current situation ourselves, we are positive that we can make a difference. And thereby contribute to the field’s long-term success. We’ll tackle that issue from several angles and we’ll shed more light on our plans soon.
Stay tuned for more.
Author: Thomas Euler
Thomas is an experienced consultant, analyst, and writer at the intersection of tech, business, and the digital economy. He has been researching and regularly covering the blockchain space for several years now as he has long been interested in decentralized systems and new types of organizations.