Braintrust Raises $18M to Bring DeFi-Thinking to the Gig Economy

Oct 1, 2020 at 16:00 UTCUpdated Oct 1, 2020 at 17:41 UTC.The next generation of the gig economy could look more like decentralized finance than Uber.Announced Thursday, Braintrust, a tech talent marketplace that will essentially be owned by the IT freelancers and companies using it, has raised an $18 million strategic growth round, bringing its total funding to date to $24 million.

Employing a system of blockchain-based tokens to align the incentives of users and keep fees low, Braintrust boasts a nice mix of seasoned Silicon Valley VCs and crypto heavyweights like Pantera, Multicoin and Galaxy Digital.

Unlike the often vague "Utility" of ICO tokens that were sold in the billions back in 2017, Braintrust is focused on solving the liquidity problem encountered when establishing two-sided marketplaces.

Stepping back, Braintrust CEO Adam Jackson is a veteran at building two-sided marketplaces, including an e-commerce platform acquired by Intuit, an automotive marketplace acquired by Advanced Autoparts and another called Doctor on Demand.

"The typical playbook from eBay, all the way up to the gig economy players we see now is you raise hundreds of millions if not billions of dollars, and use that money to subsidize one or both sides of the marketplace," said Jackson.

Jackson describes Braintrust as a "Labor protocol" in the same way that Ethereum is a smart -contract protocol.

It's more like a non-profit, a kind of public good, he said, upon which other businesses and use cases will flourish, rather like the composability, or the Lego-like functionality of building with DeFi."Our business model with Braintrust involves lowering the fees to almost zero. We charge talent zero; we charge clients 10%, that's just meant to kind of pay our bills and sustain us," Jackson said.

Once the Braintrust community of freelancers is up and running, they will be able to use their tokens to vote on proposals such as fee levels, categories of work to be added, standards for allowing workers to join and so on.

Jackson pointed out that he started Braintrust well before DeFi was a thing, but said the comparison is apt.

In terms of numbers, Jackson said Braintrust currently has several thousand testnet token holders and a waitlist of 40,000 for when the service goes public next year.