The model for education has predominantly been pay-to-learn. Students, taxpayers, and/or donors bear the cost of education. This is even true of technical skills, for example, Microsoft charges you to get certified on their products.
Our education system is only one type of reputation and credentialing system. Social media, gaming, Github, bootcamps and soon, on-chain activity in decentralized networks, provide forms of reputation that exist outside the framework of the education system.
Now is a great time to build a media marketplace. Not only are the audiences now in the billions, but subscription-driven media marketplaces are becoming viable again. Evolving payment options on mobile and the ease to connect with micro-markets through other media marketplaces make subscriptions newly powerful.
Phelps: Take DAOs. By fractionalizing core functions (treasury management, onboarding, governance, etc.), DAOs allow workers to fractionalize their time across many organizations. Meanwhile, a given task that a worker performs for a single DAO tends to be composable– meaning it can be applied to many other DAOs.
Ultimately, running a hard paywall media business is about experimenting with different ways to both get people into the funnel and get that first paid conversion. Unlocking a piece of content in exchange for an email address is one tactic worth exploring. And, if nothing else, the $1 conversion is a way to get a credit card on file.
Wish mainly targets low-income households who value cheap price above anything else. Peter Szulczewski wrote an article in Dec. 2016 introducing the concept of the "invisible half". It's the lower-income segment of Americans that has been underserved by technology and especially by ecommerce. Many Americans cannot afford to pay an annual Amazon... See more