Funded, sourced, infused - Nobody Studios and the potential of the crowd.

I am sure most of you are familiar with crowd-sourcing and crowd-funding as ways of soliciting input on the one hand and capital on the other. What they have in common, of course, is the crowd, which may be wise if you read James Surowiecki or mad if you prefer Charles MacKay.

In my work at the venture studio, Nobody Studios I have been thinking a lot about a third crowd scenario, the concept of being crowd-infused which goes further than funding and deeper than sourcing. We believe it delivers wisdom, but one look at the energy and ambition of the Studio (500 new companies in 5 years!) and you may be forgiven for seeing a hint of healthy madness in there too.

Sourcing and funding

Crowd-sourcing and crowd-funding both involve using a large disparate group of individuals to collaborate on a project in specific ways. Crowd-funding involves raising funds from the public, usually through websites such as Kickstarter and GoFundMe, to support creative projects like films or music albums. On the other hand, crowd-sourcing enables companies to access resources (other than money) by requesting help from individuals for tasks such micro-tasks, votes or ideas submitted. Amazon MTurk is an online marketplace for businesses to crowdsource tasks, such as surveys or data entry, to a global workforce. But there are many other examples of effective crowd-sourcing, ranging from Wikipedia entries to leading-edge astronomy.

Nobody Studios sees both crowd-sourcing and crowd-funding as critical components of our philosophy. As our angel-investor round wraps up on December 23rd, look forward to the crowd-funding launch which will enable almost everyone to take a stake in the studio - to be a Nobody. Meanwhile, crowd-sourcing is becoming increasingly important in ideation, design and development thinking at the studio.

Infusion

As the name suggests crowd-infusion is not just an input to Nobody Studio processes. Rather, we intend thinking by the crowd and thinking for the crowd to seep into every aspect of our work.

Our ideation for new companies, products and services looks to the potential of the crowd at every step. A community where parents can share tips, advice , blogs, video and coaching? For sure, but let’s reward the parent community for sharing too. A talent hiring platform for speakers and performers? We can make it different by rewarding talent with fees and a stake in the platform as it grows.

In almost every business model we develop, communities and crowds contribute, review, are rewarded and hold stakes in our success. This is not a gimmick, but a different and thoughtful approach to many of the problems of new company and new service creation.

Funding is concentrated in the hands of a relatively small elite group of investors - we need their skills and their knowledge, but we need to complement that with a much wider base of experience if we are to spin up quickly enough in sectors, geographies and communities that are underserved. Too many people are denied access to the opportunities that generate wealth. Only a selected few have control of the companies that influence our future.

The narrow scope of funding (and therefore what can be funded) squeezes ideation into a dull game of playing variations on a theme, rather genuinely innovating. And those who are innovators find themselves instead spending their days as administrators and fund-raisers.

Crowd infusion puts the many first, but it also unleashes the creative.

Look for more information about Nobody Studios and its crowd-sourcing campaign over the next few weeks. I expect you will not be able to avoid it.

Whether driven by wisdom, madness or just curiosity, it’s going to be an exciting 2023.