Ideas are difficult to build. Good ideas require the right team, funding and execution to deliver upon their promise. Every era in technology has brought with it new frameworks for people to collaborate and build ideas.

As the world moves towards decentralization, a new model has emerged: The decentralized development model.

Lessons from Bitcoin

If Bitcoin were a company, it would be the fastest growing tech unicorn in recent history. Bitcoin as a whole, however, defies traditional categorization. It’s not exactly a startup, nor is it just an open source project, nor mere internet money.

Bitcoin is the pioneer of a brand new way of building a business I call the decentralized startup model. It stands at the intersection of business, finance and technology. Bitcoin’s development captures the bootstrapping elements of traditional startups, the free sharing and collaborative environment of the open source movement, plus an innovative approach to fund raising and financing through cryptocurrency. Decentralized startups like Bitcoin run on a circular self-funding, and self-building loop: Investors buy Bitcoin, funding its development. Developers then develop the product, increasing Bitcoin’s value to enrich all stakeholders through the increase value of Bitcoin itself, leading to more adopters…

Projects following the decentralized startup model have a few points in common. They have (mostly):

1. An open source project, giving access to a global talent pool
2. An informal, idea and merit driven governance structure
3. Funding through crypto-assets
4. Rapid liquidity time horizons via token issuance and liquidity (Where traditional startup IPOs took years)

To date, the decentralized development model has been successfully exported to build other cryptocurrencies, (eg. DASH) blockchain platforms, (eg. Ethereum), CryptoKitties and more.

#Why The Decentralized Development Model works
The decentralized development model works because it puts ideas and entrepreneurs first.

Decentralized projects lacks a lot of the friction involved with launching a new idea traditionally; Finding collaborators, securing funding and returning value to share/stakeholders. Instead, ideas find rapid traction and collaborators through sharing open source code on social media. Funding is acquired through ICOs. The value created by projects is returned in a tangible form for all stakeholders through a liquid token, a product or service.

But not all projects need blockchain, nor is cryptocurrency based fundraising suitable for every use case. ICOs continue to be a face complications and run up massive compliance costs.

Can we make the advantages of the decentralized startup model available to non-blockchain projects?