Gitcoin

Gitcoin's mission is to grow open source software.  

We create new economic opportunities for coders in open source software, with a double sided market. We connect funders to connect to coders they want to hire, and connects coders to people who can fund them.

Our product is a blockchain-enabled, which means that anyone with a web browser can earn from anywhere -- no need to access the traditional banking system.

Gitcoin has delivered $3.5mm+ to open source coders in the last 18 months and is just getting started.  See our traction at https://gitcoin.co/results

In the 21st century, learning software development is a possible path to a new career and a new life for millions of aspiring youth across the world.

There are 26 million software engineers in the world, but access to software engineering networking, learning, and earning opportunities are limited to the most privileged communities.

In a world thats being transformed by 

- open source software - allowing people to build on top of each others solutions without ever meeting

- remote work - allowing people to contribute from anywhere in the result

- blockchain technology - allowing people to earn from anywhere in the world

we believe there is opportunity to create a solution that leverages these trends to allow the millions of aspiring software engineers in the world to their next career opportunity.

We are working with our end-users to understand their needs in a few ways

1. By signing up at gitcoin.co they can build a profile that expresses their skills and desires.

2. We have done tens of user interviews with coders across the world to understand their specific needs and aspirations in a more qualitative way.

3. We invite them to join our weekly livestream at gitcoin.co/livestream to give us an opportunity to socialize with us and get to know each other.

Gitcoin.co offers the following products:

Gitcoin offers Virtual Hackathons about once a month; Earn Prizes by working with some of the best projects in the decentralization space.

Gitcoin Grants are a fast, easy & secure way to provide recurring token contributions to your favorite OSS maintainers. Plus, with our NEW quarterly $100k+ matching funds it's now even easier to fund your OSS work!

Gitcoin Bounties - Collaborate and monetize your skills while working on Open Source projects through bounties.

CodeFund (by Gitcoin) is an open source ad platform that funds contributors of the open source ecosystem

Gitcoin Quests is a fun, gamified way to learn about the web3 ecosystem, earn rewards, and level up your decentralization-fu!

These products are all built using python/django/javascript, witha sprinkle of Ethereum.

We are built in a future forward way - we are leveraging open source software, blockchain technology, and remote work to create a solution that is native to the 21st century.

We are live today, and have created $3.5mm worth of results, and over 37 'Gitcoin Alumni' -- people whose lives have been changed by working on Gitcoin.

The inputs into our Theory of Change are:

- Employers want to be able to get access to new sources of talent.

- Coders want access to the best employers, or economic opportunieis

The activities that we manage are:

- a matching engine that connects coders to the best employers for them

- a user profile that allows people to show off their digital self

- a learning platform that allows coders to prove what they know.

- people can post grant applications or work applications on Gitcoin to describe their needs.

The outputs that we create are:

- New economic outputs: like features being created or bugs being fixed, for our employers

- New "first date"s being created every single day.

-If the "first dates" dont work, then people move on quickly and find their next match.

The long term outputs that we are 

- People are creating new full time economic relationships

- Coders are working for the open internet (maybe managing several clients at once, many of whom they met on Gitcoin)

Who may suffer because of our solution?

- Recruiters will not be able to charge $20k/placement for a technology worker anymore

- Traditional employers will not be able to move as fast as Open Source devs anymore.

We are currently serving 30k coders across the world, and expect to be serving 50k by this time next year. 

We hope to be serving 1 million developers within the next five years.

Our goals are to:

- Create 1000 Lives changed - how many people can we conclusively call 'Gitcoin Alumni' who have graduated on to a better life because of Gitcoin?

- Reach financial sustainability.  We are 1/3 of the way there right now, and with scale we think we can become a sustainable enterprise.

- Reach 1 million developers.

1. Blockchain technology is hard to use, the modern web consumer is not used to private key management, and sometimes doesnt know how to transfer their funds into their local currency.

2. remote work creates challenges around timezones, cultural barriers, and the fostering of social reloationships.

3. Getting the word out - how do we let people across the world know that there are new opportunities to build relationships, earn, and learn, about software?

1. We believe that we can leverage our world class product and engineering resources to work around the blockchain UX issues that are prevelant today.  We will aim to make our app feel more like a standard web app.

2. We believe that knowledge is power, and we are creating training resources to cultivate the social norms of the Gitcoin community.

3. We are building tools (like the gitcoin avatar builder, or Gitcoin Quests) that are so useful to consumers that they will spread via word of mouth.

We are a remote first, global, service, so the question "provide an overview of your current activities in these markets" is kind of a funny one to us.

Our top markets according to google analytics are: 

1. USA

2. India

3. UK

4. Germany

5. Canada

15 people full time

and we build Gitcoin with Gitcoin - so we use our community of 30k to help advance our cause.  Over 250 community members have contributed to the Gitcoin codebase.

Kevin Owocki has 12 years experience in web startups and has hired over 45 engineers ( https://bits.owocki.com/Qwu70Y... )

The Gitcoin leadership team has built & sold startups before ( https://bits.owocki.com/6quBek...)

We have leadership experience in all of the key trends we mentioned (blockchain, open source, remote work)

Ethereum foundation - Helping them distribute funding to their community on Gitcoin Grants.  Here's a recent review of our work with them.

Microsoft - running a couple virtual hackathons with them in 2019/2020 to help market their solutions to engineers.

Amazon - running virtual hackathon with them in 2020 to help market their solutions to engineers.

Digital Ocean - running codefund ethical ads to help them recruit engineers.

We sell sponsorships to Virtual Hackathons to top technology companies.

We sell Codefund Ethical Ads top technology companies.

We are 1/3 of the way to financial sustainability now.  In order to get to financial sustainability, we are goign to be expanding our offerings to new blockchain protocols, like

- Ethereum Classic

- Zcash 

- (and several more that are not disclosed)

The Digital Workforce Challenge is a chance for us to break out of our happy little Ethereum blockchain bubble, and to market our solution to a new audience of innovators across the world.

We think that this audience can help us refine our solution for a non-blockchain audience, and can provide feedback on the path to scaling and creating the most social impact for aspiring coders across the world

MIT itself - We'd love to run a hackathon with you.

The MIT future of work group.

Dr. Nisreen Farhan seems like she could be a valuable advisor to us.

Roya Mahboob and the Digital Citizen Fund could be a good relationship to build for us.

David Soo and Jobs to the Future