cerebro is a developer intelligence & engagement product suite which will be built by Gitcoin in Q4 2019.
employers dont need "developers", they need "the right developer for the job".
developers are beautiful unique snowflakes; they have varying skillsets, relationships with technology, reliability & accountability needs, and communication,financial/emotional needs.
we are at the confluence of several megatrends:
- gig economy
- blockchain
- open source
- remote work
that has created a new market niche for p2p jobs.
This market niche
- is new - its only a few years old.
- is still small - blockchain has unlocked the ability to transact p2p in a newly global inventory pool. This niche is still small, but ...
- is growing rapidly + will grow in lockstep with DeFI / blockchain / the gig eoconomy / remote work.
- because of tools like github/gitcoin, it is newly index-able and query-able. if we can get this right, it means no more uploading & managing resumes when developers are searching for jobs!
- is ripe for a market intelligence tool to help to grow faster & more efficiently.
Whomever conquers + defines this market niche will benefit the world handsomely (both in terms of moral/econoimc impact on peoples lives, + professional/economic outcome for the team)!
we (gitcoin) are uniquely positioned to do this because:
- we are native to each of the megatrends
- we have a brand that is considered "hip" to the developer audience.
- unlike our competitors, we build full service tools across the entire developer lifecycle (from awareness to acquisition to activation to landing to retention to referral)
- we. 🚢 fucking.🚢 execute. 🚢
the goal of cerebro is to make sure that for everyone who comes to gitcoin needing developer attention; we can fulfill the inventory of that order.
the primary KPI for cerebro is “number of developers placed”.
cerebro will be the brand name for the following umbrella of tools.
these tools will all be signed to service the existing product lines by increasing the “number of developers placed” KPI.
- filtering - search tools on gitcoin
- intelligence - intelligence matching on gitcoin
- intelligence - inventory statistics + social graph analysis tools
- intelligence - external market size statistics + analysis (like https://www.entelo.com/ )
- activation - Codefund ads - on demand inventory creation
- activation - interopability with mailchimp/hubspot so gitcoin marketing/consensys catalyst can contact them
- intelligence - feedback from each business unit about success (for hackathons, submit work -- for grants, contribution is made)
The ‘customer’ for this suite of tools is Scott, Alex, Vivek, and Connor. Pushing the KPI up will better enable them to be successful in their role of selling Gitcoin to employers across the space.
our inventory = developers
cerebro will help us
- sort inventory
- generate inventory
- feed inventory to our core businesses (codefund + hackathons)
#Cerebroiscoming to Gitcoin in Q4.
fin
Overall I really like the way you framed this pitch and the ideas and goals of the product suite make a lot of sense. The Why/Timing/Who sections describe what I’ve always seen as Gitcoin’s mission from the start, but Cerebro is a way to get there in a more efficient and scalable way.
I also like the approach of using this product internally at first, for hackathons, “managed” bounties, etc. We can test and iterate features. But the real value IMO is making it externally available, as a part of Gitcoin Tribes. Companies pay an annual or monthly subscription fee, and they get preferred access to our community with enhanced targeting and recruitment tools. CodeFund ad integration is a great idea to bring in new hackers to the community, if someone puts up a bounty that we can’t find the right person for, we immediately run a CodeFund ad targeting the relevant programming language with the task details and payment amount.
The way I see this scaling is to have an “army of contractors” with a huge variety of skillsets ready to pounce on any task that comes their way. I think for this to happen we have to avoid being seen as a platform for blockchain companies exclusively. We should cater this product to enterprises, web 2 companies, etc.
“Employers don’t need developers, they need the right developer for the job”
While this is definitely true, what (many) developers also need is stability and consistency. If this is their primary source of income, they don’t want to be constantly worrying about what their next job will be. I don’t think we should discourage our community getting full time roles, rather, if a company and a developer find they work well together, we should provide tools to help turn them into a full time employee (and maybe take a fee). There must be some balance between maintaining a solid group of bounty hunters and contractors while also supporting recruitment efforts.
"no more uploading & managing resumes when developers are searching for jobs”
I don’t think this is best framed as “Resumes are no more”, rather, resumes are changing and evolving. New developers coming into Gitcoin will still need to showcase their skills and work history so Cerebro can bucket them efficiently, which may involve uploading a resume. One pagers with prior full time work experience may not be the norm in the future, but rather your Gitcoin/Github profiles can act like the new age resume of Web3. Maybe that’s a future feature we can integrate - a simple way to export your past Gitcoin work into a readable formatted document.
Some other long term product ideas:
A bidding feature, allowing hackers to indicate what cost they are willing to complete the task for
Allowing collaboration, one dev handles front end, one backend, etc
Referral bonuses
Enhanced reputation scores