What's simple for Simon is bad for our business..

Or..the anti-intuitive process of customer onboarding and why it helps our performance, proof of work & proof of stake!

Back in the day (c.Web2 evolution) the big issue was streamlining customer acquisition or onboarding because everyone learned that Web2 was about users, not profitability per se but the quantity of users and data points. So we learned about the 'toll booth' model on the information superhighway...as we called it back then!

So what was the toll booth? Well, the argument went something like this....everyone likes driving along on smooth, well kept roads, but these roads need to be built and maintained, so at some point we have to pay, right? This is where the toll booth takes over, we pass through, pay a fee and continue to drive.

On the information superhighway, toll booths slowed you down and they didn't really take money (not at first) they would be minor inconveniences designed to get you down the road before you realised you had taken a wrong turn.

A good example is early social media tools to which you could (and still can I believe) get 'down the road' by simply providing an email address that can be confirmed. This gives you immediate, but limited access to features, although you are going down the 'road' and it's cost you nothing! After a while, you slow down again as the next toll booth comes along and asks for your photo, or phone number etc, and this continues as you navigate along your chosen systems roadmap.

The point is, the onboarding process is designed to be simple, non-invasive, progressive, so that by the time you are asked for a credit card (if ever you are) you are so far 'in' the only real option is to pay up...and we pay, either in cash terms or data terms.

This is how systems have evolved from those early days and how they (in the main) still function today..i.e make it easy for the user to become a user!

So, why does that not work for us at PIPE?

The Pre-IPO Exchange (PIPE) is, at the end of the day, dealing with risk and in particular, early stage R&D/IP risk derived from projects under development at global universities and which will be funded by the PIPE gDAO/PGF Launchpad.

This risk is historically very high, partly due to the very early stage of the ideation (<TRL1) and partly due to the nature of the source of the ideation i.e the university. This is because university derived ideation is often just that, an idea created by an inventor who is not classically entrepreneurial, does not 'see' the product market fit and who is more inclined to stay in the lab than to take on the commercial challenge. Because of these issues (and many, many more) very early stage, university derived R&D/IP is rarely investor ready or sought by investors...in fact there is a huge gap here in terms of funding and process to move projects from Lab to IPO.

So what's your point...I hear you say?

Well, the 'Simple Simon' approach to customer onboarding for nascent university derived R&D/IP coupled with a toll booth approach would, probably, produce more ideation within the PIPE Disclosure & Validation or Napkin (it is what you think it is!) tools and on the surface that would be great.

However...let's just think about that, already significant, risk issue!

PIPE is designed from the ground up to mitigate risk. We have created tools and techniques within the system workflow (known as QED) to de-risk ideation for the benefit of universities and investors. In fact we have reduced the failure rate from c.90% (fail) to c.95% succeed, so almost a 360 degree correction in risk! This does not mean we eliminate or avoid risk, only that we find ways of mitigating, managing and getting the value out of that risk.

One of the very early ways we do this is through customer and project onboarding. Put simply, if we make it really, really easy to disclose a project to PIPE, we would have lots and lots of live projects going through the system which would look good on paper (our investors would be happier) and I am sure VCs would be keen to give us more money! However, our workload (costs) would go up as would our drop out rate for projects.

At the moment c.80% of disclosed projects fail to achieve the minimum 'score' to move through QED at the first Disclosure & Validation hurdle, so simply making the process easier does not improve either our position, our investors position or our clients.

What we actually need to do (and have achieved) is what could be described as the 'Nigerian Prince' benefit. For those who do not know, the Nigerian Prince fraud is actually quite, quite brilliant and is in itself completely anti-intuitive. If you are reading this and rolling your eyes you will either know and kudos to you, or you will not know so let me explain.

On the surface the Nigerian Prince fraud is stupid and you would have to be a fool to fall for it...but that is to underestimate the brilliance of that stupidity. If, let's say, only 0.01% of all people who receive the Nigerian Prince email respond to it in the manner intended and c.1,000,000 people receive the email (and I would argue it's 10x-100x more than that) then 100 people will fall for the fraud. If 100 people give over their bank accounts, then that's 100 people who have their life savings wiped out.

The Nigerian Prince fraud therefore is incredibly smart because it actively targets ONLY the 0.01% that fall for it, as these are the kind of people who will give their account details to the fraudsters and who will lose everything!

So, what we at PIPE needed to do is to create a version of this process that would 'weed out' those subscribers who will ONLY disclose projects to the PIPE Platform if it is easy, because if it's easy, anyone can do it and we don't want anyone, we want a specific kind of person. Therefore we created a more detailed and involved customer onboarding mechanism to attract ONLY those users who are sufficiently rigorous to complete the process in the first place and 'put off' those who either can't be bothered or don't have the time.

This onboarding process is not like a toll booth as outlined above, but is designed for users to navigate, to inconvenience or frustrate those that lack the analytical rigour needed to launch a successful startup or spinout company.

What we are doing as part of the very early QED process, is identifying, through process, those individuals who are sufficiently applied and who believe enough in their innovation, to pass a simple test of rigour that differentiates them from the also rans. We are also ensuring through security checks that people are who they say they are, which helps us mitigate risk too!

Put simply, we are seeking the >20% of founders from academia who want to see their ideas and innovations become a commercial reality and to have financial, societal and/or environmental impact and we are removing the c.<80% of projects that do not have the required levels of commitment to see an idea to implementation.

One of the very first questions asked in QED once a project has onboarded and entered into Disclosure & Validation relates to how much time the academic researcher can give to a project. This allows us to support the founding team through the PIPE process using the PIPE Associate Network (PAN), so we are not suggesting that busy researchers and academics have to give 100% to their project, but to get to this point where support can be provided, the user must have demonstrated that they are committed, by onboarding and showing the required rigour to see the process through!

So, when you come to PIPE and Join Us/Register and we ask you for various proofs, certifications and credentials, we do so because we want you to fail this first step and that's precisely because we want the kind of people who will NOT fail at the first hurdle!