As I mentioned in our previous update, NFTs are simply ownership rights stored on a digital ledger (blockchain) which can be sold or traded. 

One of the rights of ownership of anything, data included, is the right to earn income. TIKI is a user data ownership platform. A core feature is our data marketplace that gives users the ability to license their data in exchange for monetary compensation. To open a marketplace of any kind, there needs to be “goods” which are owned by a certain entity (you) which in turn can be sold (to businesses).

This is where NFTs are a natural fit. As it stands, outside of just declaring it, there is no real way to assign ownership to data. TIKI is changing that by turning your data points into NFTs, and there will be billions of them.

With these NFTs, you’re able to license your data earning real money. Why license? Because you’re simply selling access, while you retain ownership of the master. You can license your data and then stop the license, license it for a set amount of time, or license for a one-time use. This isn’t a new concept at all. I used to do a lot of work in the music industry while I was in college. A big chunk of that job was licensing music. We’d reach out to artists, or they’d reach out to us, and we’d license their music in commercials, movies, or ad-spots. Some of those licenses were one-time use with a flat payment. Some were yearly deals. Some were longer with royalties paid out over time. Same concept, different application. And there’s plenty of other examples out there from photographs to automobiles to software.

Makes sense, so why hasn’t it been done before? Traditionally the cost of minting (the process of creating a new NFT) has been significant, often crossing $100 on Ethereum’s blockchain. This is driven by the high energy cost of a blockchain's proof-of-work (or even proof-of-stake) consensus protocol. This is fine if you’re selling artwork for thousands of dollars, but unsustainable if you're selling billions of data points at fractions of a penny each.

A business might buy an insight from TIKI’s Knowledge Graph composed of millions of anonymous user data points for $100 or even $10. Each NFT can’t cost $100. They must be fractions of a penny. So we developed a new approach.  

I know for a lot of you these words may just be tech-jargon, but we’re rolling out what’s called a permissionless hybrid blockchain. In effect, it works by leveraging the strength of TIKI’s huge network of users. 100k nodes is giant for a blockchain; for perspective, Ethereum runs on less than 10k. What this means is each TIKI user will generate their own data NFTs right on their phone and with a mechanism a bit like Git we automatically backup/synchronize them for you. That way if you lose your phone, your NFTs aren’t gone. Don’t worry, this won’t use up all your phone’s battery or memory! The distributed minting removes the need for complex consensus protocols and peer-to-peer networks. Instead, with a simple efficient first-come, first-served consensus protocol we can mint billions of NFTs a day, costing next to nothing. All backed by the power of blockchain: decentralization, reliability, redundancy, security. 

Now our marketplace has goods. Data, owned by you.

Time to change the game. Who’s with us?

If you’ve been perusing Twitter in the past few months and are wondering why many users are rocking avatars that look straight out of a Super Nintendo game, the short answer is, well, NFTs.

NFTs are essentially ownership of digital property, whether it be an exclusive 1/100 8-bit rendering of a cat with an eyepatch and a party hat, or the original “Charlie Bit My Finger” video. The hype in this regard is simple collector exclusivity ethos, the same driving factor that breeds popular YouTube videos of card collectors rummaging through twenty-plus-year-old packs of Pokemon cards in hopes of netting something rare, like a 1st Edition holographic Charizard. If only I’d kept my packs pristine and unopened back in 1999 instead of trying to pull a 1st Edition holographic Charizard.

Now, collection has gone digital. Personally, I can see the appeal. As VR gets more mainstream, popping into a digital museum full of exclusive NFTs seems like a creative way to make sure your licensing and exclusive ownership has legs. Owning “Charlie Bit My Finger” means you can create supplementary content based on the license, and so on. But is NFT solely a means of collecting and showcasing exclusive digital content? We think not.

First, let’s get a basic understanding of NFT. Allow me to break the collective hearts of my high school teachers by citing Wikipedia, which describes an NFT (non-fungible token) as “unit(s) of data stored on a digital ledger, called a blockchain, which can be sold and traded.”

Units of data, you say? You mean licensing pieces of data creating ownership and the ability to sell and trade said data all documented on a blockchain. Pieces of data? You mean like, your email data? Or your YouTube watch history? Or your Netflix preferences?

Are you picking up what I’m putting down? 

Wink, wink. Nudge, nudge.

Stay tuned… ;-) 

It’s been a great week here at TIKI. We have crossed the 1,000 follower mark on our campaign and increased our number of investors to 238. Mike got our knowledge graph functionality live (but he still hasn’t gotten a haircut), and there’s plenty more exciting developments on the horizon. 

For some good news we can deliver right away, we’re happy to announce that in partnership with StackMedia, TIKI has gotten some awesome articles placed in Futurism, Engadget, and Entrepreneur! Check us out in these three prestigious publications and enjoy your weekend! 

Futurism: TIKI Gives Back the Data Ownership That Companies and Big Tech Have Taken From You
Entrepreneur: Hate How Companies Use Your Data? This App Gives Users Back Their Control.
Engadget: Protect and monetize your data on your own terms with TIKI

Reminder: Get in before the campaign ends October 31. If you're already in, please share! On average marketing takes 7 nudges; every bit helps. Together we are creating something amazing and we can't wait to share more very cool news soon!

Traditionally, insights were tethered to a person. The “who,” if you will. Shane did this, and then he did this, and then he did this, and so on. Then Shane is grouped with a bunch of other people, and from this an insight is generated. Clearly this is a privacy and security nightmare, with every action tracked and connected to your identity. 

But insights do not have to be tethered to people. With TIKI, they aren’t. User anonymity is vital. So we’re building a system where instead of tracking individuals, we use events.  An event being, receiving an email from company x, searching y, watching z. 

How is this as good, or potentially even more powerful than the old way of doing things? Well, as Aristotle said, we are the sum of our actions. When you connect events across sites, apps and platforms, the result is a more comprehensive, yet anonymous, picture. Let’s take the most common use case, digital marketing. Not only can you perform traditional re-targeting by messaging users throughout their journey, you can now message in context. 

Ask any marketer: contextual ads result in higher conversions at lower costs. An unfortunate reality of the current system is companies lack the appropriate data, particularly at scale, to pull it off. This results in annoying, irrelevant ads following you across the internet. While we’re using digital marketing as an example, this same logic applies to most, if not all, data-driven aspects within a business. Shane published a fantastic conceptual piece on this our last update. 

Let’s take a very specific, recent example from Barry’s life. Barry was in the market for a new fridge. He Google’d a few things about the latest models, did some research, went to the store and bought one. Two weeks later, the fridge is installed, and he’s still complaining that his feed is full of fridge ads. Classic. Traditional “who” based targeting is the culprit. Barry was identified from his first search as a guy in need of a fridge. They say the magic number in advertising is “7”, as in, a customer needs to see an ad seven times before they buy something. So, what do current systems do? Barry needs a fridge, so it fills his life with lots and lots of fridge ads for the next several weeks, almost regardless of what else he’s doing, reading, watching or buying. 

Now, what if you knew customers who purchase your fridges (or better yet your competitor’s) take these seven steps (events). Wouldn’t it be more effective to spend your ad dollars there? Better yet, what if you could identify the exact events with the greatest opportunity, whether that be from your customers churning or a competitor's weakness? What if you could simply run a campaign with a conversion goal and the system was smart enough to place your content where and when it would be most effective? This is just a microcosm of what you can do with TIKI’s knowledge graph. 

Traditionally, data has been siloed. As a business owner you see data about your customers on a specific platform. For example, on Facebook you can see analytics on who clicked on your ad—not what other ads they clicked, not what other products they own, not what they searched for, nor what brands emailed them. TIKI is an entirely different view of the problem; it's a story told from the point of view of the user. A user’s story spans hundreds or even thousands of companies and throughout that journey are opportune moments. We help you pick the right ones. 

At TIKI we index events, not people.

My job is to make these updates engaging. I want to make you see how revolutionary and exciting what we're doing here truly is. One thing that excites me the most is the knowledge graph. But what is exciting about a knowledge graph? What does it even do? Is there another way to frame the true power of what the knowledge graph offers? And then I found inspiration in an unlikely place...

I read a brief and to-the-point post on the Red Sox subreddit the other day about the successes of the team over the past twenty years. It praised the nerdy way of doing things: making granular data-driven decisions to drive on-field success. By accepting the changing landscape of quantifying success in Major League Baseball in the 21st century, the Red Sox won the World Series in 2004, 2007, 2013 & 2018 and are four wins away from another championship appearance in 2021. A lot of that had to do with nerd stuff, or as baseball folks call it: sabermetrics. 

This got me thinking specifically about how this relates to what we are building here at TIKI.

Our TIKI knowledge graph is to business decisions as sabermetrics is to baseball decisions. For example, when a baseball team is looking for a new third baseman, they may ask, who is better, Joe or Andy? This isn’t exactly the question that they should be asking initially. A better question is, what constitutes a successful third baseman? With analytics, it could be determined that the most successful third baseman possesses qualities A, B, C, & D. Then the task is to determine who--Joe or Andy--possesses the most of these qualities.

Obviously this is a very simplified example, but this type of thinking is what has made the Red Sox so successful in the past two decades. It is also what has allowed for teams like the Tampa Bay Rays and Oakland Athletics, who have a miniscule budget compared to the Red Sox, to be successful over the years despite an obvious monetary competitive disadvantage.

Success in business (baseball included) has shifted to being able to ask the right questions. The “who” is just a product of analysis of the what, when, where, why & how.

This type of thinking plays perfectly into the TIKI model. With our knowledge graph, the “who” is not necessary. It can’t be: our users are all completely anonymous. The what, when, where, why, and how is all accessible via the billions of data points that will be funneled into our knowledge graph. The question need not be “who is my ideal target?” because the most useful answer is not “Joe” or “Andy”. The questions may be something akin to: “What constitutes an ideal customer?” You may ask supplementary questions like, “What makes someone buy something from a competitor?” or “How do our customers interact with our content?” or “When is the best time to run a promotion?” From there you may establish that an ideal customer possesses qualities A, B, C, & D. From there the possibilities are endless. What type of advertising converts someone with quality B? What is the relationship between quality A & D? 

The entire point of our knowledge graph is to solve for the right questions or even to allow for you to formulate the right questions in the first place. Data-based decisions run the world. In pop culture, baseball is a definitive example of how the competitive landscape has changed as technology has become more advanced. 

From a business perspective, not every company has the assets and luxuries that a major brand such as the Boston Red Sox possesses. But every company can have access to the insights that allow for the Red Sox to make the decisions that produce a successful product and therefore increased revenue.

Heck, the reality is, most businesses are more like the Tampa Bay Rays than they are like the Red Sox. But, being like the Rays means you have to look at and do things differently in order to find any competitive advantage. The Rays have been at the forefront of plenty of revolutionary ideas over the past decade because they had to be. They weren’t afraid to ask different questions and try different things. Despite a $63 million dollar payroll, the Rays finished first in their division in 2021 above the Red Sox ($160 million) and the New York Yankees ($220 million). Regardless of budget, our knowledge graph gives businesses the ability to find and utilize the insights that lead to victory.

And if you’re like the Red Sox, you have to be paying attention to the Rays of the world. The Sox (underdogs) just knocked the Rays out of the playoffs on Monday. But who’s the guy who put together the winning team? A fella named Chaim Bloom, a guy who orchestrated a whole new analytical model for putting together a winning team. His previous job was with... the Tampa Bay Rays.

By utilizing TIKI technology, organizations don’t need wunderkinds like Bloom or teams of opportunistic, thorough data scientists. With the right insights, you’re on the right path to making championship-caliber decisions. The unique structure of our knowledge graph is the key to unlocking these vital insights. Whether you’re more like the Rays, or more like the Sox, with TIKI, revolutionary data-driven decision making is at your fingertips. How’s that for “revenge of the nerds?”

Till next time,
Shane, Mike & the rest of the TIKI team

We’re excited to announce HUMONGOUS news today.

The first iteration of our knowledge graph is live and connected to the TIKI app!

Knowledge graph, you say? What is the big deal about that? 

Well, let me tell you: the knowledge graph is the compilation of tens of millions of data points generated from our TIKI users. This is the driving factor for generating revenue on the business side of our project. This is so exciting as we plan for businesses to purchase insights generated from our knowledge graph, with users compensated for the data they provided. 

The anonymous data funneled into the knowledge graph allows for us to do numerous things, such as train AI, build analytic models, and do simple search and queries to generate actionable insights that businesses can use in real-time. 

With our knowledge graph integration, the ability for millions of TIKI users to provide data points means the generated real-time insights are intricate, relevant, and extremely valuable. Most importantly for our users, the knowledge graph allows for users to stay completely anonymous while still providing businesses with the insights they crave. 

As our integration list grows from GMail and Microsoft to Amazon, Netflix, Spotify and beyond, billions of data points will emerge on our knowledge graph. With this development, the road to monetization is much clearer. Make no mistake, this is a MASSIVE accomplishment. 

Take a peek at Mike’s explanation video for a more in-depth look at the first version of this revolutionary technology. 

All aboard! This train is loaded up and ready to leave the station.
- The TIKI Team

When we give data ownership back to users, numerous new avenues and opportunities present themselves. One of the opportunities we are most excited about is the ability to donate to charity based on the revenue earned from monetizing your data. 

Depending on your lot in life, the monetization aspect of TIKI might not be as important to you as the privacy and control aspects. But what is potential passive income to you has immense value when forwarded to a good cause. Think of it this way: if you earn $10 a month or even $1 from your data, that may seem an insignificant amount, but combined with donations from millions of other TIKI users, a monumental impact is just a few clicks away. 

That’s why TIKI’s donate to charity functionality will bring a new meaning to “pay it forward.” Users in our Signal group have been chatting about to whom they’d want to donate their future TIKI earnings, and we have to say, the conversation brought smiles to our faces. 

When we say TIKI is for users by users, this is a prime example. For TIKI users, the giving season is year-round. We look forward to the numerous ways our users do good with their earnings. 

It’s just another wonderful example of what happens when technology serves people’s best interests; people can then serve the best interests of each other. 

With gratitude, 
The TIKI Team

Frances Haugen, the mainstream media’s darling whistleblower claims that Marky Mark and the Facebook Bunch prioritizes profit over safety. Ya don’t say. Anecdotally, as someone who feels an immediate sense of despair and a strong desire to take a long, hot, shower when he opens Facebook, I can confirm the validity of this statement. This fact-checker has marked Haugen’s claim as “true” and “obvious.” Don’t fact-check this fact-checker.

I don’t want to speak for everyone, but I feel as if I can confidently say that not many people would list “safety” on a list of the top five or ten priorities at 1 Hacker Way in Menlo Park. Somehow though, a whistleblower was required to truly shine a light on the dubious behavior of the largest social network (and one of the largest data collection tools) on the web. 

This situation is still playing itself out, but as a lifelong skeptic and doubter of the broadcasted motives of the federal government, this whole Facebook debacle of the fall of 2021 seems quite sketchy, with the ramifications potentially jeopardizing what remains of free speech on the web.

Let us first recap, on this 8th day of October, what has happened in the past few weeks in the world of Mark Zuckerberg and his empire:

In late September, Instagram, the Facebook-owned photo-sharing app, pumped the brakes on releasing Instagram Kids (not Finsta) amid backlash from lawmakers. This was on the heels of reporting from the Wall Street Journal that cited research claiming Instagram had negative psychological effects on teenagers, especially girls. Again, ya don’t say? 

Then, on Sunday, October 3rd, purported whistleblower Frances Haugen emerged complete with a verified Twitter profile, a slot on 60 Minutes, and her own PR team to take ownership for the documents leaked to the WSJ and SEC. 

The next day, Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp all went down for hours, and everyone on the Internet went nuts. The Pandora Papers were also released, but nobody really cared about that. What was going on with Facebook? Scrubbing data? Strengthening algorithms? Hacked? Some server errors? Who really knows. Mark Z. has been offloading plenty of stock in the past few years too. What’s going on, dude?

The very next day, Frances Haugen went from her 60 Minutes spot right into testimony before the US Senate Commerce Committee. The product of this hearing seemed to be this: Facebook is bad, knows it’s bad, and does bad things anyway, and it should be regulated more. By whom, you ask? How about the government. Perfect. Gotcha. Bravo. Got it.

So, a centralized power (Facebook) gets knocked by government officials such as Richard Blumenthal and Ed Markey for trying to develop Instagram Kids. Immediately after, a mainstream-media-propped whistleblower emerges on primetime television as the one who leaked the documents that alleged Instagram’s negative effects on teenagers. The following day, Facebook goes out, like OUT OUT, for much of the day. The fooooollllowing day, Haugen testifies before Congress and calls for more internet regulations. Richard Blumenthal and Ed Markey, among others, agree, and the kicker is the mental health of kids is being used as emotional leverage to enact sweeping legislative changes to speech regulation for everyone on the Internet.

Hm. Seems a solid script, if I were to write one. A classic old gods versus new gods scenario. Who will emerge victorious? The titan Facebook, or the titans of government? Will content regulation be enacted by the centralized powers of Facebook and payrolled “fact-checkers” or from the centralized powers of government and new legislation?

Stay tuned to find out! One thing is for sure: we, the users, lose. A centralized company that harvests user data uses it to manipulate its users psychologically and then turns them into their product seems like something we should probably move away from. However, the solution of a centralized government harvesting the already harvested user data to police speech on the Internet hardly seems like the correct resolution. Surely there is a way to protect kids on the Internet without developing a true Ministry of Truth on the web.

One theme throughout this ordeal prevails: centralization makes fools of us all. And it’s only gonna get worse unless we as users do something about it.

- Shane Faria, Co-founder and User Champion

After launching our initial Google/Gmail integration, we are happy to announce that we are adding Microsoft support to our app, specifically Outlook email to start. 

This is a huge deal and another step toward data ownership. More integrations mean more data, more control, and more monetization. It continues to increase the agency of users by giving them more decisions to make where previously they had none.

Between now and our public launch, scheduled for early Q1 of 2022, our goal on the development side of things is to add as many data sources as possible. Next stop, Amazon, Apple, Netflix, Spotify, and so many more, until... INTERNET DOMINATION ;).

Join the revolution!
- The TIKI Team

Facebook went down yesterday if you didn’t know already.

It is a premier example of the downfalls of centralization. The problem with centralized anything is a single point of failure. We saw this yesterday with all of Facebook’s systems going down simultaneously. Yes, all, from internal systems used by employees to Instagram. EVERYWHERE. It’s unlike anything we’ve seen before, and it’s only going to keep happening. One problem with their BGP took it all down. You don’t even need to know what BGP is; it’s just one of a million smaller systems and protocols stacked on top of each other and called the “Internet.”

It’s such a uniquely big deal because we’ve never really seen something like this before. If you remember back to the other times large portions of the Internet went dark, it was like Twitter didn’t work in parts of the world, not all of Facebook everywhere. The ramifications of such a huge chokepoint like Facebook (IG, WhatsApp, Oculus, …) shutting down were felt everywhere. The resulting traffic from wayward Facebook users migrating to other platforms started crashing other systems everywhere. People were reporting outages at Google, Snapchat, Telegram, Twitter, and numerous more. Hell, our guy Barry in Ireland had no internet for hours because the traffic from people trying to open FB in their browser took down Vodafone’s network.

You know what just kept chugging along, seemingly unaware? Largely decentralized systems. It’s risky to have all that power consolidated in a single place; inevitably, it will fail, and we, the people, will be left to deal with the consequences. It’s an endemic problem and the very one at the root of why we started TIKI. All of our data consolidated in a few hands will inevitably come back to bite us. In many ways, it already has. Until we put the power back in people’s hands, these issues will just keep coming. 

Stay tuned—That's just the tip of the Facebook news this week.

Ever wonder why we took the crowdfunding route at TIKI? It wasn’t an easy decision, but it was one that ultimately aligned with our core beliefs.  

Take a peek at our reasoning for taking on this endeavor and find out which surprising organization gave us inspiration. https://hackernoon.com/why-are-businesses-raising-equity-with-crowdfunding

Hey there,

We wanted to take some time to give you an update on TIKI and what is going on behind the scenes. I’m going to do the writing bit, but if you prefer a video format from our CEO Mike, feel free to skip this and check out this video.

We started this endeavor for a simple reason: to give users control of their data. To shift the power balance from corporations and governments to the rightful owners, you. So far, we’ve had over 125,000 people sign up in nine short months. It is an amazing accomplishment, and we’ve got a lot more in store to keep up the momentum.

By nature, we aim to be as transparent as humanly possible. We believe there should not be a wizard behind the curtains, metaphorically speaking, which is why we open-source everything that we do. This includes estimated goals and timelines.

A product of this transparency is that not only can you see what we accomplish in real time, but you can also see when we don’t hit the goals or timelines we aimed for. We learned raising capital is a bit harder than we thought. We realized building an application with only two developers, one of whom also being the CEO, is quite a difficult endeavor.

We built everything, from a local blockchain to data knowledge graphs from the ground up. Everything from scratch. We’re making a lot of progress, albeit sometimes it is quite slow. Rest assured, we are moving as fast as we can with the resources we have. Our crowdfunding campaign will go a long way in determining the future resources we can dedicate to the development of this amazing app we plan on building out for you.

Our current goal is to show an end-to-end proof of concept with one simple in-app connection. The ability to link Gmail to TIKI will allow us to build out the see, control, and monetize features. This one piece of data (email data) will be anonymized and encrypted, added to a blockchain, added to a knowledge graph, and turned into functional insights for businesses to purchase in order to better understand their current, potential, and lost customers. 

After completing the proof of concept in the next few weeks, the goal becomes: grow the product. We're aiming for a public launch in early Q1 '22. It will require two parallel efforts. One, hire additional engineers to accelerate adding more data integrations and more see/control/monetization features. Two, work closely with a handful of pilot companies to package up valuable, relevant, usable insights for purchase.

This core infrastructure with email data, once completed, sets precedent for the see, control, monetization features for other pieces of data in applications such as Amazon, Netflix, Facebook, Spotify, and plenty of others. Expanding on the proof of concept with new pieces of data and new platforms from which to source the data is a major goal for us in the coming months.

The sky is truly the limit in regard to what we can accomplish. The groundwork we are establishing is both unique and powerful. We can truly flip the market on its head and show both users and businesses a new way of utilizing data that benefits everybody, not just the deep-pocketed individuals who have been taking advantage of the data status quo.

We cannot thank you enough for your interest and continued support in this project. We’re just a baby in terms of our existence, but the amount of traction for this revolutionary idea is nothing to bat an eye at. It is truly impressive what we have been able to accomplish together in this short time.

We are dedicated to furthering the efforts in developing this technology and putting forth the best possible product for you to use. We will continue to keep you in the loop in regard to nearly everything we are doing here at TIKI, and assure you that users will be at the center of every decision we make.

We’re beyond excited to see where this journey takes us. Thank you again for being a part of this wild ride. With a bit of time and elbow grease, we’ll put forward something you all can be truly proud of. 

‘Til next time,
Shane, Mike, Barry, Anna & The TIKI Team

There are certain bad jokes that never seem to die out, and referencing Green Day as the calendar flips from September to October is certainly one of them.

For us, it’s been a different type of “Green Day” today, as we’ve crossed the $300,000 mark in our campaign (because, you know, money is green. Get it? Alright, sure, I’ll just show myself out…).

Terrible jokes aside, we want to thank the 200+ investors who believe in us. It truly means the world.

For our followers, the calendar turning over also means we are entering the final month of our campaign, which ends on Halloween.

As always, don’t hesitate to shoot us a message or drop us a line, or any of those other cliche terms that really mean “talk to us!” This is our passion, and we’re always ready to share it with you.

Best,
Shane, Mike, Barry, Anna & The TIKI Team

Malinda Gagnon
CEO, Uprise Partners. Former Sr. Partner, Head of Product Management & Technology, GroupM
Full Bio

"I've seen firsthand how the world's largest companies use consumer data to generate revenues - from my days at Google and WPP. With relatively new consumer data regulations like GDPR and CCPA and overall consumer awareness about data privacy and control, the tide is changing. People want and should have control over their own data and benefit from their data financially. That's why I'm so incredibly excited about TIKI and was happy to be an early investor."

This testimonial may not be representative of the experience of other customers and is not a guarantee of future performance or success.

Mike demos one of TIKI's beta features. Unsubscribe from spam. As you'll see, it's a very different approach to the typical opt-out button. 

TIKI uses a data-driven approach to provide users with the information they need to make informed decisions in seconds about what's happening with your data. Remember, if you're getting spammy newsletters, they have your data!

Many, many more very cool features to come. The goal is to demonstrate where we are heading, exciting times.

Autumn is here, but it’s still 80 degrees here in Boston. TIKI the pineapple is still holding on to the summer vibes while the weather abides, but it is clear pumpkin season.

The harvest moon was quite good to us at TIKI, as we’ve surpassed $280k raised! We are eternally grateful for all your support and we’ve got lots more in the works.

Today, we highlight an oft-mentioned and integral part to the TIKI ethos: open-source. In this blog written by our CEO Mike opens up (heh heh) about how our radical approach differentiates us from competitors in the market.

Open source as a key differentiator for all, even non-coders

Thanks again for your continued support! It truly means the world to us, and we look forward to seeing where this campaign takes us as we transition into fall and toward our Halloween campaign closing date.

Every milestone is one step closer to returning power to the users.

Best, Shane, Mike, Anna & Barry

Exciting news! TIKI investments keep on coming!
Our campaign just blew thru the very remarkable milestone of $250,000 raised. 

Thank you to our investors, we're so excited to welcome you all to the TIKI tribe. Today we all celebrate 🥂. Be proud and share this achievement, together we're going to accomplish amazing things!

For our 700+ followers, we hope you join us! Don't hesitate to leave a comment or send along questions. We always aim for radical transparency and relish any opportunity to talk TIKI, data, user rights, and why it matters oh so much. 

We wanted to close out this update profiling yet another amazing TIKI investor:

Rikesh Govan
Angel Investor & Physician

[The following is an automated notice from the StartEngine team].

Hello!

As you might know, TIKI has exceeded its minimum funding goal. When a company reaches its minimum on StartEngine, it's about to begin withdrawing funds. If you invested in TIKI be on the lookout for an email that describes more about the disbursement process.

This campaign will continue to accept investments until its indicated closing date.

Thanks for funding the future.

-StartEngine

Check us out as the Founder Spotlight article from the amazing team over at Gust. We're so honored they picked us as the first!

https://gust.com/launch/blog/crowdfunding-your-seed-round-mike-audi-tiki

Gust is the global SaaS platform for founding, operating, and investing in scalable, high-growth companies. Gust's online tools help entrepreneurs start, run, and fundraise for companies and provide deal flow and relationship management for investors. As the world's largest community of entrepreneurs and early-stage investors from 192 countries, Gust pioneered the equity funding collaboration industry and is the official platform of the world's leading angel investor federations and venture accelerators. More than 850,000 startups have already used Gust to connect with over 85,000 investment professionals.

AKA they rule 🤘

Thank you to everyone who has invested, we’re so excited to have you along with us for the ride. Things are accelerating FAST at TIKI and your investment plays a significant role.  

This is a notice to let you know that our campaign on StartEngine will be closing on Halloween, Sunday, October 31, 2021, so please consider investing now!

Note that an investor may cancel an investment commitment for any reason until 48 hours prior to our close date, unless we have already disbursed your funds previously.

Please continue to reach out to us with any questions or comments about our company...and thank you so much for your support! We look forward to hearing from you, and very much look forward to putting 100% of our focus into delivering an amazing product. 

- The TIKI team

Our founder Mike demos one of TIKI's first features. Link your Google account and see your data! 

To make a good decision, we need to be informed. But, unfortunately, we have a massive problem in today's data ecosystem, and everything is phrased in legalese and tech specs. How is anyone supposed to figure what data companies are collecting? How is anyone supposed to figure out how to opt-out or turn it off?

TIKI helps by turning that mess into a few quick, straightforward explanations everyone can understand in seconds. Data doesn't have to be complicated or tedious.

This is a video of our beta, not the final or finished product. Final product may look or work different. Content will change and or be added. 

Barry O'Connor 
Data Market Lead, Investor, Commercialization Animal
Full Bio

"I invested in TIKI beacuse I believe in the classic triangle, the team, the opportunity and the approach. Each of the elements are very strong and I think when the mainstream market moves away from the existing model TIKI is in prime position to see this and deliver."

Barry on TIKI, the data market, and his role:

This testimonial may not be representative of the experience of other customers and is not a guarantee of future performance or success.

Thanks to everyone for joining us this morning! It was certainly an interesting conversation on TIKI's key differentiators.
If you were unable to make it, we strongly recommend a listen. It's only 30 minutes.  

As always, please share! Together, we will take back our data.

Quick reminder for campaign followers:

We have an upcoming event Thursday, September 9th at Noon EST where we will be conducting a half-hour live session on what makes TIKI different.

The TIKI mission is built on radical user-centricity and transparency. We've created a trusted destination where people, not companies, have the power over their data. Our team will be talking thru examples, some nitty-gritty, previous experiences, and in general, why we're building TIKI the way we are. We're not quite like other startups and apps. Join us and get a look at our thought process. It will certainly be interesting!

Register Now: 
https://zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_5UxYb6KLRoiw5apfVa_anA

Deven Sharma
Former President of Standard & Poor's (S&P)
Full Bio 

“I became interested and invested in Tiki because of two reasons, First, the focus on letting individuals exercise the right to protect and control on how they want to let their data be used, by whom and when.  Second,  the energy and technical experience of the team to bring a easy to adopt solution to the owners of the data, who by and large want more transparency on their rights to the data akin to rights to protecting the reputation of their name and property.  ”

Reminders:

1. We have an upcoming event Thursday, September 9th at Noon Est. We will be conducting a half-hour live session on what makes TIKI different. https://zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_5UxYb6KLRoiw5apfVa_anA

2.  Please share our campaign link (startengine.com/tiki) on social, with friends, or anywhere else. We need your help to get the word out! Together, we can take back our data

This testimonial may not be representative of the experience of other customers and is not a guarantee of future performance or success.

As we head into the long weekend, first we wanted to say thank you! The excitement has been contagious, raising so much so fast! We look forward to carrying the momentum thru the rest of the campaign and into a killer product. Enjoy a few tiki-style cocktails this weekend in celebration! 🍹🥂

We have an upcoming event Thursday, September 9th at Noon Est. We will be conducting a half-hour live session on what makes TIKI different. https://zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_5UxYb6KLRoiw5apfVa_anA 

As you've probably noticed, TIKI is unique and certainly different from a typical startup or app. Our team will be talking thru examples, some nitty-gritty, previous experiences, and in general, why we're building TIKI the way we are. 

Join us and get a look at our thought process. It will certainly be interesting! https://zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_5UxYb6KLRoiw5apfVa_anA

We'll leave you with a few closing remarks from our last session before everyone races off to enjoy the final days of summer. 

Thank you so much for your support, and please share, share, share! The faster we raise, the faster we can bring TIKI to the world!
- The TIKI team

Jim O'Neill
Co-founder & CTO, SaaSWORKS. Former CIO at HubSpot (IPO)
Full Bio 

“TIKI is a first mover in the battle for getting our personal data back in our own control - first by giving visibility to use as consumers and then by allowing us to control who gets access to our data and second by providing a marketplace to monetize it - if we chose to”

** Just a reminder, please share our campaign link (startengine.com/tiki) on social, with friends, or anywhere else. We need your help to get the word out! Together, we can take back our data.**

This testimonial may not be representative of the experience of other customers and is not a guarantee of future performance or success.

Meet the TIKI team and learn about our explosive growth, mission, vision, and solution.

https://zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_ckJJV_KKSk-9qH1JRk_f0A 

We are holding a webinar on Wednesday, September 1 at 11 am EST where we will talk all things TIKI and answer your questions!

Even if you cannot make the event live, we encourage you to register. We will email you a link to the recording after. 

Join us! 

https://zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_ckJJV_KKSk-9qH1JRk_f0A

Welcome, and THANK YOU! 

We're so thrilled to have all of you aboard this journey with us. I think it's safe to say, we all believe TIKI is onto something very special, and we can't do it alone. Your early support has truly been amazing. We wanted to share some really great investor questions we received.  

We are holding a Meet the Team webinar on September 1, where we will talk TIKI and answer questions. We hope to see some of you there! https://zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_ckJJV_KKSk-9qH1JRk_f0A

Q: Users can add their Facebook, Netflix, and Google accounts in the app; what about other apps (Instagram, TikTok, etc.)? What about Safari on the iPhone

A: The short answer is all apps and websites on the internet have public-facing APIs. It's how all our phones and computers know what to display. Most major companies even provide dedicated APIs for developers to build products like TIKI. Because the app simply accesses your data on behalf of you and only you, and that data is encrypted, and only on your phone, TIKI is uniquely compliant with standard data and use policies. As we raise capital and scale, we aim to build as many of these integrations as possible! 

Q: What prevents other companies from copying your idea?

A: Honestly, nothing prevents anyone from copying any idea... Our competitive advantage may seem simple, but it's immensely powerful. Trust. Trust creates a nearly impregnable moat and immensely loyal fans. The reason we chose 100% transparency, open-sourcing everything, was to place trust above all. In a world with no trust, you win by not hiding anything. It certainly sets us apart.

Q: How do you generate revenue as a startup, and who pays the user by sharing his data? Is it you, the company that takes the user's data, who exactly?

A: TIKI users will be able to decide from the app if they want to monetize their data, all 100% anonymously, even selecting which data they're comfortable selling and to whom. Based on their preferences, the data is added to our data marketplace, where businesses can purchase and use it without the need for expensive software and/or data scientists. The targets are the 30M small and medium-sized businesses struggling with the expensive and changing data/privacy landscape. TIKI generates revenue by charging these businesses a 10% transaction fee for the purchase of data. This way, users collect 100% of their earnings. 

Q: What is different between you and Streamlytics they are raising in StartEngine now?

A: I'd rather not speculate about someone else's business. We are supporters of anyone building better, ethical solutions for user data! TIKI is unique in its user-centric approach to data ownership. Yes, data monetization is a piece of it, but it's not the crux of the problem. When you own something, you choose how it is used, who uses it, how it is protected, and so much more. The result of users being able to, in seconds, make informed decisions about their data creates the marketplace. TIKI is purpose-built to solve the problem of user data ownership. It is why our users are truly 100% anonymous. You can see this in our tech, which is radically different than anything on the market. It's even compliant with privacy laws all over the world because, by design, we never have any user data; it's on your phone. 

Q: Will Apple's new privacy updates affect you in the future?

A: As privacy updates are pushed forward by Apple, Google, and others, the value of user data increases due to scarcity. They're paving the way for an anonymous, safe, and transparent data market. Businesses rely on data; as we saw with the Apple ATT changes, big businesses immediately got to work creating expensive workarounds. With each update, the greater this need becomes. If you can first acquire the users (we're off to a great start with 120,000+), you can fill this need. 

Q: How much is your burn rate/month?

A: With this funding, the plan is to ramp up our burn rate to about $100k/month (9 months runway), primarily adding engineering and product resources as we race towards a massive public launch in early Q1 '22. We have a huge waitlist already (120k users), and it takes resources to deliver a spectacular product to them.

Q: What portion of this investment is for development?

A: Roughly 70% of the raise will go towards expanding our engineering and product efforts. As we've seen, strong products lead markets, especially for B2C. 

When you're building something for hundreds of thousands or before long millions of people, the impact, quality, and scalability must be there. The resource requirements are not the same as building a beta for, say, 1k people; our beta is already 100x that in size :). 

The more money we can invest into engineering and product, the more we can build, faster. The more integrations we create, the more control we can deliver to users and the more data they can monetize! The better the product and the more value it creates, the more users will sign up. Great products create a flywheel effect. 

Q: Why is it open source? What would be a benefit for the community to contribute to this project?

A: We chose to open-source everything because trust comes first. Trust is more important than a secret algorithm. Motivated engineers can reverse engineer anything. When it comes to your personal data, you should be asking questions like, is it safe? How can I trust this company? Do they have my data? What do they do with my data? And so on. The best way to prove we have nothing to hide is to simply not hide it. 

For example, Wikipedia is open-sourced, and you can copy it, but it's already outdated by the time you do. You need the contributors. The more users trust TIKI with their data, the more control we can offer them, and the more everyone's data value increases. With each account linked and data point added, the more powerful TIKI becomes for all users.

Q: What would be your next plan of funding after 9 months when money is running out?

A: Follow-on investment will likely depend on launch traction and possibly on revenue generated. There are 3+ billion users and 30+ million businesses that could benefit from TIKI. This is just the beginning. The goal is to scale and reach as many of them as fast as possible. We are judicious but opportunistic when it comes to fundraising. Or the old saying goes, not all money is good money. We have a big vision, a strong team, and move very fast.