“Talent is spread evenly across the world. Opportunity is not.”
—Adam Jackson, CEO at Braintrust

Today’s guest is Adam Jackson, a serial founder and currently the Founder & CEO at BrainTrust. Braintrust is the first user-controlled talent network that connects organizations with highly skilled tech talent.

Throughout his career as a founder, Adam has started and grown multiple marketplace businesses (Cambrian Asset Management, Doctor On Demand, and DriverSide) in different categories.

Today, Adam and the Braintrust team are leveraging blockchain to cultivate a better incentives-aligned marketplace for skilled tech talent to thrive, and for large organizations to source the specialized talent they need.

In this video, you will enjoy hearing and learning from an entrepreneur who has honed a very special ability— connecting with people and creating a trusted environment for them to transact!

This video is perfect for you if:

You are a founder or an aspiring founder, and you want to know how the power of blockchain can be used to solve key inefficiencies and misalignments in the human capital space.
You are a large organization looking for better ways to quickly source and utilize skilled tech talent from across the globe.

Key Themes

How blockchain technology can better align incentives to enrich the talent ecosystem at all levels of scale.
The benefits of having a user-controlled marketplace versus a central controlling power.
How to put 'Work' to work for everybody!
The one thing to remember if you want to turn a ‘bad situation’ into a ‘good’ one.
The simplest way for founders to find, acquire, and retain high quality talent even if you can’t pay them a fortune.
Why being a compassionate human being is so important for business.

Transcript

Adam Jackson

Well, hey, guys, thanks a lot for having me. It's a privilege to be with you. And so, so today, we are working on a project called Braintrust and Braintrust is a talent controlled, talent owned marketplace that connects a sort of high end product development, design engineering, with generally Fortune1000 companies that need their help. And that in and of itself is not a new concept. But our sort of business model/network model, the way our ownership structure is structured is actually very unique. So, can I an go into more detail about how that works at any time?

Jon Low

Please do please do at your convenience.

Adam Jackson

So maybe I'll just take a minute or two here and give a little background on Braintrust. And then, or if you guys want me to start a background on myself, and then get to Braintrust, or how would you like to do it?

Jon Low

Either or, but before we get into that, you might want to dial your gain down slightly so that you don't get too much of the reverb.

Adam Jackson

Thank you for sending me this fancy new mic.

There you go. Okay. Is that a little better?

Jon Low

Yeah, that's perfect. Yeah. Thank you.

Adam Jackson

We're going to keep your editors very busy with this right?

So, again, my name is Adam. I'm a software engineer by training. I went to school for computer science at Vanderbilt moved out here after school out here to San Francisco. And I've been out here for about 16 years now. In that time, I've started four venture backed companies, all marketplaces, all different categories.

The first one was a local shopping business that helped local brick and mortar stores on average use the internet to advertise their products. And back in 2004, when I started that, that was a novel concept. We grew that into a national marketplace, and we were eventually acquired by Intuit and joined the product, the QuickBooks team there as a product manager. After that, I started my second company called driver side which connected car owners with service mechanics that had a sort of excess capacity in their base to work on cars. And so we would connect drivers with these mechanics sort of just in time and use some kind of nifty algorithms at the time. And it also grew that into a marketplace or national marketplace. And we're acquired by advanced autoparts, which is a big box Auto Parts retailer, mostly on the east coast.

I took a little bit of time off after that, and then was connected with the two guys, Phil McGraw in his son, Jim McGraw. And Phil McGraw is better known as Dr. Phil from TV. And these guys are sort of serial entrepreneurs, but with television shows, and they had this cool idea. This is back in 2012, when it sort of like there's an app for that was just crushing every category. And so their idea was, you know, hey, there's a shortage of physicians and it's a long wait time in the United States. I mean, this is like pre-covid like it was still really bad. And and they thought, you know, why don't we just like make a clever app and staff it with great doctors and like have a thing easy to use and like we'll talk about it on our TV show. And so I've linked up with them. And when maybe later when we get to serendipity, I can tell that story but it's a cool match…

We built that company (Doctors on Demand) in 2012. I served as CEO for the first four years and grew it from from basically this little cash pay, didn't take insurance, direct to consumer app into now what's now one of the largest hospital systems in the country by visit volume. Not by revenue yet, but we're getting there. And it's all virtual. It's all doctors treating people, doctors and psychologists and psychiatrists practicing over video, so there's no buildings involved. So, I had a lot of fun building and running that business. About four years it was a giant, became a giant healthcare company. And we put in what I like to call a real manager. That's Neil Ferguson, who's our current CEO. And he has just done a phenomenal job of growing the company. And we're hoping we can take it public here someday if if companies ever go public again, then we hope to be one of them.

So I'm still very close to the company. I don't work there anymore, day to day. And then I took a little time off and sort of got back to my passion, my roots, which is kind of deep tech and engineering. And at the time this is about 2016, it was really all blockchain. And I bought Bitcoin years before a friend of mine who runs a chain of internet casinos told me about it back in 2011. And I didn't think too much about it. I just bought a few and unfortunately forgot about them and then so got back to the technology in 2016. And really became passionate about this concept of A token representing ownership and control in a network of people and like and what could that do? How could that change how we organize people change the economics of networks, and that kind of thing.

I wasn't like, I didn't really care about remittance, I'm not a payments, I find values interesting. Maybe it's like, just not my thing. I was really I've been running, owning or, you know, founding and investing in marketplaces my entire life, right? Like, I was born with this business model of like, you know, connect to people, create a trusted environment to transact, and then take as much risk as you can off every transaction, right? And that's what all of my businesses have done. Or some close derivative to that in almost all the investments I've made and been along those lines. And then along comes this token technology, and it's like, wait a minute, you could program these things to represent you know, ownership and control.

Network instead of shares of a Delaware C Corp. And so this kind of became like a passion project. And then it became a token economic model looking for a category. And so the concept was simple like, what if you could have a network, or marketplace? I'm going to use those words interchangeably. What if you have a normal people, say, a two sided marketplace, for example, sort of being owned and operated by its users instead of Central Corporation? Like, what would that be interesting, right?

Like, like imagine if, if Uber had taken, you know, some of its ownership in the early days and given it to its drivers and then gave more of it to the drivers as they maintain five star ratings and invited more drivers and invited more riders and sort of just like programmatically distributed this control of the of the network out to its its users.

And I want to clarify like a tech, when I say ownership, I don't mean like, like a stock or a security, like returning dividends or profits. Like it's actually the opposite, right? Like these networks could actually operate as nonprofits. It's not a profit return mechanism. It's just a unit of control and influence over the network.

So back to the Uber example, imagine if, you know, the control of that network had been given to the participants early, you still need that entrepreneur, right, you still need that Travis in the center to break ground and really push something into existence. Like we're not saying you don't need that, that leadership from the start. But as big networks and marketplaces grow, the incentives become misaligned between the operators and the participants. Right.

And when I'm saying is that token, a properly configured token economy, that doesn't need to be true anymore, right? You can align the incentives between the operators and the participants, and so that's where BrainTrust came from. So back to my Uber example, if you know if Uber had sort of more fairly compensated its users. Fast forward 10 years on IPO day, instead of this $85 billion IPO making, you know, six or seven dudes in San Francisco, multi multi billionaires. And then you know, like a third of and this is these are actual numbers. It's like a third of the Uber drivers, I'm sorry, to half Uber drivers living at or below the poverty line. This is, by the way, pre co Vince, it's prom shirts, much worse now. But you know, it's chosen.

According to Georgetown University study, half of the Uber drivers are living at or below the poverty line. And many of them are even living in their cars during the week to provide the service, right, while like seven guys in San Francisco became billionaires. And so it's just like, not only like is it intensely unfair, it's just bad business. Right? Like that's, that's not good for any of us.

So, this new Braintrust token economy. It's very different. It basically inverts the model. You give the ownership and control of the network out to all of the users in proportion to how much those users are helping. So with the Braintrust token, for example, the only way to get our token is to invite more talent to the network, or invite more clients to the network, or vet our talent or keep a good reputation. You'll do things that help Braintrust, right? And Braintrust that itself is a nonprofit foundation. It's not, it's not a business. It's not returning profits or dividends to anyone. But what ends up doing is it's the token represents control and voting and governance of the network. And so we can the users can decide what new categories do we get into and how do we govern ourselves and how do we shape the brand all these things and that doesn't mean there still can't be strong leaders, you know, helping push that along, but it's, it's much more of a cooperative field rather than, you know, a couple people in San Francisco. Take all the shots and then take as much value out of the middle as you can. It's basically a technology in a business model to destroy the middleman and give all that value that was being taken back to the people who use the network.

Jon Low

Wow. So as you think about Braintrust, and the future challenges you face in growing it out, what are some of the non obvious challenges that you've thought through? And, and how can you control them if you can, and if you can't, what sort of serendipity are you hoping will come through to help accelerate your vision?

Jon Low

Well, we are living through one of the, you know, most dramatic bits of tragedy and, and hopefully serendipity coming you know, with this Covid-19 pandemic that we're living through all of the downsides of this have obviously been well documented. I'll narrow this to our business, you know, our business, you know, our clients are suffering and therefore our business will suffer with it with them. And that's a sad thing.

The serendipity, I think in the silver lining, it's a bit early, but what we're seeing here is, well, you know, Braintrust is sort of promoting this concept of, you know, hiring remote workers to augment your core business. And we chose, by the way, like, I use this ride sharing example, for Braintrust, you know, we're not in the gig economy. We're in this sort of higher end, almost gig economy, like we connect really high end freelancers, most of them x Google X, Netflix x Amazon, who don't want corporate jobs anymore, right? They actually want to be their own boss. And so they love Braintrust because Braintrust hasn't taken a bunch of fees from them, right? We don't have a big rake on our marketplace.

So, you know, we're solving that problem for these companies and where companies before might have had some hesitancy with franchise, they said, well, like a lot of companies, you know, before two weeks ago, you know, we're pretty against work from home, right? They don't they didn't trust remote work. And I think there used to be good reasons to not trust remote work. I don't think there's any good reasons now, with all the amazing technology we have, like what we're talking over and Asana and things like that. But two weeks ago, the whole country basically was forced to figure out how to work from home. And I think there's some serendipity in that for Braintrust. Right, it's, I think that'll be a silver lining on this, you know, pretty terrible, tragic tragedy we're all living through.

Jon Low

So well said and that I mean, Arjun can speak to this and that checks out anecdotally across the board with what we've observed across venture funds, GPS, and also founders and their teams. So was there sorry for interrupting? Adam, was there anything you wanted to add to that?

Adam Jackson

Um, on the serendipity side, I mean, I, you know, I think, look, I think, you know, the, the framework from which I've always looked at life is, like, don't freak out about the stuff you can't control like you, what you can control is you can hone your skills, you can build good relationships, be a good person operate with integrity, and just keep doing that every day. You know, the bad stuff will eventually turn into good stuff, right? And the good stuff will be even better and, and so, you know, it's like, I'm a very type A, like, kind of control freak, if you will. I've been called many times. And so for people like me, that's it's difficult to not get upset when things don't go your way. And so the framework I've built for myself is like, just up just like, you can You know, let yourself experience that emotion and then walk through it, get past it. And, and like you can find serendipity and almost everything at that point.

Jon Low

Really well said. Adam, as a serial entrepreneur and having had some time on the block through different economic climates, was there a time where you experienced significant challenge? And really, you didn't have the wisdom, a life experience or foresight to be able to pull yourself out? Um, what did you do? How did you navigate that? Were there mentors who had guiding lights? Or was it you know, and it could have been someone who reported to you, right? Mentors can come in all shapes and forms. It could be someone who works with you, they could be a co-founder or someone you grab coffee off, right? If you could unpack that a bit, I think it'd be very relevant for emerging founder talent, especially during this economic climate and existing who are really faced with a challenge that they are empowered to solve but just because they don't have a presence. They could use some words of wisdom from you.

Adam Jackson

Well, I have a lot of stories I can tell, you know, maybe one of the more poignant ones in a second. But again, for me, it comes back to frameworks, like you pointed out, you hinted at it earlier, right? Your mentors can come from any direction.

So, you know, surround yourself with amazing people. One thing like that's a cliche and like, of course, everyone tries to hire people and like, you know, A player's hire A players and B's hire C's, higher D’s, and we get all that one thing, like, you know, since this is sort of a startup topic we're talking about here.

One thing startups get a little discouraged by and I did too, and maybe this will be helpful to those folks is like, you know, startups often say, like, often say, well, like, we cannot afford the best talent, right? Like the talent might be at Facebook or Google or whatever. And there's no way we could afford those salaries and the truth is like, yeah, I mean, you could you can use some stock options and you can you can get your talent that way. But there's not a direct correlation between, like financial requirements and expertise or horsepower or dedication, you know.

I've had plenty of expensive people who were terrible, and I've had plenty of I should say plenty, some, and I've had some, you know, really inexpensive or sub market rate people who are just incredible. And so don't like, like, drop that preconception that you have to pay for quality. It's just, it's just not true with people. I think quality people deserve to be compensated fairly. Absolutely. And so, you know, one of the, one of the doors that opened for me was, you know, this kind of goes back to why we started Braintrust, but like, you know, talent is spread evenly across the world. Opportunity is not right. That's just like, that's just the world. We live in. And so, you know, I've had, I don't have a single full time engineer product person on braintrust. They're all freelancers from our network, and very few of them live in the United States. So nothing wrong with the people who live in.

There's awesome American talent, but there's awesome down in Eastern Europe and in South America and Asia. So, you know, that that's like one thing I would say, you know, don't like, drop any preconceptions around and open your mind up a little bit. You talk like that's a general you talk more like I can tell you a specific story of just getting torpedoed and like, you know, please do please do. I mean, you know, Arjun knows the story well, too. I mean, you know, when you're an entrepreneur is like, your job is to get hit with torpedoes. And we're certainly getting hit with one right now. I'll tell you that, as all of us are. And so, but you know, talking about like, how having mentors and smart people around you, I mean, when when I think of the word mentor, like I never had a formal mentor, I just, it's it's a regret I have, I should have gone out of my way to find one. And it's, you know, shocking I hear these stories about it's like, Yeah, I just like, emailed Tim Cook, and he was cool, you know, whatever. So I never did that, but I got it. I got this chance to be a Doctor on Demand to work with Dr. Phil, who's Phil McGraw, who's this, you know, just unbelievably driven, successful, dedicated guy and he's, you know, one of the most, if not the most, behind Oprah, you know, the most successful person on television.

And you know, I got to work with him and his son Jay. Jay is my age and also a really sharp guy and the three of us started Doctor On Demand. And, you know, there were a couple times where we were dealing with regulatory problems like some serious things in your life and your business life kind of thing. Problems only because telemedicine is the type of medicine doctor on demand practices over video, like used to be kind of a gray area from a regulatory standpoint, it's it's actually really clear now and thank God. It is because it's helping quite a bit these days.

And so I was, you know, I'm not a doctor, I'm not a lawyer, you know, I'm this internet dork in San Francisco running this national medical practice and it was a lot of uncomfortable moments. And so I would look to um, you know, there were a handful of investors that I really trusted. I'll just name you know, Brian Roberts from Venrock is a such a high integrity person really was there for me a lot. And I looked, I really looked up to Dr. Phil. I mean, this is like, I never really watched this TV show. I didn't notice his stick but like, he is a, you know, he's all business. The guy takes life so seriously. He's so strong willed and so smart and so well prepared. And he's not afraid of anything, right? And we tackle challenges head on.

And there's, you know, lots of colorful language and it really taught me how to read the fight. And if you like, if you're going to pick any quality as a founder CEO, it has to be perseverance, right? It's just like, that's the only thing you absolutely have to have, right? You have to fight until you're dead. And, you know, otherwise, this is not going to work out, you're going to rely on luck. And so, you know, like, I always have good lawyers, like for Doctor on Demand and still have the best lawyers in that business today.

For Braintrust, we operate in this sort of murky regulatory world again, you know, it's, I don't like businesses like this, I just end up finding myself in them. And we have the best lawyers in the business at Fenwick. And so you have great investors, great lawyers, with great people, and if you can be lucky likeI have, four out of four times having great co-founders, it makes all the difference. You know, I could never you cannot do it alone, right? It's very hard when you're building a big system like this.

Jon Low

Because we still have a few minutes, just to synthesize, you know, most industries currently have been torpedoed. In light of recent mass events, some have not, obviously, but for a lot of the founders, you know, trying to navigate this uncertain and challenging territory. You know, what kind of words of advice would you like to share with them?

Adam Jackson

I'll try and I'll try to say things that haven't been said over and over. There's a lot of generic advice out there like, hey, you know, go get your go raise some entered debt and draw that down. I like that kind of blush. Yeah, we appreciate the real, real feedback. Thank you. Or, you know, yeah, I mean their salary cuts and layoffs and all that stuff. Um, and I've been through it all. You know, and it's they're very hard things to do.

I would say look, you know, your, your employees, your customers, your vendors, like they're all going through this too. Right. So, one thing we know, my co-founder at Braintrust, Gabe, he's a phenomenal operator, just a like a good human being a really great person and he and I work exceptionally well together and one of the things we rolled out as soon as you know, this code thing started happening is like, you know, look just first like lay everyone's fears you know, like we're in a fear death spiral right now. And so say look like we got your backs guys.

We had to trim things and extend the runway like everybody else, we're not immune to that. But like, you know, give people the time they need and just like, be a human to them. And then we did it. We did the same thing with our vendors. Right? Like we call the PR firm, same thing, then we call the, you know, everybody, our lawyer, other people we work with are like, Hey, guys, like, you know, I know we're usually playing in the NFL here and we're hitting hard and it's, you know, it gets bloody sometimes but like, this is going to be okay, like we're gonna we lose a couple months here. No one's gonna die.

Like knock on wood. Literally, no one's gonna die. And you know, so like, use that compassion. A lot of people say it. I just think like, if you're a leader, you're in a unique ability to actually do it and make a difference in other people's anxiety levels.