At Colony, we use the OKR method for setting quarterly goals and keeping our distributed team of 8 in sync and accountable. Below is our quarterly report on Q3 and a look ahead at Q4.

See ya Later, Q3

It was mid June and an air of unrest pervaded our first team all hands in Amsterdam. Three days out from the ‘theDAO’ attack, the Ethereum ecosystem was in turmoil.

From the excitement of the largest-ever crowdfunding, to this. What unfolded was unexpected, but ultimately beneficial. That painful experience was a wake up call for the Ethereum community, ushering in a welcome heightened focus on code quality and smart contract security.

To that end, we contributed extensively to TestRPC, and created SolCover: a tool for quantifying the code coverage of Solidity unit tests. We kept our Bithound score at 98%, and our tests maintained 80% branch coverage of our solidity codebase.

https://blog.colony.io/code-coverage-for-solidity-eecfa88668c2

We published and implemented our voting protocol:

https://blog.colony.io/towards-better-ethereum-voting-protocols-7e54cb5a0119

https://blog.colony.io/token-weighted-voting-implementation-part-1-72f836b5423b

https://blog.colony.io/token-weighted-voting-implementation-part-2-13e490fe1b8a

Karol joined us to lead design, and we redesigned the entire app which, thanks to Karol, looks beautiful. Check it out:

A sneak peak at the Colony application.

We wrote 9 articles, including the first in our ‘Visions of the Future’ series…

…and presented 6 times — from San Francisco to Shanghai.

Collin Vine presenting at the RocketSpace Innovation Summit

Lastly, we spoke to a lot of potential users about the different use cases they have for Colony.Colony Use-casesFor any new venture there’s a process of discovery as you try and match your vision to the market. This is an ongoing process that really doesn’t stop — it’s always a team’s job to work towards product market fit.Here are the three most common use-cases for the Colony platform:Agencies and Startups (Open Externally)Problem: Coordinating a non-employee workforce.Solution: Create their own “collaboration hub” to work with external talent; use Colony to structure, incentivize, and track participation.Status: Twenty customers shortlisted to test the first version of the product.

Corporate Innovation (Open Internally)

Problem: Internal talent is underutilized.

Solution: Use Colony to facilitate internal collaboration. Entry point is to use Colony for collaborating, incentivizing, and tracking employee’s “20% time”.

Status: Working with four corporate partners on structuring pilot projects.

Open collaboration / Decentralized Organizations (Open Globally)

Problem: How can anyone create or contribute to open projects, and have their contributions earn them a stake in that project proportionate to the value they contribute? Like open source projects but with business models?

Solution: Decentralized governance protocol and a UI for facilitating collaboration amongst a diverse group of people.

Status: This is the ultimate use-case for which our tech is being designed. It’s further out than the above two use-cases as it’s more complex, but it represents the longer term vision for Colony.

Working examples: rLoop and Hyperloop Transportation Technologies have both created crowdsourced projects by tapping into a global network of people. These types of open companies are already being built, but without the technology to support it.

Q3 has given us greater clarity of the market and the opportunity ahead. Indeed, we had no expectation that corporate innovation would be a potential use-case. It’s exciting to see that potential in front of us, especially as we build towards our longer-term vision of making work open for everyone.However, we are not so bold as to claim these as assertions of fact. They are our best assumptions after studying the market and speaking with many individuals and groups. Our focus is now on testing these assumptions by getting a product to market, and working with early beta partners on shaping Colony into something truly valuable.That brings us neatly onto…Oh hay, Q4We have one overriding focus this quarter: ship product.Where Q3 brought conferences, articles, and podcasts, Q4 will de-prioritize these activities in favour of focusing on building the Colony product. It’s not that engaging with the community and writing about our work and industry isn’t important; it’s just that right now, it’s more important that we get Colony into your hands, than talk to you about it. We’re only 8 people; we’ve gotta focus!As such, we might not be very talkative over the next 3 months. All the conversations in the world won’t bring Colony to life.During our Q4 planning sessions, we more accurately estimated a timeline to finish our product backlog. To finish our version 1 feature set, we’re still looking at ~4-months of dev work. The bottleneck? Frontend. Did we mention we’re hiring?

A Brief Overview of Colony for the UninitiatedWe want to create a world where everyone loves Mondays. Where Sunday night brings simmering excitement at the possibilities of the week ahead, not a creeping dread of the dreary slog to the next two days of freedom.For that to happen, we need to change the way the world works. That’s what we’re doing. We’re building tech that enables people to do the work they’re great at, instead of just what their manager tells them to do.To do this, we’re making work more open:

Open InternallyEnabling underutilized talent within your organization to shine.Open ExternallyTapping into a global pool of talent as though they are teammates, not external contractors.Open GloballyThousands of people, all over the world, can build, manage and share in the rewards of organizations built together online, without trusting (or even knowing) one another.We’re reimagining how work is structured, how people are recognized and rewarded.

Beta ProgramDo you have an organization that is looking to become open externally and collaborate with talent outside of your organization?If so, we’re still looking for great people to try our first version of the product once it’s built. If being more open externally and building your own collaboration network is something you want for your organization, contact Collin to discuss participating in the upcoming Colony beta.

Colony is an operating system for internet organisations.

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