Learn how TAIKAI Labs is reshaping the future of work using Request Finance
Hear from Mário Ribeiro Alves, CEO & Co-founder of TAIKAI Labs, about how they are reshaping the future of work using Request Finance.
We’ve seen so much efficiency gains ever since we started using Request Finance. It helps us pay our team in crypto at the end of the month in just a few clicks - and we just love it! I’d usually spend 1 to 2 days a month just on making crypto payments alone. Now, I take just 30 minutes per month, thanks to Request Finance.”
There is a global tech talent shortage - and it's only getting worse.
In 2022, the organizational consulting firm, Korn Ferry, released a report estimating a global shortfall of nearly 4.3 million tech workers by 2030. All these potentially unfilled roles add up to about 59 times the current number of employees at Alphabet, Google’s parent company.
Most approaches to solving the tech talent crunch attempt the enormously difficult task of trying to increase the pipeline of tech talent via educational pathways. This ranges from introducing coding into school curricula, or coding bootcamps to upskill existing talent already in the workforce.
However, trying to change the talent pipeline via education is like trying to steer a gargantuan ocean freighter: change is slow. Moreover, training more students to become developers runs into the natural limitations imposed by individual preferences and aptitudes. Not everyone in an economy can, or should be trained as a developer.
For Portuguese entrepreneurs, Mário Alves and Hélder Vasconcelos, a solution to the looming talent crisis is to reimagine the future of work.
What if, instead of trying to fill every role, companies instead embraced employees working multiple jobs? In fact, with the normalization of remote work amidst the pandemic, many people were already doing so, as a report by the Wall Street Journal found.
In a global survey conducted by LinkedIn, 37% of respondents said their current job does not fully utilize their skills, or provide enough of a challenge. If talent is not being maximized at one company, then allowing them to take on extra work elsewhere could help alleviate talent shortages.
From this eureka moment, Mário and his team launched TAIKAI Labs in 2018.
TAIKAI has built decentralized collaborative tools that connect companies with developers, by crowdsourcing solutions to their challenges. Its two main products are the TAIKAI Hackathon Platform and the Bepro Network: a protocol for open innovation bounties.
In just three years, TAIKAI has held challenges to support innovation through more than 100 hackathons in collaboration with some of the world’s largest organizations – including Pfizer, Nissan, ByteDance, Microsoft and the European Commission. TAIKAI has also been working with large Web3 brands like the Near foundation, Ethereum Foundation, Solana, Harmony and Telos.
Outstanding talent who participate at these hackathons, or open-source development projects stand a chance of being hired by the companies that sponsor them. On top of being considered for employment, the best participants to advance in the recruitment process are rewarded with crypto tokens, regardless of whether or not they eventually land a job.
With an impressive and growing community of over 50,000 developers, and a team of 24 team members, TAIKAI is well on its way to helping address the tech talent crunch in the coming years.
In September 2021, the startup announced a $2 million fundraising round led by the German fund of C3 Management, and with the participation of Portugal Ventures and Bright Pixel. TAIKAI says the funds will fuel its expansion in Europe and Brazil, and develop better hiring solutions for companies and startups.
Looking ahead, the team is working towards releasing Version 2.0 of their Bounty Network for decentralized development, Bepro Network.
It operates as a payments and curation layer for GitHub repositories, simplifying the process of launching multiple bounties, managing disputes and rewarding collaboration using smart contracts.
In August, Bepro Network was awarded a grant by Aurora to deliver a decentralized Aurora Development DAO by deploying a customized Bepro Network on Aurora, a EVM Scaling Solution for Ethereum built on Near.
This will allow the Aurora Foundation to attract developers from the community to work and contribute to Aurora Github repositories in a decentralized and sustainable way.
“We want to build the largest developer community of top tech talent from all over the world,'' says Mário. “As demand for blockchain and web3 technologies continue to grow, TAIKAI Labs’ decentralized tech talent network will help teams rise to meet the tech talent needs of tomorrow.”
We were frustrated by having to execute crypto transactions manually, which was both time-consuming and not a very safe process.
Eventually, we decided to go with Request Finance after a long process of researching and evaluating various crypto invoicing and payroll solutions on the internet.
Request Finance has helped us save so much time on our enterprise crypto payments. Yes, asking manually for invoices, doing manual payments, making sure we were paying to the right address, etc. Request has simplified the process a lot.
Our team uses Request Finance to do crypto payroll each month for our team members in a secure, and easy way.
We’ve seen so much efficiency gains ever since we started using Request Finance. Not only has it helped us see all our crypto payments in one place, it also has helped us reduce the time and cost of paying different wallet addresses in crypto for payroll.
Batch payments is a feature we use the most, because it helps us pay our team in crypto at the end of the month in just a few clicks - and we just love it!
The clean user experience in the app simplifies the whole process, making it secure and easy for both organizations, and employees to use it. All our crypto invoices are managed using the platform, crypto payments are done in bulk, and we don’t need to worry about whether we are sending funds to the right wallet address because they are linked to their names and email addresses.
I’d usually spend 1 to 2 days a month just on making crypto payments alone. Now, I take just 30 minutes per month at most, thanks to Request Finance.
When we were evaluating our options, we needed to make sure that the payments process was secure, and wouldn’t take several hours to settle crypto payments. In essence, we needed to go from 0 to 1.
We spent a lot of time researching other solutions available online, but there aren’t many in the market at this point.
A lot of them also tended to have some features but not others. For instance, one of them seemed to work for automating payroll and other payments, but did not have an invoicing system, which we needed.
It could also be a very interesting product for grants, bounties and even paying bonuses or vested tokens for the team. Also, we’re excited to see the introduction of fiat payment options in the future as an option for payroll.
Less than a day. It was a very easy process in terms of setup.
Privacy is important to us, so you have the option of disabling certain types of storage that may not be necessary for the basic functioning of the website. Blocking categories may impact your experience on the website. Cookie Policy
