What is an Incubator? [A New Layer for the Growth and Innovation of Steem]

Setting a Steem-Powered Precedent

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The purpose of an incubator is to support a period of...wait for it... “incubation.” Incubators are rigorous programs designed provide a boost for entrepreneurs, creatives, and the growth of new businesses. These specialized programs are designed to equip people with new networks, resources and expertise so that after their incubation period (typically 4 or 5 months) participants are able to exit the program with self-sufficiency and the skill sets needed to take their work to the next level.

Over the last couple of decades - the incubator has become a exceptionally popular business-growth model. You can discover dozens of different themed incubators in technology-savvy places like New York City and Silicon Valley, where small startup businesses are seeking a mix of networks and financial kickstarters. Incubators have also become popular in the realm of academia. Universities are now offering incubator programs to recent graduates who are starting off on their own as freelancers, researchers, or creating their own new companies. Some of the more well known incubators are Y Combinator in Silicon Valley and Techstars, which both have campuses in several major cities worldwide. We’ve seen incredible products and companies come out of incubators, including some familiar names like AirBnB and Dropbox (both Y Combinator alums). These programs typically last anywhere from a few months up to half a year. They’re fast paced, immersive, and designed to empower professionals of the internet era.

From the get-go, our team @sndbox has been working towards developing the very first Steem-powered incubator. Our goals are focused on the long term, where this growing community can become a premier ecosystem of empowerment for creative projects, new businesses, new cryptocurrencies and disruptive technology.

Rewards, Networks, Delegation

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The Steem blockchain has an incredibly built-in ability to incubate. Using just your ideas and content, you can incrementally accrue awards while building a following and establishing valuable networks. Another layer on top, is delegation. This is perhaps one of the most underrated features of Steem. With delegation you can lend influence to multiple users who can then leverage that influence to fulfill a task, build out a product, support a community or accrue funding.

Incubators as New Layers to Support Reward Distribution

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As with any new network, Steemit is still growing and finding its footing. This process of self discovery has yielded some fascinating discussions surrounding how to properly grow a global community composed of countless languages, core tags, and an infinite number of impactful projects.

Effectively distributing rewards remains a hot and critical topic of discussion. How do we make sure valuable contributors are supported by those of us with a stake in Steem Power? This core question is why Steemit has mobilized so quickly to create and sustain community run accounts such as @curie, @ocd, independent curation-trails, and a myriad of systems designed to effectively re-distribute voting power in an democratized and equitable way.

Under the umbrella of each trail, guild or community is the central goal of retaining as many valuable users as possible regardless of their economic standing. Steemit is only as valuable as the content produced by its Steemians. But what happens when public interest shifts attention and these support structures move onto different or perhaps newer users? Will these individuals (who received substantial rewards early on) continue to contribute? Will they have the tools and supportive community established by then to maintain the same momentum?

We’ve seen this happen already with a number of Youtube and Instagram figures who burst onto the Steemit scene in early summer with the price jump. The enthusiasm was met with several posts of extraordinary payouts that eventually and inevitably migrated to the next promising figure who would transplant large audiences built on other platforms. Very few of these personalities have stayed on past that period after that initial interest waned.

In an effort to address Steemit retention across multiple disciplines and communities, we created the @sndbox incubator. Our goal was to develop a model that could provide another layer of positive retention across Steemit, and hopefully serve as an early model for others to build off of.

We wanted our program to answer not the typical question of “how do we reward contributors?” but instead, “how do we motivate stewardship and commitment towards the long-term?” Commitment in terms of engagement, production, and curation regardless of payout and market price is the major motivating factor for us and will determine if and how new Steemians will mature in this ecosystem.

After a few months of trial and error and our ongoing first full program, our Steemit-based incubator "Sndbox" has landed on an initial strategy that we believe begins to address issues of retention while simultaneously provides an empowering model for Steemians to kickstart and create projects. Our premise is that new Steemians are likely to commit to the platform if the following are achieved over the course of a 5 month program -

• Consistently ‘fair’ (manually curated) payouts

• An accumulation of Steem Power with a longterm goal of becoming more self-sufficient

• Introduction to a core community that is active, engaged and supportive on a daily basis

• Support and encouragement for new users to take on various roles - community leaders, creative professionals, curators

• Establishing long-term goals and reasons for being on Steemit

With these key factors in mind, we have been tailoring our incubator approach for the last few months. By focusing the rotating program towards these goals, we believe that Steemians - experienced and new - will be better equipped in the community, and confident in establishing a healthy commitment to Steem for the long term. For more information on the mission and trajectory of Sndbox, check out our year review here. Let us know your thoughts below. We’ve just begun the 1st Cohort of our incubator program and look forward to discussing feedback and exploring more solutions for Steem-growth.

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