Next-Level Coding Collaboration
Coding collaboration steps up to the next level with NouGit’s decentralized platform for developers who get paid for contributing their code.
Rob Behnke, the co-founder of NouGit, gave Block.one a taste of decentralized and incentivized code collaboration in the form of NouGit, a platform that allows developers to contribute their code and get paid for their efforts.
NouGit is a decentralized and incentivized git repository platform. They have begun building the next generation of coding collaboration. They provide core features for users to register, add and share project reports, fund job postings on projects, and pay coders who satisfy the job requirements.
Their ultimate goal is to build a system that can enable many partners to build applications on top of the core system that they provide. For their first major release, they expected to optimize value and revenue capture through virtual hackathons and coding challenges.
Community Backlash on Microsoft’s GitHub Acquisition
They came to Block.one’s EOS Global Hackathon in San Francisco with a couple of ideas in mind, since they didn’t know exactly what the challenge would be. Back in June last year, Microsoft acquired GitHub, and what stuck with them is just how much this piece of news infuriated the open-source community.
So, when one of their teammates brought up the concept of a decentralized GitHub, they went straight for it. From there, they scoped out a variety of differentiating features and started building their proof of concept.
A really great team behind NouGit
Their team is comprised of proven leaders in different areas of business: Rob Behnke leads the business aspect of NouGit, having been a serial entrepreneur with two exits, while Colby, their technical lead, is a software engineer, entrepreneur, and algorithmic cryptocurrency trader. Fred, their creative lead, is a UX/UI designer and front-end developer who has worked with big brands like Under Armour, Disney, and Salesforce. Their product lead is Stewart, an experienced marketing executive who has worked for Sun Microsystems, Certicom, Avaya, etc. Mike, their advisor, is an MIT MBA with 15+ years of experience in telecom, investment banking, and blockchain.
Proof of concept from a 2-week old idea
While most companies start in stealth and then launch with something to show, they were announced to the world with a proof of concept from an idea hatched only two weeks earlier and already started work on the alpha.
They started by personally interviewing a few dozen of their alpha sign-ups, learning about their needs and wants around this product, as well as understanding what they like and dislike about existing platforms. Looking forward, they wanted to continue building an extensive roadmap, strengthening their ‘bare bones alpha’, and hiring more developers to further this project.
Built on Eosio’s Blockchain because …
They built on blockchain because their vision is to enable decentralization of information, store of value, and creation of censorship-resistant code. EOSIO revolutionized the blockchain sphere by providing high transaction throughput and grouped user permissions. Building on top of these features allows their team to build a decentralized service with the ease of use that traditional platforms provide.
From the very early stages of NouGit, they started receiving feedback. At the EOS Hackathon in San Francisco, several mentors mentioned they were interested in their concept, and some of them are in fact their advisors and alpha sign-ups. As they launch and continue to build feature sets, they anticipate interacting with their community even more, as open-source devs are quite vocal in general (which they love!). After all, the more feedback they get, the more they will be able to build a future that is optimized toward what the market demands.