THE WHY, HOW AND WHAT OF XCHANGE

Why we xchange

XChange is a platform-based collaboration ecosystem combined with a trading platform for virtual shares,

  • enabling potential collaborators worldwide to participate in building ventures together, e.g. startups, and receive virtual shares for their contribution, which they can trade; 
  • enabling founders with a novel graphical navigator and network visualisation to effectively build their venture;
  • empowering investors to take KPI-based investment decisions and receive pre-validated opportunities;
  • offering a standard virtual share program (VSOP) that is easily understandable and transparent, constantly measured and impact based. Applicable to all entities, sizes and situations incl. employee options.

Founders need orientation, support and quick progress: 1.1 mio new businesses start each year in the U.S. alone. Collaborators strive for meaningful & valued contribution: 500 mio people freelance, moonlight and consult in the knowledge gig economy. Investors seek to easily find most promising ventures, focusing more on Return on Investment (RoI) as well as on impact: 59 bn US$ were invested in 2020 in Europe.

START AND EDIT A PROJECT

Get started in 60 seconds

Click the floating (+) button on the main page in the “project” panel. All you need to get started is a name for your venture and a description, that pitches your venture to collaborators and investors. To develop a meaningful and engaging pitch, see this post for example.You should also add a header that gives a feeling about your venture. This helps to attract collaborators and investors.

Edit your project

COMING SOON

Starting up is not a straight line

There are three ways how to work your way through developing your venture:

  1. Define your own Objectives and Key Results
  2. Use the Xchange template and complete the startup dimensions
  3. Explore the map and navigate through strengths and blind spots

There is no right or wrong. Start the way that is most natural to you, then use the various perspectives and jump between the tools Xchange provides to you. It has never been as fun, easy, transparent and rewarding to start up!

OBJECTIVES AND KEY RESULTS

Manage yourself

A day in the life of a founder is like building the track while your train is running on it.

It helps to have a framework in which to operate in, like a frame for an empty canvas; and it also helps to define objectives that are like starts guiding your way. At Xchange we built on the concept of Objective + Key Results (OKRs) and married them to a dynamic way of handling these goals and their deliverables. According to the Pareto principle, you want to complete objectives to 80% to achieve a high efficiency.

You can define your own objectives and their corresponding key results. We advise you to link these objectives of yours to the one in the Xchange catalogue that we call a startup “template”. This way, you can connect the steps you choose natural for yourself with the process we distilled out of years of experience from hundreds of entrepreneurs and their analytics. For more info on working with the template, see Templates and dimensions.

TEMPLATES AND DIMENSIONS

Xchange comes with a template that covers the startup development journey. It is your personal incubation program and shows you what you need to do to get from idea to market and show your progress to collaborators and investors.

The Objectives at Xchange

Below you find the 288 objectives in the Xchange template. We distilled them from years of experience with hundreds of entrepreneurs. They follow a hierarchical logic of DIMENSION > CATEGORY > OBJECTIVE. For every objective, you define your own measurable Key Results, add collaboration details and record tasks and results. You can also define your own objectives that are not linked to any pre-defined one.

Every objective is assigned to a Maturity Level, 1-4. The maturity shows you the advancement from a general start to an advanced stage in your journey. The levels can also be taken as sequential steps in the process inside a category; this is not mandatory though.

The Xchange template has the following objectives

March 2022

  • Wants & needs
    1. Find your personal motivation to be a founder
    2. Find out what you want to have, achieve and be
    3. Calculate your monetary expenses
    4. Find your acceptable risk level
  • Values & awareness
    1. Discover your strengths and weaknesses
    2. Define your personal values
    3. Plan your life-work-balance
    4. Set out on your life-long development journey
  • Personal branding
    1. Discover your strengths and weaknesses
    2. Define your personal values
    3. Plan your life-work-balance
    4. Set out on your life-long development journey
  • Leadership
    1. Develop social skills and empathy
    2. Find your leadership style and train communication
    3. Learn to delegate
    4. Foster a positive culture
  • Networking
    1. Understand the professional ecosystem you live in
    2. Start online networking
    3. Create a network of personal contacts
    4. Maintain fruitful relationships over time
  • Personal growth
    1. Find out what you need to know and do
    2. Learn from online courses
    3. Surround yourself with inspiring peers
    4. Create a library and read constantly

In their haste to get to market first, entrepreneurs often run with the first plausible strategy they identify. They can improve their chances of picking the right path by investigating four generic go-to-market strategies and choosing a version that aligns most closely with their founding values and motivations. Frameworks help, but contrary to the teaching at many business schools, entrepreneurs really have no alternative to learning by doing. Read more in this Harvard Business Review collection.

  • Vision & mission
    1. Agree with co-founders to start together
    2. Define the problem to solve
    3. Define vision & mssion
    4. Commit to building the business
  • Customer definition
    1. Conduct stakeholder interviews
    2. Consolidate interview results with market data
    3. Outline a clear picture of target customer profile
    4. Get market feedback and iterate on our target customer profile based on that
  • Market definition
    1. Define the core market
    2. Identify market needs from research
    3. Identify market size
    4. Study the market in depth and continuously learn from field-specific sources
  • Business model
    1. Review business model options (linear vs platform)
    2. Brainstorm revenue streams
    3. Find a feasible business model
    4. Do a SWOT analysis
  • Story & branding
    1. Find a company name that matches market and customers
    2. Check for domain and brand availability
    3. Develop CI that matches market and customers
    4. Create a brand story that relates to values and customer journey
  • Organisation
    1. Outline company needs and capabilities
    2. Design an organisational architecture based on company, team and product requirements
    3. Review and adapt architecture with respect to your ecosystem
    4. Proof operational effectiveness (qualitative & quantitative KPIs)

What makes a successful startup team? One common answer is that prior startup experience, product knowledge, and industry skills predict the success of a new venture. But is prior experience sufficient for a team to work well together? In a recent study, it was found that experience alone was not enough to make a team thrive. While experience broadens the teams’ resource pool, helps people identify opportunities, and is positively related to team effectiveness, a team also needs soft skills to truly thrive. Specifically, they found that shared entrepreneurial passion and shared strategic vision are required to get to superior team performance. Read more on Harvard Business Review.

  • Capabilities
    1. Define most urgent & important roles
    2. Align these roles with the startups strategy
    3. Match roles with capabilities
    4. Establish a performance review process
  • Talents
    1. Define which capabilities are needed
    2. Search & find the right people
    3. Onboard new team  members
    4. Set up ongoing talent acquisition processes and goals (OKRs)
  • Coworking
    1. Learn how your team wants to work
    2. Set up basic coworking routines
    3. Test and iterate coworking routines
    4. Measure performance in efficiency, effectiveness, resilience and adaptability regularily
  • Culture
    1. Align on what makes the team special based on purpose and vision
    2. Define guiding principles and team values
    3. Align team on open feedback culture
    4. Review monthly how the culture has established and if it matches the desired state
  • Contracting
    1. Define the scope and timeline for need of first contracts
    2. Confirm the importance & urgency of these contracts
    3. Draft the contracts
    4. Get a lawyers final approval on the contracts
  • Professional development
    1. Determine strengths and weaknesses in the team
    2. Align team on constant development (growth mindset)
    3. Define a learning & development framework
    4. Validate the framework with our investors

During the startup product development process, entrepreneurs usually wonder what it takes to succeed in businesses all the time. A simple answer to this query is tenacity and passion. You must do your own research to get an innovative idea, plus business acumen and the pitch are required that can inspire people to trust you. However, passion is the driving force that allows you to keep going on a rollercoaster ride of a startup, even when the conditions get tough. Read more in this blog post by Falac Khuram on IQVIS .

  • Value proposition
    1. Define most relevant customer pains & a solution approach (JTBD)
    2. Review if the defined solution is already present on the market
    3. Define one Value Proposition (VP) per stakeholder based on the JTBD
    4. Describe VP in a 1-sentence pitch
  • Desirability
    1. Map out ecosystem of your product
    2. Weight market and customer needs vs socioenvironmental benefits
    3. Enhance benefits for stakeholders and adapt pricing accordingly
    4. Develop a long-term vision for your product-service ecosystem
  • MVP (minimal viable product)
    1. Break down most valuable possible product features
    2. Create a document/ mockup to illustrate your MVP
    3. Gather feeback early and build a life MVP
    4. Track user behaviour in/with product and inside the customer funnel
  • Product strategy
    1. Define sub-products with mini-VPs
    2. Design an overall product development strategy
    3. Develop and launch 80/20 versions
    4. Iterate the pricing strategy based on customer behaviour
  • Go-to-market
    1. Engage with market players to get first-hand insights
    2. Design a Go-to-Market (GTM) strategy
    3. Start acquire leads with initial GTM approach
    4. Review the GTM strategy based on traction
  • Product roadmap
    1. Outline how value will be created over time + match product features
    2. Confirm if roadmap matches Product Statement
    3. Document the roadmap incl. phases
    4. Ask for customer ideas for features / product

Impact is no longer an option but becomes the new standard when starting up. Impact multiplies through collaboration and we give collaboration a tradable value. The need for systemic change – the change of the startup industry as our primary use case, but also beyond across all sectors – is very strongly required by the industry. The benefit and impact of Xchange is confirmed by client interest and the various use cases that call for a customization of the current startup ecosystem.

  • Values
    1. Which SDGs are driving you
    2. Define your Massive Transformative Purpose
    3. Define the values of your company
    4. Set up a plan when to review your values
  • Circularity
    1. Review your Product, Materials and processes with the 6Rs
    2. Replace product by process, by service, by platform
    3. Introduce recycling schemes and replace virgin materials
    4. Collaborate with suppliers, customers and retailers to increase recycling
  • Carbon footprint
    1. Calculate your Carbon Footprint
    2. Offset your Carbon Footprint
    3. Identify biggest producers
    4. Develop a plan to reach neutrality
  • Supply Chain
    1. Enhance/change your mobility scheme
    2. Enhance/change your energy scheme
    3. Enhance/change your tech scheme
    4. Enhance/change your logistics scheme
  • CSER – Corporate Social-Environmental Responsibility
    1. Develop a CESR plan based on your values
    2. Connect to and support non-profit projects
    3. Integrate CESR KPIs into your business plan
    4. Integrate a transparency scheme in all business activities
  • Regeneration
    1. Develop a hybrid business model as for-benefit business
    2. Build your financial streams in ESG criteria
    3. Become carbon-negative (climate positive)
    4. Engage in projects that multiply positive impact

Every startup builds a business model that is viable and promises huge returns after a specific time frame. For a business to sustain itself in this highly competitive ecosystem, earning revenue along with some investments is important. So, here are some of the revenue model for startups i.e. a channel through which a specific business earns to sustain and grow itself. The offerings could either be a B2B (Business to Business) or B2C (Business to Consumer). Read more on the StartupTalky blog.

  • Sales engine setup
    1. Define sales approach (B2B vs B2C)
    2. Define sales approach ratio (% of outbound vs inbound)
    3. Clarify for internal vs external sales managers
    4. Validate sales orientation/ behaviour
  • Sales operations setup
    1. Describe the customer journey
    2. Define sales cycle and map out necessary efforts
    3. Set up processes for customer management and tracking (CRM)
    4. Collect feedback and optimise sales process based on hard KPIs
  • Partnerships
    1. Choose key partners based on customer profile overlap
    2. Contact and establish positive relationships with potential partners
    3. Agree on a cooperation and sign an MoU
    4. Maintain partner relations with the CRM and apply KPIs
  • Marketing
    1. Define goals of Marketing
    2. Align marketing with brand image
    3. Find speaking and publishing opportunities
    4. Monitor PR lead channels
  • Traction
    1. Prepare minimal viable sales material / marketing messaging
    2. Confirm if sales material and channels matches IPC and sales cycle
    3. Build a funnel and launch campaign
    4. Track deal closings / funnel performance
  • Customer success management
    1. Set up customer relationship channels
    2. Anticipate and track of most relevant and possible customer complaints
    3. Setup customer success metrics & solutions
    4. Track customer success metrics continuously

In the business world, it’s very important to establish a network of professional connections. For people who are interested in entrepreneurship, this holds especially true. Building a strong professional network is something that can and should be done on a regular basis. It takes time to build a network, but in the future, these connections can turn out to be beneficial relationships. Read more on Elephant Journal.

  • Storyline
    1. Develop an engaging story around problem statement and value proposition (why-how-what)
    2. Write down your story
    3. Customise the story to fit to different stakeholders (multipliers, customers, investors)
    4. Test and iterate your story with stakeholders
  • Pitch
    1. Build a deck based on storyline and CI
    2. Enlarge to a full pitch deck with to 10-20 slides
    3. Customise pitch deck per target group
    4. Develop pitch formats varying in length and target audience
  • Multipliers
    1. Engage with all stakeholder
    2. Create mutual benefits for multipliers
    3. Ask multipliers to assist in business development
    4. Update multipliers regularly
  • Fundraising
    1. Identify kind of funding
    2. Define ideal funder profile
    3. Research matching funders
    4. Reach out to short list of matches
  • Ecosystem
    1. Map the ecosystem of your business
    2. Consider stakeholders beyond your business and map dependencies
    3. Create a stakeholder analysis and engagement plan
    4. Design a system to multiply benefits for all stakeholders
  • Investor relations
    1. Study investment behaviour and build a list with desired investors
    2. Build relationships with investors
    3. Collect and summarise KPIs relevant to investors
    4. Update investors regularly

So you’ve heard of bookkeeping and accounting, but what is financial planning and analysis, and why is it important? Creating systems and processes on a daily basis; Short-term cash flow analysis and forecasts; Routine analysis of internal controls; Creating and analyzing financial models and simulations; Anticipating scenarios about the company’s cash flow and financial projections; and implementing monthly, quarterly, and annual growth strategies. This and more insights can be found in the EU-Startups Magazine.

  • Business plan
    1. Define revenue and cost streams based on your BMC
    2. Compare with similar business models
    3. Create finance plan with all relevant tabs
    4. Review with experts
  • Controlling
    1. Define most important KPIs for your business plan
    2. Align the business and finance plans with business strategy
    3. Build a business dashboard to track KPIs
    4. Review KPIs every 6 months
  • Banking
    1. Find potential banks that are suitable for your business model
    2. Compare relevant options, decide on one
    3. Set up company banking account
    4. Review setup after 6 months, change if necessary
  • Accounting
    1. Outline in- & outbound invoice flows
    2. Define accounts receivables & -payables (AR & AP)
    3. Implement accounting system
    4. Check performance after 6 months
  • Cap table
    1. Check what sort of cap table is needed based on legal model
    2. Build cap table setup
    3. Compare with other cap tables / check accuracy
    4. Integrate cap table with your business dashboard
  • Cash flow & Investment
    1. Define cash flow requirements
    2. Define timeline for investment & goal
    3. Develop investment story and iterate with stakeholders
    4. Send your investment proposal to your investor network

Managing operations in the incubation phase and entering the growth phase is much easier for a company with multiple products in different phases of the curve than for one that has only one product that it’s trying to commercialize. Not only does the multiple-product company already have a reputation, but also, the products in the growth phase can help fund and fuel those products trying to survive incubation. Not only for “dummies”, this excerpt introduces you to operations.

  • Core processes
    1. Map user journey with operations requirements
    2. Cross check if critical path is covered
    3. Define core processes and document them
    4. Double-check if processes are enabling operations
  • Workflow definition
    1. Define most important workflows supporting core operations
    2. Include the team in the decision process and prepare onboarding
    3. Set up a workflow with tools, roles, schedules
    4. Review every 6 months
  • Standardisation
    1. Derive Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) from workflow & core processes
    2. Weigh up if level of standardisation is reasonable
    3. Define, document and implement SOPs
    4. Check-in with partner on SOPs / required changes
  • Operating model
    1. Draft a division structure, define roles & responsibilities
    2. Double-check structure with company strategy, team, product and ecosystem
    3. Build  a simple operating model
    4. Review every 6 months
  • Affiliates
    1. Weigh which tasks can be done by network partners
    2. Define required  partner profiles and  processes for your affiliates
    3. Create MoUs or contracts for the affiliates
    4. Add affiliate management to the CRM for constant documentation & status tracking
  • Tools
    1. Screen market for digital tools suitable for the identified workflow
    2. Test tools in quick iteration cycles
    3. Include the team in the decision process and prepare onboarding
    4. Review suitability and available products every 3 months

Your business entity has responsibilities, and if you are behind the business then you definitely share those responsibilities. You can get in serious trouble if you don’t act within the constraints of the law. Even if your business has limited liabilities, it doesn’t offer complete protection. You may still be found guilty in some situations, for instance, if you have been found to be negligent in your business dealings. Different types of business have different legal requirements, and you will need to consider clients and customers closely. In this article, Maria Azadian introduces you to the legal side of starting up.

  • Incorporation
    1. Find a corporate lawyer you trust and can openly talk to
    2. Find a corporate form, company name and address
    3. Set up company contract with help of a corporate lawyer
    4. Set up legal entity with a notary
  • Shareholder agreement
    1. Predefine what sort of shareholders will enter over time
    2. Draft a term sheet for the various stakeholders
    3. Craft blueprints for Shareholder Agreement (SHA)
    4. Let your lawyer do a final check of the documents
  • Insurance
    1. Do a risk assessment
    2. Weigh if and what kind of company  insurances make sense
    3. Compare company  insurances on the market
    4. Decide on and conclude an insurance policy
  • T&C and GDPR
    1. Research the legal framework for your operations
    2. Define end to end personal data processing (MVP stage)
    3. Document T&Cs and draft GDPR framework
    4. Get feedback from data protection experts if everything is fine
  • IT security
    1. Define what customer data will be processed in IT systems
    2. Check if data processing is business critical
    3. Draft first (critical) IT security guidelines
    4. Get feedback from IT security experts if everything is fine
  • Virtual Shares for collaborators (VSOP) and employees (vESOP)
    1. Define volume and incentive goals and check for economic feasibility for your VSOP and VESOP
    2. Create VSOP and vESOP terms and contracts
    3. Compare with state of the art VSOPs and ESOPs
    4. Communicate the VSOP programme with an engaging story to team and stakeholders

Start-up companies have become an important supplier of innovation and software-intensive products. The flexibility and reactiveness of start-ups enables fast development and launch of innovative products. However, a majority of software start-up companies fail before achieving any success. Among other factors, poor software engineering could be a significant contributor to the challenges experienced by start-ups. How to avoid traps and succeed with your product is subject of this Springer book.

  • Business scope check
    1. Define requirements based on business requirements
    2. Map out connections between business operations & technologies
    3. Benchmark technologies of competitor products
    4. Review with experts on usefulness
  • Architecture
    1. Derive required tech architecture from MVP concept and tech research
    2. Confirm if the architecture is the right one for the broader vision and confirm feasibility
    3. Break down the architecture into structural containers and microservices
    4. Determine dependencies and resources to implement the architecture
  • Systems & Tools
    1. Research suitable technologies on the market
    2. Go through system specifications and decide for/against them
    3. Buy the system/tools and implement it into workflow
    4. Get feedback from users if system performs
  • Setup coding environment
    1. Align on a coding language & system
    2. Define the implementation of containers and microservices
    3. Set up coding core infrastructure
    4. Get feedback from engineers if system performs and is robust
  • MVP building
    1. Translate the Value proposition into a technical requirement list with minimal and final features
    2. Build a mockup and get customer feedback on defined minimal features
    3. Build the core features into a simple prototype and get customer feedback
    4. Iterate the prototype to a full MVP
  • Tech strategy
    1. Align with co-founders and partners on the defined tech strategy
    2. Create a tech roadmap and align it with the other roadmaps
    3. Digitalise the roadmap and make it interactive to use inside the team
    4. Publish the roadmap to partners and customers to use in your communication

Coming soon

Coming soon

  • Scaling
    1. Revise your business we with the economy of scale
    2. Develop a 10x vision for the future of the startup
    3. Analyse and standardise your client relationships
    4. Analyse and standardise your internal processes
  • Automation
    1. Map and streamline processes
    2. Experiment with SaaS automations
    3. Outsource repetitive tasks to virtual assistants
    4. Develop customised automations
  • Externalise assets
    1. Craft a list of present, desired and required assets
    2. Determine which assets you can outsource
    3. Weigh costs/ benefits of external vs internal assets including the process of outsourcing
    4. Create a roadmap to outsource assets and align it with the other roadmaps
  • Acquire assets
    1. Collect present assets and liabilities, resources and costs in a lst
    2. Determine which assets you need to acquire
    3. Weigh costs/ benefits of external vs internal assets including the process of acquisition
    4. Create a roadmap to acquire assets and align it with the other roadmaps
  • Diversification
    1. Study markets where you can introduce the product
    2. Define features that diversify functionality
    3. Rethink your BM as P/S/aaS/ Platfrom
    4. Canabalise your BM by outlining the development of your product in the future
  • Exit plan
    1. Define your end goal
    2. Align the team and incentives on this goal
    3. Design investment and growth strategy accordingly
    4. Adjust roadmap and speed accordingly

MAP AND NAVIGATION

The XChange ecosystem is supporting founders to effectively navigate their venture. The Project Navigator is a managing tool and framework for complex and evolutionary project development, i.e. the Startup process management. It creates the context that allows for collaborative value creation, venture visibility, progress measurement and a dashboard that makes a venture tangible. The community supports startup growth & validation, helps to multiply impact, shares knowledge and earns virtual shares – thus conserving value created as the basis for our Web3 decentralised asset management and NFT trading platform.

A dynamic process

A startup is a living system that evolves in iterations. While classically, projects have a define start and end, resources and conditions, the agile way of looking at it is rather that of a developmental process where goals and steps change along the way. Starting with a first objective, the path grows, diverges and converges. Any iteration is an insight that can benefit the startup as well as the community – and thus turn into an tradable asset for the startup. Value accumulated through collaboration increases the pre-validation of the startup on XChange.

Interface and map

The novel, unique UX and management interface combines the most advanced features from flexible views and tools: Lists, a graphical radar navigator, floating tools and gamification. Whatever happens on the platform is displayed in a systems map giving users quick and intuitive insights into opportunities and blind spots, and matches people, projects and assets. Using a cutting-edge Graph database, 3D analysis and visualisation revolutionises the way of project management.

A novel navigation mode

Our team at Xchange is developing a totally new way to navigate through the process of buidling a venture. The navigator turns tedious project management into managing a project in a dynamic, visual, non-linear process. With guiding questions the navigator guides iterations along templates with 288 guided steps from idea to scaling through 12 dimensions, 6 categories and 4 phases. Continuous adapting via the drag-and-drop card navigation in a radar map allows the needed flexibility to develop a startup successfully.

PROGRESS AND COLLABORATION

Xchange supports your progress with a stringent process to achieve your goals (objectives). Working through the Xchange process is driven by the needs of the founder, or project owner. We are determined to make sure that the platform stays clear of annoying marketing like you experience it on a lot of other platforms. To achieve this, collaborating on a task is always initiated by the project owner by sending a request to a collaborator.

1. Set up an objective

Objective and Key Results

The project owner defines the objective from the template according to a category and an objective from the list that opens below (see ). The owner also has the option to define a completely new objective that is not associated with a category or maturity stage (“0”); they can also select an objective from the list (“1”-“4”) and change its subject which will not affect the association of this objective with the category or maturity stage.

To Dos and Results

To reach an objective, you’ll need to define the way how to get there. Your tasks should all require the same amount of work to make them comparable and manageble. Use the (+) on the right to add them to your ToDo List. Once you finalised a task, you should add the results or outcome again by using the (+). You can write short snippets to describe the results, or paste a link to a cloud storage or website.

Start and end date

An objective needs to have a start and an end date. This is important for contracting reasons but also to incentivise work on this objective.

2. Start a collaboration

Invite a collaborator

There will be many tasks that you will need help with, or you might want to outsource them to move quicker. To do this in Xchange and reward the collaborators with Xshares instead of direct cash, you invite them to sign up to Xchange. Once they are registered, you can add them to an objective. The collaborator then gets a notification and can accept the assignment. This concludes a collaboration contract that becomes binding when the objective is closed.

Satisfaction

When completing a task, project owners and collaborator can score their satisfaction with the results of a given objective on a level of 1-5. The satisfaction is a completely subjective measure to evaluate the outcome of an individual or collaborative work. It should be handled with utmost care:

Value

Currently, the Xchange platform follows a simple valuation logic for work on a project: Owner and collaborator agree to a given monetary value for the service provided by the collaborator, e.g. the market value for the collaborator as a bulk sum or an hourly rate.

3. Close an objective

To close and objective hit “close objective” in the objective card. This also closes the collaboration contract opened when a collaborator accepted the invitation. Don’t forget to close an objective! Only closed objectives score in your analysis, and show your progress to collaborators and investors. It is also important for you as the owner to close the open contracts with your collaborators so both sides are clear about the delivered task and the value held by the collaborator henceforth.

ANALYTICS

Xchange comes with a built-in automatic analytics dashboard for each venture. To leverage the analytics for yourself or show progress to investors, you will need to link your objectives to the objectives in the Xchange template.

Project analytics

Completeness

The main bar in the project header, and its miniature version in the project cards, show the “completeness” of the project – or in other words: How far you are on the way from start to investment readiness. The score in yellow shows the objectives you have completed (objective progress over 80%) out of the Xchange process that leads you through 288 objectives.

Progress

Below the completeness bar you find three metrics as circles. The first one shows the progress, i.e. the ratio ofcompleted objectives (objective progress over 80%) to open objectives (objective progress under 80%). All objectives you added to your project are counted to calculate your progress. The percentage indicated is the average of the progress of objectives per category over all dimensions. This metric thus shows how far along you are in the work through your own goals and tasks instead of the completeness, which shows how far you came from start to investment readiness.

Maturity

The second circle metric shows the overall maturity of your project. Every objective comes with a Maturity Level. The maturity shows you the advancement from a general start to an advanced stage in your journey. Maturity scores are additive, that means level 1+2+3+4 add up to a maximum of 10. The metric is the mathematical median calculated from the maturity of completed objectives per category over all dimensions.

Satisfaction

The second circle metric shows the overall satisfaction with the results inside your project. When completing a task, project owners and collaborator can score their satisfaction with the results of a given objective on a level of 1-5. This metric is the mathematical median calculated from the satisfaction for completed objectives per category over all dimensions.

Detailled analytics

In this tab, each detail of your project is analysed for you to gain a life overview about your venture on the way from start to investment readiness. In the current version, quantitative and qualitative data is shown on a dimension level only.

Quantitative analysis

The left bar graph shows the dimension’s completeness, i.e. how much this dimension contributes to your investment readiness. The score is calculated from the objectives you have completed (objective progress over 80%) out of the Xchange process that leads you through the 24 objectives per dimension. The colour code indicates the Maturity median in this dimension from grey, over yellow and green to purple.

Qualitative analysis

The right bar graph shows the progress in the dimension, i.e. how many objectives were completed out of all objectives started (Average of Category progress per dimension in %). The colour code indicates the Satisfaction median in this dimension from grey, over yellow to green.

XCOINS AND THE XCHANGE ECONOMICS

Currently, the Xchange platform follows a simple valuation logic for work on a project: Owner and collaborator agree to a given monetary value for the service provided by the collaborator, e.g. the market value as a bulk sum or an hourly rate. The value is expressed in Xcoins with a fixed rate of

Xcoins : EURO = 1 : 1

Refer to the current exchange rate of your local currency to EURO if you access Xchange from a location outside the European Union.

The future of the Xchange economics looks like this:

Cooperation contract

A project owner has a need that is fulfilled by a collaborator in the community. Automatically a contract is generated on Xchange that specifies the details, most importantly the objective and value of the agreement

NFT

The contract on Xchange is saved as an NFT in the blockchain. This way it becomes immutable and publically accessible. The NFT is the property of both contract partners; accessibility can be individually regulated.

Xshares

The NFT has an initial value specified by the contract that is equivalent to a percentage of the overall project value. This percental value is called an Xshare. The more value a project accumulates through collaboration, the more valuable it becomes. Xshares are monetarized at a future trigger moment, e.g. an exit or investment.

Xcoins

XShares can be traded on the Xchange platform for Xcoins. The volume of Xcoins is defined by the overall volume created by contributions saved as NFTs. The sell-buy-rate of Xshares to Xcoins depends on the overall volume of Xcoins and the value of the NFT.

Market investment

Xcoins can be bought through fiat or crypto currency. The exchange rate depends on the overall volume and a free-market-price. This allows the crowdfunding of projects on Xchange while actively supporting the development of this project.

Glossary

NFT: The non-fungible token on Xchange is the unique and non-interchangeable unit of data that describes the interaction between a task (or project) owner and a collaborator. The NFT represents the contract that is automatically generated when a collaboration occurs on Xchange; it is mirrored from our Graph database onto a blockchain.

Xshare: The Xshare is the value that is calculated for a collaboration task. The value of the Xshare depends on the initial value of an NFT and the overall project volume. The value of an Xshare is also considered when calculating the price of an NFT on the Xchange trading platform.

Xcoin: Xcoins are the internal currency of the Xchange platform. NFTs can be sold on the Xchange trading platform for Xcoins at a given rate that depends on the initial value of the NFT and its usage in projects on the platform (and beyond). Xcoins can also be bought through fiat or crypto at a rate determined by the overall NFT value volume on the Xchange platform.