Pitch / presentation

I like it because it is simple but it needs to have a hook or climax or something at the end.

This probably won't suit what I need to present to (for example) the LARC group, most of whom are probably not (but let's see) immediate potential investors or users. So, in the spirit of 'protected project infancy' and the NDA, I'll present something a lot more general, not sure what kind of time I'll have either.

I like it, some good thoughts in there...
a few points to consider - who is the audience? this ends like it is for investors, but there's no detail for them about how the funding will work... what the investor would get out of it...

So this presentation could probably be tweaked with different endings for different audiences...

One for Businesses would need a lot more detail on the benefits for businesses... which is not really covered at all.

As discussed (with Dave on a call) I question the "MC strengthens communities" line -
Debt based money system is the cause of the breakdown of communities
OK
But it’s a HUGE leap to “mutual credit helps avoid this…."
And I’m not sure we should go there…
e.g. if I trade with you using fiat - and then we switch to using MC - how does that help grow my community / avoid extraction…? If I'm not using debt and not paying any bank fees at all (e.g. via Tide bank) then it could be argued that MC is MORE extractive because I will have to pay a fee to a central body to trade in MC.
Also, any "network" can help build trusted relationships e.g. joining the FSB might help members feel "more connected" and hence build "more trusted business relationships"... So I question whether "MC strengthens communities" is true and whether it should be used as part of our pitch... it needs proving if we want to use it.

We should also be careful about saying we are building nodes and "networks within networks" until we really are... and I think we have a long way to go before we can do that...
I think it's ok to mention but more as "our vision is..."

Good work tho - the more we do this the better it will get!

:)

Oli sometimes Dave talks about 'extractive' without defining it very well. He's talking about extraction not from individuals but from communities.

Excellent presentation.
Some thoughts:
Slide 12 makes an excellent point:
“There is no value sitting in the system that can be extracted and deposited in tax havens, or used to corrupt the political system.”
Slide 13
“stregthens communities (I need to prove this to Oli).”

What makes communities strong?
Mainly, I think it is mutual dependency, not just on the material plane, but also on the other levels of human needs--social, emotional, etc. All of these derive from recurrent interactions and ongoing relationships. I gained a lot of insight on that many years ago when I read Wendell Berry’s essay, Does Community Have a Value? I shared it widely but it seems I no longer have it on my computer. However, Berry has written a great deal on the subject of community and much is available online, including his essay, Conserving Communities, http://home.btconnect.com/tipiglen/communty.html
I also recommend his, 17 Rules for Sustainable Communities, at https://utahlinks.org/rp/docs/Rules_WBerry.pdf
Slide 19
“Talked to zillions of people – lots of people know what we’re up to, and we’ve got lots of partners, potential noes and a lot of goodwill.”
I presume you mean “nodes,” not “noes.”
Slide 22
“Our target is to enable 1% of UK SME transactions through Mutual Credit in ten years time, amounting to £20 bn in throughput.”
“Projections have us self-sufficient on the basis of very low transaction fees by year 7, and we have an investment model that will get us there.”
“But, we need £200k of seed funding to get us ready for investment.”
All that is fine, but it may seem a bit daunting. How about mentioning some near-term goals that are doable.

Ha - yes, nodes not 'noes'.

Couple of other angles on community economics:
* Michael Linton's "money-go-round": https://docs.google.com/document/d/1NtKqqrhroc3e-66JaUJgR9QESVTCZW0hVdUwFk_qGrE/edit?usp=sharing
* And "economic impacts" and "multiplier effects" as explained by Ken Meter and Megan Phillips Goldenberg: http://www.crcworks.org/econimpacts.pdf

The main ideas of both of those are excerpted in the "money-go-rounds" section of this: https://blog.p2pfoundation.net/how-the-signals-used-by-capitalist-supply-chains-could-serve-a-mutual-coordination-economy/2016/02/10

The audience is “100 influentials (although they’ve since said it might be 200), including investors and funders, policy makers and civil society representatives – carefully curated for their potential ability to help your business get to the next stage”.

In the ask (which is just for money – a donation, as we’re not really ready for investment yet), we could also say we’re looking for people to join the team / offer pro bono work / help us spread the word etc. - anything they can think of.

“- the more we do this the better it will get!” - exactly. It’s an iterative process, and we’ll learn what turns people on. In my opinion, so far, what’s turned people on is its world-changing potential. Maybe that would change if we really ramped up the emphasis on benefits to small businesses. I’m not saying we shouldn’t do that. In the pitch (only 5 minutes), we say that their customers can buy from them even if they have no money, and they can buy from suppliers even if they have no money. That gets attention. But also, what appeals is the community-building. See below.

The mutual credit and communities debate is huge – but it’s really important. Here’s my first stab.
If you trade with fiat, you’re trading in, and therefore supporting, the debt-based money system. We want to reduce the amount of trade done in fiat – that’s the whole point. There are no mutual credit units in tax havens – only fiat.
Regardless of whether the growth of the credit commons stops at 1% or 10% of the economy (and I’d ask: why should it?), or grows to comprise all of it, every percentage point represents a reduction in the use of (debt- and compound-interest-based) fiat – and as we’ve agreed, the ‘Debt based money system is the cause of the breakdown of communities’.
That’s it really, but I’d go further.
Mutual credit represents a sea-change in thinking, not just in the transactions.
From the article that Bob Haugen pointed to: ‘the technology of coordination signals in economic networks is necessary for a mutual coordination economy, but it is not sufficient, nor is it even the main requirement. The main requirement is boots on the ground: live people organizing together in mutually-beneficial production and distribution networks that take care of their daily lives and their ecosystems.’
Exactly. That’s what’s missing, and that’s what mutual credit (and community energy, community-supported agriculture, community land trusts, co-ops, etc. etc.) contributes to. The world isn’t perfect, and corruption can creep in, but it’s a different world view.
But I’d go further still.
There’s a distinction in David Graeber’s ‘Debt: the first 5000 years’ between a commodity-based economy and a money-based economy. It’s from Marx, in ‘Capital’ (you can agree with Marx’s critique without agreeing with his proposed solution), but Marx writes in dense, academic terms. I think it’s a concept that could do with translating for a wider audience.
A commodity-based system is represented by C-M-C, and a money based system by M-C-M’.
C-M-C means that someone produces a commodity (C) - i.e. a useful product or service, and exchanges it for money (M), which is then used to purchase another commodity that they can’t produce themselves. This is just a normal, free-market model that has been used for millennia. People produce what they want to produce, sell it for a price that they agree with a buyer, and use the exchange medium they get for it (whether it’s coins, bank credit, crypto or mutual credit) to buy whatever they like. No skewed market, no coercion, no central control.
M-C-M’ is the capitalist model. It’s a relatively recent invention. Someone has money (And the more they have, the more useful this model is to them. Plus the more they have, if you trace the history of its acquisition, the more illicit it usually is), which they invest in the production of commodities, to obtain more money. The ‘ on the end of the final M is crucial. It signifies that M’ is more than M. This is the really damaging part – it ensures that wealth will concentrate, via extraction, and that the economy has to perpetually grow, and therefore destroy ecology.
Mutual credit is firmly part of the C-M-C economy.
People often conflate free markets with capitalism, and I think that’s completely wrong. M-C-M’ can never be a free market, because the concentration of wealth that it inevitably brings will overflow into the political system and mean that the state will continue to skew the market in favour of large capital. That’s exactly what’s happened. A Starbucks will always pay far less tax than a local, independent coffee shop in any community it’s situated in anywhere in the world. Tax is only one of the many ways the state supports big capital (protection for their patents is another; giving monopoly control of the money supply to banks is another). Take away the state prop for the corporate sector, and I think ‘economies of scale’ will be revealed to be an illusion.
I think it’s perfectly possible to be a free-market anti-capitalist – that’s exactly what Kevin Carson calls himself. For me, the credit commons is an attempt to replace the failed M-C-M’ model experiment by reverting to the C-M-C economy, and that has only really become possible with the internet.
[Workers often think – or are fooled into thinking – that the rich must have worked hard to become rich, because they live in a C-M-C world. Capitalists are fully aware that other people have worked for them to get rich, because they operate in a M-C-M’ world. They know that it’s not work, but money, that brings them money. A microscopic minority of the super-wealthy did actually work hard – Bill Gates, for example – but it was still the work of others that made him super-wealthy.]
So - transaction fees in a mutual credit system – at least our co-operative model, with the intention of building a credit commons – are a reward for useful work done, not extraction. They will be used to develop the credit commons, and thefore reduce the use of debt-based money, and therefore extraction overall. Extraction is taking the value that other people have produced, via profit, rent and interest, and concentrating it in the hands of fewer and fewer people as time goes on, because of ownership and state collusion rather than any useful work done.

Well stated Dave.
MCM'
Frederick Soddy has put it, "Money now is the NOTHING you get for SOMETHING before you can get ANYTHING." -- Wealth, Virtual Wealth and Debt.