Verge Nation is our technology-enabled innovation platform that empowers creators of digital content to access reliable guidance and find and transact with the right people to get their creative projects off the ground.

With its forthcoming integration of blockchain solutions and business models to address common pain points that independent creators face, Verge Nation has the potential to disintermediate several creative industries, starting with music.

The name "Verge Nation" accordingly refers to two things:

1. The state of creators "on the verge" of bringing their new projects to life; and
2. The convergence of these creators on a platform that helps them succeed.
    

MARKET VALIDATION

A vital task that TDG Holdings facilitates is market validation.  We provide upfront capital and source teams to develop prototypes, samples, and promos to test original ideas with target customers and make changes based on their response.  Our mantra in this regard is innovate on market instincts, then iterate on customer feedback.
 

From Prototype to Product Roadmap

The Verge Nation platform presented an interesting situation.  The importance of product design to our target customer base required us to validate this aspect of the platform along with the overall concept and functionality.  Yet providing mock-ups of the platform was insufficient because content creators expressed a need to see the proposed integrated functionality in action.

*   *   *   *   *  

Our collaborative team thus built a fully functional early prototype of the platform in which we integrated an intentionally broad set of features to test, including leading third-party editors to create projects and the design of a storefront to sell them.  We also produced the following four-minute demo to attain feedback from creators not testing the platform.  It is important to note that the prototype shown in this demo was developed prior to Ethereum and the blockchain-based innovations that it has enabled.

(Click the image below twice to play the video if viewing on a mobile device.)

The market feedback that we received from testing the prototype was promising.  It confirmed our key assumption that finding the right people and guidance to get creative projects off the ground is a widespread pain point that content creators will pay to fix.

The feedback on the prototype also revealed broad demand among our target customer base of creators for tools to connect and transact with greater efficiency and less cost / risk.  This demand significantly exceeded the desire for the storefront and media editors that we had included in the prototype, which have become standard integrations among platforms that content creators use.

The above lessons learned have given rise to an updated product roadmap for Verge Nation focused primarily on technology-enabled solutions that empower content creators to connect, learn and transact.

*   *   *   *   *

Building an Innovation Platform

A key insight gained from testing the prototype is that, with respect to the Verge Nation platform, content creators generally have expressed that they need help not with creativity, but rather with innovation.  To paraphrase creativity expert and TED phenom Sir Ken Robinson, innovation pertains not to developing creative ideas of value, but rather to the process of putting them into practice.

On the basis of the above insight and market feedback, we have re-envisioned Verge Nation as a technology-driven innovation platform.  Our product roadmap accordingly comprises solutions for innovation that, as noted above, focus on empowering content creators to connect, learn and transact, such as centralized feedback on projects, smart contracts, and digital rights management.

A redesign of the platform that reflects this updated product roadmap and the following future set of blockchain-based innovations is now underway.
 

The Blockchain and the Road Ahead

The above overview reflects a leap from the status quo of an offline creative economy that is poorly connected and non-curated to an online multi-field ecosystem that is designed and curated for content creators to "find and be found" and gain required knowledge to get their projects off the ground.  We refer to this platform development as Verge Nation 1.0.

Given the recent and projected pace of advancements in the ability to build innovative offerings on the blockchain (particularly Ethereum), we envision Verge Nation will quickly expand beyond being an online multi-field ecosystem.  TDG thus has already begun to lay the groundwork for Verge Nation 2.0 which will introduce a crypto token and set of smart contracts built on the Ethereum blockchain to incentivize and/or govern the innovation of new technology applications for, and creator content on the platform.
 

Target Customer Base

Feedback on the prototype also has helped us narrow the target customer base.  As noted in the Market section, music projects have become the initial focus of Verge Nation.  They incorporate creators within related fields like digital design and film who work on ancillary projects such as album art and promo videos.  The core customer base here extends from serious hobbyists to aspiring professionals and comprises mostly Millennials and Generation Z.  Service suppliers also are an important part of the solution.

PROMOTION THAT INSPIRES

One of many methods through which we intend to bolster the widespread adoption of the Verge Nation platform is the promotion of branded content and designs that seek to inspire a movement around people pursuing their creative passion.  We also have trademarked the phrase "Passion Matters" and enabled Verge Nation to use it as a mantra for this purpose.

The following two videos are examples of promotional pieces that our core and collaborative teams have produced.

(Click each image below twice to play the video if viewing on a mobile device.)