Your Expertise Is an Asset — Here’s How to Monetize It with Dan Pratl

Full Episode Transcript

This is the full recorded conversation from The Human Protocol Podcast, published by The Human Protocol Group. © 2026 The Human Protocol Group. Please link to and attribute the original episode when referencing this conversation.

mykel (00:02.463)
Welcome to the Human Protocol, the podcast about staying human while building the future. I am your host, Mykel Salomon. Today's conversation is about trust. Because we are entering a world where anyone can generate almost anything: a resume, a portfolio, a research summary, a voice, a face, a reputation. When everything can be created, copied, and scaled instantly, the question is stopped.

been who can produce it and becomes who can prove it, who can be trusted, and whose judgment actually mattered. My guest today is Dan Pratt, founder and CEO of Quadrum. Dan, welcome to the human protocol.

Dan Pratl (00:49.006)
Hey Michael, great being here.

mykel (00:51.493)
Awesome. Appreciate you taking the time to be with us today. And to to get started I wanted to you to tell us a little bit about yourself, who then is and and for this I would like I will let you go as personal as you wanted to go just for us to know a little bit more about yourself.

Dan Pratl (01:09.122)
Yeah, of course. So, founder of Quadron, come to this opportunity after a in retrospect to quite a serendipitous career. began at the Securities and Exchange Commission during the Great Recession, got to be disenchanted by the regulatory estate, moved into open source software, so away from law and into open source software, developed a little bit more of the technical brain. I was chief of staff to the CTO, helped set up the internal corporate venture fund at Red Hat.

before moving on to doing a crowdfunding start startup when crowdfunding was the new hot sexy thing in the mid-teens. from there moved into crypto. if you remember DeFi Summer and all of the the things that came in like, you know, the the white paper really reaching its fulfillment as part of distributed tokens that people can own and disintermediate the banks, all of that. From there got to see crypto become what it is today.

mykel (01:45.319)
Mm.

Dan Pratl (02:06.806)
And got to see the rise of prediction markets, arguably the next phase of speculation on new and interesting things in the world. And Quadrant is the summation of my experiences and the belief that there is a lot of goodness in each one of these technological developments and processes by which we've created the modern digital infrastructure and the world around us, but we're missing out on a critical piece that I'll tell you about a little later, and that we

need to build the next era of value with a high degree of deliberateness and intentionality to ensure that the right things are done by us and the society and culture and the community of the world around us. Because if we don't, this one could really mess us up this time if we're not careful. It's also informed by some personal experiences that I've had with loved ones, where incentives not being the way that they should, creating failed systems that actually don't r allow the individuals that need help.

to get the help they need in the moments that they need it most. And I'm happy to tell you about that medical crisis and experience as well. But yeah, that's me. Quadrant is my big bet on humans mattering and a better future where machines aren't replacing us Terminator 2 style, but are actually helping us build a better world for everybody.

mykel (03:14.879)
Hm.

mykel (03:20.543)
I hope so. I'm I'm I'm in that fight with you. And so so we don't end up we don't end up like a move like we've seen in the movies and I love that part where you say that that that we need to build things are with intentionality on it, right?

Dan Pratl (03:27.486)
Yeah.

mykel (03:40.455)
And I think a lot of what we're seeing today, and part of the problems that I also see then is the intentionality sometimes sometimes is not seen or discussed enough. So people can understand better how this technology can can really help. But but I want to ask you since you mentioned that part, and I and I and I believe that's what you mentioned on the personal side of things, that's the healthcare

Dan Pratl (03:40.462)
Mm-hmm.

mykel (04:07.945)
problem that you had with your mother, how how that experience really shaped that part in you?

Dan Pratl (04:15.618)
Yeah, so I'll take you back to 2017. I was just beginning my crowdfunding journey, my crowd cut funding company. And very briefly, that was the insight that a lot of the deep tech that is coming out of the universities in the United States, arguably the innovation engines of of the United States, it's really beyond the horizon of a traditional investor. You need to have new and different people fill that early stage funding gap. It would be great if you could take alumni.

with specific, you know, professional as well as academic focus areas and and specialties, if they could come back and fill that early stage funding gap. So what that meant was we were reaching out to people that had PhDs and master's degrees and telling an emotive story about things coming out of the labs and bringing down the check size and the complexity for them to get back and get involved. So as I was doing that, that meant I was pretty good at understanding medical research and how the academic system, if you will, you know,

peer review of how all of that worked. And that was right when my mom got really sick. She had a series of autoimmune disorders that led to some GI issues. And well, I'll I'll I'll suffice it to say, we had to get her into a trial to save her life. And when when I went and looked at trial information to try to be an advocate for her, I found that the trial information, although centralized, it's regulatorily mandated for it to be centralized, was not robust, not dynamic, and primarily jargon.

You had to have a be a clinician or have a medical background to really understand it. And then you take a step back, you realize that's because it's an obligation for the researcher or the academic to provide this information. It's really not in their best interest because they've got to protect the intellectual property filings and prior art search that, you know, they can't say too much, but then at the same time, it's an obligation. They don't want to do this. It's it's it's something they're being forced to do. And that really stinks for an advocate or even a clinician.

mykel (06:06.953)
Yeah.

Dan Pratl (06:09.634)
That's dealing with a patient in a medical crisis that they don't have the time. They're focused on good bedside manner. They don't have the time to go and look at the state of state of the art of medical research. It's just simply too much to handle. So what I realized in 2017 is you can have people doing the right thing on the research side and you can have people doing the right thing on the clinician side. And they're so far apart and they never find one another because the incentives are broken on one side and the systems enabling a clinician or an advocate on the other side are broken as well.

And in 2017, that was frustrating. The fact that it doesn't work today is I wouldn't say criminal criminal, but just south of it. There should be a system in place with proper incentives and proper networked intelligence to solve problems just like this. There's plenty of these problems in the world. Lack of incentives, lack of networked intelligence operating the way they should. And that's what led me, kind of in the back of my mind, to starting quadrant, right? Because we're now we have.

A performant blockchains and we have this super intelligence that lives in network, you know, the AI solution, the foundational models we have today, it would be great if at the application layer we started thinking about these types of crises, these medical crises that we're all going to experience personally, as things that we can resolve, but look at them as a new systems architecture that's necessary to solve them and resolve them.

mykel (07:27.369)
So if you can if we can talk a little bit about what quadron is, right, in in the simplest of possible terms. How would you talk about Quadron in a way that I could say, hey then this will I understand well this can help us?

Dan Pratl (07:48.035)
Yeah, so expertise is an asset class now. and what that means is that gone are the days where the only way we knew that you were credible was where you had been and what you had done, kind of like pinpricks of light or like things on a radar system. Think about it. You went to a university, you wanted to go to the best university, get hired by the best companies. You see it all the time on LinkedIn. It's ex meta, ex Google, went to Harvard, went to MIT. And it's these things, these totems of competence.

mykel (07:51.687)
Mm.

Dan Pratl (08:18.232)
But the reality of it is that anyone can say anything on these platforms. They can put whatever they want on there. And it's you talking about yourself with very little verification. And in the world prior to AI, that was fine. I could go find Michael, I could go to a clearinghouse, verify that information. There was some work. But in this day and age, the super abundant high-quality noise we have out there thanks to these tools means that we need a fundamentally different approach. So when I say expertise is an asset class,

Quadrant is building the mechanisms to actually prove the things that you've done, to show the progress that you've actually created. It's a layer deeper. It's a substrate below those social proof, totems of competence, prestige networks that we have today to allow individuals to actually tell their own story with the information necessary to show the proof that's critical. And again, in an era of high quality noise. So that's a great high-level statement. Expertise is an asset class. Great. How do we get started?

Right. And it's a three-part story. Today, I think the recognition at everyone is that centralized platforms where you go and say nice things about yourself is probably not a solution because again, anyone can say anything. So our first step is building the infrastructure to allow you to capture all of the work that you do and allow us intelligent system to help tell your own story without you having to regurgitate everything. So what that means is it's it's a productivity solution with a social component on top of it.

And what that helps you do is own your credibility, own your narrative, toggle on and off what you want to show to people, and then share it in the world with the world the way you want without having to go to a LinkedIn. So a truly platformless portable credibility infrastructure that allows you to optimize for the journey that you want to talk about with all the proof required to make you uniquely you. Where this goes is I'm sorry, Michael, go ahead.

mykel (10:13.767)
No no it's it's okay, continue.

Dan Pratl (10:15.892)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that's Quadrant as it stands today. Quadrant Next is Quadrant as a collaboration service. That's an ensemble approach, a multi-model, multimodal approach that allows you to work wherever you want to work with whomever you want to work securely and without the friction of different tools and different structures. It lives in workflow that allows you to commit work and others to commit work. Everything gets organized. Your participation and contributions get acknowledged as unique uniquely yours.

And you don't have that infinite scroll as a Google document with everyone dropping copies and pastes in. And it becomes a seamless collaboration experience that simply exists in the background. Now, at the end of this three-part journey, is where that expertise becoming an asset class actually starts to take some, get some teeth and create some structure. You've now have proof. You now have the ability to collaborate with people in the ways that you would like.

mykel (10:48.71)
Mm.

Dan Pratl (11:10.708)
Now it's time since it's been structured and encoded, your expertise can actually be evaluated outside of the 1099 W-2 type relationships with a single company. Because think about it, you're only monetizing your expertise on a contract-by-contract basis, but company by company in a in a in a in an annual report or a bonus or you know, however you're being evaluated. This allows you to truly assetize your expertise and be part of an open market where you can monetize it the way you see fit.

mykel (11:23.187)
Right.

Dan Pratl (11:40.824)
cart as an API layer or simply just use it as proof of competence for your next job. It's the next era of proof in a superabundant information space that allows you to own your reputation and expertise and monetize it the way you see fit.

mykel (11:55.603)
Yeah, that's so interesting 'cause not sure if you have watched Black Mirror. It's a T V series and one of the episodes I can't recall exactly which season is, there is one episode that talks about this type of verification layers. It's basically each human being has a way to verify themselves and for human beings to actually rate other human beings based on it on different

Dan Pratl (12:03.01)
Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Dan Pratl (12:13.646)
Mm-hmm.

mykel (12:25.567)
categories and what it tells me is that based on the work that you're doing at Quadron and the way that we may be heading into the future, it's verification will continue to be really what is gonna turn knowledge into trust because trust it will be

the most important thing that we all gonna have, right? It's what are we gonna be trusting? And this type of verification layer should help us to really turn that knowledge that we have into something that can be trusted in a way.

Dan Pratl (12:47.746)
Mm-hmm.

Dan Pratl (12:59.298)
Yes. Yeah. It's to put it more simply, markets do a great job of price discovery, allowing people to optimize for their sown self-interest. That's just capitalism. We don't really do a good job of that with expertise because it's so it's previously ineffable. Now we can encode it and structure it, analyze it. it allows verification to be a byproduct of human ambition. I wish I could tattoo that on myself, because that's the next era. People optimizing for their own self-interest, verification just falls out the bottom.

Trust just falls at the bottom. I think in the Black Mirror episode, if we're thinking of the same ones, that seems scary. But think about a world where this type of verification is top down. It feels one of two things. It's surveillance, or I'm training my replacement, my, my, my intel, my intelligent, artificially intelligent replacement. What we're saying is, no, no, no. Let's take a bottoms-up approach. Let's allow individuals to own and the monetization mechanisms for their own expertise, and then allow individuals.

to do the best for them. We're just talking about another market with different tools this time.

mykel (14:04.678)
Yeah, 'cause you know, it's and it's not something new. Knowing and proving what you know has always been two different things, right? And we're seeing it today. Some people s put a lot in their resumes, for example, that how do you prove that, right? When you're hiring, for example. So so when I look at this and when I hear what you're saying, it's yes, w if you can match your capability to something that you can

Dan Pratl (14:21.592)
Mm-hmm.

mykel (14:32.926)
trust and that you can prove that's really it's gonna bridge the gap into into both of them. So very interesting that part and how you can, you know, turn verification into actual knowledge that you can trust. I think there is a gap that everywhere will probably need some sort of verification layer for sure.

Dan Pratl (14:50.38)
Mm-hmm.

Dan Pratl (14:59.906)
Yeah, absolutely. It's it's I mean, if I were going to be mercenary about it, I would say quadrons attacks on expertise everywhere in the future. that's how we would grow into a very valuable company. But human beings deserve to have the ability to own their credibility and own the monetization of their expertise, building that credibility. any other way would be creating centralized

mykel (15:21.734)
Mm-hmm.

Dan Pratl (15:27.192)
you know, oligopolies, monarchies, whatever you want to call them, creating monopoly where individuals would are simply the better avenue for making a more efficient system. So if you want to talk about fairness or economic vitality, vibrancy and and reinforcing, the decentralized letting people do what's best for them approach has always proven to be most successful.

mykel (15:50.962)
Yeah, now let's let's go straight to into why AI is making all of this even more urgent, right? why do you think AI is making verification more important, not less?

Dan Pratl (16:08.662)
Yeah. So it really goes back to seventeen ninety. You're about to it's a history lesson time, Michael. but no, the yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It it it it goes back to the intellectual property system that was written into our constitution here in the United States by James Madison. put yourself in the shoes of the founders. You've had a largely agrarian society that was at the cusp of the industrial revolution.

mykel (16:13.842)
You're taking back a history lesson right now.

Dan Pratl (16:36.212)
And so they created a system that did two things. It protected outcomes, the supposition being that people put a lot of effort into creating something, think, you know, steam engines and cotton gins. And then you needed somebody to create the documentation around that such that there's an enforcement monopoly on enforcement, which is what the intellectual property system is. So what that did was it said, you have ideas in the form of things, and now we need to protect them to allow you.

Get the value that you deserve. That was getting farmers off the off the farms into like thinking about things that to make them money and to allow white-collar workers like lawyers to make a bunch of money. Fast forward 236 years now, we have a system where the people making money on the intellectual property system are largely attorneys, right? And it's a it's a function of large companies, it's an enforcement action, you don't actually monetize patents, etc. And now getting to your question, AI totally

destroys these systems. Those systems largely already didn't work since the 80s, because again, capture by by large organizations. People aren't really filing patents these days. And the courts were where patent issues were adjudicated. And the patent office would just throw things to the courts and that's how things were settled, hence making attorneys more money. That system doesn't work today because of the amount of high quality stuff coming out. You can't protect everything that way because we can't

Actually disambiguate value that way anymore. Again, because of the high quality, high quality signal and noise. There has to be a new system that allows for two things: for high-quality stuff to be protected and shared without defeating the eventual path to patentization, while also allowing that to be monetized prior. And that's where secrets and monetization of trade secrets comes in. So AI destroys the old system.

And doesn't give us an alternative resolution or solution because copyright trademark and patent are the only three levers that we have outside of the fourth, which is this kind of cottage industry eyable contract for consideration with you to do something of business purpose to make money, and that's what a trade secret is. You can't do those at scale. So what Quadrant's doing is saying, Patent's totally rock. You're absolutely right. Let's support and reinforce that system by giving you.

Dan Pratl (18:58.196)
all of the auditable record of processes by which you developed and let's allow you to monetize in the AI era in a new and different way, utilizing secrets without before and prior to the IP system to that we have today. So it's supporting an old system and building a new one.

mykel (19:12.156)
Hmm. Hmm. It gets I keep hearing what you're saying right now and it's you know, it's as we make more as as this becomes more important, right? Especially in times with AI, because AI it's can really imitate right the appearance of expertise in a way as everybody continues to use it. And if really this verification layer and this type of proof

really become the scarce resource that we think it will be in the future. Doesn't that doesn't just become kind of a problem if that advantage, right, it's only on those that owns the proof system in a way? Do you hear me now? Better?

Dan Pratl (20:04.118)
It it it it cut out a little bit. I didn't get that question. I'm sorry, man.

mykel (20:07.184)
I okay, so no not a problem. I think it's it's reverse side on the internet. Do you hear me now?

Dan Pratl (20:14.176)
Yeah, you're fine now.

mykel (20:15.972)
Okay, so let me know every time that happens and don't worry, we cut it from from the editing. Right. So my question is if this type of proof then really becomes that type of scarce resource that it will, you know, make it or break it in the future. Doesn't that just advantage of whoever owns that that proof, that verification system, becomes what make you successful or not in the future? Meaning

Dan Pratl (20:20.738)
Yeah. Yeah.

mykel (20:44.738)
if you have the access to a t this type of proof of verification system, you're gonna have a leg up in in in in instead of those that don't may not have that access.

Dan Pratl (20:56.492)
Yeah, I I I agree with that. I actually very much agree with that. And that benefits me because it's like you should be using a system to tell your story and and and create the verification and have that auditable record. What's funny is that in large institutions, auditability is already com critical from a clump compliance perspective. So the organizations that we work for already do this and they take away the need and obligation of individuals to do this. Like you go to your job, you work, you don't think about

Auditability and compliance typically, unless you're in that that function. In the future, if you want to be an entrepreneur and you're eventually want to utilize patents offensively or defensively, you're going to need to have the proof, the record, the verified auditability of what you've done to do anything. If you because again, I don't, I think we'll see a lot of large companies be single people. I think that's a big thing right now, like a billion-dollar company with one person.

mykel (21:25.637)
Mm-hmm.

Dan Pratl (21:52.355)
I don't think that's gonna be the norm. People are still gonna work with other people. So as you move from one person to two to four to eight, et cetera, you want your record of what you did. I'm the founder of Quadrant, you're the founder of XYZ Company. We eventually wanna work together. Who did what? Right? From a partnership perspective, that's critical, et cetera. So it's absolutely vital that we start thinking about protecting value in a new and different way.

mykel (22:10.492)
Mm.

Dan Pratl (22:19.842)
Be it an individual, be it a small company, be it a larger organization, because intellectual property is going to change. We need to protect it as it operates today, patents, copyright, trademark, while also protecting it for what other activities we want to do as we want to monetize our secrets, create new partnerships, create new arrangements. Now pause there and say: this conversation is what open source software or software generally should have had in the 90s and never did. Because

Verification has always been critical to the development of the modern digital infrastructure. But they said they hit the easy button and said, now we're free licenses, you know, like like and that's and that was fine. But what we have today is a infrastructure system built on obligation or fascination, and that's not durable, right? We need to build a new intellectual property system for the AI era that's a little bit more vibrant and again, iteratively reinforcing, recursively.

mykel (22:49.799)
Right.

mykel (22:57.66)
Yeah.

Dan Pratl (23:15.788)
you know, whatever str the building strength that we didn't do 30 years ago, that is absolutely critical and even more so today.

mykel (23:24.934)
Yeah, I I I have to agree with that. I think what we're seeing today and this challenge that you're trying to tackle is not something new. It has it's probably something that we should have worked on for decades now. But now with AI exacerbating a lot of what we need to work on, it's making it more urgent in a way. but it's really I totally agree with you. It it's it's really nothing nothing new that we shouldn't have work on. And and you know, Dan, I know that you

Dan Pratl (23:44.771)
Yes.

mykel (23:54.994)
that you also agree with this, based on what we have discussed previously. But let's talk a little bit about human judgment, because I know that you think that human judgment it will be the scale cassus of the resource in the future, especially with AI. Curious to hear your thoughts on that.

Dan Pratl (24:14.594)
Yeah. So human judgment isn't a monolith. It's not a thing that I point to. It's I wish I had something to hold and say, look at my judgment. It's it's not an asset like a rare painting or a wine or a classic car. It's something that's made to manifest over the course of time. Call it vibes, call it signals. It's something that compounds and compil compiles and compounds over the course of time. And the idea with expertise is that it needs to become

robust as a data set, an intelligence layer about you. Now, the way what I compare this to is the you would say the analytics revolution in sports, right? Let's go back to the 1960s and 1970s, basketball, football, baseball, at least here in the United States, it's RBIs, home runs, rebounds, assists, sacks, and then I'm trying to think of like something else per score, like yards per carry, something like that. Very rudimentary.

Right. And these were how individuals in those games were evaluated. Now, fast forward forty, fifty years, everything is measured. You know, the the length of foot to knee of a quarterback and like likelihood of being sacked is something that is now looked at when an individual's going from college to pro. None of these things critically are outcome determinative, meaning that they are going to say that Tom Brady's having this length needle length of your that doesn't say that that the Patriots are

The Bucks are gonna win that game, but it's something to consider, right? That is something that we we can start doing in the professional context. Create an intelligence layer about you that supports what your expertise looks like, and then tell a deep story that's easy to understand and easy to unpack to say Michael's likely a very interesting candidate here based on XYZ, but is he going to

mykel (25:54.31)
Mm.

Dan Pratl (26:09.474)
Get us a $10 billion in revenue next year? We can't say that. We can say that he is very interesting candidate based on information that we can prove and verify. It's the the analytical revolution of the modern professional world, but that requires human beings providing their information and opting in rather than it being an obligation that companies create for their employees, which is they don't want to do for reasons mentioned.

mykel (26:36.338)
Yeah, 'cause 'cause one thing it's our human judgment, right? And and another thing it's really reputation. Reputation you have to build, you have to prove it, and you have to protect it. It's kind of the differentiation between between both of them. And I like when you're saying that human judgment it's become an asset class in a way, right? because that's at the end of the day what we're trying to work towards on it.

Dan Pratl (26:42.902)
Yeah, mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. Right.

Dan Pratl (26:58.691)
Mm-hmm.

Dan Pratl (27:05.57)
Yeah. Yeah. It for society to operate effectively, people need to be able to be rewarded in a in a in a dynamic manner based on what they've actually done.

mykel (27:19.836)
Yeah, and and you know, when we talk about judgment, whose judgment gets verified first in a way? How do you see this part and and and and doesn't a credibility system risk hard coding the advantages of people who already look credible maybe in paper?

Dan Pratl (27:40.323)
Yeah, that's a very, very good question. So the Nobel laureate on Quadrant is going to have a leg up on a twenty two year old that just graduated, and that's the way it should be, arguably, right? That's the way it it it it should be. But right now, our current systems, think LinkedIn, allow that individual to be the only one that gets rewarded, right? so it's not either or, it's a yes and that we're trying to build. Because right now, the people that have, you know.

Gone to the best schools, get the best jobs, get the credentials. They get the microphone. And they're the only one that gets the microphone. And if you look at the next generation's solutions, they're just replaying LinkedIn, but with agents this time, right? like monetize your expertise with agents this time. It's the same fundamental problem because that 22-year-old shouldn't not have an avenue to recognition, legitimacy, and credibility.

mykel (28:23.416)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Dan Pratl (28:36.032)
they should be able to prove it and they should have an avenue to do so. And that's what we're trying to provide is allow them, if somebody should be a Nobel laureate today, let's find them. Let's give them the pathway to get there rather than it sitting on the other side of a 15 or 20 year career, which is, you know, the current situation that we're in and the the social proof that's required to get you there.

mykel (28:59.898)
I see. I see. Yeah. That that that makes total total sense. You have a point. I give it to you. And you have a point for sure. I totally understand how that can be a more realistic way of us moving forward, right? And base based on that. But but as we leverage AI more and more then how

Dan Pratl (29:06.764)
Yeah, yeah.

mykel (29:24.7)
How do you think organizations are gonna be able to judge real human contribution, right? In in really an AI assisted world where everything is assisted one way or the other by AI?

Dan Pratl (29:43.523)
Yeah, I think that AI is going to be just another tool in organizations. organizations need to, in my personal opinion, think about institutional AI as a very different modal or experience or just feel than what AI is being conceived of today. So you go to large organizations today, they have the AI remit typically under a CIO or maybe IT or a VP of innovation.

And that looks like a chatbot that uses a foundational model behind some type of wall to make keep it secure their information, or maybe they're utilizing a series of these. And they're very much solar solo player experiences, right? Everyone going and doing their own thing using this super intelligence. And what that does is it forces everyone off into different directions at high rates of speed, right? There's no finishing layer, there's no ensemble approach.

That says your information's done, it's centralized, and it creates the company brain, so to speak, as we call it. And if you look at the current solutions today, beyond just chat functionality, it's forcing people to interact and centralize their information, very similar to with any other top-down compliance solution, right? And again, people don't like being surveilled and people don't like feeling like they're training their replacement. So there is this kind of blocker.

To companies getting the robust and dynamic information they need to do the things that keep them, you know, supple, robust, viable in the modern age. Companies need to think about institutional AI differently. Institutional AI is a new systems architecture that rewards and celebrates individuals for their progress, for their activity. So let's take a step back. I just described to you GitHub in 2005 when open source development was becoming a thing.

People want to do this open source development because the best ideas from the brightest minds are in marketplaces of ideas that leverage the internet, blah, blah, blah. Organizations say, no, that code is mine, right? And what ended up winning and what ended up happening is that people won out, right? People's desire of to for code to be open and free won out. And that's why you see open source as the common development method of the world today, you know? And that is where expertise is going to go. Expertise can be encoded.

Dan Pratl (32:03.914)
Expertise can be shared. Individuals don't want to be enslaved to a single employer for their entire career, which means that we're going to have to version expertise. We're going to have to decouple it and make it modular from the artifacts that are generated with it. And companies need to start thinking about expertise as a critical resource that they have access to for a period of time, but they don't own the person with that expertise. They own the outcome that that individual created for that organization in that point in time.

mykel (32:33.454)
And and how would you how would you approach someone that is also concerned that this verification or continuous verification it's not turning into an ongoing surveillance in a way, right? A kind of a permanent record of following every worker around in a way.

Dan Pratl (32:55.234)
Yeah, you don't have to do everything. You can just connect it to Slack, connect it to GPT, connect it to Claude, connect it to your email, and say, I only really want you to focus on, let's say you're a nutritionist or a dietitian, on the engagement patterns with me and somebody that has Crohn's disease, right? And you really want to tell a durable story about how you are successful at reading panels for somebody with Crohn's, right? That

Is surveillance with an intrins that you've you've created with a particular end in mind, right? This is not you know, a god like 1984 that's watching everything. You control the story you want to tell. If you don't want to tell a story, quadrant isn't for you. If you want to tell a story about why you are the best in the world at helping somebody with Crohn's disease overcome it, we can help you get there and we can tell a better story than anybody else because of the philosophy we have on you at the center of the narratives that you create.

If you want to tell every story and totally surveil yourself, you have the control to do so. Nobody else is forcing it upon you.

mykel (34:02.354)
So it's still an option and potentially we may have a workforce that it's kind of divided maybe in two categories, one that is verified and another one that is not.

Dan Pratl (34:15.212)
Yeah, absolutely. And that's just Reddit, if you think about it, right? Reddit is a network of communities that lives on a platform that people opt into different communities at different points in time. what's funny is taking a step back, I've just described analogs for every one of these. All of these tools and functionality already exist in the world today, but they're built on a revenue or a value creation structure that centralizes the value into companies that you have to go to to get access to these tools.

mykel (34:21.83)
Mm-hmm.

Dan Pratl (34:43.64)
Quadrant says, let's decentralize it. Let's make you the true fulcrum around value creation and allow you to self-select into the community. So a true network of communities that's totally decentralized. If you want to participate, sure. If you don't want to participate, that's fine too. But the individuals that do participate have the critical resource that everyone's going to need, which is verified proof of progress that is actually something that follows you around.

That's decoupled from a platform that's trying to sell you something or trying to keep you on there for your keep your eyeball so that the revenue dollars keep coming in in that.

mykel (35:22.654)
So that would potentially mean the death of the resume as we know it, right? If we get into exactly exactly officially. 'cause it's I also think it's just a waste of time. It's you know and hiring today is still so reliable on resume, I I don't understand it. It's just a waste of time for everyone, and then you have AI.

Dan Pratl (35:27.63)
Resume's already dead. Yeah, the resume's the resume's already dead. We just don't know it yet, you know? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

mykel (35:52.178)
judging AI ATS system, judging this AI generated resume where there is no proof of no verification, no one knows what they're verifying there. Yeah. It's broken. Yeah.

Dan Pratl (35:58.114)
Yeah. And

Dan Pratl (36:03.722)
It's it's it's it's a dance that we all continue to Yeah, it's a dance we all continue to participate in because that's the way things have been done. I mean, GitHub does have the star system and even that even for technical individuals, it's still predicated on social proof, right? We have to do better. And the way to do better is to affix a dollar sign to it. Allow people to monetize it because that's where, you know, markets are how we organize ourselves most efficiently.

mykel (36:19.986)
Right. Yeah.

mykel (36:33.18)
Yeah, that makes total sense. And it's a perfect segue for our next next segment, where I want to talk to you and a and a little bit more about IP and ownership, right? And and I know that you have experience with that, but how do you think traditional IP systems are really failing in the AI era?

Dan Pratl (36:58.424)
Yeah, they re IP is an archaeological exercise. It's retrospective, it looks at outcomes, and it looks at outcomes as the only valuable thing. when in an era, again, with superabundant intelligence, it's about who is credible, verifiable, and what they can do next. So you have a system that presumes that all of the cognitive work and and and effort went into creating a thing, and now you've got a

Protect that thing for a period of time, right? That doesn't really work when the most important thing is finding highly competent, highly verifiable, like-minded people and doing something fast enough that no people can compete with you because of the speed and the confidence and the trust you have that you're doing the right things with the right people at the right time. Intellectual property as it was composed does not move at this speed. Intellectual property as it's composed.

was built for a different era with a different intent. There has to be something new that allows people to do the thing that machines can do, which is be creative, imaginative in a situation and environment where trust is abundant.

mykel (38:09.788)
Got it. And I know that you also talk a lot about secrets isolation and gradual disclosure then to in to as a way to control value. How does that work?

Dan Pratl (38:22.424)
Yeah, gradual disclosure, it's hopefully pretty obvious. You don't tell everything, everyone everything all at once, right? that that is orthogonal to the notion of yeah, of a secret. The idea is is that so think this is how the think of it the system in this way. Rather than you and me going to LinkedIn and saying nice things about ourselves in the vocabulary that we understand it, the system, because it's watching what we do and how we think and how we operate, is calcifying our expertise.

mykel (38:30.172)
We hope so. Yeah.

Dan Pratl (38:52.054)
And then exposing it to other people in a vocabulary that we don't control. Michael and Dan have done these things. It tells a story. And then it overlaps us and says, you guys should connect and meet because you're working on these things. Now, working on these things, that's where the secret comes in, right? Everything to this point in time has been totally secure. It's yours, it's your baby. You opt in to finding collaborators for various, you can define and refine your reasons for connecting. Then it's

You guys are working on this. Great. I'd love to connect. You're working on this and you've done these things that you've chosen to share with people like one another. Great. I'd like to learn a little more. Now you have the ability to monet, start monetizing. Okay, if you want to learn more, Michael, it's gonna be, you know, pay up. And we use a digital token for that. and okay, so let's say that we have now decided to enter a relationship and a secret has been shared.

Well then that's a secret for a particular business purpose. And now there's a structured trade secret with full auditability of where it came from, who's done what with it, and what you get to do with it. And this is, I think, super interesting and very cool. Trade secrets today, it's kind of one-to-one. You know, you have a trade secret, the Coca-Cola recipe, you sell it to somebody else, and they're gonna use that recipe to pretty much do the same damn thing every every single time. What if you could atomize that Coca-Cola recipe into its chemical compounds and then create

Highly targeted vertical-specific trade secrets. So one thing, multiple trade secrets for different industry purposes. That's the future I really see us getting to. And that is where trade secrets that are structured and created for the AI era guess us, is a more robust intellectual property environment where trust is abundant and ideas can flow freely and compensations built in.

mykel (40:47.708)
Yeah, and I really I really like the the Gregor disclosure part on the way to control value as really also protecting creators, right? This is a way to also protect creators in a in a more robust and and and current way of doing things. Yeah, agree.

Dan Pratl (40:58.061)
Yeah.

Dan Pratl (41:06.754)
Yeah, it's it's it's the it is an inevitable consequence of again reinforcing and buttressing the systems for intellectual property that exist today while building something new. You have to develop a relationship and then develop a commercial relationship on top of that personal relationship.

mykel (41:26.684)
Yep, yep, that makes total sense. Total sense. And and I would like to talk next then about what are the new architectures that there needs to be in place for trust, right? What we must build next and and and why do we think maybe a single platform shouldn't be able to own all that? why we need to have multiple

providers and platforms owning all this instead of only one from your point of view.

Dan Pratl (42:02.274)
Yeah. Because going back to the Reddit analog, Reddit is very good at allowing people to self-organize around communities while using common infrastructure tools to create it there, right? Now, when it comes to monetization and recognition of value from a pecuniary compensation remunerative perspective, every one of those that's a that's a new and vitally different and critically important layer, which is

How do I pay my mortgage? Something like that, right? That's something that Reddit doesn't deal with, but it gives us the pattern. You and I work in very different industries. You know, I and my girlfriend and my friends work in very different industries. Those industries articulate, acknowledge, refine, and then reward value in very, very different ways. It's very difficult for a single company to do

mykel (42:30.429)
Mm-hmm.

Dan Pratl (42:55.124)
All of that assignation of value, management of value, and reward of value. What Quadrum wants to do is that build the substrate, right? Here is the infrastructure for these vertical specific solutions focused on recognizing expertise and monetizing and evaluating. It's a common infrastructure for different vertical-specific solutions. We don't want to become expert in pharmaceutical training and management of that, right? Allow people.

mykel (43:17.224)
Hm, right, right.

Dan Pratl (43:22.168)
To utilize the infrastructure that recognizes expertise as an asset class, a common token. And this is the Web3, this is the Web3 story, right? Like, like use our token to do this, but it's actually doing something for purpose, right? Coming back to the crypto narrative, they got 75% of the way there, right? The token was for something, utilize a token, and then it devolved into base speculation. What we're saying is utilize the token to do the creation, recognition, and then reward.

of value for vertical specific activities. We don't care what they are. All we care is that you are allowing individuals to tell their own story for monetizing their expertise and being rewarded for it.

mykel (44:03.804)
Yeah, I think by now we have a pretty pretty good understanding and idea what you're trying to build with Quadron. So I would like to frame this neck this question in in a slightly different way. So yeah, I think we understand what you're trying to build, but what is the future that you're trying to prevent?

Dan Pratl (44:24.374)
Yeah. The future that I'm trying to prevent is a future that never comes. I'm trying to enable a future where on the other side of a 30-year career, you have a passive, I'm trying to create a future where a passive annuity structure or universal basic income is actually useful and productive, right? Right now, a UBI or a passive annuity type system doesn't isn't based on what you've done.

the work that you've you've done and what you've put in. It's largely like, did you pay in? Did you are you employed? Then you get Social Security. Like, like that is not I mean, there's arguments to be made that that's going to run out of money and we need Yeah, exactly. If we we need to build a system that allows you to convert those tokens that have been piling up in the background, because the point is not speculation, to turn that into a stable coin or turn that into fiat if you'd like. We build a programmable token that rewards you

mykel (44:56.37)
Yeah. Yeah. Pretty much. Yeah.

Dan Pratl (45:18.37)
For thinking about expertise as a thing that is rewarding to you and others, share it with a a very charitable, a very charitable approach to the marketplace of ideas that compensates you. And then at the end of your career, you can actually be compensated for the work that you've actually done. That is the future that I want to see. Bottoms up individuals at the heart of it, allowing the best individuals that can prove it to be rewarded in the way that they should.

That stands in stark opposition to a future where one of two things: total centralized monopoly of foundational tools and technologies, where value's accruing in the way that it always has to just a couple, or alternatively, a system where expertise is not recognized as the critical resource and individuals simply continue to work and live in an environment that where they feel insecure, be it because of layoffs or because of replacement by a superintelligence.

mykel (46:15.428)
And and in part of that, that's where you're saying that trust needs to be portable in a way.

Dan Pratl (46:21.004)
Yes, exactly. For for expertise to work as a market, the portability, if you leave Upwork Fiverr or LinkedIn, you don't exist anymore in those systems. It has to be portable to create expertise as a true asset class. Again, we're just talking about a market like any other.

mykel (46:29.756)
Yeah. Yeah.

mykel (46:37.02)
Yeah, yeah, exactly. I see that happening too and and why that will continue to be super important whatever we're landing into this next phase of our future. then I would like to get to our next section and I think this is our final segment, which is just one question, but to get your thoughts directed to multiple groups. And one of them, what would be your piece of advice for

Dan Pratl (46:57.251)
Mm-hmm.

mykel (47:06.404)
individuals trying to make sense of this new feature on and how do they kinda start proving and protecting their expertise now.

Dan Pratl (47:15.564)
Yeah. getting started now, first off, the people that are going to be successful in the future are the people that have varied experiences. So I think the death of a traditional 30-year career is foreseeable, likely here, and probably beneficial to us long term. Machines have proven that they are very good at everything, but having imagination, cre even creativity, they can do pretty well. But imagination, jumping from one silo to the next. the the the the things that we learn.

from varied experiences in life. That's the opportunity for people. And if individuals want to start protecting their their their expertise today, you need a record, right? You can build that record in the old fashioned way. That's a pain in the butt. And again, as we discussed, resumes are are probably out the door here soon. You need to have your credit, your, your, your information sitting in a broader context.

Not just you, but others. You need to be part of a community because we already are. A system like Quadron really helps you there. I'm not telling you to come to our website, sign up, and have and and and but I I mean you need to start thinking about your expertise as an encodable asset that you are at the driver's seat of. It's not something that is ineffable and fuzzy and lives in the ether. It's something that you manage and control. Arguably it's your most valuable resource, start acting like it.

mykel (48:22.686)
Yeah.

mykel (48:41.084)
Yeah, that's a great advice that you know for this new generation that is getting started out, those mid career people that are going through their career right now, it's still at the end of the day, it's our expertise, the skills that we that we carry, the one that will continue to be important in the future. So so like that advice. And and what would you like to see on the policy maker side? Is there anything or any initiatives that

governments maybe should be thinking about, trying to better understand the work that you're doing at Quadrant and others that are doing similar work on with verification.

Dan Pratl (49:20.886)
Yeah, there's there's there's two things. One, the current iteration of prediction markets. I mentioned them and I didn't go into it because it's a whole other can of worms that I I didn't want to get into. The current iteration of prediction markets, this V one, is not the final form of identifying resolvable claims. you know, we have a very different opinion. Prediction markets aren't gonna be a place that you go that you bet on things with other people that you don't know and have a

lose money efficient because of asymmetric information, which is what prediction markets are today. We think that prediction markets are invertible. They come to you and they the asymmetry is the point. You and other experts utilize these credibility markets to figure out who's right and who's not in a structured and collaborative way to generate novelty as we described. So when it comes to the CFT CT and the re CFTC and the rest of them, we need to think about prediction markets as a mechanism

With speculation being the language of conviction. It's gonna be another tool set in the professional toolkit that allows you to prove what you know. And that day is coming quite soon. That's one of them on the regulatory side. The second is inevitable litigation around the intellectual property, like expertise as a as an asset and and the intellectual property of either an individual, an employee, or the employer.

It's inevitable there's gonna be litigation that says that the expertise that you brought to this company, it's encodable now, it's an asset unto itself. Well, that's mine because I'm the employer that employed you. That is not the case because then it inevitably makes an employee when they leave somewhat of a slave to the employer. No, no, they can't use their expertise anymore to for another company. This is just a permutation of litigation that's already been settled. It's just that new technology is creating an asset.

mykel (51:05.096)
Hm.

Dan Pratl (51:12.418)
That makes it look like intellectual property as we understand it. We need a new conception of intellectual property and a new understanding of what it means to version expertise and allow employees to own the the s the route, if you will, and allow a an employer to get ver to get access to versions of it that was created and generated while they were employed by an employer. Right. So there's the new understanding that that needs to be had. It's inevitably gonna be fought out in the fought in the courts, but

mykel (51:14.226)
Yeah, right.

Dan Pratl (51:42.208)
It's coming and it's it's pretty cognizable at this point.

mykel (51:46.664)
Got it. And and what's the one human thing that you think then no verification system should be ever allowed to score?

Dan Pratl (51:56.558)
Did we say that again? I didn't I didn't y y you cut out again, my apologies.

mykel (51:58.396)
Yeah. What's the one human thing that no verification system should ever be allowed to score?

Dan Pratl (52:07.768)
Huh. That's a really good question. What's one thing verification should never be allowed to score? I think it's probably the consequences or personal impact that's created, right? So like think about it in sports, right? The Steph Curry in the three-point line. Did that make the game better or worse? Right? These these like like that's that's a that's a judgment call that people can have very different opinions about. There's no conclusion that it made the game better or worse.

Same thing in the professional, like does quantifying oneself from an expertise perspective, does that make you more or less of a person, or more or less of a valuable employee? A system's not gonna say that. I think that's gonna be in the eye of the employer at that particular moment in in time, right? so we shouldn't say what that means is that on the system, we shouldn't say that Dan is not valuable. What it means is that Dan's not a fit for this role based on as you described, if that makes any sense.

mykel (53:05.82)
Got it. Yep. Thanks for that. And and last but not least, what would be your piece of advice for a younger version of yourself seeing him today, getting into this new feature? What would you tell that kid?

Dan Pratl (53:19.158)
Yeah. it's gonna be all right first and foremost. Because I came out during the Great Yeah, we came out well, I came out during the Great Recession and like the only jobs were were going to the sands sands of Iraq or like, you know, working for a rental car company. and then secondly, more varied experiences the better, right? The thing that human beings do very well is create narrative and stories. And if I could have had even more varied experiences.

mykel (53:24.358)
We hope so.

Dan Pratl (53:46.54)
I would be in a better situation to tell an even stronger story. 'Cause it turns out that that's prob that's what I'm pretty good at is weaving weaving, you know, disparate things together to make something coherent and interesting.

mykel (53:56.974)
Awesome, love it. Thank you very much, Dan. It has been a pleasure having this conversation with you today. And is there anything how can our audience reach out to you? anything that you can that you want to let our audience with?

Dan Pratl (54:12.546)
Yeah, so our website is quadrant.tech. We're currently we have an enterprise product. We're currently in beta with the consumer product that I've described here. Got a long wait list at this point. if you're interested, please go to quadrant.tech. If you want to reach out to me, my personal website is my last name, Praddle, E-R-A-T-L, Praddle.me. All of my socials are there. My email is there. I tend to respond fairly quickly unless I'm, you know, heads down on something that's that's, you know, critical to get out.

mykel (54:39.55)
Yeah, thank you. Perfect. Thank you very much, Dan. It has been a pleasure, as I said, having this conversation. Very interesting and cool stuff that you're working on. we'll keep in touch. Thank you, okay?

Dan Pratl (54:53.506)
Thank you. Appreciate you, Ta. Have a good one.

mykel (54:55.814)
You as well. Bye everyone.