OP here. Did not mean to imply that web5 sprung out of web3 in any sense. Really I just found web3 to be a useful reference point for explaining SSI. Lots of people understand how web3 works at this point, but there's way less mindshare around the idea of a digital wallet that actually holds credentials and not just private keys.
To that end, I'm generally happy to support the hype, and hope this stuff gets more attention from the web3 lot.
Definitely possible that Apple will win the identity wars. That said, I don't agree with the characterization of web3/web5 as "having to trust nobody". If anything, all the efforts around identity are meant to allow for bringing IRL notions of trust onto the internet. In other words, the whole pseudonymity thing is not a result of using blockchain, but just the fact that nobody's bothered to add identity verification to a lot of stuff happening in web3. That's changing though.
> We hope to ultimately build a Slack/Teams alternative designed for rich, asynchronous human interactions that encourage deep work.
All I can say is keep going. I've been feeling the absence of this for a while, and have taken to making occasional videos on Loom to supplement live meetings and Slack messages. But it's a disjointed experience, and Loom is not trying to be a collaboration tool at all. It would be great to have a solution that does the whole thing end-to-end, with a focus on being more async-friendly than Slack.
By the way, I downloaded the PingPong app, and it seems great. Are you selling subscriptions, or just putting the free version out there for now?
P.S. If you haven't read this article on Figma's growth strategy, I'd take a look. There are some parallels with what you're doing -- i.e. SaaS, collaboration-focused, and attempting to dislodge incumbents with a similar list of features, but less focus on collaboration pain points. https://kwokchain.com/2020/06/19/why-figma-wins/
Electric AI | New York City (NYC) | Software Engineer, Engineering Manager (Data + Full-stack), Product Director | Full-time (Onsite) Electric is the world's first all-in-one, real-time IT support solution for small and midsize offices. Through a chat interface, personalized service and flat-rate pricing we keep your email, computers, Wi-Fi and software running smoothly at a fraction of the cost while eliminating headaches normally experienced with traditional managed service providers.
Behind the scenes, we're building out a hybrid human/software platform to resolve and execute IT tasks with maximum efficiency and automation.
Electric AI is backed by Bessemer Venture Partners, Primary Ventures, and others. We're currently post- Series B, and hiring across the board for engineering roles. Our stack: React/Redux running microservices on AWS with Python/Serverless. Running Snowflake/Looker/dbt for data analytics & data science.