In 2018, Forbes declared ‘Data is the new oil.’ Meanwhile the Cambridge Analytica scandal reminded us all that no one owned their data.
Taking a design-thinking approach, Akord was founded on a simple user need: privacy. End-to-end encryption was a clear solution, so our first iteration focused on encrypted file transfer. As WeTransfer became a household name, it remained inherently insecure for sending sensitive files.
Over the first year, we kept iterating until Akord encompassed a broad variety of SME needs for privacy-first file management and collaboration.
Early feedback confirmed our intuition that business would value secure collaboration and privacy more than individuals. The user experience grew around the idea of a data room where every action – file upload, folder rename, message – would be private and immutably recorded in an auditable ledger of events.
In 2021, as the product became more complex, we invested in customising Google's material design system with our own brand.
After pivoting our storage layer to Arweave, we had to rethink our GTM strategy.
The process involved in-depth research on existing users as well as a series of focus groups. I hired a full-time BDR and over 6 months I took more than 50 calls with organisations like the Paul Mellon Centre, Verizon, African World Heritage Fund, Finish Postal Museum, and the Goethe Institut.
I used the insights to develop our JTBD framework, which informed our sales and investor pitch, product roadmap, and marketing.
We quickly emerged as the main gateway to Arweave’s global data network.
The Akord platform focused on easy onboarding, users with any level of technical knowledge store data on Arweave. Along with a complete file management system, we built in essential collaboration, team and org features like access control, notifications, private messaging, and white labelling for enterprise customers.
The UX around publishing data kept users informed through the various stages.
Along with the API and SDK, the Akord web app was designed to be fully responsive.
The Akord brand won Gold at the 2022 European Design Awards.
I commissioned and collaborated with the agency responsible for working on the brand, contributing to the web design and writing most of the website copy.
Akord was consistently a leading publisher to a global data network valued at $3bn.
Akord was featured in Decrypt, ReadWrite, Blockchain News, Crypto News, and NFT News Pro. We worked with enterprise customers like Goethe Institut, Veritree, Quantum Temple, Dedoco, Superscript, and many projects tokenising art onchain
In 2024, Mysten Labs invested with a proposal to rebuild Akord on Walrus, their next-generation decentralized storage protocol—opening Akord to a larger ecosystem.
