Primd Introduction

Welcome to
Primd

Who are we?

Primd is a cooperative startup which aims to revolutionize hiring, learning, and work itself through a skills-first approach. While many organizations are now focused on a "skills-first" transformation, we believe Primd is uniquely positioned to succeed where others cannot. Although we love our technology, the essential difference is not our infrastructure or code, but the organizational structure of Primd itself.

Founded by a group of laid off workforce and education workers from a well-known non-profit.
Created as a worker-owned and worker-centered for-profit — guided by principles.
Dedicated to digital privacy, user's rights, and democratizing related systems and information.

Why skills-first doesn’t work as it exists:
- Institutional development treats skills-first as micro-credentialing
  - Many small degrees/certificates instead of one large one.
  - Creates dependence on credentialing bodies and establishes a life-long market.
  - Does not reflect Mostly seen as a way to generate revenue
- Workers often struggle to articulate their skills:
  - Creates multiple-points of anxiety:
    - What skills do I need to become or remain competitive?
    - How do I express them in a way that will be recognized?
    - How do I validate them to my existing or potential employers?
  - Creates dependence on established platforms and services:
    - No ownership or portability of skill information.
    - Designed to maximize employer value (often at workers expense).
      - Justify broader pay differentials
      - Pay-per skill / gig work for all
When we say “skills-first” we mean something different:
- Skills are not something you have/obtain but something you do/develop.
- Validation is based on broad social recognition, not authoritative testing.

Foundational Concerns

Primd's vision is closely associated with "mission-driven" non-profits and that's exactly where its earliest conception was born. While our experience working in that space tells us that non-profits can play an important role in shaping the research, policy and even technology around workforce and education, it has also revealed fundamental limitations.

What we want to keep

Empathetic and passionate workers.
Strong sense of social responsibility.
More transparency and public trust.
Collective "in it together" mindset.

What we want to avoid

Dependence on entrenched institutions.
Limitations on political expression.
The "road to hell" problem.

A Principled For-Profit

We believe it's possible avoid the pitfalls of large non-profits through what we call our "cooperative startup model." This structure allows us to separate our long-term financial sustainability from the excesses of the same broken system we're trying to fix, while simultaneously establishing guard-rails against the inequality and exploitation associated with traditional for-profit ventures. Accordingly, Primd works like no other company.

Work as much or as little as you like or are able — just coordinate.
Work on what interests you with flexible projects and teams.
Own your output with implicit, non-exclusive license to Primd.
Membership interest is built, not bought — no worker buy-in.
Profit sharing is based on contributed time, not equity.
Strategy and decisions through consensus, not executives.

Building Something Different

While "mission-driven" organizations can easily fall victim to their ends justifying their means, Primd's core principles leave less room for interpretation — something closer to a "bill of rights." Furthermore, these principles don't just shape our organization and work, they also shape the products and services we build. At the center of everything we build are three core concepts which extend our principles to our users.

Digital Rights and Privacy

Human-Structured Data

Distributed Trust

Digital Rights and Privacy (Your time is yours)

We consider users to own their own data. Full stop.

In the immediate term:
- We consider informed consent critical to success:
  - No unauthorized visibility into personal data
  - Implied authorization must give notice (e.g. by clicking X you share…)
  - Explicit authorization for detailed and select data sharing
- Personal data is never sold or used for unsolicited marketing
- We limit all third-party services (where feasible) to ensure data remains in-house
  - When third-party services are required, we send no more data than what is absolute required.
In the mid-term, we plan to ensure that:
- Users can delete their data simply and without hassle.
- User’s own data is accessible/exportable to them.
In the long-term:
- We intend to fully open-source Primd App, enabling individuals and organizations to self-host private instances for even greater privacy.

Human-Structured Data (Your time is value)

We value the implicit contribution that users make when they use and interact with our platform and we consider their data to be the backbone of Primd and what makes it truly valuable.

In the immediate term:
- Limit restrictions on what users can input or how they express themselves
  - No authoritative taxonomies or compelled selections
- Rely on distillation not conformance: Distillation is the concept of taking unstructured and non-normalized data and finding patterns/mapping it to a structured and normalized layer in order to be able to perform analysis. This is a difficult approach compared to how most applications and data systems work but is considered a necessary burden to build the kind of tools and analysis we want to provide.
  - There are 3 levels of distillation:
    - Level #1: Implicit – users enter the same value or AI generates the same descriptor for a keyed field, e.g. the same name for a skill.
    - Level #2: User-Based – users provide clarification through interactions in the system, e.g. adding alternative names, merging skills, etc
    - Level #3: System-Based – Primd creates requisite systems to constantly refine, categorize, and link data to canonical representations.
In the mid-term:
- Develop increasing number tools to provide personal insights and ways to express yourself
In the long-term:
- Users get paid for the work they do on the platform, including retro-pay.

Distributed Trust (We are Primd)

Work and education are inherently social activities which depend on the coordinated actions and recognition of all those who participate. There are no islands. Accordingly, Primd’s entire validation model is intensely decentralized and democratized to try and prevent existing inequality and biases from limiting opportunities.

What are we building?

We want to build novel tools to help solve what we believe are critical socio-economic problems. At present, that means connecting workers and learners to employers and training providers to maximize their common interests. To achieve this, we've grouped our ideas into two distinct solutions which share their common data, providing the two broader audiences with tools that are unique to their needs.

Primd App

A mobile application that provides workers and learners ways to explore, track, develop and share their skills, values, and experiences in order to improve visibility and opportunity.

Primd Hub

A set of tools which enables employers, program managers, and training providers to obtain insights and connect with workers and learners to increase their shared opportunities.

Primd App

Primd App creates a single point for workers, individually or working with their existing employers and training providers, to build a comprehensive skills portfolio. It uses real-world social connections and peer-to-peer recognition to validate skills and abilities through a concept of distributed trust.

Our prototypes are already live! Early users can:

Explore and claim
their skills
Add work or training
experience
Connect with others
they know
Recognize each-other's
skills and experience

As we build, we'll add more ways for workers to track, express, and advance their skills.

Discover gaps between skills on-hand and what you need to meet your goals.

Track organizational skills gain and loss over time and measure confidence.

Reduce time and costs with smart internal hiring and training plans.

Source new talent by leveraging your affiliates' professional networks.

Primd Hub

Primd Hub will allow organizations to connect their employees, students or other affiliates that are using the Primd App to access real-time analysis and get useful insights to improve their skills-oriented processes and programs. Development is starting early 2026.

Progressive, per-member
pricing.
À la carte add-ons
and features.
Unlimited reporters
and admins.
Role-based configurable
permissions.

Welcome to Primd

Who are we?

Foundational Concerns

Foundational Concerns

What we want to keep

What we want to avoid

A Principled For-Profit

A Principled For-Profit

Building Something Different

Building Something Different

What are we building?

Primd App

Primd Hub

Primd App

Primd Hub

Welcome to
Primd