Welcome to the Mclowd Newsletter, our monthly communication to Investors, Marketplace participants and Partners.
Introduction
“Like every other economic revolution that preceded it, the Third Industrial Revolution is going to recast many of our most basic assumptions about the way the world works.”
Jeremy Rifkin, The Third Industrial Revolution: How Lateral Power is Transforming Energy, the Economy and the World
Asset migration into the Mclowd Community is now approaching A$1 million per day and importantly this rate of growth is being delivered without any change in the operational footprint of Mclowd Pty Ltd itself.
Everything at Mclowd is being delivered by the Crowd in the Cloud, and in a manner that would be very familiar to the contributors and editors of Wikipedia (and the publishers who were subsequently displaced).
Whereas incumbent business models are capital intensive, centralised and hierarchical, the Mclowd Community is growing laterally, as hundreds of Trustees and service providers link up in a seamless network designed to drive down the cost of asset management.
In this context Mclowd’s role is mainly curatorial – providing a governance environment that supports rapid growth while ensuring high quality outcomes for SMSF Trustees (and in due course other asset owners).
Whether it be energy (renewables), manufacturing (3D printing) or education (MOOCs), this sort of lateral scaling will be typical of the Third Industrial Revolution.
Accounting Platform Update
Version 2.6 is now live, including the following new functionality:
- Member Benefit Statements
- Support for loan facilities associated with direct property investment
- Incorporation of APIR codes
Version 3.0 is scheduled for 30 September and will include:
- Profit and loss allocation to Members at year end
- Statement of Taxable Income
- Depreciation accounting for direct property
While only a waypoint on the journey, version 3.0 will represent a watershed for the Platform, as it will mark the delivery of a free accounting package that supports the full life cycle of a self managed super fund.
As always detailed Release Notes are available on the website, and we have now added 10 new video tutorials to the Platform Help Centre, with more to come.
Trustee Users and practitioners can sign up for our regular Introductory Webinar, or view a recording of the August edition.
Channel Migration
From mid-October accounting and financial planning firms will be able to sign up as Mclowd Partners, and in doing so manage unlimited client accounts from a single login – with no software licence fees payable.
Advisory Board Member and former Head of SMSF Strategy at AMP, Regis Gapaillard is available to consult to Channel Partners looking to scale their practice using Mclowd, and he can be contacted at: regis@gapaillard.com
Mclowd Forum
The rate of asset migration has not surprisingly been reflected in the level of activity in the Forum. The Forum represents a window into the Community, and illustrates a growing level of engagement from everyone involved in Mclowd.
More importantly, many of the conversations are peer-to-peer, with individual Trustees providing support to other Users of the Platform.
Postscript
Over the last 6 years monetary authorities around the world have deployed vast amounts of balance sheet resources in order to stave off deflation in their economies.
For better or worse these efforts are going to be overwhelmed by the forces described in my introductory comments (and ironically the huge increase in debt levels which these policies have encouraged may well end up acting as rocket fuel, accelerating the speed of our collective journey towards zero marginal cost).
In a similar vein numerous software vendors have deployed large amounts of capital with little understanding of the speed and scale of price deflation being triggered by cloud computing and crowdsourcing.
As it did with Wikipedia and WordPress more than 10 years ago it is governance – and the scalability it brings – that will define long term success in relation to accounting software and the broader investment management industry, rather than size or incumbency.
Kind Regards
Ashley Porter
Managing Director
Mclowd Pty Ltd