Time Republik

= TimeRepublik is a global timebanking platform

URL =

Interview

Via Liminal News:

* Who are you? What is TimeRepublik? What’s your background?

I am Gabriele Donati, co-founder of TimeRepublik: a global time-banking platform. For those who are not familiar with this concept, it’s basically a community of people that share all sorts of services in exchange of time instead of money. One hour has the same value for anyone involved, no matter what your talent might be. Yes, 1 hour = 1 hour. No matter what you do, no matter who you are. I know, most people cringe when they hear that, but we truly believe in this formula and I will try to convince you why.

Together with Karim Varini, a childhood friend of mine we founded TimeRepublik in 2012. It started more like a mental exercise, in the early 2000, but little by little it morphed into a real thing, and became – to our surprise – the biggest time bank in the world. Neither of us had any tech background, nor past experiences in the field, so we had a lot of homework to do (luckily we both love to read). Karim and I are also coming from two totally different backgrounds: his is the financial world, and mine is music.

I am originally from Switzerland, but I’ve been living in NYC for over half of my life. Ever since I was a teenager I’ve always wanted to become a jazz musician, so I moved to NYC right after high school to pursue this dream, learning upright-bass while getting my BFA at the Jazz Program at The New School For Social Research.

Funny enough, now that I think about it, time has always been consciously at the center of my life, and through music (and especially as a bass player who’s role is the pace setter) I was able to look deep into the meaning of time. Year after year I became more and more aware of the importance of every beat, of every fraction of the second.

In jazz the beat is like the brick for an architect. You need to lay each down one at a time, with as much precision as you can manage, in order to build something as amazing as a cathedral. The same applies to life: where the beats or bricks are the seconds you live. Second after second what you are building is your future, and I don’t mean this figuratively—I am being quite literal." (http://liminal.news/2020/04/tools-for-now-timerepublik/?)