Cash rules everything around meThis is the 3rd essay in a 5-part series on funding models for the creator economyFunding the creator economyAvoiding the venture trapCash rules everything around meShared income and bespoke financeNFTs, $GME, and the crowdfunded Cambrian explosionMost of the time when I see a pre-revenue company trying to fundraise, my first question to them is why they aren't trying to get money from customers first. If you are developing life extension drugs or a social ...

Cash rules everything around meThis is the 3rd essay in a 5-part series on funding models for the creator economyFunding the creator economyAvoiding the venture trapCash rules everything around meShared income and bespoke financeNFTs, $GME, and the crowdfunded Cambrian explosionMost of the time when I see a pre-revenue company trying to fundraise, my first question to them is why they aren't trying to get money from customers first. If you are developing life extension drugs or a social ...

GPT-3 is a natural language processing neural network that is taking the internet by storm with examples of incredibly human-like outputs. Put simply, it uses a massive dataset of text to predict what words go well together. It's as if someone took the entire internet and figured out how to give it a voice. But you have to be careful with analogies like that. OpenAI's new creation is racing up the hype cycle faster than you can say "trough of disillusionment", and it's importan...

GPT-3 is a natural language processing neural network that is taking the internet by storm with examples of incredibly human-like outputs. Put simply, it uses a massive dataset of text to predict what words go well together. It's as if someone took the entire internet and figured out how to give it a voice. But you have to be careful with analogies like that. OpenAI's new creation is racing up the hype cycle faster than you can say "trough of disillusionment", and it's importan...

The great challenge of logistics has historically been the last-mile: in a fractal expansion of road networks, how do you traverse the last bit of distance to every home? It is an under-rated marvel of modern civilization that this challenge has been largely and quietly accomplished in developed countries like the United States (and is slowly but surely being solved even in remote corners of the world). My parents live on a ranch in Texas, a two-hour drive from the nearest metropolis and then...

The great challenge of logistics has historically been the last-mile: in a fractal expansion of road networks, how do you traverse the last bit of distance to every home? It is an under-rated marvel of modern civilization that this challenge has been largely and quietly accomplished in developed countries like the United States (and is slowly but surely being solved even in remote corners of the world). My parents live on a ranch in Texas, a two-hour drive from the nearest metropolis and then...

I signed up for David Perell’s Write of Passage class expecting two things: (1) some tips and tricks for online writing and (2) weekly homework assignments that would hold me accountable to start producing content. In short, I was looking for a traditional school experience. So far, that’s been about 10% of the value of the course. I was surprised to find that the other 90% hasn’t come directly from David—it has come from other members of the class. As we’ve engaged in small group video chats...

I signed up for David Perell’s Write of Passage class expecting two things: (1) some tips and tricks for online writing and (2) weekly homework assignments that would hold me accountable to start producing content. In short, I was looking for a traditional school experience. So far, that’s been about 10% of the value of the course. I was surprised to find that the other 90% hasn’t come directly from David—it has come from other members of the class. As we’ve engaged in small group video chats...

This is the 2nd essay in a 5-part series on funding models for the creator economyFunding the creator economyAvoiding the venture trapCash rules everything around meShared income and bespoke financeNFTs, $GME, and the crowdfunded Cambrian explosionVenture capital is the shiniest of the capitals. You, the founder, get a big check at an eye-popping valuation. TechCrunch writes an article saying you are the coolest kid on the block. Your mom is proud. And if the whole thing goes belly-up, you ju...

This is the 2nd essay in a 5-part series on funding models for the creator economyFunding the creator economyAvoiding the venture trapCash rules everything around meShared income and bespoke financeNFTs, $GME, and the crowdfunded Cambrian explosionVenture capital is the shiniest of the capitals. You, the founder, get a big check at an eye-popping valuation. TechCrunch writes an article saying you are the coolest kid on the block. Your mom is proud. And if the whole thing goes belly-up, you ju...

This is the 5th essay in a 5-part series on funding models for the creator economyFunding the creator economyAvoiding the venture trapCash rules everything around meShared income and bespoke financeNFTs, $GME, and the crowdfunded Cambrian explosionA return to weirdThe early 2000s were a heady time for people still hanging out on the internet. Sure, the dot com bubble had crashed, but that just meant the speculators and suits were gone and it was back to building. It seemed like anyone could b...

This is the 5th essay in a 5-part series on funding models for the creator economyFunding the creator economyAvoiding the venture trapCash rules everything around meShared income and bespoke financeNFTs, $GME, and the crowdfunded Cambrian explosionA return to weirdThe early 2000s were a heady time for people still hanging out on the internet. Sure, the dot com bubble had crashed, but that just meant the speculators and suits were gone and it was back to building. It seemed like anyone could b...

One of the favorite past times of tech twitter during the pandemic has been predicting the next Silicon Valley. Austin, with its natural beauty, weird-chill vibe, flagship university, killer BBQ, and long history of technology companies is an obvious choice. Francis Suarez, with the hustle of a direct-to-consumer CBD salesman and the political savvy of a future president, has been miraculously tweeting Miami into existence as a tech hub. And, of course, you can never count out San Francisco t...

One of the favorite past times of tech twitter during the pandemic has been predicting the next Silicon Valley. Austin, with its natural beauty, weird-chill vibe, flagship university, killer BBQ, and long history of technology companies is an obvious choice. Francis Suarez, with the hustle of a direct-to-consumer CBD salesman and the political savvy of a future president, has been miraculously tweeting Miami into existence as a tech hub. And, of course, you can never count out San Francisco t...

I’m reading Carlota Perez’s excellent book Technological Revolutions and Financial Capital after seeing it referenced in several essays by Venkatesh Rao and others. It’s a great read if you don’t take it too literally and just try to play the game of fitting patterns to her framework. She lays out a historical narrative from 1771 to present, walking through five “technological revolutions”. She then goes on to walk through a framework for mapping each of these revolutions (loosely) into a “te...

I’m reading Carlota Perez’s excellent book Technological Revolutions and Financial Capital after seeing it referenced in several essays by Venkatesh Rao and others. It’s a great read if you don’t take it too literally and just try to play the game of fitting patterns to her framework. She lays out a historical narrative from 1771 to present, walking through five “technological revolutions”. She then goes on to walk through a framework for mapping each of these revolutions (loosely) into a “te...

This is the 4th essay in a 5-part series on funding models for the creator economyFunding the creator economyAvoiding the venture trapCash rules everything around meShared income and bespoke financeNFTs, $GME, and the crowdfunded Cambrian explosionIn between debt and equity lies an idea that is quietly changing education. It's called an income sharing agreement or, for less of a mouthful, an ISA. Ironically, incoming sharing agreements spent their first 50-years of existence as an obscur...

This is the 4th essay in a 5-part series on funding models for the creator economyFunding the creator economyAvoiding the venture trapCash rules everything around meShared income and bespoke financeNFTs, $GME, and the crowdfunded Cambrian explosionIn between debt and equity lies an idea that is quietly changing education. It's called an income sharing agreement or, for less of a mouthful, an ISA. Ironically, incoming sharing agreements spent their first 50-years of existence as an obscur...

Kevin Kelly described one of the first paths to becoming an independent creator employed by the internet in his classic essay 1,000 True Fans:To be a successful creator you don’t need millions. You don’t need millions of dollars or millions of customers, millions of clients or millions of fans. To make a living as a craftsperson, photographer, musician, designer, author, animator, app maker, entrepreneur, or inventor you need only thousands of true fans.I believe Kelly's prediction of an...

Kevin Kelly described one of the first paths to becoming an independent creator employed by the internet in his classic essay 1,000 True Fans:To be a successful creator you don’t need millions. You don’t need millions of dollars or millions of customers, millions of clients or millions of fans. To make a living as a craftsperson, photographer, musician, designer, author, animator, app maker, entrepreneur, or inventor you need only thousands of true fans.I believe Kelly's prediction of an...

Last Wednesday at 4:00am, bleary-eyed and freshly caffeinated, I watched in awe as a dozen people, many who had never met before, descended on my property and worked together to build something that may be there for hundreds of years. We are building a new Creator Cabin and I've been getting a crash-course in construction. I'm learning a lot about the invisible physical infrastructure that surrounds us: electric lines, plumbing, septic systems. I'm also learning about the const...

Last Wednesday at 4:00am, bleary-eyed and freshly caffeinated, I watched in awe as a dozen people, many who had never met before, descended on my property and worked together to build something that may be there for hundreds of years. We are building a new Creator Cabin and I've been getting a crash-course in construction. I'm learning a lot about the invisible physical infrastructure that surrounds us: electric lines, plumbing, septic systems. I'm also learning about the const...

When VC thought-leaders opine about the future of work on Twitter, they mostly just mean that people will use video conferencing more than they used to. And this, of course, is a big change with lots of second-order effects. As people have been forced into a rapid transition to working from home, society is having to quickly answer lots of new questions: what does it mean for second-tier cities? Pay scales? High-end lighting and video rigs? But while it’s true that the future of work is remot...

When VC thought-leaders opine about the future of work on Twitter, they mostly just mean that people will use video conferencing more than they used to. And this, of course, is a big change with lots of second-order effects. As people have been forced into a rapid transition to working from home, society is having to quickly answer lots of new questions: what does it mean for second-tier cities? Pay scales? High-end lighting and video rigs? But while it’s true that the future of work is remot...