The Future of Luxury Is on-Site

Where will we see luxury software transform markets? Already, in the consumer productivity space, we’re starting to see “luxury” email clients, calendars, browsers, and search engines emerge. While all of these capabilities are freely accessible to consumers and rather commoditized, companies like Superhuman for email, Cron (now Notion) for calenda... See more

Instead, competition in the office world shifted to aspects that were previously overlooked or unimportant: interior design, community, social vibe, digital experience layer, sustainability, network vs. single location, symbolic value, and activism.

As anything scales too effectively – from restaurants and ad agencies to social networks and search engines – the market opens for more non-scalable alternatives. Once Starbucks opens on every block, we crave the artisanal coffee shop. There's the identity piece of it, where we want some degree of distinctiveness. But there's a practical side too: ... See more

Consumer demand for smaller scale and human-crafted versions of everything will grow in an AI world. While the future of work might lend itself to small business creation, let’s ****not forget the demand side of the equation. We are going to crave artisanal and story-driven sources and experiences. Why? As every big company floods the zone of our a... See more

We accept today that the days of startup cities, at least in the West, are over, but I don't think we should. And the societal changes that a post-COVID world makes possible could restart this cycle. For thousands of years, ambitious young people have had to move to big cities run by the kind of people who run big cities to maximize opportunity in ... See more

Ill-timed though it may have been, the rollout of Soho Works also positions the company well for the post-Covid era, in which remote work is expected to remain the norm, companies are shrinking their footprints, and nobody wants to spend any more time at home than is strictly necessary. Though they’re hardly the only game in town, the plummeting ca... See more

My humbler assertion is that 2020 has punctured my confidence that the internet cannot encroach on the benefits of urban density and proximity. Going forward, many fledgling companies may agree, as they find that the city in the cloud essentially acts as a more accessible version of the city on the Earth, eerily reproducing its forces of agglomerat... See more