The Building Blocks of Tech

Some rare companies innovate on all three sides of the creator triad, crossing creation tools, distribution and monetization: Roblox, for example, provides accessible tools in Roblox Studio; allows developers to have their experiences discovered by the community; and shares earnings with developers via the virtual currency Robux, which underpins a ... See more

Roblox, and games/worlds like Minecraft are a huge step forward. Instead of just paying money to game developers, users can actually make money by developing for the ecosystem. It does, however, fall just short of the Bill Gates Line for a platform -- something is a platform if everything built on top of the platform makes more than the platform it... See more

The borders of being ‘technical’ are expanding by the day

There used to be a well-defined line between who could build things and who couldn’t. Building was reserved for people who could code—people who were “technical.”

Sure, there’ve been waves of milquetoast no-code tools that purported to turn you into a developer for the past decade. But those ... See more

One of the innovations that Roblox did is there was a relentless focus on removing the barriers to creating content on our platform. Not only did we give the tools away, but we hosted the content for free. We provide customer support. We translate it into five different languages. We automatically port it to all available platforms. It’s everything... See more

But for the new wave of horizontal software tools like Notion, Airtable and Roam, the magic is in their flexibility. By providing the “no-code” building blocks, these startups enable consumers to create their own personalised experience. This creates a "complexity gap".