the goal is resonance, not scale

To me, the ideal life is to take the 20 percent of my time that make me feel most alive and see if I can cut everything else out until that fills everything. Then do that again, cutting the “worst” 80 percent of the best. This is the inverse of how many companies operate. There the ideal is often “growth,” which they take to mean “say yes to all

... See more

This begs the question: What might it mean to reimagine the form of these datasets in a world unconstrained by pressures like speed, scale, and universality? By looking to artists like Anna Ridler and others for their rejection of “off-the-shelf” datasets, we can imagine what it would be like to curate datasets with much deeper intention and... See more

One option a company with a useful network has (whether it’s an email platform or a social network) is to curate what they feature. They’ve built an asset and that asset goes up in value when it attracts thoughtful users.

The other option is to believe that ‘open’ is the answer, the more open the better. As we learned when we launched Squidoo a

... See more

As anything scales too effectively - from fashion to restaurants to music - the market opens for more non-scalable alternatives. Once Starbucks opens on every block, many of us crave the artisanal coffee shop. Once our favorite Italian restaurant becomes a chain of three, we grow tired of it. Why? First, so much of what we buy and do is tied up in... See more

So, the question that keeps me up at night is, what are us humans gonna do with all of our newfound time? Which brings me back to Japan, and this quaint Kyoto restaurant I found myself sitting in one evening. There were 10 seats, one chef/owner and one apprentice, and the most incredibly crafted experience. It wasn’t expensive, but everything was

... See more