the goal is resonance, not scale
building and monetizing soulful businesses + brands where the goal is resonance, not scale
sari and
the goal is resonance, not scale
scalability ignores the negotiations between individual elements and is predicated on hierarchy, isolation, and the commodification of nature. Instead, synthetic biology should model itself on the living world, which takes a collaborative approach to survival and allows for fruitful cross-contamination of ideas.
In providing a precise experience, you are necessarily polarizing. There’s a certain tyranny of NPS or averages you have to decouple from – where averages blunt a nuanced understanding of a product or experience. There’s that funny truism that the most authentic Chinese restaurants have the most 1 star reviews.
Distinctive features are not... See more
Distinctive features are not... See more
Nix • the delight of specificity
Almost everything about growing the size and scale of your team has immediate and detrimental impacts to the thing that matters the most: building awesome products.
Unless you actively fight against these effects, you’ll wake up one day with a very effective bureaucracy machine and a very poor product (and a slow... See more
claire vo 🖤x.com“The first Velvet Underground album only sold 10,000 copies, but everyone who bought it formed a band."
-Brian Eno.
By contrast, consumer software tools that enhance human agency, that serve us when we are most creative and intentional, are often built by hobbyists and used by a handful of nerds. If such a tool ever gets too successful one of the Marl-serving companies, flush with cash from advertising or growth-hungry venture capital, will acquire it and kill... See more
Ivan Vendrov • The Tyranny of the Marginal User
note to self: do not let this happen
“How many things which are good when small get better by becoming bigger? That local restaurant you love can’t scale to millions of users. Do you really want your favourite indie band to aspire to stadium-level fame? People get cheaper books, and an independent bookseller closes its doors to make way for a giant warehouse full of underpaid people
... See moreAnti-network effects sometimes incorporate network effects of their own, but are generally more deliberate, intelligent, and actively governed. They are designed with scarcity in mind and are not so easy to starve out. They have long horizons and think many steps ahead in time, and can be spatially intelligent across entire topologies.
27/ They need... See more
27/ They need... See more
Anti-Network Effects
Some people have told me I’m not doing enough—that I should publish more, react to breaking news, tweet every day, start a podcast. But to what end? More subscribers but less pride in my work? Host a podcast but constantly cringe because it’s not really me?
I don’t know if you’ve noticed this, but there seems to be an assumption now that if you... See more
I don’t know if you’ve noticed this, but there seems to be an assumption now that if you... 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