Lillian Sheng

Being mobile-first means user is more attentive as an app is a more immersive experience than a browser.  There’s also a rough cut-off for the number of apps any sane person can have on their phone. - On average, Chinese users open 26 apps a month.- About 75% of their time is spent in the ecosystems of Tencent, Alibaba, Baidu, Bytedance and Ku... See more

The 20th Century was defined by standardization — the coordination of groups to produce more output. The 21st Century is defined by leverage— the ability of a single individual to reach billions of customers, readers, and collaborators and to match their unique combination of skills to their most profitable use.

A strong post-war American economy meant installment buying was accessible to low-wage earners who could now purchase previously unattainable goods like automobiles and radios. Moreover, workers were no longer dependent on employers for healthcare and education.

In many societies, one’s professional fate is decided by the tribe, the family. However, one is increasingly thrown back into ‘How can I develop my own voice and niche from where I can operate’? Is there something like an individual signature? Perhaps not, but I do believe in skills, in small steps, working on various projects at the same time with... See more

Vine divided its UX into two traditional surfaces: Home and Explore. Home showed you content you opted into receiving, whereas Explore showed you things you might not know about yet. Vine’s Explore screen asked if you were more interested in “Editor’s Picks,” “Popular Now,” or “All Posts.” You could search the app or to click into a specific hashta... See more

What would happen if online networks adopted these principles of governance? You can imagine all sorts of interesting configurations. For example, what would federalism look like on Twitter—could the network be split into regions that have some degree of local autonomy? What would happen if Twitter established a legislature? What if you could run f... See more

When Jesse evaluates investments for their ability to be dominant he actually inverts the question: he spends a lot of time assessing factors that could prevent a company from becoming dominant — what he calls “dominance friction.” And dominance friction comes from a pretty surprising place: any time a company’s interests are misaligned with i... See more