sari

One of the first people I met in Second Life was a woman who’d built this mansion by the ocean. We started talking and she casually mentioned that she was homeless in real life. She had built this Second Life home while squatting in an abandoned apartment in Vancouver. She had a background working with computers and had cobbled together an internet... See more

In total, Amazon should have transacted $35 billion in GMV in 2007 -- roughly 1x its valuation. At the same valuation, Shopify today is transacting 74% more GMV than Amazon did in 2007. To be fair, Shopify converts far less of that GMV into gross profit dollars (1.4% vs. 9.7%), but it has shown the ability to grow its rake of GMV by offering... See more

I have discovered in my time here that the people who inspire me the most are those who left the hallway, shut the door behind them and settled in. It’s Fred Rogers recording Episode 895 of Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood because he was committed to advancing a humane model of children’s television. It’s Dorothy Day sitting with the same outcast folks... See more

Design for emergence is open-ended. There’s no room for surprise in high modern or user-centered design, unless the design is exapted for an unintended use (see “Design Exaptation” in the bottom right quadrant of the 2x2 above). Meanwhile, a key characteristic of design for emergence is that the end design may be something that the original... See more

Execution Does Not Matter: If your startup addresses a market that really wants your product, you can screw almost everything up and still likely be successful. On the flip side, if you are really good at execution, but the “dogs aren’t eating the dog food”, you have no chance at winning.

What we have learned — what we were forced to learn — during the COVID lockdowns has permanently shattered these assumptions. It turns out many of the best jobs really can be performed from anywhere, through screens and the internet. It turns out people really can live in a smaller city or a small town or in rural nowhere and still be just as... See more

Wagner James Au: In terms of users, Second Life is still vibrant. There are about 600,000 monthly active users and about 200,000 daily active users after almost 20 years. One reason I keep writing about it is that there’s so much there. And so much interest from people who’re involved in these worlds.