sari

Stripe’s slogan, “Increase the GDP of the internet” points at a far loftier vision and more ambitious goal than the mundanity of payment processing. And this is reinforced in both much of Patrick Collison’s projects outside of Stripe as well as initiatives like Stripe Press.

When Gin Lane, arguably the most important brand strategist of the DTC era, wound down and launched Pattern Brands, they announced they were launching a “Direct With Consumer” brand. This DWC brand would not only sell cookware products but would build its brand and future products alongside its community.

Uhhh ok, so they talked to other people while working on their ideas? Sure, we shouldn’t have this naive view that these so-called solitary geniuses work 1000% on their own without any input whatsoever from other people, but that doesn’t mean that they didn’t do most of the heavy lifting.

Think: Podcasts are based on RSS feed technology (which was pre-Facebook, YouTube, and a whole bunch of other things we take for granted)

Ezra: I worry about a world where the stars can leave institutions and make their full market value. There is a lot about institutions that is valuable - fund investigative reporting, etc... I wonder about how this works in a decentralized vision as it empowers the individual and creates more winner takes all dynamics. Are we losing some of the str... See more

Of course it would be foolish to believe that you can boil down all this down to just money. There are many other implications on human welfare, and they will be explored as well. So really, the formula for the IoJ is: