the best brands of the future will be born from non-scalable experiences

whatever you do next, aspire to do something that doesn’t make sense to most at the moment.

observed among the most successful people I admire (who really worked for it): they don’t want to network, they want to learn (and the learning subsequently builds relationships, which ultimately becomes a powerful and authentic network)

thinking/observed: the journey to express yourself is vastly accelerated by the need to prove something to yourself

being motivated by curiosity greatly outperforms the motivation to be right

continuously struck by the altruistic nature of Waze, and just how many people contribute meaningfully without a clear transactional reward mechanic. we just love it and want to make it better - such a unique ecosystem. explains why it’s still independent from Google Maps.

one famous photographer I know once confided, “it’s really just taking a shit load of photographs and then picking the best one.” Reminded me that quality is often a function of quantity of options, time and tools for creation, and taste.

the faster a space is moving, the more you need to bet on the people than the product

thoughts on attribution for human creativity, “content credentials,” and bringing back the artist’s signature for the digital era ahead. (what’s old is new again!?) fortune.com/2025/01/14/a...

Reimagining the artist’s signature so creative people can thrive—even as AI content explodes

Ensuring artists get credit for their digital work will accelerate many creative careers, says Adobe's Scott Belsky.

fortune.com

observed: some of the boldest / most rewarding career moves i admire and have seen friends make were among the most misunderstood. true orthogonal head-scratchers from the outside, but clearly driven by skills, unique opportunity, and genuine interest within.

A few things I expect to see in 2025, from investigative journalists breaking news via betting markets, to a new variety of small businesses, DIY software, migrations of talent, and the emergence of “cognicos” - companies with a cognition-based stack. www.implications.com/p/a-few-thin...

A few things I expect to see in 2025…

Some forecasts for new technologies and shifts in how we live and work for the year ahead, alongside a few implications...

implications.com

phenomenology, the study of how we perceive and experience the world, is the ultimate underlying body of knowledge for any product builder. true for consumer and for enterprise - every end user is just a person w/ natural human tendencies…

thinking: gotta take risks in things you love, follow curiosity relentlessly, and seek to understand the things you hate - the tech you doubt, the political sides you dislike, the people you struggle with…lots of gems to be mined in whatever repels us.

why couldn't the older Apple Pencils still **work** with the latest iPad Pro, albeit with reduced functionality!? grabbed the wrong one for this trip and now...no sketching for me. argh. support.apple.com/en-us/108937...

science proves, art moves

gotta be a student to remain an expert.

Our pre-publication paper is out! The Next Phase of the Data Economy: Economic & Technological Perspectives co-authored with some amazing people: @skominers.bsky.social, Leora Kornfeld, John Deighton, @scottbelsky.bsky.social, @apuchitnis.bsky.social, @kinjal.bsky.social, @dsearls.bsky.social ++

Our “Based on what you know about me, what would you…” questions to LLMs will be extremely popular and enlightening 3+ years from now when we’re running so many of our life questions and decisions through AI. The retentive “network effect” equivalent for LLMs will be their memory about us.

never bet against memes. they are state-of-the-art mechanisms for compression of knowledge and meaning that efficiently hack culture and pierce straight through rationality.

advice I liked: instead of asking team "what can you stretch to do?" the better question is "what does great look like?" with the right team, you can align on excellence, work w/ bias-towards-action, and then do everything you can to clear the path…

the “happy path” through a product experience rarely happens, and yet most product reviews assume it. truth is that most engagement is careless engagement, and you must design products accordingly.

often times, the best and hardest thing to do at a big company is what a small company would naturally do

gotta feed your creativity by starving the stuff you're worried about.

😳 via @scottbelsky.bsky.social

a bold plan is only as effective as its least committed stakeholder, because it’s too easy to miss a deadline on something you don’t believe in.

shifts are upon us as every brand floods the zone with content. game will shift from engaging with flashy content to engaging with meaning. taste, story, and craft will become key differentiators, and the more non-scalable “artifacts of humanity” in customer experiences will command a premium.

The Personalization Wave, A Surge of Wildly Human-Intensive Non-Scalable Experiences, & Ideas Of The Month

We cannot surf waves without knowing where they may take us, right?! Let's discuss implications of the personalization wave and the anticipated rise of non-scalable experiences.

implications.com

observed working as a product-obsessive investor and across companies small and large: momentum is one of the most defensible moats, consistently underrated by teams with products that are undeniably better yet still suffering in market. momentum is a more sustainable advantage than most realize.

“artists allow us to see what we are unable to see, but somehow already know…the artist’s perception reminds us of who we are and who we can be.” - rick rubin

thinking: anything that is fully frictionless is hard to notice or truly appreciate friction and texture are the only way we notice and hold onto time and experiences as they pass. otherwise, from the perspective of memory, they never happened.

observation in early stage landscape: tech is developing faster than companies can build and deploy a product, which makes picking a "winner" in any particular space more difficult. in such times, team velocity and flexibility is critical criteria to consider.