less humans, more robots
My work moves around the intersection of technology, design, architecture, venture capital, psychology, economics and applied physics. I work with startups and large corporations on business design and future design.
In my work, it starts with ideas. It starts with design. It starts with writing. It starts with strategy.
In my work, It starts with getting started.
Products can introduce more complexity over time, but as far as launching and introducing a new product in to the market, it’s a marketing problem,..
You have to explain everything you do, and people have to understand it, within seconds.
…In the mobile context, you need to explain what you do in 30 seconds or less because people move on to the next shiny object. There are so many apps and people are vying for your attention on the go. It’s the one context in which you’ve got lots and lots of other stuff going on. You’re not sitting in front of a computer; you’re at a bus stop or in a meeting.
1. Globalization is not (all there is to) progress.
2. It is better to be right than to be contrarian.
3. Secrets exist.
4. Capitalism and competition are antonyms, not synonyms.
5. People lie.
6. Much of life is a power law.
7. A bad plan is better than no plan. A good plan is even better.
8. Foundations matter. Beginnings are special.
9. Founders are different.
10. Find a frontier and go for it.
There is something importantly singular about each new thing. There is a mini singularity whenever you start a company or make a key life decision. In a very real sense, the life of every person is a singularity.
The obvious question is what you should do with your singularity. The obvious answer, unfortunately, has been to follow the well-trodden path. You are constantly encouraged to play it safe and be conventional. The future, we are told, is just probabilities and statistics.You are a statistic.
But the obvious answer is wrong. That is selling yourself short. There are still many large white spaces on the map of human knowledge. You can go discover them. So do it. Get out there and fill in the blank spaces. Every single moment is a possibility to go to these new places and explore them.
There is perhaps no specific time that is necessarily right to start your company or start your life. But some times and some moments seem more auspicious than others. Now is such a moment. If we don’t take charge and usher in the future—if you don’t take charge of your life—there is the sense that no one else will.
The Biggest Problem in Design [by Julie Zhuo, Product design director @ Facebook]
Good Design is Honest [Omar El Amri, Computer Scientist]
Wasted Talent - Arranging deck chairs on the Mars rover. [Matt]
Do Tomorrow What You Decide Today [ Anders Thoresson]
What kind of a designer are you? [ Tuhin Kumar, Product Designer @Facebook ]
How, When and Where Will The First Truly Great Digital Design Studio Emerge? [Murat Mutlu, Designer]
Here is a collection of uplifting and heartwarming words of encouragement from the most sage voices in the tech startup world as you begin your own entrepreneurial journey.
- Throwing yourself off a cliff and assembling an airplane on the way down. - Reif Hoffman
- Being an entrepreneur is like eating glass and staring into the abyss of death. - Elon Musk
- Running a start-up is like eating glass. You just start to like the taste of your own blood. - Sean Parker
- Startups are hell. - Penelope Trunk
- It’s like we’re married, but we’re not fucking. - Y Combinator founder via Paul Graham
- I kept busy by thinking about how running that marathon was much like doing a startup. - Dan Martell
- People say doing a startup is like a marathon. It’s actually a roadtrip at night with no headlights. You think you’re going to Toledo but you’re actually going to Miami and you might not have enough gas so you might need to buy gas from someone who might take you out if you aren’t driving well. - Ben Silbermann via Jason Shen
- This is what running a startup is like…every day (cue video). - Jason Calacanis
- Running a startup is like being punched in the face repeatedly. - Paul Graham
- In my tiredness, my scars, and my strength I have noticed that launching and running a start-up is a lot like war. - Ryan Wood
- Running a startup is like having all the bad guys from Die Hard attack you, but you’re way more scrawny than Bruce Willis. - Aaron Levie
Midas, Son of Gordias
We are like them only, aren’t we? We don’t want to follow the herd. We want to be the black-sheep. We don’t want to be ‘wrong’. We all want to be alone. We all want to be right. We all want to be Midas, son of Gordias.
But - was he right?
“Can we ____?” is an engineering problem.
“Should we ____?” is a design/UX/strategy problem.
Ideally, people on your team can handle both.
At fusedcow, we are not a startup - we are a movement. A movement to help people create inspiring homes for themselves and their families. We achieve that with the help of technology, some really innovative computing which helps the end-user make his dreams comes true.
Human Centered Design:
The technology ecosystem ignored the end-user in this industry. Architects are failing to create/show value. Architecture - from the original ‘human centered design’- is moving to ‘architect/me centered design’.
Especially in India, everytime I talk to somebody who have hired an architect for any job is dis-satisfied with the architect. They think Architects are teaming-up with the local-contractor and pushing the budget up (to earn 10% of the total spend).
This is not a problem of the architect - 5 years of grad-school taught him to create ‘inspiring designs’ - not ‘inspiring and usable designs for the client’. The role models - whosoever, the Hadids to the Roarks - pushed the point “create iconic buildings” - never really focused on ‘usability’. — especially in interiors.
The end user is dumb/less-visionary than the architect - he wants a well-planned & designed space for himself and family and it should be under the budget.
The home owner never gets what he wants from the architect - and that is one of the reasons the 70+ home-owners bitched about the architect to me.
The Satellier Alumni and other things DESIGN:
Let’s change that. My friends and I worked on changing the way architecture is done about 9 years back, bringing collaborative technology platforms in large-scale real-estate development. At Satellier Inc, we worked with some of the best estate-developers in the world (especially in the US and UK) with a strong focus on the designer.
Not the end user. The market then demanded better tech for the designer. The market we know of is saturated.
Let’s bring the most- important stake-holder in the real-estate business: The home-buyer. That space is still craving for technology, design and innovation.
We are building a technology platform which will help you build a dream home, the CAD drawings you see will transform into magical-spaces, just the way you wanted.
If you are a recent home-owner, sign-in for the private-beta of fusedcow - thank you!
And this made me think. People ask me who inspires me. This question often stumps me because I have been inspired in my work by stuff that people make. […]
…the people who make these things are my leaders. Most of the time I don’t know their names. Sometimes I’m lucky and do.
And every day you discover something new that is a new problem or a new opportunity to fit these things together a little differently. —
And it’s that process that is the magic.
