It’s remarkable to watch a five-year-old draw, void of any anxiety about what the world will think. We all start our lives creatively confident, happy to create and share our work with pride. And then, as we age, our comfort with creative expression declines. We’re discouraged by the learning curve…

How will work and life change in a material way over the next ~5 years? This is the question I challenge myself to think about every year as I synthesize the trends I’m observing in technology and culture. I‘m sharing them as a way to connect more dots, meet more…

Brands have become decentralized — the memes, content, and daily conversations of the masses increasingly define a brand. The next generation of projects and businesses are also on a path to becoming decentralized — where new blockchain-driven organizational constructs turn owners and customers into a community of stakeholders. This confluence of decentralization will advantage emerging brands and local businesses, and could prove to be the most disruptive force against the internet behemoths and global marketplaces that rule the world. Yes, a bold proclamation, but bear with me here…

You know that iconic scene, at the end of The Matrix (the original!), when Neo suddenly “gets it.” He picks bullets out of thin air as if they are cute and curious little things. As the next installment of The Matrix comes out I’ve been thinking, what’s the equivalent of…

Over the last year I became the proud owner of The Furry Lisa, among several other one-of-a-kind digital creations often referred to as “crypto art” or “NFTs” (non-fungible tokens — a special type of cryptographic token and digital contract that represents something specific and unique as opposed to Bitcoin and…

As we pull ourselves out of the ditch that was 2020, there are a few major themes of the future I’m particularly excited about. Like previous years, I am sharing them as a way to connect more dots, meet more founders, and solicit input to further develop these ideas. No…

The pandemic is not only forcing us to reconsider how we work, it’s also unlocking gains — and potential efficiencies — we accrued but never fully realized. The implications are far reaching and worthy of consideration. — No doubt, within teams and organizations, this pandemic has forced us to make tough decisions and has accelerated our adoption of new tech and business practices that enable us to work remotely. A less discussed result of this black-swan event, especially as we emerge out of it, will be the…

If new mediums take off only when they fundamentally change our everyday life, what are the daily implications of augmented reality? What are some principles for the adoption of new mediums? — On the prospects of augmented reality, opinions vary widely in my conversations with fellow investors, designers, and technologists. Many investors consider the space “many years away,” “un-investable,” “not practical,” and “far from certain.” …

In the age of A.I. and machine learning, just being more productive won’t cut it. The future belongs to the creatives. — The Productivity-Creativity Inversion When leaders face the challenge of scaling their teams, they hire people to replicate many of the tasks they were doing. …