Unsurprising -- there is a lot to do.
The initial moments of panic I suffered in the first three days came from thinking of Villager as a tech start-up, which would put us in fierce competition with the bustling masses of crowdfunding platforms, peer-to-peer lending giants and social media driven start-ups. Ten minutes on Techcrunch or a quick review of the dozens of start-up articles that are published daily by mainstream media sources immediately convey the fact that New York and San Francisco are in the throes of start-up mania. The (must-be-dreaming) valuation of Groupon at $25 billion, Facebook at $50 billion, Twitter at $7 billion and Zynga at $10 billion has angel investors and venture capitalists in frenzy mode, throwing hundreds of millions of dollars at start-ups in hopes of riding the next wave. Software developers are being lured with bigger perks and better compensation and there appears to be unlimited appetite for developers and a very limited supply, as the earlier fears of software engineering being dominated by outsourcing were clearly wrong. All of this led little ol' me to start freaking out because so far this is just me and all of the tech folks I know are so happy at their jobs that there is no way I could convince them to jump ship. This is a fiercely competitive world and culture I was not entirely ready for and that I am frankly a bit terrified of.
But, I think all of this is wrong. Besides the fact that I think we are witnessing the frothy crest of a social media bubble (I don't see how it could be otherwise -- all you need to do is look at this article to fully grasp the froth), I think it is fundamentally wrong to think of Villager as a tech start-up, despite the fact that the internet is a critical tool. I am not trying to reach a national or global market, I am doing the opposite -- I am trying to reach deeply into local communities and strengthen the ties within. I need to push hard to cultivate connections with small businesses in New York and Brooklyn and push harder to reach citizens (heh, villagers? (no.)) in these markets. I want to use technology to re-orient to the local, not to the global. Now that it's the simplest thing to take a dollar and stuff it into the balance sheet in a Chinese or Indian company instantaneously, it should be just as simple to take that dollar and invest it in the donut shop next door. (Disclosure: I love donuts.) (Not much of a disclosure, of course I love donuts.)
In these terms, I am more comfortable and confident of steering my own course and finding my own way. The entire mission of Villager is to preserve the character of our neighborhoods, of allowing local entrepreneurs and their dreams to thrive, to strengthen the bonds of community, to re-consider the meaning of investment, to reduce the footprint of the chains that slowly undefine the character of a hometown and use of the power of infinite possibility and optionality to choose what we would like our neighborhoods to look like. I hope to build my business accordingly.
The initial moments of panic I suffered in the first three days came from thinking of Villager as a tech start-up, which would put us in fierce competition with the bustling masses of crowdfunding platforms, peer-to-peer lending giants and social media driven start-ups. Ten minutes on Techcrunch or a quick review of the dozens of start-up articles that are published daily by mainstream media sources immediately convey the fact that New York and San Francisco are in the throes of start-up mania. The (must-be-dreaming) valuation of Groupon at $25 billion, Facebook at $50 billion, Twitter at $7 billion and Zynga at $10 billion has angel investors and venture capitalists in frenzy mode, throwing hundreds of millions of dollars at start-ups in hopes of riding the next wave. Software developers are being lured with bigger perks and better compensation and there appears to be unlimited appetite for developers and a very limited supply, as the earlier fears of software engineering being dominated by outsourcing were clearly wrong. All of this led little ol' me to start freaking out because so far this is just me and all of the tech folks I know are so happy at their jobs that there is no way I could convince them to jump ship. This is a fiercely competitive world and culture I was not entirely ready for and that I am frankly a bit terrified of.
But, I think all of this is wrong. Besides the fact that I think we are witnessing the frothy crest of a social media bubble (I don't see how it could be otherwise -- all you need to do is look at this article to fully grasp the froth), I think it is fundamentally wrong to think of Villager as a tech start-up, despite the fact that the internet is a critical tool. I am not trying to reach a national or global market, I am doing the opposite -- I am trying to reach deeply into local communities and strengthen the ties within. I need to push hard to cultivate connections with small businesses in New York and Brooklyn and push harder to reach citizens (heh, villagers? (no.)) in these markets. I want to use technology to re-orient to the local, not to the global. Now that it's the simplest thing to take a dollar and stuff it into the balance sheet in a Chinese or Indian company instantaneously, it should be just as simple to take that dollar and invest it in the donut shop next door. (Disclosure: I love donuts.) (Not much of a disclosure, of course I love donuts.)
In these terms, I am more comfortable and confident of steering my own course and finding my own way. The entire mission of Villager is to preserve the character of our neighborhoods, of allowing local entrepreneurs and their dreams to thrive, to strengthen the bonds of community, to re-consider the meaning of investment, to reduce the footprint of the chains that slowly undefine the character of a hometown and use of the power of infinite possibility and optionality to choose what we would like our neighborhoods to look like. I hope to build my business accordingly.
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