This book is the real-time narrative of how we're building the Shoptype platform and the broader Awake Market Protocol. Even more broadly, it is about how we are building out the entire Awake ecosystem.
It's a story of how entrepreneurship is a blessing and a curse, and how to think about launching companies and growing something out of nothing. About how to recognize when a vision takes hold of you, and you become driven by it, and not the other way around, how friends and family and peers think you're delusional, but you persevere on because you see it. Always so close.
This is the introduction chapter to #BeyondAllClouds
I suppose you might think I ought to write this book after Awake is a trillion-dollar company, or the fastest company in history to get there, or after we create 100M jobs, or some equally astonishing vanity metric.
But where’s the fun in that?
I always wanted to read a book by someone who wrote it before they made it big, but who knew they would make it, and where the outcome was not a foregone conclusion, by far. I have not found a lot of people crazy enough to do stuff like that, so I suppose I figured I’d oblige.
I started Awake in 2019, in a spare bedroom in our home in downtown San Mateo. I’d always HQed companies within a few blocks from my home, this time would be no different. I had been working on online platforms for most of my career, and had been obsessed with this one idea for several years: why couldn’t the Internet actually deliver the promise of an open transparent global village where everyone could benefit?
In particular, I was obsessed with making it drop-dead easy for businesses to succeed on the Internet by automating and eliminating inefficiencies and intermediaries, and every other source of friction in doing business. Whatever happened to the original design of the open, decentralized Internet? I had spent my childhood and young adult life until 22 years of age in India and had always dreamed of Silicon Valley as a bastion of sanity, where the strong protect the meek, and where technology enables the common man.
But the world has become totally entrenched in the old way of doing business, the so-called "Web 2.0" model, where the big Internet platform companies dominate and take a good 30%, 40%, and even 50% and higher chunks of out every business transaction that they mediate.
The blockchain and Web3 guys are on to something, but how to bridge the gap between where the world is today, and where it's heading to tomorrow?
What happens when multiple blockchains are popular, do businesses then have to figure out how to exist seamlessly across blockchains? Will it just become another cross-platform cross-blockchain universe of complexity like before?
I imagined a world where the Internet's original design prevails, a simple global network that powers common functionality for all members, including the need to integrate into various Internet platforms and blockchain ecosystems. This Awake Universe, an Internet 3.0 would truly be the integrated experience that we were promised when we were first introduced to the idea of a global Internet. My mom would be able to use it, without the complexity of crypto or any other craziness, despite being able to leverage the latest and greatest of innovations behind the simple facade of 1-click.
So how to go about it?
In a prologue, perhaps one day I will write about the journey that brought me to Awake. But after writing about what I wanted to achieve - 100M jobs in 10 years - in 2019, I finally began to roll up my sleeves and began to build.
The company that ultimately spawned Shoptype was incorporated on Nov 13th almost two years ago, and we've built a lot of software since then. We leveraged the best of our abilities across high-level programming languages, distributed systems, and lean/agile programming processes.
But it all started with the most important element - the brightest and most capable minds. I tapped into my networks across prior companies I had been involved in - Runa (one and two and also Work At Runa), Quintype (including Work At Quintype), HigherOrder, Coffeebeans, Nilenso, and others, and landed a star founding team.
What a joy it is to work with others who can see higher and higher levels of abstraction!
Coffeebeans is one of the world's top software development shops, particularly around machine learning and artificial intelligence, and together with my old venture studio HigherOrder, we designed the bootstrap of the Awake Market Protocol.
Through bringing WRU.ai into the Awake family, I was proud to bring on Naveen Kunapareddy, the co-founder and head of products across Awake Protocols. We were also able to snag our COO, he can tell you about the evolution of digital and how he helped the smallest of the small to the biggest of the big use the Internet to drive marketing and sales. BTW, the word type is a reference to protocol, I borrowed this from functional programming, something I used to be very passionate about, and still am.
I had previously designed various versions of the Awake Ecosystem in my mind and at prior companies Runa and Quintype. I had also designed a blockchain version with PressCoin. We had the scars from prior battles and knew that this time around we would be beginning from a clean slate. The technology, as well as the business model, would be where we would innovate.
I had seen top Internet companies such as eBay, Groupon, Staples, and so many others at close quarters, I knew what we needed to change. I had also seen, and continue to witness, terrible value extraction in Silicon Valley and other innovation and capital markets around the world. It all boils down to the lack of transparency, and we decided we're going to fix things. Very broad-brush stuff, but that's how my mind operates.
BTW, during the years leading up to starting Awake, I had meanwhile been going through another journey that did not involve digital transformation but resulted in a complete inner transformation. Through karmic circumstances, I was led deep into the rabbit hole that is the human consciousness, and I emerged on the other side as my whole self.
During this process of change, I discovered meditation, was able to go deep into my own psyche and found many wonders that apply to everyone. Luckily, during a stroke of such meditation, I visualized the Awake ecosystem in its complete form. I was able to distill that vision into a set of protocols, that became the foundation for the Awake Ecosystem.
Awake is a new Internet Ventures Ecosystem that leverages the underlying connectedness that binds everything in nature, both man-made and otherwise. We call it digital consciousness, but as you will see, there are already many names for it, and many more to come.
One of the other lessons that stayed with me over the years is that a product or business is nothing if there are no sales. Correction, no profitable sales. I mean real entrepreneurial businesses that add value for all sides, not money-losing pump-and-dump operations that some venture-backed rigs are. If I could just add value, I'd be in business! Value and cash flow became my mantra.
And so I resolved that one of the first protocols we'd build and launch a platform for would be a sales force type thing that would help us sell. Correction, help us sell everything we had to sell, or as you will see, help us sell anything that anyone (else) has to sell.
Maybe you're thinking of launching your own startup or have a product idea. We have decided to be the ones that will add value by generating cash flow for you. We will help sell your products and services, as long as they add value. In other words, if you add value, we will buy from you and distribute you around the world across countries and platforms, and as you will soon see, across metaverses.
That's all for now.
PS - I'll also create 111 chapters, so we can follow along with my favorite book on this topic, Behind The Cloud.
