I knew I was going to build out the Awake Ecosystem, and I had the design of it all very clear in my mind. It had come to me in a flash of clarity when I was attending an event organized at the Stanford University campus in early 2019. I mean, it was an arc I was following ever since I came across first the computer, then the network, then the Internet, and now metaverses. The same Internet that has created the problems evident in our society and economy today will also become the solution. The Internet just needs to be restructured a bit.
For this, I designed a set of protocols where each protocol captures one key aspect of Internet businesses, one that is common to all. For instance, Shoptype is designed as the Awake Market Protocol, enabling buyers and sellers and now Cosellers to connect and exchange information with each other and to do business.
Shoptype is one of the core protocols and there are others. When I first began to describe what I saw clear as day in my mind’s eye, most people recoiled with “that’s crazy, no one can fix the entire Internet” or “but that means going up against all the big tech companies at once” to just polite nods and outright eye rolls.
One really needs the conviction that one is enough, that I am enough, that I can do what it takes to drive change. I know that like it always happens, passion and clarity will win, and a small group of people can and indeed will change the world. It's how it works.
I recalled from my Quintype days when I would stand in a full convention hall packed with professionals from the publishing world, I’d advise them that advertising was dead and that they needed to move towards e-commerce as a revenue stream (this was 2014 through 2017), what an uphill battle it was to sell them the idea! Even though publishers are sitting on top of audiences large and small, they seemed loathe to monetize them the same way the ad buyers are monetizing them… through retail sales. These audience members were shoppers, after all, no other reason to show them ads!
And what became painfully obvious only later was that most incumbent corporates are unable to see the future. They’re resting and coasting on past success only. One can rely upon this, that despite their size and the ability of large businesses to hire the right talent, there was a very little entrepreneurial spirit in these companies. This often makes them absurdly easy to disrupt.
But the future is obvious only to the blind. Those that can see what is in front of them are usually limited by it. That is why running focus groups is a dumb idea. Customers do not know what they want until they see it, and they certainly can not imagine the new based on the old (status quo). And if someone had the clarity to know what they wanted, they’d also just have it built, or would build it themselves. It is a plain fact that most people are unable to innovate and create new things.
So while the traditional advice is to discuss your idea with a select group of potential experts, and get feedback, and so on, I decided to take it to the extreme. What is the extreme of asking a few people? I figured it was building and discussing everything in public so that anyone on the Internet could chime in, and even join the effort. So in 2019, I began to write about the ecosystem I wanted to create and what I began to engineer and build.
I first began to write on the AwakeVC blog, and also created a video Q&A of sorts, a series of video “unepisodes” called TheWoke.VC, which is a tongue-in-cheek reference to an important idea of becoming awake not just woke. I can tell you, writing about one’s work and building in public are both highly recommended. Not only did my writing help me become super clear on what I needed to build, but it also helped with being super focused on what was important, while also having the added benefit that others could read it to get a sense of what Awake was all about.
Ultimately, there is no such thing as a stealth startup, ultimately everyone has to find out what one is building. I have discovered that it is the most beneficial to all stakeholders when founders write and talk about their in-vitro products and services, bringing in the community earlier than later to co-create with the business. We are building Awake on the same ethos of community, and of sharing, as well as co-creating value for everyone involved, and I found it very helpful to build in public.
As I write this chapter in July 2022, we’re speaking to early adopters from serial entrepreneurs launching new social commerce platforms for various industries, to modern DTC brands that want to deploy market networks for their communities. But most of all, we're working with the USPTO to complete our patent filing so we can ensure this work reaches everyone without anyone else controlling the technology.
Awake! It is Time To Build Together.
And we’re continuing to build in public, we’re continuing to evangelize the new model, and are inviting the broader innovation community to engage. We are also in the process of pre-launching Awake Build because it is time to build together. Over the past few months, this broader community is coalescing into Awake Ventures, the global entrepreneurship and venture network.
Awake Ventures | Awake Ventures
Join us, become Awake.
PS - Read the whole book at Beyond All Clouds.
