The Awakening is coming, the Awakened are rising.
AwakeVC was born from imbalance. Nature takes care of itself, and when the Universe gets out of harmony, it does not remain that way for long. Along comes a force that restores order, a force that makes the whole feel whole again.
AwakeVC is that awakened force.
Awake is creating new platforms to change the paradigm of e-commerce and venture building. Awake is an interconnected platform of platforms, a new AI-powered fabric for media, commerce, and fintech that allows truly decentralized value co-creation.
1995 to 2020
As a planet and as a society, we have engorged on excess.
On the whole, capitalism is good. Socialism in the form of social services is also good.
Anything necessary is good. Anything unnecessary is generally not good at all.
Not to pick on anyone, but Google at one point claimed to embody “don’t be evil”. Facebook also was good at one point, it was a reasonable way to keep in touch with school buddies and family. Instagram is cute, and is generally a good way to share yoga and brunch pictures.
What is entirely unnecessary is the absurd 30% revenue share charged by these platforms.
This goes for all the platforms – Facebook, Google, Apple, and everyone else in a power to extract value. It is entirely unnecessary that Door Dash charges restaurants up to 45% of top line revenue to deliver someone’s rolls down the street.
What is entirely unnecessary is the need to accumulate at the expense of the broader whole.
What started out as benevolent “do no evil” companies, the upstarts that many of us grew up idolizing, have turned into the very machines they were meant to undo. It is truly unfortunate, the cycle of samsara.
This is not the dream I had dreamed, not about my beloved Silicon Valley.
Dreaming is still Asleep
And what is sad, is that we are Facebook, we are Google, we are Instagram. We are what is wrong with the state of the world today, for we are the ones who got us here.
I know I am, for I am on Facebook, I have an Instagram account, and a Twitter account.
We claim to be conscious, and yet here we are dreaming an unwanted dream, the world tumbling towards destruction of things we hold dear such as the environment, full of incredible and increasing inequality, and downward mobility, lack of healthcare, education, and even food and water. We’re online and connected, but depressed and in despair.
We claim to be conscious, and while we invest in global trade and artificial intelligence, we do not remember to plan for the massive job losses that are about to happen, and the human displacement about to occur. AI and climate change are about to unleash a tidal wave of global migrants. How is society going to survive a displacement of 50M human beings, if we could barely survive 500K these past couple of years?
The whole system has become rotten and overloaded. We have let government institutions become corrupt, we have allowed oligarchies and monopolies to take over society, we have let businesses and corporations take over our privacy and our lives, we have let our values be replaced by compulsive greed and the need to accumulate. We have lost what it is to be human, for we have reverted to the law of the jungle.
This is not the society we need. It is certainly not the humane society that human beings are capable of, indeed the very stuff that differentiates civilization from the jungle has vanished.
We claim to be conscious, and yet, like frogs in a slow boil, we have let ourselves get into this situation where so much is wrong with the world, all at once.
And funnily enough, despite the fact that it was extreme capitalism that got us here, it is going to be conscious capitalism that will get us out of here, and back to where we need to be.
And to me, what is funnier still, is that it wasn’t just greed and unbalanced capitalism that got us here, but that the Internet, the very medium that was to democratize access was weaponized against the people.
What a revenge of the nerds!
Awake does not subscribe to this status quo. We must stop fighting over resources as if things are a zero sum game. We must awaken to the abundance that we are.
And the Internet must become the savior again, not the swampy bog that it has turned into.
The Internet and Society as a whole must work for Everyone.
2020 and Beyond
What is to be done in this age of Big Tech?
Big Tech is itself not a problem, but unaware and unconscious big tech for the sake of big tech… this is clearly a highly apparent problem.
How can balance be brought back? How can an individual fight back the borg?
How can society bring back diversity when the collective greed embodied by these cloud-based giants have turned us into mindless robots responding to click-bait, providing them energy they need for their rockets that fly them to Mars?
How can independent thought survive in the onslaught of numbing or polarizing non-media? How can the independent business survive when the modern Internet has been stacked against the very individual it was meant to liberate?
How can the American Dream survive?
Becoming Awake
The vision of 2020, the flying cars and the robots that do all the menial work in an age of plenty, that vision has not happened. Hunger still is a thing in a surplus society, and many signs that should be way positive, are way negative.
The resources needed to fix things are already available today, and have been for a long while. The abundance we want has always been here, just not realized and not equally distributed.
And we got here because we weren’t paying attention. We seem to be caught unaware, because we were acting without awareness to the reality of what has been happening around us for so long.
We let greed and self-interest run amok – in the guise of an old wine in a new bottle – we let ourselves believe that tech companies are somehow different, perhaps because they are created by nerdy folks who appear to not be all that materialistic, and that some how techies are more egalitarian or liberal. Fundamentally untrue, as the wealth distribution shows in actuality.
And what is worse is the Don’t-Be-Evil and We-Connect-People platforms have become toll booths that claim to be free, but essentially sell us, their users, down the river. If it was cheap and open, that would still be a service, but they have now turned into pay-for-play oligarchies that enable each other – small businesses and people are captive revenue streams, pouring their hard earned dollars into the bottomless pit of the so called attention economy.
Why? Because TINA. There is no alternative.
Until now.
In Plain Sight
How does one wake up from a bad dream?
The answer to our problems is in plain sight, it is all around us. Who is Facebook? Who is Google? Who is Twitter, Snapchat, and Instagram? Who is WhatsApp, and TikTok, and YouTube, and WeChat?
Who are all these people?
It is You. It is I. It is Us. We are Facebook, and We are Google.
We can easily turn the tide against these juggernauts by realizing the truth about ourselves, about we the people. That we are all mere participants in the Great Marketplace, the single universal marketplace that transcends all barriers of platforms and even countries.
Introducing the Awake Market, powered by Shoptype.
On February 22nd, Awake will introduce Shoptype. And you’ll see why 2020 won’t be like 1984. - Amit Rathore, CEO @ Awake
Surely, all these people across all these aggregators are not beholden to the platforms? Surely there is a way for all of us to take back our personal sovereignty from these dictatorial platforms?
But how? How to awaken the people, how to create an Alternative to the Current Situation?
The New World Order
The simple truth is in plain sight. We are Facebook, and we are all the platforms.
I am the one that matters, not the aggregated I.
We matter, not the platform that aggregates us. We are the ones being monetized, we are the products. We are the value.
We can choose how to do business, and where.
And we do not need to leave Facebook 😉
We continue to be Facebook, and Instagram, and Twitter, and Snapchat. But we also remember our True Identity, as unique individuals, that together can create any aggregated online platform we like.
All we need is a factor that unites us in that cause.
Shoptype enables brands and causes, it enables people to come together across the diverse Internet platforms, and enables commonality, powered by trade.
Shoptype enables everyone to participate in The Great Marketplace, as individuals again.
Whether you are a brand, or an influencer, or a media creator, there is a place in the Great Value Chain where you fit. Where your individuality shines, and it adds a little something to the value chain, where your efforts drive transactions towards fulfillment.
Shoptype enables brands and businesses to emerge and thrive.
Shoptype enables brands to instantly create a virtual salesforce powered by anyone online, assisted by AI, no matter what platforms they are on, no matter where their large or small audiences are.
Markets within Markets
Stores within stores. This is the power of Shoptype.
When anyone can create an Amazon of Amazons, where does value addition go?
It exists only in the personalized influence and service you can provide, encouraging value-driven loyalty across your followers.
In other words, sales is a relationships game, and everyone can and does play it.
Sales is an influencer game, and any media producer can play it.
Brands are media companies, and anyone can start one.
Resellers are influencers, and anyone can resell. Reselling is the new selling.
Any brand can instantly go from Zero to 1M resellers overnight, no matter where they reside, across Facebook, across WeChat, across YouTube.
Viral Marketplaces
How to engineer virality?
Virality is when people begin to share something organically, because they themselves have a purely vested interest in doing so. Maybe something is truly funny, or truly moving.
But usually, it is motivated by something far simpler.
The one who shares something with earnest, typically has something to gain.
So give everyone something to gain. Power your brand and your global virtual salesforce with Instant Settlements, and with fully verifiable tracking.
This is Shoptype, because everyone is an influencer, everyone is a buyer, and everyone is a referrer. Word of mouth is a real thing, now it is settled and compensated for in real time.
And if you’re good at amplifying your “word of mouth” through digital media, then you are a powerful force for brands.
You are your own brand, we are all brands.
Facebook, and everyone else, is merely an aggregator of the most powerful things in the world – brands – you and I that actually DRIVE worldly commerce by word of mouth, and by staking our reputation on referring others and by helping others sell.
Shoptype for Everyone
Shoptype enables an entirely new paradigm that goes beyond just influencer marketing.
Shoptype enables an entirely new paradigm of direct influencer commerce.
Instant Paychecks!
Shoptype acts as the platform layer that helps media creation and curation, and selling, reselling and influencing, via real-time digital commerce.
Shoptype however also acts as the settlement ledger, allowing you to get paid instantly, no matter what your contribution to the value chain is – making, branding or marketing, selling or reselling, creating media or influencing.
Shoptype connects all the dots so no one else has to.
Finally, the big tech aggregators can be used what they are good for, tapping into audiences your sales people have, that listen and consume content about things you make or sell.
The big tech platforms are not the marketplaces, WE ARE.
And once again, you as an individual have the power to drive influence and commerce, whether you’re an independent brand or independent media, or indeed an individual influencer.
People Powered Marketplaces
Shoptype, in the end, returns us to the roots of human civilization – the marketplace.
Shoptype enables brands to create digital reseller networks that sit on top of the existing media and audience clouds. These reseller networks are powered by individuals – brands and influencers – and they in turn have audiences across various Internet platforms around the world.
Shoptype enables makers and brands to create markets for their products and services by creating a market for resellers to make money by selling for them, creating jobs and new brands in the process.
As value is created by each node across Shoptype value chains, the settlement process is transparent and real-time. It removes the needs for shady affiliate clouds entirely.
Everyone is able to work together towards enabling commerce. And the notion of exorbitantly priced media campaigns to buy “Facebook and Google ads” of dubious value, that becomes a thing of the past.
The toll booths vanish because Shoptype sidesteps them entirely.
Shoptype makes any brand a Direct-To-Consumer (D2C) machine.
Shoptype brings power back into the hands of the individual nodes, and makes clear that the power of networks is only in the sum total of mutual value creation, not in the current one-sided aggregation.
Shoptype enables an Awake Market.
2020 and 1984
Fire. Bicycle. Transistor.
Amazon. Facebook.
WordPress. Shopify.
Shoptype.
What did you think 2020 would be like?
Are we entering a world of open camaraderie and technological abundance, or are we entering a world divided by inequality and imbalance?
The imbalance can be set right very quickly and very simply. Shoptype makes it possible for anyone to achieve the dream – of harmony, peace, and prosperity.
Shoptype is Prosperity-as-a-Service, and turns any brand or individual into a financially independent media-powered digital business.
Shoptype is Commerce 2.0.
