The Slow Hunch by Nick GrossmanFrom Crypto-Native to Crypto-Enabled
I’m not one to make big annual predictions, but one thing that seems likely to me is that 2024 will mark the emergence of mainstream apps powered by ...
The Slow Hunch by Nick GrossmanBitcoin as Battery
One of my favorite things about crypto is that, every so often, your conception of what it is changes.Bitcoin at first was "weird internet money...
The Slow Hunch by Nick GrossmanThe Internet's Next Business Model: A Conversation with Cloudflare's Matthew Prince
I just released a new episode of The Slow Hunch with Matthew Prince, CEO and co-founder of Cloudflare. Since we invested in their Series C back in 2013, I've watched Matthew and his team build one of the most critical pieces of internet infrastructure—protecting and accelerating vast portions of global web traffic. Our conversation traces Matthew's journey from his early "slow hunch" that the internet was fundamentally broken and needed fixing. We start with his law school days in 2000, when ...
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Investing @ USV. Student of cities and the internet.
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I always have a hard time explaining what we do at The Open Planning Project. The front page of our website reads: "TOPP is a catalyst. We empower civil society through software, media, and smart urban policy." While this makes sense if you think about it for a while, when I first say it to people I'm usually met with blank stares. I don't mean to dig on TOPP -- a lot of effort went into writing that tagline, and believe me, earlier versions were more abstract and less punchy. Prior to this current version, we had a different tagline: "Virtual tools for real-world change." That's what our t-shirts still say on them, and I don't mind it. It has a skyline above it, implying a connection with cities, which I like. But still, I don't think we have a compelling enough elevator pitch -- a description that doesn't take five minutes and a walk-through of our org chart to explain. So recently, I've been trying out something new. I'm experimenting with the following explanation:
I always have a hard time explaining what we do at The Open Planning Project. The front page of our website reads: "TOPP is a catalyst. We empower civil society through software, media, and smart urban policy." While this makes sense if you think about it for a while, when I first say it to people I'm usually met with blank stares. I don't mean to dig on TOPP -- a lot of effort went into writing that tagline, and believe me, earlier versions were more abstract and less punchy. Prior to this current version, we had a different tagline: "Virtual tools for real-world change." That's what our t-shirts still say on them, and I don't mind it. It has a skyline above it, implying a connection with cities, which I like. But still, I don't think we have a compelling enough elevator pitch -- a description that doesn't take five minutes and a walk-through of our org chart to explain. So recently, I've been trying out something new. I'm experimenting with the following explanation:
Subscribe to The Slow Hunch by Nick Grossman
Investing @ USV. Student of cities and the internet.
The Slow Hunch by Nick GrossmanFrom Crypto-Native to Crypto-Enabled
I’m not one to make big annual predictions, but one thing that seems likely to me is that 2024 will mark the emergence of mainstream apps powered by ...
The Slow Hunch by Nick GrossmanBitcoin as Battery
One of my favorite things about crypto is that, every so often, your conception of what it is changes.Bitcoin at first was "weird internet money...
The Slow Hunch by Nick GrossmanThe Internet's Next Business Model: A Conversation with Cloudflare's Matthew Prince
I just released a new episode of The Slow Hunch with Matthew Prince, CEO and co-founder of Cloudflare. Since we invested in their Series C back in 2013, I've watched Matthew and his team build one of the most critical pieces of internet infrastructure—protecting and accelerating vast portions of global web traffic. Our conversation traces Matthew's journey from his early "slow hunch" that the internet was fundamentally broken and needed fixing. We start with his law school days in 2000, when ...
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(standard disclaimer) "We're a non-profit software company; yeah, it's a bit strange, I know." "We build software that makes cities easier to use. You know, like, making it easier to get around, to interface with your government, and to connect with your neighbors."
This morning, I tried this on a friend at the gym, and I got an "Oh, cool! You mean like public transportation? My friend in Seattle was telling me about GPS on buses there -- how come we don't have that in NYC?" Bingo. So, I'm going to test this out a little more. Making cities easier to use. I like it. I just updated my twitter description with that; we'll see if anyone notices. To get a little more specific, here are some of the questions I think we're trying to answer that fall under this larger goal: How can we make it easier to...
get around? (ideally by foot, bike, or transit)
interface with government? (who reps me? who supports me? how can I help? how can I be heard?)
connect with neighbors? (who lives on my block? what do we have in common? how can we help each other?)
be involved in shaping the future? (combining the two above: connecting with neighbors and interfacing with gov)
Of course, there are plenty of other ways to make a city easier to use, that lots of creative projects (many of them NYC-based startups) are already addressing: How can we make it easier to...
connect with friends? (Foursquare)
help people & volunteer? (Ushahidi, The Extraordinaries)
connect in real-time (Twitter)
organize a team to make something happen, right now (Groundcrew)
find people who want to do things I want to do (Meetup)
and on and on...
Given all of these questions and more, it's highly likely that Making cities easier to use is still too broad; but there's no question that it's easier to explain, which is a start. And for those of you struggling with similar issues of tagline-choosing, see Seb's brand-spanking-new conjoint.py decision-making tool, which OpenGeo has been using recently during its own tagline discussion. // Photo of crumpled city map by Emanuele Pizzolorusso via MoCo loco
(standard disclaimer) "We're a non-profit software company; yeah, it's a bit strange, I know." "We build software that makes cities easier to use. You know, like, making it easier to get around, to interface with your government, and to connect with your neighbors."
This morning, I tried this on a friend at the gym, and I got an "Oh, cool! You mean like public transportation? My friend in Seattle was telling me about GPS on buses there -- how come we don't have that in NYC?" Bingo. So, I'm going to test this out a little more. Making cities easier to use. I like it. I just updated my twitter description with that; we'll see if anyone notices. To get a little more specific, here are some of the questions I think we're trying to answer that fall under this larger goal: How can we make it easier to...
get around? (ideally by foot, bike, or transit)
interface with government? (who reps me? who supports me? how can I help? how can I be heard?)
connect with neighbors? (who lives on my block? what do we have in common? how can we help each other?)
be involved in shaping the future? (combining the two above: connecting with neighbors and interfacing with gov)
Of course, there are plenty of other ways to make a city easier to use, that lots of creative projects (many of them NYC-based startups) are already addressing: How can we make it easier to...
connect with friends? (Foursquare)
help people & volunteer? (Ushahidi, The Extraordinaries)
connect in real-time (Twitter)
organize a team to make something happen, right now (Groundcrew)
find people who want to do things I want to do (Meetup)
and on and on...
Given all of these questions and more, it's highly likely that Making cities easier to use is still too broad; but there's no question that it's easier to explain, which is a start. And for those of you struggling with similar issues of tagline-choosing, see Seb's brand-spanking-new conjoint.py decision-making tool, which OpenGeo has been using recently during its own tagline discussion. // Photo of crumpled city map by Emanuele Pizzolorusso via MoCo loco
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