Last night I went to see RAIN, a Beatles tribute band, with my friend and neighbor Jeff. If you haven't been to one, tribute bands/shows are kind of odd: on the one hand, typically technically/musically perfect (the tribute band can play the entire catalog of the original band flawlessly); and on the other hand, the vibe is strange: it's a band pretending to be a band, so it doesn't have any original energy or punch.
As I was watching the show I kept thinking about this. What is the difference between being a Beatle and being a musician that can play the Beatles catalog perfectly, in character?
Perhaps the answer is obvious, but it still got me thinking. I believe the answer is part creativity and part risk. Creativity because, of course, half of being the Beatles is actually inventing the music, not just playing it. Probably more than half the challenge.
And on risk: playing new music, music that has not been played before, or "digested" and understood by the general public, is hugely risky. People won't "get it" right away, or worse may simply hate it (whether on the merits or just for being new and different).
On a broader level, it got me thinking about the difference between being a leader and a follower. Once the creative work is done, and the opportunity is de-risked, it is relatively easy to look at something and copy the execution. But it takes creativity and balls to do it on your own the first time.
This applies to all things -- music, art, writing, a startup, investing, restaurants, etc. I have seen it particularly first hand in the startup and investing world, where a "lead" investor not only has the foresight and conviction to back an early team, but they have the leadership to bring other investors along.
Continuing on the theme of what decentralization is good for, this week I would like to focus on one of the most powerful drivers in the near-term: Platform Risk.
Platform Risk is is the risk that the tech platform that you build your product/app/business/life on will become a critical dependency, will become unreliable, and/or worse, will screw you in the end.
Here is a post from a few years back that details many different flavors of platform risk, many of which are benign, and some of which are malicious. And here are some examples, to make it more concrete:
Over the long weekend, I spent a bunch of time with my kids doing outdoor cold weather activities. I love the winter, and I love winter sports -- there is something about being outside on a cold, sunny day that gets my blood moving and makes me feel great.
Those who have read this blog for a while may know that a few years ago I got the ice skating bug and have been working on my skating and learning to play ice hockey.
This past weekend, while skating with my kids, I had a breakthrough moment -- the elusive "backwards crossovers" that I wrote about back in 2016 finally made sense, both to my brain and to my body. It's like that moment in Night School where Kevin Hart finally manages to make sense of the jumble of mathematical symbols:
It was amazing: somehow I managed to slow things down, connect my brain and my body in the right way, and the move that I just couldn't master for so long suddenly made sense. It was absolutely a combination of body and mind -- understanding it the way as well as feeling it the right way.
Last night I went to see RAIN, a Beatles tribute band, with my friend and neighbor Jeff. If you haven't been to one, tribute bands/shows are kind of odd: on the one hand, typically technically/musically perfect (the tribute band can play the entire catalog of the original band flawlessly); and on the other hand, the vibe is strange: it's a band pretending to be a band, so it doesn't have any original energy or punch.
As I was watching the show I kept thinking about this. What is the difference between being a Beatle and being a musician that can play the Beatles catalog perfectly, in character?
Perhaps the answer is obvious, but it still got me thinking. I believe the answer is part creativity and part risk. Creativity because, of course, half of being the Beatles is actually inventing the music, not just playing it. Probably more than half the challenge.
And on risk: playing new music, music that has not been played before, or "digested" and understood by the general public, is hugely risky. People won't "get it" right away, or worse may simply hate it (whether on the merits or just for being new and different).
On a broader level, it got me thinking about the difference between being a leader and a follower. Once the creative work is done, and the opportunity is de-risked, it is relatively easy to look at something and copy the execution. But it takes creativity and balls to do it on your own the first time.
This applies to all things -- music, art, writing, a startup, investing, restaurants, etc. I have seen it particularly first hand in the startup and investing world, where a "lead" investor not only has the foresight and conviction to back an early team, but they have the leadership to bring other investors along.
Continuing on the theme of what decentralization is good for, this week I would like to focus on one of the most powerful drivers in the near-term: Platform Risk.
Platform Risk is is the risk that the tech platform that you build your product/app/business/life on will become a critical dependency, will become unreliable, and/or worse, will screw you in the end.
Here is a post from a few years back that details many different flavors of platform risk, many of which are benign, and some of which are malicious. And here are some examples, to make it more concrete:
Over the long weekend, I spent a bunch of time with my kids doing outdoor cold weather activities. I love the winter, and I love winter sports -- there is something about being outside on a cold, sunny day that gets my blood moving and makes me feel great.
Those who have read this blog for a while may know that a few years ago I got the ice skating bug and have been working on my skating and learning to play ice hockey.
This past weekend, while skating with my kids, I had a breakthrough moment -- the elusive "backwards crossovers" that I wrote about back in 2016 finally made sense, both to my brain and to my body. It's like that moment in Night School where Kevin Hart finally manages to make sense of the jumble of mathematical symbols:
It was amazing: somehow I managed to slow things down, connect my brain and my body in the right way, and the move that I just couldn't master for so long suddenly made sense. It was absolutely a combination of body and mind -- understanding it the way as well as feeling it the right way.
The Slow Hunch by Nick Grossman
Investing @ USV. Student of cities and the internet.
The Slow Hunch by Nick Grossman
Investing @ USV. Student of cities and the internet.
This is not to say that any of these acts are necessarily illegal, or even immoral. But if you are investing serious time and money -- especially dropping everything to build a business on a platform -- these kinds of risks are of grave concern.
So, what does decentralization have to do with platform risk? When the platform is a protocol (i.e, decentralized) rather than a company (i.e., centralized), the rules of engagement are known up front and can't change on a whim or because of a business decision.
If we think about the original internet protocols (TCP/IP, HTTP, SMTP, FTP, SSL, etc), they are a set of networking, communications and data exchange protocols that ultimate form the platform we know of as the web. While there are certain forms of platform risk on the web (e.g., stability, speed, security), the web on the whole has become a very stable and reliable platform, generally absent of the flavors of risks detailed above.
Cryptonetworks (i.e., public blockchains and cryptocurrencies) combine the architecture of the original internet protocols with the functionality of today's corporate applications platforms (data management & transactions). While there are still major issues to solve before these systems collectively become a mainstream platform, they are gaining major adoption from developers in large part because developers are so keenly aware of platform risk, and see cryptonetworks as a type of platform they can trust.
As an illustrative example, let's compare downloads of the Truffle framework (a popular dev tool for Ethereum):
Developers are the canary in the coal mine when it comes to platforms. And at the moment, they are pointing to the desire for platforms with less inherent risk, more reliability and more trust.
This is not a post about ice skating. But rather about the magic that happens when you finally unlock a new skill. It is an amazing feeling, and not something we get to feel every day.
I think there is something particularly important about doingit to get it -- it's one thing to read about something, or watch videos, etc -- but nothing substitutes for getting out there and trying it (and falling a few times along the way). This is a lesson I keep reminding myself of whenever I'm trying to learn something new.
This is not to say that any of these acts are necessarily illegal, or even immoral. But if you are investing serious time and money -- especially dropping everything to build a business on a platform -- these kinds of risks are of grave concern.
So, what does decentralization have to do with platform risk? When the platform is a protocol (i.e, decentralized) rather than a company (i.e., centralized), the rules of engagement are known up front and can't change on a whim or because of a business decision.
If we think about the original internet protocols (TCP/IP, HTTP, SMTP, FTP, SSL, etc), they are a set of networking, communications and data exchange protocols that ultimate form the platform we know of as the web. While there are certain forms of platform risk on the web (e.g., stability, speed, security), the web on the whole has become a very stable and reliable platform, generally absent of the flavors of risks detailed above.
Cryptonetworks (i.e., public blockchains and cryptocurrencies) combine the architecture of the original internet protocols with the functionality of today's corporate applications platforms (data management & transactions). While there are still major issues to solve before these systems collectively become a mainstream platform, they are gaining major adoption from developers in large part because developers are so keenly aware of platform risk, and see cryptonetworks as a type of platform they can trust.
As an illustrative example, let's compare downloads of the Truffle framework (a popular dev tool for Ethereum):
Developers are the canary in the coal mine when it comes to platforms. And at the moment, they are pointing to the desire for platforms with less inherent risk, more reliability and more trust.
This is not a post about ice skating. But rather about the magic that happens when you finally unlock a new skill. It is an amazing feeling, and not something we get to feel every day.
I think there is something particularly important about doingit to get it -- it's one thing to read about something, or watch videos, etc -- but nothing substitutes for getting out there and trying it (and falling a few times along the way). This is a lesson I keep reminding myself of whenever I'm trying to learn something new.
