AR Networks
In this article, we describe how small world networks will develop within augmented reality experiences and how they will be powered.
Small-World Networks
Who runs the world? It's not Beyonce. It's a Small-World Network.
Every animal connectome is a collection of small-world networks. Your collection of group text messages is a small-world network. Your high school reunion is a good example; a forest is another.
Nearly everything in life is both a fractal and a small-world network. Here's a short, 4-minute video we recorded where we explain it in more detail and how to use them to your advantage:
https://youtu.be/e6D0tg6Ck-w?si=KhRWkwCh5IBoLP4K
Augmented Reality Worlds
But why should we care about small-world networks when we're talking about Augmented Reality (AR)? Even though Apple released its version of the global reference product, it does not yet have a killer use case that drives people to buy its hardware product.
We at the firm feel fairly confident that the killer app will not be a port of a 2D app from the iPhone to a see-through 2D app in a 3D space. It will be something different and native to the platform itself.
It requires an entertaining experience that gives you superpowers when you put on the glasses, which you use in your digital and real life for work and play.
The solution will unify the experience of work, play, digital, and real life. It will go in the opposite direction of apps that break apart use cases for the small screen. It will consolidate them.
So where do you look for inspiration of what the future world will look like? We already have beta tests adopted at scale. These include Minecraft, Fortnite, Roblox, and RecRoom. Roblox, for example, has nearly 100M daily active users, 2.6M developers, and 5.2M experiences driving nearly $1B in bookings as of the end of Q1 2024.
But even in these Ready Player One metaverse worlds, where people come to hang out while doing things, experiences are fragmented, fake money is used, and there is no real-world integration. In addition, these are all fully virtual experiences instead of digital experiences overlaid in the real world.
As a result, there are many small-world networks, but not the primary ones. The primary one we all live in is the real world. Whether you believe we're in a simulation or not, we're here and there's no escaping it.
Connecting the Real with the Virtual
How do you connect the real world with the virtual world?
You use Bitcoin.
At this point, I'm going to walk away for a few minutes to let that sink in fully.
Let me explain briefly. The Sun emits energy, which we capture with solar panels. Those solar panels power small-world networks of computers called data centers. Time passes and those data centers create Bitcoin (until there's only 21M in total) and process transactions, adding another "entry" onto their blockchain. This is the internet. Connected computers doing calculations based on human and machine interactions. Those Bitcoins are used to pay for things in the virtual world.
So, the real world turns into the virtual world over time.
As we've described in prior memos, people don't understand Bitcoin or Artificial Intelligence. But they do understand how to walk around our world and interact with things. We learned it as babies and have been doing it our entire lives. 3D objects move around a 3D world. The only difference is we’ve now overlaid digital objects. We’re quite literally digitally transforming the real world.
What this means is that AR starts in the virtual world and moves into the real world when we put on glasses and interact with them. Meanwhile, Bitcoin starts in the physical world (sunshine, computers) and then interacts with us in the virtual world.
Now put the crossover, convergence, and evergence together:
Sun > Humans > Electricity > Computing > Bitcoin > Artificial Intelligence > Augmented Reality > Humans
or go the other way
Humans > Augmented Reality > Artificial Intelligence > Bitcoin > Computing > Electricity > Humans > Sun
Confused yet? Or as our friend Anthony says, "Brain grenades"?
What's Next
Where do we go from here? We remind ourselves of the Evergence:
We begin building small-world networks in a three-dimensional augmented reality overlaid in the real world and powered by artificial intelligence, bitcoin, the sun, and core values.
Or said differently, we build a better world.
Stay tuned.
--Sean
AI Secrets Revealed
In this memo, we break down perspectives, definitions, and guardrails for artificial intelligence that you may not have heard before.
Perspectives
Everyone believes Artificial Intelligence will change the world, but the question of how it will do that is divided into three camps: It's going to take our jobs, it's going to kill us, or it's going to make our lives better.
The real question is not which one will happen, but rather how do we incentivize the positive ones and disincentive the negative ones? Thus, the work is to ensure it makes our lives better without taking our jobs or killing us.
But first, we need to describe AI appropriately because its PR has been abysmal at best, which resulted in this issue in the first place.
Definitions
AI is math. It's as simple as y = mx + b, the equation for a line, if you remember your middle school algebra. The simplest "artificial intelligence" is:
Remember that old refrain?
What am I going to use this math for in the real world?
Now you know. It's one of the most valuable technologies ever created by humankind, and it's sucking up all venture capital investment, consumer attention, data center build-outs, and big tech product development time.
Guardrail 1
Hollywood needs to create compelling stories to keep people engaged. One way to do that is with movies like Terminator, which is more memorable and profitable than Bicentennial Man. As a result, generations of humans have subconsciously believed that AI is inherently evil. But math isn't evil. Humans are.
If I give a murderer a pencil, he will likely stab you with it. If I give Walt Disney a pencil, he will probably entertain your family and make you feel good.
So, it matters who we give this new pencil called AI to and how they use it. Thus, we need appropriate guardrails to give more responsibility to trustworthy people with empathy and strong values. Similarly, we keep AI out of the hands of sociopaths.
But how many companies have a hiring process that tests for empathy over raw skills? Very few.
And how many political elections vote empathetic leaders into office? It's not part of anyone's campaign platform, so there are few, but in time perhaps there will be.
As a result, you shouldn't be scared of math or AI but rather of who you elect to build it, control it, and give your data to. That's the first guardrail.
Guardrail 2
The other primary issue with AI is that it gives fuzzy answers. Some call them hallucinations. Who are the ad wizards who name things these days? Can we please get some values-based product marketers, with an advertising background, who know how to tell the truth about the essence of a thing in a friendly, human way? It seems rare.
As a result, we need to establish protective guardrails on the output of AI models, what those models are connected to, and which things they can do. These balances and checks will help control second-order consequences that we can't yet see. Some organizations call this "AI Safety," which I suppose is a response to poorly executed PR, but it doesn't tell you much about what the definition of safety is in this new world.
That's why we like words such as Guardrails and Permissions better.
Give permission to a trustworthy few individuals and organizations to develop the math that turns into products, and only give certain permissions to these mathematical products that have proven they can control themselves. These can be written into software, much like certain users have admin permissions and other users have read-only permissions.
We like the golden rule: do unto others as you would have done unto you.
If you or your product hurts people, animals, or our environment, it may end up circling back around and hurting you too. Like a boomerang of mathematical karmic energy.
Evergence™
As we move through the convergence of technologies and into the emergence of new business models, it's helpful to stay aligned on which layer artificial intelligence operates in the internet tech stack of today:
Once we do that, we can begin to focus on how these things come together and their impact.
For the AI layer, it's likely the intersection of multiple technologies will create the end-game automation layer: if-then statements, machine and deep learning, large language models, and biologic intelligence in the real world. Each are good for certain things, but taken together, we can unlock Voltron.
Remember, the people and organizations you give capital and power to matter a great deal. Profit potential must be balanced with core values. How do you determine someone's core values? Look at what they stood up for and what they suffered as a result of standing up. Those are their strongest values.
Stay tuned.
--Sean
New Bitcoin Perspective
In this memo, we describe a new way of thinking about Bitcoin that could help you internalize why it has value.
Listening to most people speak about Bitcoin, there seem to be only two schools of thought—it's worthless or it's the best thing since pockets.
We've been studying the asset class since 2013 when we were exposed to it by engineers in our local video streaming office who used the excess computing power to mine Bitcoin. Back then, the price had spiked from about $100 USD to $1,000 USD, and some engineers made enough to send their kids to college. Today the price is orders of magnitude higher with adoption from consumers to countries.
Most of the narratives you hear about Bitcoin have been poorly regurgitated and repeated. Much like the telephone game, only the repeatable sound bites remain while much of the fundamental analysis is removed.
So, we found a simple thought experiment helpful in understanding this asset class that is shorter and friendlier than trying to read code or spend the thousands of hours necessary to have a deep and true understanding of it.
Part 1: Our World is Chaotic Change
Imagine you are living in the exact world you're living in today, with all of its vagaries, ups, downs, and sideways twists. Shocks are everywhere and happen more frequently. Dot com busts, 9/11, housing busts, COVID, inflation, layoffs, stampedes, school shootings, war. You name it, we humans have a hand it in.
As a result, the world's primary currency, the United States Dollar, fluctuates with these shocks. Businesses raise prices to make money and also stay ahead of the rising costs. The United States Federal Reserve prints money and burns money constantly as a blunt tool to control the value of that money.
You may get a $0.50 per hour pay raise every year. But your grocery bill, school supplies, health care, and movies seem to be going up faster than that.
In essence, you live in a world of change, not in a world of stability. So something that doesn't change would be hard for you to understand. It would be as foreign as an alien landing a spacecraft in your front yard. In fact, you may not even recognize that it is alien or is a spacecraft because it's something you've never seen or experienced before. It is completely unique, different, and hard to wrap your head around.
Part 2: Bitcoin is Foreign Because It's Stable
Now I want you to imagine you've somehow been magically transported to another planet. On this planet, things don't change. They're always the same. It's consistency, safety, and stability. If we were to introduce the human world and its United States Dollar to this world, it would throw it into complete and utter disruption. The reason is because it brings with it constant and chaotic change. The inhabitants of the planet can't understand it or use it because the value is constantly changing.
However, on this planet, people use Bitcoin. There is a set amount of it, and the fundamental rules for how it works are set in stone and can't be changed. As a result, the world has built things on it, both its economic structure and its technologies.
Things don't change. There are 21 million Bitcoin, and each Bitcoin has 100 million Satoshis within it (think about Satoshis like you currently think about United States Dollars). Imagine buying $100M for $65K. You would take that deal all day long and twice on Sunday.
Because everyone on the planet uses Bitcoin, the value of 1 Bitcoin is always worth 1 Bitcoin. And 1 Satoshi is always 1 Satoshi (e.g., dollar). Of course, you can sell your product or service for a different amount. Some T-shirts might be more expensive and cost 500 Satoshis. Some might be less expensive and cost 100 Satoshis.
But because the amount of Bitcoin and Satoshis is stable and always the same, people can use it to compare the value of one good or service to another. There is no exchange rate. There is just this product vs that product. Which one "costs" less means it stops being about price and starts being about value. At that point, the entire planet has a shared and consistent subconscious way to communicate value to each other. From there, a deeper understanding can develop.
So the real question is which planet do you want to live on? The Planet of Constant Change and Chaos, or the Planet of Stability.
People have asked me what it's backed by. It's backed by the Internet (used by 5.4B people and 17B machines) and people's values (i.e., freedom).
We have written an investment analysis paper covering the various asset classes, which we may release to the public at some point. However, we have inserted a screenshot of the current draft below for your consideration, which shows that every asset class on Planet Earth is backed by the Internet.
Part 3: Another Compelling Argument for Bitcoin
Michael Saylor owns a technology company he founded decades ago. It's a public company but people didn't really pay attention to it because it didn't change much. Again, we live in a world of change, so the only thing "exciting" to us is more change.
During COVID, he and some intelligent individuals analyzed all the asset classes and tools available to the company to protect it from these chaotic changes and landed on Bitcoin. They began buying it aggressively and putting all the company's savings into it due to its stability. As a result, the value of his company rose from $500M to $25B and garnered quite a bit of attention.
Then, the SEC approved Bitcoin ETFs, which pushed Bitcoin through the largest investment distribution channel on the planet and enabled corporations and individuals to get access to the price movement of Bitcoin without any of its other features. Eventually, one would assume they will skip the fake ETF wrapper that makes it look more like a stock and go straight to the asset itself.
Here is the video where Michael Saylor provides his argument for Bitcoin. It covers more perspectives and detail about scarce resources on our planet, like time and property.
https://youtu.be/S3T4nhtHxOA?si=8JnHPD1pRPRMnMBL
Feel free to reach out to evergence.team should you have questions or need help.
--Sean
10-Step Success
In this article, we describe the 10 fundamental steps to becoming successful as a product manager and business owner. Anyone can do it, just follow the path.
Back in the day, one of the founders of A16Z published a post called "Good Product Manager, Bad Product Manager" that helped people understand the difference between the two. It primarily focused on talking to customers, delivering weekly reports on time, and essentially just doing the table stakes of the job. There's an update at the top of the post that says it's out of date as it was written over 15 years ago.
But, the world has changed. Historical table stakes are no longer today's table stakes. Being different, unique, and better is table stakes. The Internet is the most competitive marketplace on the planet, for attention, for coins, for doing business.
So what does a good Product person look like today? To us, it looks more like a founder than a product manager:
Anyone can use this framework to develop their own business from scratch or improve an existing business.
--Sean
Power Messaging & Distribution Channels
In this article, we describe a method for supercharging growth that represents one piece of the new world we're building together.
I feel like I’m sprinting harder than ever but falling further behind.
It’s a common refrain we’re hearing from people across every walk of life and every level in the organization. Even those who many would deem “successful” are struggling to get by.
As prices continue to rise and living life becomes ever more expensive, nothing can keep up with the cost of capital. You need to earn a consistent 12% growth every year just to stay in place. Cash loses 3% per year, money market accounts and U.S. Treasuries earn you 4-5%, stocks in the S&P 500 may get you 8%, and some high-growth early-stage startups may get you higher but at a higher risk profile. Bitcoin has delivered more like 50% but it’s been volatile when viewed from the perspective of owning USD, though that volatility is now less than Netflix. Not to mention those coming out of school with no hope of home ownership.
I saw a stat that said the American dream now costs $3.5M: a marriage, two kids, a house, two cars, a couple of vacations a year, and a college education. Whether or not the number is perfectly accurate is irrelevant. What used to be “pick all six” is now barely “pick one.”
Something’s gotta give. And is likely the reason people are angry, anxious, depressed, and suicide rates are rising. We’re yelling at each other on social and bombing each other’s families metaphorically or realistically. It is simply not sustainable for our species to continue on like this.
It’s why people feel like they’re sprinting faster with nothing to show for it. And they’re exhausted. We’ve successfully transformed the human race into individual profit machines where they get a very small portion of the profits created, thanks in large part to 1900s assembly line education and thinking.
We are entering a new era where the people who feel this approach being unsustainable are leaving the societal expectation of work-life and choosing a less-bloated, higher-quality balance with smart, skillful, and most importantly, values-based people.
So, it requires a new business model, a new culture, and a new decentralized product development and distribution structure within its organization.
I’m no longer your boss when you can switch between “employers” at a whim based on which environment feels the best and pays the best. People will take short-term pay discounts to receive massive improvements in the feel, which then leads to massive improvements in pay and work-life balance.
The “American dream” is within reach again, for all citizens of the world.
And so, to stand out in this new world, and compete against the massive corporates using small teams of ten, we require a different weapon. One more real, more powerful.
It requires simple but powerful messaging that gets repeated amongst teammates and customers alike. It requires leveraging existing distribution channels to get the message and product out to the edge where customers exist. And it requires lower cost products and services but the opportunity to share in the upside. Distribution is built in from the beginning, if you will.
In this bold new world being created by the smartest and most capable now, the key to the whole shebang is getting leaders together in a room for decentralized roll-up partnerships. It doesn’t require a war chest of money when CEOs and founders agree that working together opens up a massive upside they couldn’t achieve on their own.
Like Voltron, the sum of the parts is 10x greater, but at a fraction of the cost. Together, we go farther.
POWER MESSAGING & DISTRIBUTION CHANNELS
Of course, we can help you with that to drive organic growth. But when we put multiple companies together into micro-ecosystems and do the same, the growth is supercharged, and compounds to deliver 10x results.
Reach out if you’d like to join us. We’re building one in eCommerce and one in emerging tech, with multiple CEOs and Founders in place already. Everyone has decision-making authority over their own lives; we welcome all who feel called to this new world.
We’re pushing forward towards new shores that will benefit us all instead of an ivory tower Of kings and queens. Instead of fiefdoms, a new kingdom.
The future is in the hands of the builders.
“Unlimited…”
—Sean
Magic as a Service
Wouldn't it be cool if you could make a simple API call and immediately add drops of magic to your boring, commoditized product? Just add the link to the developer documentation to your engineering team's Jira backlog. It means you can skip the whole product management, user experience, brand guidelines, and reviews that slow down your company. It results in improved release velocity and improved user love.
But what is the magic? Does Disney's Parks & Experiences offer an API to insert their magic into your product? Darth Vader shows up on your 404 page..."You shall not pass", and WALL-E on your under-construction page "waaaaallllleeeeeee".
Simple examples but it's unlikely that's the solution. It's not embedded into your product itself, whether that's a digital or physical product.
And it probably won't take the form of an API call because that makes it too generic. Sure, call ChatGPT for storytime answers in text, image, or video but everyone else has access to the same tool. So the end game of that is yet another me-too experience.
This means the only way you will have truly differentiated experiences for customers is by calling in the Avengers team, who are experts at Magic. It's a service, paid one time or monthly. And you lock them in place by paying for their time, which means you're at a competitive advantage for a cornered resource.
Jony Ive created a company called LoveFrom that offers Magic as a Service. Their website's animated typography is a wink to the magic they can produce. You trust them because Jony made popular Apple products. But so far they haven't released a true product. Sure, there are rumors of a ChatGPT phone but is that really magic? Can't you already load ChatGPT's website on the iPhone?
We think differently over at our studio.
We think in terms of world-building, character design, gaming, brand partnerships, and roll-up strategies combining many emerging technologies that compound distribution points, with mathematically pure incentive systems that reinforce behavior aligned with values system. Our building blocks are entire companies and industries, the totality of the Internet, cultural dynamics that shape the species, and magic moments like when Tarzan Touches an iPhone.
The sum of the parts is 10x better because, as a species, humans seek positive reinforcement at every step, a warm feeling of safety and goodness, the achievement of loving interactions, and the novelty of something new that excites every connection in their biological intelligence connectome.
The future will look nothing like the past, and you'll know you've achieved it when the solution becomes obvious in hindsight.
The number of people with this experience working on every emerging technology, entertainment brand, product, and consumer brand and with companies large and small is microscopically small. But that's what it takes to create a single, fleeting moment of magic.
And once you experience it as a customer, you forever feel whole because of it, a sense of wonderment severely lacking from the age we live in, and a sense of emptiness when you can't feel that magic again. So the search continues to re-engage in that feeling and experience that world for another fleeting moment.
Unless, of course, you can find a way to live within that world for longer periods of time—from seconds to minutes to hours to days to weeks, months, and years.
The product roadmap is extending the length of the feeling. Safety, warmth, wholeness, goodness, trust, excitement, creation, longevity, helping, giving, receiving, together.
This world is possible, and it's getting closer.
Trust the process and the team. We'll build the boat and fill it with friends to take us to new shores.
Magic isn't a service. It's a priority.
Have a magical day.
--Sean
Product-Emotion Fit
In this article we share our thoughts on the most critical lever of all to generating customer attention and driving growth in purchase behavior.
The corporate process has a way of sucking all the human emotion out of products. Brand marketers have their work cut out for them trying to get approvals from finance, legal, ops, blah blah blah.
Coke seemed to have figured it out. Drink our sugar water, be happy, and oh, Santa Claus.
Most of the technology industry thinks a requirements document is for engineering. No, that's a spec. The requirements document is for your user. And often, it has nothing to do with the features, benefits, colors, doohickies, and flim-flams.
It has more to do with social clout, ego, a sense of belonging and purpose, and even better, just plain old fun.
Products used to be exciting, like toys, and contain a sense of wonder when you experienced them. Now they're just the same ole design systems in figma with different color palettes and typography.
We've reached the end game of trends, which are now moving so fast that even consumers can't keep up on TikTok.
So, what's the answer to all this? I'll tell you. It's invention, it's the joy of creation, it's to stop looking at your one-year payback period, J-curve impacts on the firm's structural EBITDA, and product mechanics that have to hit, or we're all out of a job.
There is an infinite amount of money in the world for things that capture the imagination of our collective psyche. But creativity and invention don't work on your corporate timeline. "Make magic on a budget and an insane timeline," says everyone, and it's no wonder that Marques Brownlee is calling out startups and big tech alike for missing the magic.
So what are we to do...
what to do...
...
You hire the most insane, bleeding-edge talent on the planet, you give them a budget, some time, and most importantly, a safe place to explore, play, create, invent, feel, and they'll come back to you with some epic stuff you ain't never seen or experienced before.
That then gets a remarkable amount of attention because it gives people something to REMARK upon.
All these briefs that say, "Go viral, here's $5K" aren't going to cut it. Every social media influencer is playing from the same playbook, and every brand is copying every other brand's products at light speed. No one stands out; it's just noise, noise, noise, noise, noise. More of the same.
5.4 billion people are asleep at the wheel on the internet, and we think pushing that one more Instagram post is going to unlock the dam. Heck, even Zuck can't invent the next new product. He's got to go buy those. Apple canceled a car. Google's now just a gigantic product store window with ads plastered all over where you can barely see through to get what you're looking for. And Amazon's user experience still sucks. Good thing they spent 10 years working to remove that small bit of plastic outside of batteries to "help the environment". Perhaps Jeff returns that $0.5 billion boat and builds solar and wind farms with robotic corn farms instead. More importantly for Big Tech and their billionaire founders, where is the growth going to come from?
A consumer dam is ready to burst from decades of users and companies building these Big Tech companies but not sharing in a significant portion of the $10 trillion market cap they're now worth. Instead, it's all going to the owners of Blackrock.
So yeah, product-emotion fit. You either have it, or you don't. And I'd argue that unless you're selling ice cream in the summer, you don't have it, and your EBITDA growth rate is suffering as a result.
--Sean
evergence.team
The 10% Rule
When you're in the heat of the battle building your business, it's worth reminding ourselves about the 10% rule to keep our perspective in place.
When you think you've got it figured out, you're only 10% of the way there.
But what does this mean, you ask? Well, we've often found in our inventor and operator days that certain things seem to click into place along the path of business building. At first, things expand and become more complex. You're in the dark night at this phase. "Will it ever come together?" Then one thing will get added, and bam, it smashes together, minimizes itself, and becomes elegantly simplistic.
When it happens the first time you think you're done and you've solved all the problems of the world. But in reality, you've only solved about 10% of the total problem space. You just can't see the next steps, problems, or solutions yet.
Well, maybe you see some of the problems laid out in front of you, but you have to keep going to deliver the final solution.
So, celebrate the success of the first unlock and keep going through the black hole of the unknown to solve the next 9 riddles, and new worlds will emerge.
--Sean
Money Machine
We describe what it takes to master building money machines and why existing investors typically only manage one phase of the process required.
Let’s say you have a couple extra dollars that you’re not going to need next week for bills. Wouldn’t it be cool if you could put those dollars to work for you and get another $1 in return? Of course it would, you’re not insane.
Take that thought experiment a bit further and imagine it’s not just a few dollars but, say, $10K, $100K, or $1M. You’d love to put it to work and get some back. But you don’t want to lose any of it. So you get a bit scared and just leave it in cash in your account. You worked hard for that money, after all.
Giving it to someone else would require a great deal of trust and prior experience proving they know how to not lose it but also make more of it.
Basically, you want something so programmatic and guaranteed that you put money in and it spits money back out. You want a money machine.
You don’t necessarily care how the money machine works as long as it doesn’t mess up. Tinkering around on the inside of an ATM and a bank’s software wouldn’t get you very far, for instance. It's worth noting that these banks don’t give you more money for letting them use it and give it out to other people. They just make sure not to lose it. So they worked with the government to guarantee it. The government can print some more so that’s no biggie if it does get lost. Just print up a new batch and hand it back to the customer.
Economics lesson aside, you need to find a money machine provider that guarantees you don’t lose money and will also give you back more money than you put in.
What you’re looking for is a business! Or are we? Well, they’re not great at making money in the beginning, and they darn sure don’t last forever. They just keep dying after 25 or 50 years, even the big ones. So that’s not a reliable measure. I guess we have to keep shifting our money between businesses and hoping we pick the right ones at the right time. We should hire some people who know how to hop our money between businesses. They must know the secrets of getting the money machine to work properly.
Except they’re not so great either. They cost you more than you get many times.
So we’re left with relying on the government money machine. We give them some to hold for a little bit, and they pay us small amounts over time before giving us our original money back. That’s as risk-free as it gets.
But are we missing something? I think we are.
We know customers like new things that work better, are faster, and cost less. We know they trust those who have done it before and made successful money machines. We know we need to make something and get it in front of the people who need it. And we know the more people with that problem, the more money the money machine spits out.
So doesn’t it require people who have built small money machines rapidly before and can also rework them to be bigger money machines over time? Those who focus on returning the money you put in first and fast so you don’t lose money, and then give you more than you started with after that?
Yes. You had me at hello.
Nobody ever got fired for hiring IBM but there has yet to be a business whose entire purpose is a money machine. Give us $10, we’ll give you back $10, then more in a short amount of time. You don’t care how we do it only that we return you the $10, a little extra, and don't break the manmade laws as currently written. Then you may want to put some of the extra money back in so you keep getting more money back. All legally. Not ponzi’s here.
Sure, you could call these portfolio managers, venture capitalists, private equity investors, or value investors. But none of them do the entire thing we’ve described. They don’t each concept a new money machine from scratch, build it out, expand it, and begin returning money from it from the very beginning. They each represent certain phases of the money machine process Why?
It’s easy to say but hard to do. It requires mastering the art of money machine concepting, building, expanding, and returning.
This is what we do. We make money machines. If you give us $10, we'll start giving you back $1 until we return all $10, and then provide more $1s while you sit back and enjoy its benefits.
After all, do you really care how the money machine works as long as you keep getting that $1 back over a long time period and you don't get tied up in legal battles? We sure don't.
It takes less money upfront when you have an assembly line of money machines rolling off the factory floor. You can have your money machine in any color you want, as long as its green.
So let's get you in the money, and keep you there in perpetuity.
—Sean
The Evergence Cloud™
The world has changed, and the cloud has evolved into its third major phase. We break down each phase and provide a resource for capturing its value.
Cloud v1
The cloud of the far past was a sprinkling of carbon, a few hydrogen atoms, and an oxygen atom that, when converged, created the substrate from which life emerged. What an evergence.
Cloud v2
The current cloud shifted from nature-made nature to human-made nature, in the form of silicon and electricity. While hydrogen atoms are about 0.5 nanometers, our computer chips are pushing boundaries at 3 nanometers. So, we're not quite computing at the atomic scale, but we're close.
Next, all they did was transmit some of these 1-0, open-close bits over the airwaves, and viola, all the world's knowledge floating through the clouds.
Big Tech made its fortunes building data centers in remote locations connecting them with copper, underground and subsea cables, and satellite networks, and building human use cases in software over the top.
Cloud v3
As our technologies begin to converge, new things we could never have imagined will begin to emerge. The picture at the top of this page says it all.
The internet value stack of the future will enable new use cases, business models, and profit pools faster than ever. The question is who will capture it and how?
We believe the ones who begin experimenting now by combining multiple emerging technologies and new business models and developing bridges from the old world to the new world will be the ones to acquire massive user adoption. The speed of scale has accelerated from 0 to 100M in a matter of days, given the right media and word-of-mouth strategy.
Book of Principles
Planetary adoption is within reach, but it requires reasoning from base principles rather than analogy. Lemming behavior will not navigate you to the new world. Those who wait until it's already figured out will be left in the dust and too far behind to catch up.
This isn't Innovation, Digital Transformation, or Experimental budget. This is do-you-still-want-your-business-to-exist-in-ten-years.
Besides, the cost is negligible given you choose the right team.
We wrote a 20-chapter book with 30 principles and priced it at $1 so there should be no objections. Grab it here and get movin' before someone else takes your cheese:
https://everettadvisors.com/book/p/build-planetary-products
Sean
evergence.team
Light Speed Business Model
Not Another SAAS App
Well, we did it. We made software as a service happen at a planetary scale. Seemingly every startup, venture capital investor, and private equity investor wants a recurring revenue stream with high retention, so every business model is $ per user per month. We're done here.
Or are we?
If you talk to users and customers of these apps, they're going insane. There are too many apps, too many browser tabs, too many notifications, and too much context switching. And the apps that try to do it all in one become bloated and difficult to use.
Please, not another SAAS app.
We're spending tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, or millions of dollars per year on enterprise software to deliver simple things to end users.
Put text or numbers in a box, save it, then present it in another box or chart.
Upload audio or video, save it, play it, like, subscribe, and test what you learned.
This is it? We've had 30 years of global internet, the most capital created, and the best talent on the planet.
But we now have AI you say? A box where we put more text in it and, wowza, instead of giving us text back, gives us that image, audio, video, or chart.
OK, but it doesn't require all the browser tabs, logging in, forgetting passwords, or notification hell. It doesn't always work, and it's fuzzy at best.
"STOP THE INSANITY" as Susan Powter used to say in the 90s.
A Better Business Model
We believe the right answer starts with a better business model. And what's a better business model? One that makes you more money? Sure, that's good for you but not for the customer. That's a win-lose situation. Those suck.
So what's a win-win?
That would be a faster business model. And by faster, we mean light speed faster.
So instead of $ per user per month (SAAS) or $ per use (AWS) which has retention less than 100%, we suggest $ sharing (evergence). Let us explain.
Hi customer, we're company XYZ. Please use our product. It's got awesome thing 1, 2, and 3 and the best part, it's free. But as you use it to earn new revenue, we will take a % of that revenue. So, you only pay when you get value.
Of course, we've seen this business model before. It's a cost-plus concept. Costco used it to great effect. Charge at cost, and then put a small subscription margin over the top of it (call it $60/year or $5/month).
But the consumer is still bearing the brunt of most of the cost.
Why doesn't the consumer get anything in return for buying your product other than another product. Just cheaper cost, faster shipping, and better quality?
Why don't I get a piece of the company that I'm choosing to support? Why don't I get a revenue share of every new customer I bring into the store, or a percentage of everything I pay (read: "invest" into the company's operations) by buying from you versus someone else?
Wanna Get Wealthy?
The startup that figures this out is going to laugh all the way to the bank, to the moon, and beyond.
Starbucks wouldn't be having so many missed expectation problems right now if they adopted this thinking. A $7 cup of coffee is ridiculous unless I'm investing in my financial future by choosing Starbucks over Keurig or Dunkin.
Heck, maybe we'll start a new coffee company called, Investors Choice. The best part of waking up, is money in your cup.
--Sean