Ugly but unexpected things
Five fragments for the week of July 15, 2024
Hello from the middle of July. I’m Diana Kimball Berlin, a partner at Matrix leading concept through Series A rounds in B2B SaaS and AI startups. I work with companies like Liveblocks, Meshcapade, Accord, and Infinity.
Here are five fragments that stuck with me last week…
I think WebSim offers a glimpse into the future of AI. Although it’s “websites” they are really software applications generated in seconds with no coding ability needed. Everyone talks nonstop about LLMs and image generators, but WebSim includes all of those features and actually leverages them. It blows my mind to see AI create ray traced 3D environments, image editing tools, games, etc.
– Post on the /websim subreddit, June 27, 2024. I also appreciated this comment on Twitter/X—“I'm obsessed with [WebSim] it's basically Minecraft for adult millennials who miss Web 1.0.” Interesting to see some of the same energy come through to Anthropic’s Claude in the form of Artifacts.
I start on Monday with problems brought to me. Tuesday, I start resolving them. Wednesday, I’m close to finished resolving them. Thursday and Friday are wonderful because everything’s resolved. Then I start again on Monday. I want happy users and a happy team. But I’ll settle for happy users, unhappy team, because then I can work to make the team happy.
– Fuzzy Khosrowshahi, CTO of Notion, in an interview published in Fast Company, July 5, 2024. People I know who’ve worked with Fuzzy think the world of him, so it’s helpful to see inside the philosophy of a respected leader. I’ve often heard the opposite—a happy team leads to happy users—but I think this is more accurate. A sidenote: while looking for related tweets, I learned that Fuzzy and Dara Khosrowshahi, CEO of Uber, are related!
A good creative tool should let people make ugly but unexpected things, I think. Any new capability that yields only beautiful things is a subtle kind of tyranny.
– @xhfloz on Twitter/X, November 18, 2023. I believe this wholeheartedly.
Since introducing the game on a key chain last November, the Bandai Co.…has sold 5 million Tamagotchis. But it probably could have sold a bunch more. Indeed, Tamagotchi, which roughly translates as “cute little egg,” has become a virtual game in another sense as well: it is virtually always sold out at virtually every store.
– Andrew Pollack, “The Tamagotchi: Toy Life-Form Invades the U.S.,” The New York Times, May 3, 1997. Got inspired by Tolan, the “alien best friend” app, to page back through the history of virtual pets. Did you know that trading volume of Bandai’s stock quadrupled when it offered to gift a Tamagotchi to each owner of at least 1,000 shares?
Not everyone embraces [Tadao] Ando’s aesthetic. When it came to marketing the seven condos at 152 Elizabeth, the sales team worked with an interior designer to soften the look with more textured touches, lighting and wood accents, in order to appeal to a wider audience. “It had to be warmed up,” Steinberg said. Still, Ando had to sign off on the interiors, or “we would have gone to Ando jail,” he said with a laugh.
– Katherine Clarke and E.B. Solomont, “Celebrities Like Beyoncé and Jay-Z Have a New Obsession: An 81-Year-Old Japanese Architect,” The Wall Street Journal, May 25, 2023. The idea of “Ando jail” is so charming to me—a mental structure designed to support total authorship. (Thanks to Adam for the tip.)
Until next time,
Diana
https://dianaberlin.com