I live in an Airbnb.
If you ask me why, it’s because I’m certain that an era of a new sense of value will begin. It’s the era where “Social Evaluation” will become everything.
Continue reading ““Social Evaluation” will become everything”
You don’t need Mozart in a rock band
A company is a band
A startup is a band.
About 10 years ago, a “legend” at my company entered as an advisor. He was an expert who had created a certain software, and he was an extremely famous person. At the time, he had the desire to grow young startups as a post-retirement career, so he joined us.
Although he had joined us as an advisor, I felt that his way of thinking was outdated with every little thing, and it irritated me when we had meetings. I was still okay, but the engineers started to complain too.
Our cultural differences soon came to light, with people saying,
What that person is saying is a sound argument, but he doesn’t understand our development direction at all. The old way of doing things doesn’t suit us at all.
Why create a Slack account, rather than collect e-mail addresses?
The importance of Slack
In 2017, we ran a number of events. At the time, we discussed whether or not we should collect e-mail addresses. I felt that there was not much point in doing this, so I have now collected the messages that I sent to members of the management team at the time.
We do not really look at e-mails very much, do we?
I believe that Slack will become increasingly more important in the future. Among groups of technical people, there have recently been many that have created their own Slack channels. I believe that this usage is likely to grow even more.
Up until now, the main technique used was to ask people to sign up for a mailing list. However, communication styles have now started to change, so much so that an increasing number of technical people do not even tend to use e-mail in the first place, opting instead for chat-based communication or Slack channels. I have no doubt that whether you have a Slack account or not will become an increasingly important point in the future. In fact, it will become akin to the olden day technique of collecting e-mail addresses.
Continue reading “Why create a Slack account, rather than collect e-mail addresses?”
Since it’s 2018, these are the things I’ve decided to stop doing
I want to live in a world I can believe in
The picture you see is a New Year’s gift I gave this year. I didn’t want to receive these young people, who still have their entire futures ahead of them, so I gave them a gift using a currency I could believe in. I was told last year to stop putting these strange ideas into their heads, but this year, it went so smoothly I could hardly believe it. I also took the chance to explain to them how to use and manage their gift.
And now, it’s 2018. The future is practically now. So, I’d like to announce a few, not quite new year’s resolutions, but things I’ve decided I really have to stop doing, as an expression of my determination.
Continue reading “Since it’s 2018, these are the things I’ve decided to stop doing”
Beyond the startup
I went to CERN
I visited CERN. I’m going to make an announcement later, but I made an official appointment before visiting.
I remember it even now. It was a special TV program about the Internet revolution that I had once seen while I was a child. It was an episode about Tim Berners-Lee giving birth to the WWW at CERN, and Andreessen developing Mosaic. The Internet nowadays has all started from the WWW.
And I went to the birthplace of the WWW.
Bitcoin: The Land of Asura
Power is everything
Power rules over all in the world of virtual currencies.
The world of cryptocurrencies; a decentralized society in which individual power is everything. In order to survive in this decentralized society absolute power is essential.
Why is it that when you use cryptocurrencies the fees are so low? It’s because there are no middlemen taking a cut. On the flip side, it’s a fact that the convenience to users and improvements to the security offered by the centralized control are done away with when these costs are removed.
The decentralization of society
What is the decentralization of society?
Our world today is becoming more and more decentralized.
Decentralization refers to the breaking up of a completely isolated and individual system into smaller and more efficient organizations or communities. Multiple finely divided communities would exist from the standpoint of one individual human being, communities can also be physically separated. The kind of societal structure we are currently heading towards is a system depicted by the cryptocurrency.
Mom’s ICO
The era of Moms doing ICOs has arrived
When I attended a consensus in this year, I was approached by a woman around my parents’ age who said, “I am going to do an ICO.” Just in case anyone doubts me here, this really is a true story.
After that happened, as I was thinking “the day when mothers are doing ICOs must be quite soon,” after returning to Japan I quickly began talking in various places about how “when mothers start talking about doing their own ICOs, it might be time to be careful.”
That has become a reality faster than I thought it would. It has truly become the era when moms come to ask for advice regarding ICOs. If your mother came to your place and asked for advice, you must give advice so that she does not conduct fraud without intending to do so.
What do ICOs destroy?
The major premise of ICOs
What do ICOs destroy? I have declared that I will stop talking about this in public, so I had put down what I always used to say when I had the opportunity to talk in public in a written document.
Many people understand ICOs to be an easy method of fundraising. I think this is because their full name is “Initial Coin Offering” a name similar to IPO. However, the more that one gains a correct understanding of the actual state of ICOs, the more one realizes that what ICOs have changed is not the ease of amassing funds.
What ICOs have changed is the ease of providing funds. First of all, this is the major premise.
The Real Innovator
In this world, there are people who want to prove their existence even if it means holding others back. Regardless if they realize it or not, they are not productive when they are criticizing others.
In the world of cryptocurrencies, many people are considered “shady” if not downright frauds, and thus they have many enemies. Many are criticized, by people standing in the safe zone, for being “gray” simply because the gray zone is so large.
However, in my opinion, it was those people who are now considered “gray” that first saw the possibility of ICO and the use case for next-generation blockchain. In fact, from my experience of interacting with a wide range of people, I have realized that people who reside on the extremes are truly admirable.