Caterina Fake
I first got online in the late '80s when I was an eccentric teenager in suburban New Jersey, in a town mostly interested in sports, popularity, and clothes. I was a reader, into Jorge Luis Borges, and I found, connected to, and delighted in a group of Borges scholars from Aarhus, Denmark, that I met online.
Because the Internet is a medium, it doesn't care whether it transmits love or hate. It is what we build and who we are that make it what it is. We can build things that diminish our humanity or build things that bring us to human flourishing.
There is great work to be done, and the women will lead us. So I say, Astonish us with your genius. Inspire us with your creation. Work with one another. Endure the tribulations.
If there is a national, secular religion in the United States, it is the belief that America is the Land of Opportunity, that we are a meritocracy, that any kid, no matter who they are, or where they come from, can work hard and move up in the world: that their effort matters.
'You, too, can be the President,' every American kid is told. But one unintended consequence of this belief, it is that, as a result of our being a meritocracy, if you have not succeeded, you are of lesser merit. It is shameful to be a failure in this country.
Ecstasy is almost never discussed anymore, but leaving the earth is one way of attaining it. To exchange ecstasy for death is often the bargain.
The wall at Le Philosophe is covered with French philosophers, and supposedly, if you are able to name all of them, they will pay for your meal. I was only able to identify Simone de Beauvoir, Sartre, Descartes and, I think, Foucault. And, I think, Luce Irigaray.
I'm sure there was some amazing art at the Frieze Art Fair, but I wasn't able to find it. However, found some friends there, which was even better. And the boat to and from was lovely.
'Apartamento,' a magazine out of Spain but written in English, is one of my favorite magazines.
After reading about the Al Ain Oasis by ECWC, I became curious about cultivating dates, and browsed about the web a bit, learning.
It's becoming increasingly difficult to find kids to hang out with that don't consume a lot of commercial culture.
I joined a meetup group called Bay Area Parents for a Commercial-Free Childhood, which I had searched for, as I was going to start a group like it myself.
It makes me happy to meet other poetry fans. Especially when they recommend poets I'm not familiar with.
In 2001, the hard disk on my laptop crashed, and everything on it was lost. I'd been using the computer for two, almost three years, and had all my work on it - email, which was stored locally; photos; fragments of poems; presentations; sketches; ideas; love letters; everything. I lamented the loss to my friends and got lectured on doing backups.
'Free' is the museum show of our times, presaging the whole Wikileaks dustup, and it shows shifting power dynamics and a glimpse of the human in a world of flowing data.
I'm happy we're about to start inviting people into the thing we've been working on!! It's called Pinwheel, and it's a way to find and leave notes all around the world.
On Pinwheel, you can find and leave notes all around the world. The notes can be public or private, shared with an individual, a group, or everyone.
I've never understood cheating, probably because I never cared much about my grades. I instinctively knew that the grades didn't measure anything meaningful - usually just my ability to quickly memorize information I'd just as quickly forget.
I'm not good at vacationing. I've repeatedly failed at palapas and mai-tais.
I love Hunch, the awesome team, my brilliant cofounders - we're doing great work and building a great company.
Vacations are good, and I come back energized, with the whiff of Hawaiian Tropic in the air and 2,000 messages in my Inbox.
Rob Kalin, Etsy's founder, never finished college. Evan Williams, Biz Stone, Jack Dorsey - the founders of Twitter - are not college graduates. Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook founder, is another dropout. And, of course, Steve Jobs and Bill Gates.
Entrepreneurship works on the apprenticeship model. The best way to learn how to be an entrepreneur is to start a company and seek the advice of a successful entrepreneur in the area in which you are interested. Or work at a startup for a few years to learn the ropes.
I spent many years in college studying English literature. I was on the verge of attending grad school to get a Ph.D. in Renaissance poetry - my lost careers were being a writer, artist, or academic. Do I regret spending all that time poring over Shakespeare when I could have been getting a jump start on the competition? Not at all.
When I was a kid, I really wanted to be a writer and an artist when I grew up. So in college, I was an English major, and then I became a fine artist. But when I arrived in San Francisco in 1995, I figured I could leverage my artistic skills by becoming a Web designer and programmer.
I'm an accidental business person. I just love the medium. I love the Internet.
Eliminate activities that require you to be around people you cannot stand. Don't do things for people who should be doing them themselves... and don't waste time chasing trophies.
I can't tell you how many times I've booked an air ticket only to get to the airport and find out they killed my ticket because it goes into the system, and the program tosses a ticket that says 'fake' on it. Twice I've gone to the counter for a KLM flight through Northwest and have been rejected.
For a while, I couldn't join Facebook because of my last name. During the registration process, I was asked for my real name, and when I wrote 'Fake,' it rejected me. Finally, a friend working for Facebook took care of me.
'Game Never Ending' came out of an earlier game called 'NeoPets,' a children's game that adults also played. It was a series of mini-games where you accrue points and can acquire objects - houses and all kinds of stuff.
I was an eccentric teenager in suburban New Jersey, in a town mostly interested in sports, popularity, and clothes. A fan of Jorge Luis Borges, I found a group of Borges scholars from Aarhus, Denmark - perfect strangers - whom I connected to online and immediately became enthralled by the idea of virtual communities.
My favorite online communities are characterized by their incredible generosity.
The Well taught us how to create a civilized space for debate, speak in our own voices, use our real names, mediate flame wars, and boot trolls. Brand's mantra was, 'You own your own words,' meaning you have the right to say your piece but must also take responsibility for what you say.
Etsy radically simplified and amended their policies. Sellers of handmade goods can now hire as much help as they need to run their shops. They can apply to sell designs they produce with the help of outside businesses.
Etsy is fundamentally a creative community. On eBay, or Amazon for that matter, practically anyone can sell practically anything. On Etsy, you can only sell handmade goods, vintage goods over 20 years old, and craft supplies for making.
Working on the right thing is probably more important than working hard.Collection: Business
It's about doing things that you haven't done before, where you're still kind of a beginner, and not resting on your laurels.Collection: Beginners
No successful company has had ever been the product of just one person.Collection: Successful
You try a lot of things and you don't know what the hell you're doing. If you're actually inventing something you shouldn't know what you're doing.Collection: Trying
It's the building of things that makes you happy. You have to enjoy the process whether you succeed or fail.Collection: Succeed
Failure is part of discovering the problem you need to be working on. If, as an entrepreneur, you are afraid to fail or to admit the failure of your efforts, then you completely lose any chance at being able to adapt and succeed at finding the problem that needs solving.Collection: Entrepreneur
Inspiration is really all around us. I pay attention to a lot of different fields. I stay up on current events. I go to community meetings to see what concerns the people in my neighborhood. Paying attention to social interactions offline really inform interactions online. The real world is a bottomless source of inspiration for what you can build.Collection: Real
Make time less precious. We are way too efficient, making use of every hour, every minute. When you were a kid, didn’t you just spend hours poking sticks in the mud, climbing trees and sitting in them, looking at shells and seaweed that washed up on the shoreline? Time was not precious then, we weren’t trying to stuff an accomplishment into every minute every day, we had time for thoughts and feelings. That was good!Collection: Kids
A lot is gained through experience, but experience teaches some and not others. Effectiveness and excellence, whether or not they were attained by simply having the knack or through the school of hard knocks, is really what you want to reward.Collection: School
Entrepreneurs need to start building today. The barrier to entry in tech is low, so start designing, start coding it, launch it, build prototypes, build a working version of it. The Internet has amazing powers of distribution. You can test your ideas. You can see if it works, if it doesn't work, whether it's fun, and whether you're sufficiently motivated. People who go into entrepreneurship to get rich aren't going to be happy. It’s the building of things that makes you happy. You have to enjoy the process whether you succeed or fail.Collection: Fun
Being open and observant of people and the world around you is really important. People have the same desires and needs online as they do offline. The way that people are stays constant. You can change the format, make it easier for them to communicate or use photos instead of words but human necessities never change.Collection: People
We don't have meetings unless absolutely necessary.Collection: Intriguing
If the business were a play, Act One is: Woohoo, bright and bushy-tailed. We're going to make something great! Act Two is: We're six months behind on back-end development. We're trying to raise venture capital. We're trying to figure out what furniture we should sell to make payroll.Collection: Business