Product & Startup Builder

Reminder: Government Is The Thing We Do Together.

Added on by Chris Saad.

Reminder:

Government is the thing we do together. It’s not us vs them. We have democratic institutions and elections so that anyone and everyone can be part of a shared project called governance.

America is the only western democracy (ha!) that has a plurality of people who view their own government as the potential enemy and uses that as a reason to arm its citizens in the name of “Freedom!”.

In the mean time, the same people that are fighting for guns are also fighting to protect a group of men undermining the principles and institutions of free and functional democracy.

Originally posted on Facebook

We are wired to raise children in community

Added on by Guest User.

Very interesting article attached below.

I've always longed to live in an extended community.

Maybe it can be traced back to my childhood where my life was filled with extended family and friends who would always visit or stay at our home for dinners, parties and movie nights. As an adult, I've attempted to recreate that environment as often as I can with the best people I can find. Hence #SaadSanctuary and #SkySanctuary.

Now, as I start to ponder what my own family might look like in the next 20 years (wife? kids? friends with kids?) I wonder how I might maintain this plurality of relationships and experiences for myself, my partner and my children (future children, I don't think I have any right now!), over time.

This is further challenged by the fact that so many of my dear friends and family are now so spread out across the world. And, as usual for me, I'm not satisfied to just repeat what's come before. Rather, I want to take it to the next level. What might a community like the one described in the article look like in an urban, modern setting? Penthouses instead of fields.

Government is SocietyOS

Added on by Guest User.

Government is SocietyOS. It is not the enemy.

As various App level "features" become fundamental/common they should become part of the platform. Electricity, roads, healthcare.

Laws provide guardrails for the "apps" (I.e companies etc) to function and protect the system from crashing.

Only question is "How good is your OS?"

Originally posted on Facebook

Last Day of 2017: Gratitude

Added on by Chris Saad.

Today is the last day of 2017.

This year I have one overriding thought and feeling: Gratitude.

Gratitude for all the people and experiences I've had. Gratitude for all the abundance. Gratitude for any period of time - however brief - that I can live in gratitude.

If someone told me how this year would turn out, I would have a) not believed them and b) not changed a thing (except maybe Trump).

I left it all out on the field. Saw the difference between world class bold leadership and fear based incrementalism up close, worked my ass off to make a shared vision a reality, had the opportunity to travel to places I'd always wanted to go, advised some great companies doing very cool stuff, pushed past my anxiety to do some public speaking, reconnected with family and a sense of balance, and made beautiful new connections in my life - all while (surprisingly) going up and to the right!

So to 2017 - and the people who made it what it was - thank you!

Originally posted on Facebook

Mild Spoilers: Last Jedi

Added on by Chris Saad.

Mild Last Jedi spoilers:

The movie is about...

1. Perspective: Everyone is the hero of their own story. Everyone has their own perspective on events. Everyone feels justified in their own behavior.

2. Leadership: There are many ways to communicate and lead. Some are successful, some are total failures. Some engender trust, some get results, some can lead to disaster.

3. Letting go of legacy: Both sides argue for sweeping away the past and creating a new kind of future. Let it die. Let it burn. Time for a new approach. Ironic given that the Force Awakens borrowed so much from the legacy of the franchise.

Originally posted on Facebook

Regarding net neutrality:

Added on by Guest User.

Regarding net neutrality:

If major ISPs start implementing paid access/tiering as most observers fear, this doesn’t just affect the US - It affects the whole world.

Companies that would have been born in the US will now be unable to launch and/or succeed in that critical market and will therefore never come into existence for the rest of the world. The next Facebook, Google, Uber etc will be snuffed out before they even begin.

At the very least it could put a real chill in the air for Silicon Valley and the US startup/tech ecosystem that produces so many amazing companies.

Further, the rest of the world’s corrupt right wing governments will now feel emboldened to pass the same laws In their respective countries.

As usual, America sneezes and the rest of the world gets #manflu.

More broadly speaking:

In so many practical ways, critical factors/systems of the established world order that were leading us to greater and greater productivity and prosperity are now being dismantled. Health, education, a free and open internet, the UN, Brexit, a thriving US middle class and yes, even America’s status as a global leader. Without these fundamentals I sincerely worry about our shared future.

To be clear, these effects won’t be felt in just a few years.

Take the US itself as an example. Trump didn’t come out of nowhere. He’s the result of decades of Fox News propaganda, a long-term rigged economy and a dismantled education+healthcare system that created a great many uneducated and desperate people.

Similarly (and in many ways as an extension of the US situation) we are now seeing a slow unraveling of the ingredients that have lead to relative global stability since World War 2. This has a chance to one day lead to systemic failures and may cause more frequent outlier events (e.g major wars, shifting of alliances, major dictators etc)

Or maybe, I’m being an alarmist and a pessimist. I hope so.

Side note: It’s funny, I started this post with the intention to say I didn’t have much new or useful to say about the net neutrality decision. I guess I had a lot to say.

Originally posted on Facebook

Net Neutrality

Added on by Chris Saad.

Regarding net neutrality:

If major ISPs start implementing paid access/tiering as most observers fear, this doesn’t just affect the US - It affects the whole world.

Companies that would have been born in the US will now be unable to launch and/or succeed in that critical market and will therefore never come into existence for the rest of the world. The next Facebook, Google, Uber etc will be snuffed out before they even begin.

At the very least it could put a real chill in the air for Silicon Valley and the US startup/tech ecosystem that produces so many amazing companies.

Further, the rest of the world’s corrupt right wing governments will now feel emboldened to pass the same laws In their respective countries.

As usual, America sneezes and the rest of the world gets #manflu.

More broadly speaking:

In so many practical ways, critical factors/systems of the established world order that were leading us to greater and greater productivity and prosperity are now being dismantled. Health, education, a free and open internet, the UN, Brexit, a thriving US middle class and yes, even America’s status as a global leader. Without these fundamentals I sincerely worry about our shared future.

To be clear, these effects won’t be felt in just a few years.

Take the US itself as an example. Trump didn’t come out of nowhere. He’s the result of decades of Fox News propaganda, a long-term rigged economy and a dismantled education+healthcare system that created a great many uneducated and desperate people.

Similarly (and in many ways as an extension of the US situation) we are now seeing a slow unraveling of the ingredients that have lead to relative global stability since World War 2. This has a chance to one day lead to systemic failures and may cause more frequent outlier events (e.g major wars, shifting of alliances, major dictators etc)

Or maybe, I’m being an alarmist and a pessimist. I hope so.

Side note: It’s funny, I started this post with the intention to say I didn’t have much new or useful to say about the net neutrality decision. I guess I had a lot to say.

Originally posted on Facebook

Consensus

Added on by Guest User.

The world is built on consensus.

Concepts like ownership, law, money, monarchy, governance etc - they are merely constructs built on this fundamental mechanism.

Said another way: the only reason we can own a piece of land or money has value or the queen is the queen is because a sufficient number of people agree that those things are true. All the mechanisms and norms of society only exist because the majority basically agree they exist.

In an era where our most senior business and political leaders are explicitly calling into question our fundamental institutions of operationalized consensus - or manipulating them for their own greedy and corrupt ends - a new kind of consensus needs to emerge.

That’s why Blockchain technology is so very important.

Being able to turn human consensus into running code and an immutable distributed dataset (e.g a ledger) transforms our implicit rules operated by central authorities into distributed, peer-to-peer operations.

We can now #unbundle consensus from legacy, centralized institutions and put it at the edge.

The implications are profoundly disruptive. For both good and ill.

// Inspired by the first 10 minutes of “The Crown”. And the stupid comparison of Bitcoin to Tulips.

Originally posted on Facebook

More Outside Time

Added on by Chris Saad.

I’ve spent the last 10 years designing the perfect place to stay in. Now I’m considering how to inspire the perfect reasons to go out.

Moving from a focus on epic apartments, TVs and household gadgets to great bags, drones, cameras and a car. From a job that requires me to be in one place, to work that lets me be anywhere.

I’m curious if this will be a successful or permanent change. I don’t expect that I’ll completely flip to being a digital nomad (although I did consider that) but I think rebalancing my life to include more outside/travel time will be a healthy new experience.

Stay tuned...

4 Critical Questions

Added on by Chris Saad.

H/t Philippe Lewis...

Maya Angelou suggests there are four questions that we’re all unconsciously asking each other all the time.

We ask the people we love, we ask the people who matter to us professionally, and on a broader level, we ask the people we encounter as we go about our everyday lives: the cashier who takes your coffee order, the jogging neighbor you wave to from the car on the way to work, the elderly woman sitting across from you on the train.

The four questions rarely get asked with words, just as they're rarely answered with words.

They're almost always silent questions, because they're almost always unconscious.

When the silent answer to each of the four silent questions is a definitive YES, the love (or basic sense of humanity, in the broader examples) in the relationship becomes more palpable and is in turn immediately felt.

In a romantic context, when the questions go unanswered, the person unconsciously asking them typically becomes increasingly distant, grows restless in the relationship, and often starts seeking drama and distraction to get attention and feel more alive.

In the broader context, people who don't get an answer to these questions (or worse, who receive a 'no') feel increasingly disconnected from any sense of community.

Here are the 4 critical questions:

1. Do you see me?

2. Do you care that I’m here?

3. Am I enough for you, or do you need me to be better in some way?

4. Can I tell that I’m special to you by the way that you look at me?

Whether it's your kids, your colleagues, your partner, or really anyone in your community, when someone feels genuinely appreciated by you, it’s because you treat them in such a way that affirmatively answers each question pretty consistently. It's because when you look at them, you actually take the time to see them.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Added on by Chris Saad.

Today is all about gratitude.

Putting aside all the historical implications of the day - Thanksgiving Is about pausing for a moment and giving thanks for the good things in our lives - however small.

Of course, it’s not about just one moment. It’s a chance to remind ourselves that gratitude is an important ongoing part of a happy life. What a great idea for a holiday!

In fact, it’s perhaps my favorite holiday because it is explicitly about the only thing has ever made me truly happy in any kind of sustainable way. Also, food.

I rarely remember or succeed at it - but having a consistent (ideally every day) practice of gratitude gives me a euphoric feeling that can be more intense than any quick hit from a drug or retail therapy.

The other day I was accused of showing off (Australians love their tall poppy syndrome). After gut checking myself it occurred to me that my actual motivation is gratitude. When I was a kid, I dreamt of doing many of the things I’ve been fortunate enough to do as an adult. In order to have deep gratitude for this (in real-time) I try to both enjoy and share these moments with as much child-like wonder as I can; constantly reminding myself of how absolutely thrilled 5, 10 and 15 year old me would be to have the things and relationships I have.

The most unhappy people I know tend to be unhappy because they focus so much on what they lack or on how others interact with them. They don’t take responsibility for their own behavior and they don’t focus on their skills, opportunities, and possibilities. They don’t have true, deep gratitude for what they have and for the abundance others have around them.

So on this Thanksgiving, I encourage you to be grateful for gratitude - and I encourage you (and me) to make it part of your everyday experience.

For right now, I’m most thankful for the family and friends who have shaped my life and supported my journey. I’m grateful for the overwhelming agency and abundance in my life. And I’m grateful that the latter has allowed me to spend so much quality time with the former.

Originally posted on Facebook

Blink and It's Another Era

Added on by Chris Saad.

Watching the high school graduation of my mate Ashley and Julie-Anne’s daughter Mackenzie.

I used to sit in this very seat 20 years ago. Wow.

Another reminder that life goes on. And it cycles. We share similar experiences across years and generations.

Time flies by. Blink and it’s another era.

We build mighty institutions and place ourselves inside them as a way to engineer these experiences and as a form of immortality.

I used to babysit Kenzie and now she’s going to take a huge step into the real world. And in a blink, she’ll be here for her kids or the kids of her friends.

Can’t wait to see what she achieves in this precious little time.

Very proud of her!