[projectvrm] Attracting VRM/Me2B investments, VRM/Me2B Day

[Doc Searls < >]

I'm forking this off another thread. Responses inline below.

On Sep 16, 2019, at 7:34 AM, katherine < " class=""> > wrote:

Guy,

Is the “American Dream” limited in its capacity? 

It may be or it may seem like it is.

They say that Millennials are the first generation to make less than their parents. 

Here's Pew on that: <https://www.pewsocialtrends.org/essay/millennial-life-how-young-adulthood-today-compares-with-prior-generations/>

I’ve observed this even when, unlike their parents, these couples are better educated (masters degrees) and both working. 

Many large corporations are managed like an assembly line. There are metrics to deliver.

Algorithms calculate what to pay people based on these metrics.

And people hate being manipulated by algorithms. For more on that, see What People Hate About Being Managed by Algorithms, According to a Study of Uber Drivers and Re-Engineering Humanity. (Also what I wrote about that book after it came out last year.)

Do anything outside of your job description or unrelated to these metrics and it has no perceived value. Because predictability is more important than exceeding expectations.

NET: Expectations are already low relative to human capital potential. What if that means we’re “leaving money on the table?”

The important fact about wealth, at least for our purposes, is that inventions create it. So the VRM wealth we don't yet have is what our inventions haven't yet created.

Innovation was supposed to be the domain where the unexpected could happen. But Venture money flows most to models that are predictable.

True. But there are exceptions. And when those succeed, or look like they might, VCs tend to stampede in that direction.

For example, instead of developing new business models in digital media, most venture money invests in the ad model, often bastardizing the original purpose and reason these startups thrived.

Adtech (tracking-based advertising), now that it's virtually illegal, is radioactive for VCs, but that hasn't stopped VCs from investing in post-adtech advertising bullshit. See Under the influence: How VCs are embracing next-gen advertising, published by PitchBook in August of last year. It begins,

@lilmiquela has 1.3 million followers on Instagram. Her bio reads that she's 19 years old, lives in Los Angeles, and supports causes including Black Lives Matter and the Innocence Project. Oh, and she's a robot.

Her Instagram feed, which at the time of writing has 245 posts, is her entire existence. She likes memes and posting selfies. One photo in particular shows her relaxing on a lawn chair, while another has her posing on a washer/dryer set. There's even a snap of her being tattooed by similarly Insta-famous tattoo artist Dr. Woo.

But. She's. Not. Real. @lilmiquela is a "virtual influencer" and the brainchild of a venture capital-backed company called Brud, which describes itself as a group of "problem solvers specializing in robotics, artificial intelligence and their applications to media businesses."

In April, @lilmiquela and Brud brought in approximately $6 million in VC funding from Sequoia, BoxGroup, SV Angel and Ludlow Ventures. It's unclear how that money will be spent; perhaps it will go toward building out more virtual influencer accounts, some "friends" for @lilmiquela.

The PitchBook profile for Brut says it now has seven investors and the latest deal amount is, or was, $19.5 million.

According to PitchBook, the Brud URL is, or was, http://www.brud.fyi/. That goes to a 404. The Crunchbase profile gives the URL as http://brud.fyi/. That goes to a Google doc with more bullshit, and says approximately nothing useful about the company. 

My point: great bullshit will sell VCs. The problem for us is that you can make great bullshit with VRM. Its promises are too much like real-world (i.e. boring) market effects. 

Google took off because it was the search engine that couldn’t be manipulated by advertisers like Yahoo.

There was also PageRank. And simplicity. Google proved better than AltaVista, Excite and HotBot at plain old search. BTW, they could live without adtech. And VRM could do wonders for them too. If people were in charge of their relationships with websites, plus the way loyalty and permitted advertising works, in standard ways that Google would obey, Google would likely make more money, and cleaner money, than they do now with adtech. They'd also get much better behavioral data, and do better behavioral advertising, for the people who want it.

Facebook surpassed MySpace because Facebook was private by default.

And had a much better design. (MySpace was a parody of itself.) Also, Facebook was prototyped in universities, where it worked well for students wanting to find stuff out about each other. (My first Facebook account was with UCSB when a university email address was the only way to get one.)

If more Venture money invested in alternatives to advertising revenue for digital media, VRM type concepts would be much better funded. What if investors challenged bright minds, old and young, to go beyond what is predictable and exceed expectations?

They think they're doing that already (at least with young people), whether they are or not. But yes, a good point.

Okay, three things here.

First, I'm hoping one way to solve the investment problem for VRM is by rebranding it Me2B. (See VRM is Me2B.)

Second, we need to do a better job of making the case that it'll be good for business when customers to have full agency, and tools of their own to give them that agency: Me2B tools. (Yes, services too, but tools come first. Examples of familiar tools: email and browsers.) If those tools take the form of apps, those apps have to be good enough for people to insist on having on their phone's home screen. And they have to be substitutable, meaning in a category with competing tools working to do the same thing. An example here might be a wallet app that can hold multiple currencies and multiple ways to present credentials. (Just like our wallets work in the real world.) Or a keychain of loyalty cards. Or a drawer full of picos (things we own, and their makers and/or sellers and/or insurers know we own). 

Third, if those tools are not built on open protocols, open standards and open source code, there will be no pudding to prove Me2B's worth.

We'll be talking about all three of these things, and more, on VRM/Me2B Day (Monday the 30th) and at IIW (the next three days) at the Computer History Museum. Register here <http://vrmme2b.eventbrite.com>.

Note: for those not yet registered for IIW, there is a discount code on that page, just for VRM/Me2B Day participants.

Doc

Katherine Warman Kern