All posts filed under: tech

Scaling v Multiplying | NYC Design Week

It’s been a while since we’ve written. JLee very recently finished up her MBA training, I’ve been living the startup life in NYC. We are both headed back on the road this summer with Turkey, Solvenia, Croatia, Ireland, Morocco, China & Netherlands on the itinerary. The Socient Life continues in our search both philosophically and through product and real business models that are making impactful good in the world. For myself, I’ve been interested in seeing the evolution of social impact becoming generationally an ethos within entrepreneurship. Lately, discussions with my business partner have revolved around scalability, the magic word that has become an ethos in of itself within the startup world, particularly in Silicon Valley. As we wandered Brooklyn artisanal markets for NYC Design Week, perusing the “slow foods” equivalent of craft goods, she became increasingly nonplussed about lack of scalability for any of the products we saw. From marble-hand-chiseled-glazed cups (personal wabisabi favorite of mine, costing its creator 120 hours of work, selling for $34), to art print transfers of surely a graphic student’s …

Selling crops by phone

One of the fastest ways for a society to leapfrog its economic development is through technology. We saw this in China, where traditional landlines that were communally shared quickly gave way to mobile tech before landline infrastructure were even built. Grandmas manning telephone stations on the street with long phone cords paralleled youth riding bicycles while talking on their cellphones. However, the commercial and consumer uses for tech can be very unique and require well-thought out planning and product development.