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Uma aula de empreendedorismo
em Berkeley

Autor do post Por Michell Lucino
Data de publicação junho 7, 2022
Nenhum comentário em Uma aula de empreendedorismo
em Berkeley

Uma aula de empreendedorismo
em Berkeley

Em Berkeley, tive a oportunidade de assistir a uma aula chamada Tech & Entrepreneurship com o professor Naeem Zaffar, um grande profissional que já foi VP da Oracle (entre inúmeros outros cargos) e hoje é fundador da TeleSense, uma agtech que já está em Series B.

De início, vale citar que o professor foi muito duro com os alunos já no primeiro minuto de aula. Começou falando que os alunos precisam apresentar um pitch em 20min e que se nos 2 primeiros minutos eles não chamarem a atenção, seriam abruptamente interrompidos, porque o começo é importante. Para entender o nível de detalhe que o professor pedia, ele disse que se recebesse impressões frente e verso descartaria o trabalho e não leria nada (risos).

Como o tema da aula era falar sobre um executive summary, o professor já começou falando que o summary precisa ser direto ao ponto. “Nobody gives a shit about details”, me diga o que você descobriu, o que está fazendo, quanto cresceu e se o time age como um time mesmo. Um dos principais critérios para avaliar comprometimento dos founders é a profundidade e extensão da pesquisa feita pelos founders.

Depois recebemos uma guest speaker chamada Bhumi Bhutani, fundadora da Way.com, um super app que começou como uma solução para estacionamentos e hoje envolve tudo relacionado a carro – faturam US$120 milhões por ano.

Esses foram alguns dos insights dela:

Ela começou dando uma sugestão para ler o livro The Founder’s Mentality. Formou em Berkeley e fez mestrado na London School of Economics. Trabalhou na Roche. Começou falando sobre shamelessness e precisa dar a cara a tapa literalmente.

Teve uma experiência horrível em uma reunião em San Francisco com estacionamento. Parou em um lugar horrível, caro, e depois viu que tinha um outro mais barato logo do lado de onde era a reunião. “E se tivesse uma plataforma com todos os serviços, todos os custos, incluindo os mais baratos?” foi como surgiu a way.com (começou com estacionamento e consolidou tudo de car services em um super app).

Na pandemia, demitiram vários e ficaram só os “generals”, que compartilhavam a visão. Teve covid e foi falar com muita gente e acabaram lançando 5 novos produtos na pandemia do tanto que falaram com clientes.

Começaram com 4 pessoas. Uma pessoa que cuidava de finanças, um developer e um CTO, além dela. Quando tiver escala, traga pessoas com experiência do setor. If you don’t have a strong insurgent mission, you can’t attract good people. Algumas pessoas não tiveram salário por um bom tempo na crise.

O primeiro investimento é o mais importante, porque é o que valida o negócio e dita o ritmo para os próximos.

Eles queriam ser a Amazon de serviços e mudaram completamente.

back your doubts with data, even if it’s limited (and be your customer)

go to market strategies focused completely on differentiation

Queria pegar investimento sempre, tinha vontade, mas sempre dava um passo pra trás pra se virar primeiro e encontrar uma maneira de não pegar dinheiro. Disciplina enorme pra isso.

Sobre mentores: importante pedir 15min no LinkedIn uma vez por mês, o que tiver disponível. First ask them how they got to where they were e daí você começa a conversa. Relaciona com o tal do shamelessness que ela falou no começo da aula.

É só o começo.

Av. Brigadeiro Luís Antônio, 4980, Jardim Paulista, São Paulo – SP, Cep 01402-002

contato@lsb.com.br

+55 11 93098-6541

Depoimentos de empreendedores

Conversa com Franco Pontillo,
Manager da Domo Invest

Autor do post Por Michell Lucino
Data de publicação junho 7, 2022
Nenhum comentário em Conversa com Franco Pontillo,
Manager da Domo Invest

Conversa com Franco Pontillo,
Manager da Domo Invest

Esse é um resumo dos insights tirados da palestra com o Franco Pontillo, General Partner da Domo Invest.

O bate papo com o Franco começou, na verdade, com as empresas do MI5 se apresentando para ele. Logo no início, ele deu um insight interessante no que diz respeito a novos mercados e produtos sem muitos concorrentes prévios: existe o Last Mover Advantage, a vantagem de não ser o primeiro em um mercado – ou seja, a vantagem de não ter que ralar para educar o mercado e descobrir principais canais de aquisição de clientes, por exemplo. Isso não é uma regra para todos, mas podemos citar um exemplo real dessa Last Mover Advantage, que é o caso da Captable com um dos seus fundadores, Guilherme Enck, que esteve em uma das palestras do Hub de Conhecimento e comentou que hoje é a maior empresa do segmento em um tempo muito menor que os players mais antigos, porque “eles comeram muito mato e educaram o cliente”, enquanto a Captable entrou já com uma parceria super importante com a Startse e se aproveitou dessas descobertas dos concorrentes mais antigos.

Franco também deixou explícito como o mercado de VC pensa: a empresa precisa estar em um mercado grande, com um time incrível, ter uma “barreira competitiva de entrada” e precisa pensar em um exit nos próximos anos – e existem projetos que nem sempre têm fit com VC e não tem problema. Ao falar sobre o time, Franco também disse que a experiência dos empreendedores é muito importante – mas isso não significa que empreendedores “sem Harvard no currículo” não se darão bem. Experiência pode vir da família e da vida, o empreendedor precisa saber vender e não pode transparecer o medo – precisa agir de acordo como alguém que conseguirá levar uma empresa a um crescimento enorme. Obviamente, o empreendedor também precisa saber se comunicar e não saber falar inglês, por exemplo, pode o prejudicar em uma captação Série A ou além.

A Domo Invest é uma gestora formada por criadores do Buscapé. Sua história de criação com a oportunidade do Buscapé se resume em juntar um consultor da McKinsey que soube dizer o que fazer com um time hands-on que executava tudo o que precisasse.

Franco também comentou em alguns momentos como o Buscapé se beneficiou do networking e da sua importância, dizendo que uma vez o Buscapé conseguiu uma reunião muito importante sendo “uma empresa do filho do Menezes” com um grande banco. Se fosse só mais uma empresa de um empreendedor não conhecido, talvez não tivessem essa oportunidade – e faz parte do jogo.

Outro comentário que marcou foi ouvi-lo dizer que dinheiro é tudo igual; o mais importante é o entorno de quem está colocando dinheiro: o expertise e os contatos.

Outro insight da palestra foi quando ele comentou da diferença de startups B2B e B2C, considerando o custo de aquisição de clientes. B2B é mais fácil de acessar, enquanto B2C exige um esforço e provavelmente investimento maior – embora obviamente não seja uma regra. Inclusive, ele comentou de maneira bem clara para todos os alunos que eles não ficassem com só o que ele estivesse falando ali; incentivou perguntar para outras pessoas e nunca ouvir uma única opinião.

Respondendo também a outra pergunta feita pelo time da Lium sobre como acessar Venture Capitalists, Franco respondeu que os empreendedores precisam ser caras de pau, precisa mandar email, precisa ligar, precisa aparecer na porta e o que for necessário, por quantas vezes forem necessárias. O VC não vai te ignorar, a não ser que sua empresa não encaixe na tese deles – o que, aí, seria óbvio ser ignorado.

Por último, Franco respondeu a uma pergunta feita pelo Digo sobre foco e o recado não tem nem como ser diferente de tudo que nos passam. Foco é um só e não tem como não ser isso. Busquem em períodos curtos de tempo provas do que o foco deve ser até encontrá-lo. O único ponto que talvez justifique uma leve perda de foco é com a necessidade do aumento de runway (tempo que a startup consegue se sustentar financeiramente).

Em resumo, o VC é um jogo de minimização de riscos. A Link tem um poder incrível, que é poder mostrar quem está dentro do jogo com você e isso ajuda na percepção de minimização de risco das startups de dentro da Link.

É só o começo.

Av. Brigadeiro Luís Antônio, 4980, Jardim Paulista, São Paulo – SP, Cep 01402-002

contato@lsb.com.br

+55 11 93098-6541

Jobs to be done Validação

Estudo sobre “Jobs To Be Done”

Autor do post Por Michell Lucino
Data de publicação junho 6, 2022
Nenhum comentário em Estudo sobre “Jobs To Be Done”

Estudo sobre "Jobs To Be Done"

Cubos Academy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UbTnpBHxgco

Para criar um produto, a primeira pergunta é “qual é o job to be done?” e existem jobs funcionais, emocionais e sociais.

Princípios do JTBD: é sempre um verbo + objeto + circunstância. Exemplo: pagar boletos condominiais (e existem várias formas de fazer isso). JTBD é escrito sobre a perspectiva do executor, não do observador. Outro princípio é entender o propósito, o objetivo final, e não as ações pequenas. O JTBD é esse propósito maior, a necessidade primordial, é atemporal (exemplo: criar uma playlist do Spotify não é um JTBD, porque não é atemporal – em 1940 não existia, por exemplo; então seria algo como “criar uma playlist para ir ao trabalho” – sim, contém uma inovação que é a playlist, mas pode ser considerado atemporal). JTBD nunca tem “e” ou “ou” e não tem adjetivo, porque isso coloca subjetividade.

Exemplo: “Ter ajuda para criar as férias que a família inteira vai curtir”. Tem dois verbos, tem subjetividade. O ideal seria “planejar férias para a família”.

A capacidade de identificar o principal job é o que faz uma indústria inteira ser modificada. Uber e táxis têm mesmo JTBD, que é “chegar no destino a tempo”. O Uber olhou isso e mapeou jobs correlatos que surgiram junto com a necessidade principal: planejar como vou, quanto tempo vai durar, entender percursos, quanto vou gastar etc.

Pense sempre no jobs principal e busque inovar nos jobs correlatos.

Projeto Draft: https://www.projetodraft.com/verbete-draft-o-que-e-job-to-be-done/

O JTBD parte do princípio que não adianta só perguntar para as pessoas o que elas querem, porque elas responderão de acordo com o que já existe no mercado. Frase do Ford entra aqui: “se eu perguntasse o que a turma queria na época, eram cavalos mais rápidos e não carros”.

Exemplo bom de um JTBD: Easy Taxi oferecendo 30% de desconto oferecendo contratos pra transportar todos os convidados em festas de casamento. É foda pegar táxi na madrugada, então eles resolvem esse problema: é ir na direção do que as pessoas precisam. Outro exemplo é o JTBD de bancos para jovens – eles precisam ser invisíveis para os jovens, já com idosos é o contrário: precisa ser super atencioso, porque ir ao banco é uma atividade social para eles.

Forbes: https://www.forbes.com/sites/stephenwunker/2012/02/07/six-steps-to-put-christensens-jobs-to-be-done-theory-into-practice/?sh=27058bbc1f63

6 passos para colocar a teoria do JTBD na prática:

1: Quais são os high level JTBD? Foque nas necessidades das pessoas (e suas). Por exemplo: um pai que leva 3 crianças num domingo à tarde no cinema – não era pra ver filme e sim pra tirar as crianças de casa. Será que poderia ser uma boa colocar um espaço kids no cinema? Apenas ilustrando.

2: Quais são os approaches existentes atualmente aos pontos de dor? No exemplo do cinema, talvez ele tenha que encarar playgrounds indoor infantis como possíveis concorrentes.

3: Existem benchmarks em muitas áreas além da sua própria. Por exemplo, os cinemas podem aprender muito com a Disney sobre como vender produtos para crianças e como entreter pessoas nas filas.

4: Qual critério de performance seus clientes usam? Quais adjetivos descrevem uma boa solução? Bom? Barato? Fácil? Rápido? Entender isso traz um foco muito maior no produto como um todo e no que precisa ser desenvolvido ou enfatizado.

5: O que previne novas soluções de serem adotadas hoje? Converse com clientes sobre como eles tomaram decisões para adotar inovações.

6: O que é valor para o seu cliente? É preciso ter muita clareza disso. Valor pode ser definido por dinheiro, tempo, conveniência, paz de espírito e muito mais.

Exemplos JTBD (criador): https://strategyn.com/jobs-to-be-done/jobs-to-be-done-examples/

Sempre pense no job do ponto de vista do cliente. Exemplo: para uma empresa que produz herbicidas para fazendeiros, eles podem achar que o JTBD é “matar pragas”, mas na verdade para o fazendeiro é “prevenir pragas de impactar minha plantação”.

Foco sempre no job/cenário inteiro, e não só em um pedaço. Exemplo: uma empresa pode focar em “prevenir pragas de impactar a plantação”, mas ela pode considerar ajudar no processo inteiro, que é “ter uma boa plantação”. Clientes não querem ficar juntando várias soluções, é muito melhor e mais cômodo para eles ter tudo junto para o “job to be done”.

Defina um job em torno do aspecto funcional, não dos emocionais que o rodeiam. Uma empresa que oferece um produto que “evita pessoas se perderem ao dirigir” faria um desserviço a si mesma concluindo que seus clientes compram seu produto para “não ter dor de cabeça” (aspecto emocional). Um foco nisso não entrega o que o cliente precisa para não se perder. É óbvio que é importante entender o aspecto emocional, mas somente na hora de posicionamento e comunicação, não na inovação.

Framework: https://jobs-to-be-done.com/jobs-to-be-done-a-framework-for-customer-needs-c883cbf61c90

1: Quem são seus clientes?

Para uma empresa B2C, isso pode ser simples. Para o B2B, isso pode complicar. Existem 3 tipos de clientes: (1) o executor do job, que é a pessoa que usa o produto pra ter o core job feito; (2) o time de suporte do ciclo de vida do produto, que são pessoas que instalam, transportam, reparam etc o produto; (3) e o comprador, que é responsável pela decisão financeira (que acredito que seja o caso da LaneMatch).

2: Que tipo de job ele quer que seja feito?

O cliente executor do job tem 3 tipos de jobs a serem feitos: (1) o core job funcional, que são exemplos como “consertar um móvel quebrado” ou “proteger contra um ciberataque”; (2) jobs relacionados, que são jobs que devem ser feitos antes, durante ou depois do core job; (3) e jobs emocionais, que descrevem como o executor do job quer se sentir ou ser percebido ao executar o job core funcional (esses inputs são importantes para criar a proposta de valor para o cliente).

O cliente do time de suporte do ciclo de vida do produto tem o job da cadeia de consumo, que envolvem receber, instalar, preparar, transportar, armazenar, reparar etc.

O cliente comprador quer o job a decisão de compra, que é feito pela lente financeira e quer analisar métricas de performance/finanças para tomar a decisão.

3: Os resultados desejados pelo cliente

É necessário descobrir as necessidades do cliente associadas a resolver o job. O que exatamente o cliente está buscando? As necessidades são descobertas estudando o processo do core job funcional e mapeando o Customer Centered Innovation Map (https://hbr.org/2008/05/the-customer-centered-innovation-map).

Mistakes JTBD:

https://jobs-to-be-done.com/avoid-these-common-mistakes-when-getting-started-with-jobs-to-be-done-bd55ec91fcb2

“As pessoas não querem uma furadeira de 3 cm, elas querem um buraco de 3cm”.

É só o começo.

Av. Brigadeiro Luís Antônio, 4980, Jardim Paulista, São Paulo – SP, Cep 01402-002

contato@lsb.com.br

+55 11 93098-6541

Depoimentos de empreendedores

Palestra Elon Musk

Tem gente que acha o Musk super polêmico. Preciso dizer que também acho (não que isso mude em algo a admiração que tenho por ele).

Ao falarmos de empreendedores que conseguiram gerar um impacto na história do mundo, acredito que será difícil não citar o nome de Elon Musk – por tudo que ele já construiu e, por incrível que pareça, por tudo que ele ainda vai construir (que, de certo modo, ofusca o que já foi construído, de tão grandiosos que são seus planos).

Não consigo pensar hoje em um nome que seja tão inspirador como o de Elon Musk.

Pelo menos não consigo pensar em outra pessoa que tenha planos tão grandiosos quanto tornar a raça humana interplanetária (Space X); ser um dos principais motores de sustentabilidade do mundo (Tesla); permitir a conectividade à internet para todos (Starlink); e reduzir o risco da Inteligência Artificial, além de ajudar a reduzir o dano de lesões cerebrais (Neuralink) – e tudo isso ao mesmo tempo. Literalmente.

PS: e olha que nem comentei acima da The Boring Company e do Twitter, que tá pra ser comprado.

Eu tive o privilégio de assistir a uma palestra do Musk na última sexta-feira, quando ele veio ao Brasil para tratar de um acordo com o governo brasileiro e prover internet para 19.000 escolas brasileiras, além de monitorar a preservação da Amazônia via satélite.

Dentre algumas perguntas muito simples feitas pelos participantes, uma delas se destacou. Uma aluna perguntou ao Musk o que realmente motivava os colaboradores das empresas que criou e o que ele poderia compartilhar a respeito disso.

A resposta foi um grande aprendizado:

Em primeiro lugar, Musk começou dizendo que precisamos sempre tentar entender por que queremos fazer algo. Intencionalidade.

Aproveito pra dizer aqui que, coincidentemente, esse foi um dos principais aprendizados que eu tive na minha pós graduação de neurociências aplicada à educação: conseguir explicar da melhor maneira possível por que uma matéria é importante e como ela vai te impactar é necessário para que o aluno possa realmente aprender.

Vou te dar um exemplo prático real que aconteceu comigo: há 4 anos, eu comecei a ler sobre meditação e vi que tinha alguns empreendedores americanos que adotaram a prática e eu queria ser igual. Tentei, tentei e tentei – não consegui manter o hábito.

Só consegui criar o hábito depois de um bom tempo lutando, porque consegui entender realmente por que eu estava fazendo aquilo: eu queria aprender a responder de maneira menos instintiva as pessoas que amo, como meus pais. Sabe quando você tem uma relação tão próxima que as respostas às vezes saem na lata? Eu queria corrigir isso. É um motivo bem claro, não é?

É disso que o Musk estava falando. Nas palavras do próprio Elon, “o nosso cérebro evoluiu para lembrar do que é importante”. Pra que nosso cérebro se lembraria de algo que não tem relevância, como, por exemplo, o que seu professor de finanças falou na antepenúltima aula? Talvez você só se lembre ao saber que aquele conteúdo poderá ser aplicado na sua empresa para resolver aquele problema de fluxo de caixa (por exemplo).

Automaticamente, vamos ignorar e esquecer as coisas quando não sabemos o porquê elas seriam usadas.

Ainda nas palavras de Musk, “explicar o porquê aumenta consideravelmente a motivação do time – mas nem tudo precisa ter um motivo grandioso pra mudar o mundo. Você pode começar tentando maximizar sua utilidade”.

Você pode fazer coisas pouco úteis para muita gente ou fazer coisas muito úteis para pouca gente. Talvez até consiga pensar em algo muito útil para muita gente – mas a pergunta que o Elon nos deixa é “quão útil você está sendo para o mundo?”.

Tomo a liberdade de adicionar aqui uma reflexão minha no meio da reflexão do Musk: vale a pena começarmos a pensar que o impacto que geramos não deve ser medido somente pelo alcance que temos, pelo número de seguidores ou likes. Talvez o impacto que geramos também precise ser medido pela profundidade da diferença que fazemos na vida de algumas pessoas.

Musk terminou essa resposta (que foi a última) da seguinte maneira: “Qual objetivo você deve ter? Tente ser útil – já é bem difícil”.

E como fica isso na prática?

Eu ouviria o tio Elon… Realmente não é fácil e nem sempre vai dar certo.

Mas não é porque algo não deu certo que significa que você fez uma escolha errada.

Quero terminar esse texto dizendo que acredito muito que nós precisamos considerar encarar o mundo mais como probabilidades, não como certezas. Já tem muita gente espalhando certezas aí e pedindo pra você arrastar pra cima…

É muito mais confortável pensar em caminhos binários na vida – ou direita ou esquerda – simples. Mas você e eu sabemos que não é assim.

Não é um texto desses ou um conselho do Elon Musk, do Bill Gates ou do Warren Buffett que vai fazer algo dar certo. É o seu comprometimento com

Existe mais a “escolha que você faz ser certa” do que “a escolha certa”.

É só o começo.

Av. Brigadeiro Luís Antônio, 4980, Jardim Paulista, São Paulo – SP, Cep 01402-002

contato@lsb.com.br

+55 11 93098-6541

Growth Validação

Existe “business as usual” em startups?

Autor do post Por Michell Lucino
Data de publicação junho 6, 2022
Nenhum comentário em Existe “business as usual” em startups?

Existe "business as usual" em startups?

Trecho retirado da newsletter “Startup Core Strenghts”:

This is a hard one: “What about “BAU?”

We’re constantly reminding entrepreneurs that, with any successful startup, 90% of their growth ends up coming from 10% of the stuff they try. So we push companies to prioritize uncomfortably.

Companies write a short list of “must win battles” that’ll ultimately dictate their success or failure. And that’s when it gets uncomfortable.

Suddenly, everyone’s inundated with new work, but these crucial “must win” projects tend to creep along painfully. Teams get stressed, and founders usually ask me how they can carve out time to focus on growth initiatives plus the “BAU.”

Now, BAU stands for “business as usual,” so I ask: “What exactly is this ‘BAU’ and why is it more important than growing your startup?” And they reply with really important projects like fixing technical debt, ongoing social media marketing, sending newsletters, the product roadmap, QA testing, fixing typos, setting up internal tools and processes, compliance, getting feedback from lawyers…you get the point.

I’d hate to tell them to stop any of these pressing matters. It’s not my company, and those sound really important! So instead, I tell them this:

In the early days, PayPal wasn’t licensed to transmit money in any of the 50 US States
Their early fraud losses exceeded $2,000 per hour
And the entire “tech stack” was a single monolithic CGI script that eventually collapsed and brought down PayPal and eBay for 8 days before Christmas 2004.

I tell them that great startups are messy places where people take huge risks and do work they’re not always proud of. They prioritise growth ruthlessly, and make painful choices in the process.

Look, I’m not saying you should break the law, avoid compliance, send emails with typos, or accumulate technical debt. But I am saying that every successful startup has taken huge risks to gain tactical advantage.

It’s a hard thing to tell perfectionists, but there is no such thing as “business as usual” in a startup.

É só o começo.

Av. Brigadeiro Luís Antônio, 4980, Jardim Paulista, São Paulo – SP, Cep 01402-002

contato@lsb.com.br

+55 11 93098-6541

Uncategorized

Making the metaverse: What it is, how it will be built, and why it matters

Autor do post Por Michell Lucino
Data de publicação junho 2, 2022
Nenhum comentário em Making the metaverse: What it is, how it will be built, and why it matters

Making the metaverse:
What it is, how it will be built, and why it matters

When Facebook rebranded as Meta last October, it brought into the mainstream a concept that has been exciting the bright minds of Silicon Valley for years: the metaverse. Mark Zuckerberg’s unveiling of a vision for a new era of integrated, immersive technologies was met with enthusiasm in some quarters, and cynicism in others. It’s easy to see why. Skepticism is a natural reaction to something that sounds like it’s straight out of a science fiction novel — in a way, it is — especially when there are wider societal concerns about how tech operates in the two-dimensional world.

Many rightly ask: what is the metaverse and why should I care? And even if I can be persuaded that it is worth getting excited about, how can I trust that these new technologies will be built and governed responsibly?

When Facebook started 18 years ago, we mostly typed text on websites. When we got phones with cameras, the internet became more visual and mobile. As connections got faster, video became a richer way to share things. We’ve gone from desktop to web to mobile; from text to photos to video.

In this progression, the metaverse is a logical evolution. It’s the next generation of the internet — a more immersive, 3D experience. Its defining quality will be a feeling of presence, like you are right there with another person or in another place.

A wide range of technology companies — from big players like Microsoft and Google to smaller ones like Niantic and Emblematic — are already building experiences and products for the metaverse. Early versions of it already exist in the virtual worlds of games like Roblox, Minecraft and Fortnite. It incorporates technologies like virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) that, while still young, have been in use for some time.

And all of us have a stake in the metaverse. It isn’t an idea Meta has cooked up. There won’t be a Meta-run metaverse, just as there isn’t a ‘Microsoft internet’ or ‘Google internet’ today.

The metaverse isn’t just about the detached worlds of VR, where we don headsets that take us out of our environment in the physical world and transport us somewhere new. VR is one end of a spectrum. It stretches from using avatars or accessing metaverse spaces on your phone, through AR glasses that project computer-generated images onto the world around us, to mixed reality experiences that blend both physical and virtual environments.

The word ‘metaverse’ is actually a little misleading, as ‘verse’ implies you are transported to another ‘universe’. Of course, there is escapism inherent in using some of these technologies — like an immersive gaming experience. But the metaverse is much more than that. It’s ultimately about finding ever more ways for the benefits of the online world to be felt in our daily lives — enriching our experiences, not replacing them.

Imagine, for example, how useful it could be to wear glasses that give you virtual directions in your line of sight, or immediate translations of street signs in foreign languages. Or even make it possible for you to have a conversation with someone who is thousands of miles away as a three-dimensional hologram in your living room instead of a head and shoulders on a flat screen. And, as I will go on to explain in more detail, the potential societal benefits — particularly in education and healthcare — are vast, from helping med students practice surgical techniques to bringing school lessons to life in new and exciting ways.

As someone in their mid-50s who has spent most of my career in British and European politics rather than Silicon Valley, it wasn’t until I started using some of the early products that I started to properly grasp the potential. For several months now my close team has been meeting weekly in Meta’s Horizon Workrooms app, in which you interact with colleagues as avatars in virtual meeting rooms, complete with whiteboards, boardroom tables, wall art, and futuristic cityscapes visible through the windows. Yes, we are meeting as stylized representations of ourselves, but there really is something about the sense of place and space, and the directional sound in particular, that makes the meetings feel much more human than talking to thumbnail faces on a laptop.

We can exchange glances and private asides with the person next to us, get someone’s attention with a gesture, even read each other’s body language — rudimentary as it is when we are blemish free avatars. I can be in my home in northern California talking to a colleague an ocean away in his garage in Milton Keynes, England, and yet it feels like he’s sat three feet to my left. If he gesticulates too wildly while disagreeing with me, I get a genuine urge to lean away.

Different technologies will enable different levels of immersion that suit the individual and their environment. They won’t be a replacement for our experiences in daily life any more than the internet is today. What they will be is a way to build on the interconnectedness the internet enables, so that we can do more and have even richer experiences. All this has the potential to unlock new opportunities and spark new ideas we haven’t yet imagined, and to have a huge positive impact both socially and economically.

For people to actually want to use these technologies, they will need to feel safe. Companies like Meta have a lot of work to do both to build the credibility of the metaverse as an idea, and to demonstrate to people that we are committed to building it in a responsible way. That starts by explaining as best we can what our vision for these technologies is and the challenges we believe will need to be considered as it develops. It means being open and transparent about the work we’re doing and the choices and trade-offs inherent in it. It means drawing on existing work to protect marginalized communities online, and listening to human and civil rights, privacy, and disabilities experts as systems and processes are developed to keep people safe. And it means being clear that our intention is not to develop these technologies on our own, but to be one part of a wider technological movement.

The metaverse is at a critical early stage in its development. There is nothing deterministic in the way a technology impacts society. Technology isn’t good or bad in and of itself. People will use it as they see fit — and people will misuse it as well. Just as we have seen how problems in our physical society have manifested on the internet, they will reoccur in any system or platform regardless of what it is or who builds it. That is why we must create thoughtful rules and put guardrails into place as the metaverse develops to maximize its potential for good and minimize the potential harms.

Done well, the metaverse could be a positive force for inclusion and equity, bridging some of the divides that exist in today’s physical and digital spaces.

Collectively, we can think of this process as developing a system of governance for the metaverse. And it mustn’t be shaped by tech companies like Meta on their own. It needs to be developed openly with a spirit of cooperation between the private sector, lawmakers, civil society, academia, and the people who will use these technologies. This effort must be undertaken in the best interests of people and society, not just technology companies.

In this essay, I’ll set out why the metaverse is a compelling new evolution of the internet; some of the potential benefits it creates for education, healthcare and economic opportunity; the importance of building it in a way that ensures it is open and interoperable; some early thoughts on how to approach questions of governance; and how I believe we have time on our side to ensure it is built collaboratively and responsibly.

In doing so, I hope to shed some light on how Meta intends to go about this work. In turn, I hope that a better understanding of our approach will help others — in both the private and public realms — to make informed decisions of their own about what they want in this next phase of the internet.

We already have the internet — do we really need the metaverse?

Earlier, I described the metaverse as a logical evolution of the internet. It’s worth taking a moment to explain the logic. Since the advent of the internet, we’ve moved from chunky computers tethered to dial-up phone lines, to laptops and tablets connected without wires, to phones that allow us to carry the internet with us wherever we go, as well as internet-accessible cars, watches and all manner of household devices. This evolution has been driven in part by increases in the speed and availability of internet connectivity. And each step in this evolution has made communication and interaction easier and more natural.

We don’t communicate through written words alone, so text-based internet services would never suffice. Static images are an important part of how we communicate, as are sounds and moving images. But we interact in three dimensions. We use multiple senses, body language, spatial awareness. We signify our intention to trust one another by looking each other in the eye, smiling, or warmly shaking hands. We express our feelings towards loved ones not only by saying what we feel but by expressing it physically. We show joy, sadness or anger through nonverbal cues that are embodied and experienced rather than written down.

Advances in speed and availability of connectivity have now reached a point that begins to make many of these three-dimensional interactions possible virtually. It is therefore logical that the next step in the evolution of the internet is one that reflects this.

There are three key factors that will make interactions in the metaverse feel more like those we have in our daily lives: ephemerality, embodiment and immersion.

Ephemerality: In the physical world, most of our daily communications are ephemeral: we speak, people hear us, and no long-term record of what we said exists. In contrast, emails, text messages, and written posts on social media are often persistent, creating a record that lasts over time and which can be inspected, reviewed, modified or deleted. The metaverse will constitute a shift towards live, speech-based communication that will often feel as transient as face-to-face conversations. Just as in the physical world, this kind of ephemeral communication will exist alongside persistent messages and communication, but is likely to be far more common. If I want to communicate with you in today’s internet, the first thing I’d do is write text — a post or message, for example. But to communicate with you in a shared metaverse space, I would speak.
Embodiment: In the metaverse we will be able to communicate not only through typing on a keyboard or looking at a screen, but through our physicality. Avatars will reflect our real bodily movements. This will allow us to communicate more expressively, to use our hands to create and manipulate digital objects, and to interact with our virtual 3D environment. This real-time, 3D synchronicity is a crucial difference with the way we interact in today’s internet.
Immersion: In the metaverse, we will communicate in ways that make us feel as if we are actually in a specific space with other people — shared environments where social interaction feels natural, like a conversation with friends in a coffee shop, restaurant, or at home. We often talk about getting immersed in a good book or losing ourselves in a song. But no other form of communication has so far been able to achieve the sort of audiovisual fidelity necessary to create the feeling of being in a shared space that is possible in the metaverse.

Empirical evidence from countless social science research studies corroborates this notion that nonverbal/embodied forms of communication are crucial to the cultivation of social trust, and to the development of a shared sense of community with others. For example, in their influential book Wired for Speech, Clifford Nash and Scott Brave argue that we evolved to understand the world and to communicate primarily through speech, rather than writing, and therefore functional speech-based interfaces represent an improvement in the way we communicate online.

These attributes — ephemerality, embodiment and immersion — mean people will experience the metaverse in a way that is much closer to physical world interactions than to the experience of using a mobile app or website. In this way, the metaverse isn’t analogous to a mobile app like Facebook or Instagram. It’s closer to a universal, virtual layer that everyone can experience on top of today’s physical world — one where you can have a consistent identity (or even set of identities) that people can recognize wherever they see you.

For this to become a reality, no single company can or should control the metaverse — but different experiences will need to be compatible if, for example, you want to be able to bring a photo you took in one space into another, or to use the same avatar to represent your virtual identity in different places.

The possibilities for education, health and economic opportunity

Iappreciate that none of this is easy to visualize. These technologies are nascent. Today, VR and AR are used primarily for gaming, and the often cartoonish experiences that exist right now will no doubt feel quaint in a few short years. The great leap forward that companies like Meta believe is possible hasn’t happened yet. Many of the benefits that technologists espouse will be unlocked by advances that are still to come. But they are possible. The technology may be virtual, but the impact it will have on education, healthcare, commerce and much more will be very real.

Think about what it could mean for education and training. The internet has already transformed the way we learn. Search engines make fact-finding virtually instant. We carry around an infinite library in our pockets on devices slimmer than a paperback book. Classes can be taught by video conferencing or live-streaming. The metaverse promises to make learning more active. We will be able to learn by doing and not just passively absorbing information. We’ll be able to learn in 3D — bringing the study of architecture, or history, or even basic geometry to life in ways white boards and flat screens never could.

Learning won’t be limited by geographical location — a student in Mumbai could attend a seminar hosted by a Professor in Frankfurt; a middle school class in Wyoming could take a field trip to Stonehenge or the Pyramids of Giza. Indeed, they could experience these landmarks as they would have been at the time of the Druids and Pharaohs.

The potential for revolutionizing education and training is one of the things Meta is investing in early through a $150 million fund called Meta Immersive Learning. One project it has supported is a partnership with Prisms VR, run by a former teacher, to build a virtual Math and Science curriculum for grades 8–12, which is currently being piloted in Ohio with plans to expand to Boston and Los Angeles. Another is a partnership with Victory XR to launch 10 digital twin campuses — replicas of existing campuses constructed in fully spatial 3D, at colleges and universities in the United States. In these virtual campuses, students will be able to move about, socialize, learn and compete in activities, and take part in classes they can access remotely.

Meta is also providing VR headsets for all the students for use during the course they are taking. This touches on an important point about access to the metaverse. Obviously, anything that is dependent on hardware comes with a cost, and anything that comes with a cost will make it harder, even prohibitive, for some people on low incomes. There will be many low cost entry points to the metaverse — including through mobile phones — but to buy VR headsets some level of cost will be unavoidable. As part of Meta’s efforts to ensure it is actively considering diversity, equity and inclusivity as it works to help build the metaverse, we are determined to make our headsets as affordable as possible.

Another area where metaverse technologies have the potential to be transformative is healthcare. There are endless possibilities for training healthcare professionals — from practicing surgeries without risk to patients or training first responders without putting them in dangerous situations, to making med school more accessible by removing geographical and other barriers. Recent studies have also looked at the ways virtual reality can be used for pediatric pain management, children with autism, and depression.

Augmented reality also has the potential to be transformative. This article suggests nine ways that AR could be utilized: saving lives by showing people where nearby defibrillators are; assisting surgeons during operations; helping new mothers with breastfeeding; helping patients better describe symptoms; helping nurses find veins more easily; showing people how drugs work in 3D; helping medical students visualize anatomy; teaching kids about the human body; and even motivating runners by having them chased by virtual zombies.

Now, think of the economic possibilities. For the last three decades we’ve been in the midst of a global digital transformation. As more and more people use the internet and connections have become faster and more accessible, businesses and institutions of all sorts have increasingly gone digital to reach them — a trend that accelerated dramatically during the pandemic. Today, the widespread use of digital tools by businesses of all shapes and sizes means the digital economy is absolutely central to the global economy.

The digital economy contributed $2.1 trillion to the US GDP in 2019. Even if the metaverse went on to account for the equivalent of just 10% of the pre-pandemic US digital economy, it would be a $200 billion industry, employing somewhere in the region of 770,000 people.

A white paper produced for Meta by the independent economic consultancy Analysis Group has estimated the metaverse economy could be worth more than $3 trillion globally in a decade.

An industry this massive would also be a job creation engine — and those jobs wouldn’t be limited to the campuses of Silicon Valley. In 2020, the mobile technology sector directly employed about 12 million people globally, and indirectly employed another 13 million people. The metaverse economy will not only include the industries that will create its infrastructure, including hardware, software, payment systems, and broadband providers, but also sectors like e-commerce, education, gaming and more which will provide goods and services associated with it. When social spaces are created in the metaverse, people will need to be employed to manage and maintain them, just as they are in the physical world.

For its part, Meta may be based in California but it is a global company with a global workforce. In recent months it has announced the creation of thousands of jobs in Europe and Canada to help build the metaverse, and there will be many more created around the world in the years ahead.

This digital transformation has not only been a boon for the global economy overall, it has also helped to democratize access to it and opened up a new world of economic opportunities. Before the internet, if you wanted to start a business, you needed to get a loan from a bank and have a physical presence on a high street or in an office. If you wanted to advertise, you needed to walk around handing out flyers, or to buy very limited space on a handful of TV networks that charged huge amounts, or in a local newspaper.

When the internet came along, all of a sudden you could start a business without a big loan. You didn’t need a shopfront or an office, you could do it from your living room. You could advertise for small amounts of money to targeted audiences of people you thought might be interested in the products and services you provide. The internet and social media have made it possible for people to express themselves, reach like-minded people, and start businesses in ways that simply weren’t possible before, which in turn benefited those who have historically been marginalized or discriminated against — women, LGBTQ+ people, those with disabilities, veterans, underrepresented minorities, and others.

We don’t know what the metaverse economy will look like yet. But it’s hard to imagine the direction of travel will change. The digital transformation will only be enhanced by the metaverse, democratizing access even further and making it a powerful force for greater access and diversity. It will be possible to create more immersive, more social, more detailed experiences than ever before, all from your living room — or your spare room, or garage, or wherever it is you do your Zoom meetings.

In its infancy, no one could have imagined the overwhelming impact the internet would have on commerce. And it is the same right now with the metaverse.

A new generation of entrepreneurs will have much more creative ideas than this, but it’s easy to imagine how, say, a fashion designer or clothing retailer could benefit by making their outfits available to be tried on in a virtual fitting room. And there’s a huge opportunity for developers — not just for the large developers building for the metaverse today, but for a new generation of independent creative professionals who will be able to access the tools necessary to create amazing spaces and experiences.

Ensuring an open metaverse

Asthe technologies and their uses develop, guardrails need to be put in place to mitigate the risks and accentuate the positives. So what sort of guardrails are required for these new forms of immersive and immediate social interaction? And who gets to set the rules?

The metaverse is not a single product, in the way Meta’s apps — Facebook, Instagram, Messenger and WhatsApp — are. Nor is it an operating system like Microsoft’s Windows, or hardware like Apple’s iPhone. Like today’s internet, the metaverse will be a constellation of technologies, platforms, and products. It won’t be built, operated or governed by any one company or institution. It will take a range of companies large and small, civil society, the public sector, and millions of individual creators. It isn’t a single piece of cloth, but a patchwork quilt.

Given the varied mix of companies, institutions and people who will operate spaces in the metaverse, the rules for what happens in them will be set in a variety of ways. The scholar Helen Nissenbaum coined the phrase ‘contextual integrity’ to describe the way norms and expectations around the sharing of information differ depending on social context. In her book Privacy in Context, she gives the example of your relationship with your doctor — a situation in which you are prepared to share information you likely wouldn’t choose to share with your friends. When it comes to making content policy rules, one size is not going to fit all — there will be different expectations, and therefore different rules and norms established, in different spaces.

Of course, like the internet, the metaverse will be an interconnected system that transcends national borders, so there will need to be a web of public and private standards, norms and rules to allow for it to operate across jurisdictions.

One way to think about the structure of the metaverse is to imagine a building, where each floor supports the one above it. For each floor, and within each floor, there will be different kinds of rules and regulations required.

Foundations — hardware, protocols and standards

The foundations of the building include the hardware — phones, VR headsets, AR glasses, etc.— and the technical protocols and standards that ensure the various technologies can interact, or be ‘interoperable’ in the jargon.

Ground floor — platforms and networks

The ground floor of the metaverse will be built on top of these interoperable protocols and standards. This is the intermediary layer where platforms, institutions and other networks will create the universe of products that make up the 3D worlds of the metaverse.

First floor — experiences

The first floor of the metaverse is where you’ll access it as a user, and where the vast array of experiences will be available. Current Quest users, for example, can access the metaverse through social VR apps like Horizon Worlds. Apps and experiences will support the ability for creators to design a multitude of unique spaces.

The common theme across these floors is interoperability — the interconnectedness of standards, systems and applications that enable people to travel seamlessly between one part of the metaverse and another. It isn’t an absolute — not every element of metaverse experiences needs to be, or will be, compatible with others. But without a significant degree of interoperability baked into each floor, the metaverse will become fragmented and broken into silos, each impenetrable from the other.

As has been the case throughout the internet’s development, interoperable standards and protocols will be developed by different people and companies over time, and will often be settled by institutions like the US-based National Institute of Standards and Technology or international multi-stakeholder organizations like the Internet Engineering Task Force or the World Wide Web Consortium.

An example of interoperable standards is the HTML language that developers use to build websites, and which all internet browsers can read. Common hardware standards are things like USB ports that allow different devices to connect together. These are crucial because they provide a common foundation that allows seamless communication across different devices and platforms.

Because the ground floor’s platforms and networks will be built on this foundational layer, they will have the potential for interoperability. Of course, there’s nothing inevitable about individual companies adopting industry-wide standards, but they will have a strong incentive to align on ways for consumers to take digital goods such as clothing for avatars from one platform to another.

For those who think the risk of a fragmented metaverse is theoretical, look what has happened in the current internet. We have two operating systems that effectively create walled gardens — and in Apple’s case, a walled garden that is increasingly vertically integrated. As interoperability develops it needs to be driven by the interests of users, so that they are not randomly locked into one silo or another.

Its development will likely follow the same path as the existing internet — piece by piece, standard by standard, driven by a mixture of public and private initiatives.

Take the history of an internet technology that is commonplace today: the Graphics Interchange Format, or GIF for short. Up until the late ’80s, each computer manufacturer would develop their own proprietary computer language for displaying images on a screen. This, in turn, made sharing images between different computer brands a technologically challenging task. In 1987, Steve Wilhite, a programmer who worked in an online service company called CompuServe, came up with a universal image sharing computer language — GIF — that revolutionized the process of sharing images online. From then on, the images that users shared on CompuServe’s network would be readable by any computer, no matter the brand. Wilhite’s innovation, which was formed on the idea that we need a common interchangeable computer language to share information between devices, helped pave the way for the next generation of the internet, which was centered around the sharing of images rather than just text.

Other internet technologies have longer and even more complicated histories than the GIF. Email, for example, has a history of more than fifty years of technical standards evolution. And the list goes on: sharing a video, creating a webpage, even texting someone, requires the development and adoption of a common technical language. Today, the internet is open and accessible to billions of people because of the work of standards-setting bodies like the IETF or the W3C, the innovations of luminaries like Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn who developed the TCP/IP protocol, government projects like ARPA, and the creations of companies like CompuServe.

We should have the same expectations of openness and universal access for the metaverse. It will need to be developed from the ground up by a new generation of developers like Steve Wilhite; driven by a mixture of private and public initiatives that will develop and help adopt interoperable standards over time. This is a case made powerfully in an essay by Matthew Ball and Jacob Navok, espousing the virtues of what they call ‘Interchange Tools and Standards’ in the metaverse:

The Metaverse will not develop as the internet did. Public institutions, military research labs, and independent academics led the latter’s development because they were effectively the only ones with the computational talent, resources, and ambitions to build a World Wide Web, and few in industry understood its commercial potential. None of this is true when it comes to the Metaverse.

But we still want the Metaverse to flourish as the internet did. We want as many new platforms, technologies, and companies to be created — to maximize the number of Metaverse users, and the devices it reaches — while also checking the rent-seeking instincts of dominant platforms. To do so, we will need an ecosystem of ‘interchange’ solutions that interconnect, translate, and exchange information/users/assets across and between myriad different and competing platforms. It’s not enough to have more powerful hardware, computer, networks, virtual platforms, and Metaverse tools and technologies.

Interoperability isn’t just an abstract technical idea. It will be crucial to people’s experiences in the metaverse. Imagine, for example, that two friends want to go together to a concert taking place in Horizon Worlds. If they both click the link to the concert venue from different starting points, there will need to be a common protocol for travel to ensure they can end up at the same place in the metaverse.

If they buy a t-shirt at the concert, they’ll want to be able to take it with them and not just be limited to wearing it in Meta-built experiences. To do so will require digital items created in different places to be compatible and accessible across metaverse spaces, just as photos or other images can be used to display images across websites, social media apps and devices designed and operated by different companies. Digital items for avatars — or any 3D objects that someone might wish to take with them throughout the metaverse — will need to be like GIF or JPEG image files in today’s internet.

A metaverse that is open and interconnected is not only the right thing for users — and something that will involve both technical and policy work from industry and regulators — it is also the sort of thing that might come to distinguish the metaverse in the parts of the world that still believe in an open internet from the metaverses built in other parts of the world where a closed internet has been constructed in recent years.

The borderless and largely free internet that you and I use every day is being challenged in many parts of the world by an alternative model: the authoritarian internet. Some governments are building digital barriers at their borders and imposing greater control over the internet inside them, creating rules and infrastructure to monitor and censor users, and partitioning the internet into a series of national and regional silos.

This is how the internet operates in China, and others are moving in this direction. Not least Russia, whose actions in the weeks following its brutal invasion of Ukraine accelerated its own divorce from the global internet — restricting or blocking social media services, clamping down on the media and the free expression of its citizens, and cutting them off from the world beyond Russia’s borders.

The rise of the authoritarian internet represents an ideological challenge to the open internet as we know it. That’s why, with investment in metaverse technologies happening all over the world, the values which underpin how these technologies are constructed are as important in this coming phase of the internet as they are in the current one. While ideas like interoperability may sound dry and arcane to non-technical ears, they matter because ensuring the fundamental architecture of the metaverse is as open and accessible as possible will have profound implications for how we experience it for generations to come.

What sort of rules do we need?

The rules and safety features of the metaverse — regardless of the floor — will not be identical to the ones currently in place for social media. Nor should they be. In many ways, user experiences in the metaverse will be more akin to physical reality than the two-dimensional internet.

For example, you and I might create a metaverse space — like a virtual living room — where we can get together with a small group of our friends to hang out, chat, gossip, and generally put the world to rights in the way we all do when we catch up with friends. It won’t be a public space where anyone can turn up and join in, just a private space for friends. We will be the architects of our space and we will decide how it’s used — just as we can invite people into our homes for private conversations in our living rooms. In this situation, we wouldn’t want or expect a private company to be listening in on our conversation, in the way that we would expect a social media company to see our conversation if we were posting on Facebook or Twitter.

Of course, the unique characteristics of the metaverse will contribute to negative as well as positive experiences. For example, a sense of immersion can heighten the emotional impact of offensive or aggressive interactions that would probably be less affecting in a 2D, text-based environment. One measure Meta has taken with this concept in mind is the introduction of a personal boundary around one’s avatar, which is intended to create personal space for each user, so that their safety is better protected.

But formal rules and built-in functions will only ever get us so far. In the physical world, as well as the internet, people shout and swear and do all kinds of unpleasant things that aren’t prohibited by law, and they harass and attack people in ways that are. The metaverse will be no different. People who want to misuse technologies will always find ways to do it.

The current debate about how to handle bad-but-not-illegal conduct on social media and the internet hints at the debates to come about how to treat anti-social behavior in the metaverse.

Companies and developers will have to create new formal rules for their spaces. While some may be readily developed based upon lessons of the internet, others will be new and evolving. And as in all societies, informal and unwritten codes of acceptable behavior will also develop over time. In many cases, the operators of the apps and creators of experiences will want to nurture the development of healthy norms rather than falling back on exhaustive and impractical lists of what users can and can’t say or do.

Consider a scenario in a more public metaverse space than our private living room. Two friends — let’s call them Bhavika and Elijah — meet in a virtual bar in the metaverse. The bar owner, a 23-year-old developer from Sweden, has set very clear rules of conduct which are displayed to every customer before they enter: everyone is welcome as long as you are over 21; you can say anything you want; but no physical aggression, however small, is allowed. Anyone who violates these rules will be kicked out.

Bhavika and Elijah like the idea of open and free conversation that this bar promotes, and they’ve heard it’s a place where new and radical political ideas are debated. When they enter, however, they quickly realize that the heated conversation taking place at that moment involves an uncomfortable amount of abusive language. Disliking what they see and hear, they decide to leave the place and report their experiences to the company that hosts the virtual bar’s data on its servers.

Who is responsible for Bhavika’s and Elijah’s experience? What are the bar owner’s responsibilities? And what are the rules that should be imposed by the company that hosts the bar’s data?

Answers to these questions will most likely deviate considerably from the sort of rules imposed in the internet world — like a social media platform’s community standards — not least because this situation involves live speech rather than posted text. In fact, the immediacy of metaverse spaces makes it more likely that this sort of synchronous, ephemeral communication will be far more prevalent than the tangible, text-based communication that dominates much of today’s internet. So, in this case, a better place to look for answers may be the existing rules and norms that govern bars in physical reality.

For example, in the US, we wouldn’t hold a bar manager responsible for real-time speech moderation in their bar, as if they should stand over your table, listen intently to your conversation, and silence you if they hear things they don’t like. But the bar manager would be held accountable if they served alcohol to people who are under-age. We would expect them to use their discretion to exclude disruptive customers who don’t respond to reasonable warnings about their behavior. And we would expect customers who were upset by aggressive or inappropriate speech to be able to speak to the manager about it, and for some kind of action to result.

In metaverse spaces, we could reasonably expect to be able to report this behavior without the need for our conversations to be stored indefinitely on a company’s server. For example, for Meta Quest users in Horizon Worlds, a rolling buffer is available so that most audio data can be kept for just a short period — for privacy reasons this is kept on the device, not Meta’s servers — to ensure it is available for users to report abuse or harmful conduct. If they don’t submit a report the data is deleted. As well as reporting, they also have the option to block or mute people, as well as being able to leave the space immediately via the Oculus button on their controllers.

A great example of a company taking a thoughtful, context-driven approach to issues of negative behavior online is Good Game Well Played, led by Dennis Fong, a gamer and entrepreneur who created his AI-powered moderation platform to help games publishers respond to user reports. Its player report management system aggregates, triages, and prioritizes player reports and provides context around incidents by displaying historical and holistic data on the players involved, including their reputation scores, credibility rating, and the severity of the incident.

Time is on our side

This is all futuristic stuff — but as with all major technological advances there are going to be big challenges and uncertainties. In the past, the speed with which new technologies have emerged has sometimes left policymakers and regulators playing catch-up. Companies get accused of charging ahead too quickly, while innovators have felt that technological progress can’t afford to wait for the slower pace of regulation. Guardrails around new technologies were at times retrofitted with the plane already in full flight. Cars were on the road for decades before regulators made seatbelts mandatory.

That doesn’t have to be the case this time round. The technologies being described are certainly no less ground-breaking. The crucial difference today is that time is on our side. It may not always feel like it when so many different companies are talking up these technologies and announcing new products and initiatives. But these innovations aren’t going to happen overnight. We’re in the early stages of this journey. Many of these products will only be fully realized in 10–15 years, if not longer.

While that’s frustrating for those of us who can’t wait to use them immediately, it has the great benefit of giving us time to ask ourselves the difficult questions about how they should be built. It gives Meta — and every company innovating in this environment — the space to invest in research and work in close collaboration with industry peers and experts on many of these important issues.

There are many challenges in ensuring the metaverse is designed to maximize opportunity for all. First, industry must come together around shared technical standards that allow the metaverse to be interoperable. Second, and significantly more difficult, is determining to what extent there are shared rules of behavior for users across the metaverse.

Given that the metaverse much more closely mimics physical life, with all its complexities and nuances, how should we think about where the line is drawn in terms of formal rules for what behavior is and isn’t allowed — whether enforced by government or industry? What tradeoffs exist in content-focused rules? How do we ensure they are not used to further stigmatize or surveil historically disadvantaged communities? At what level are these things best decided — platform-wide, or in individual communities? And given the technical challenges, what level of standards is realistically achievable?

By working together from this early stage across industry, the public sector, academia and civil society, I hope that we can begin to answer these questions as these new technologies are built, and ensure that the enthusiasm for the potential of these technologies is accompanied by a rigorous focus on developing them collaboratively and responsibly.

To that end, Meta has set out a number of priority areas that will guide our work:

Economic opportunity — how we can give people more choice, and maintain a thriving digital economy.
Privacy — how we can build meaningful transparency and control into our products.
Safety and integrity — how we can help keep people safe on our platforms and give them tools to take action or get help if they see or experience something they’re not comfortable with.
Equity and inclusion — how we can make sure these technologies are designed inclusively and in a way that’s accessible.

These priorities build on a set of Responsible Innovation Principles that Meta’s Reality Labs first set out in 2020 to underpin our product development work.

Meta will be working across the industry, and with experts from all sorts of different fields to develop these technologies, and to enable others to do so. In particular, we need to ensure that industry standards or regulations are inclusive of the concerns of the civil rights and human rights communities so these technologies are built in a way that’s empowering for everyone.

The World Economic Forum is taking a leadership role in this space by creating a multi-stakeholder network to inform future best practices and governance principles on key societal, ethical and governance challenges involving the metaverse. In particular, it will look into issues around equity, inclusion and accessibility, privacy and safety, economic opportunity and interoperability. This is similar in spirit to the work the WEF recently launched on quantum computing principles.

Many will understandably be skeptical about the idea that erstwhile competitors like Meta, Google, Microsoft and other tech firms, big and small, will really be prepared to work together in this way. But it is happening already. One forum for cross-industry co-operation is the XR Association, which brings together companies working across the whole spectrum of metaverse technologies — from headset manufacturers and technology platforms, to companies that build components, internet infrastructure, enterprise solutions and more.

Evidence of the XR Association’s commitment to grappling with some of the thorniest issues can be found in a new report, published last month in partnership with the think tank the Bipartisan Policy Center. As well as unpacking some of the serious concerns people have around issues like privacy, safety, inclusion, access and security, the report identifies a series of gaps in US law and public policy that will need to be addressed in the years ahead. These include policies around government-backed research and development, procurement and financing, workforce training, and digital infrastructure, and laws around privacy protections, civil rights, and tort and labor laws.

Meta has also made direct investments in external research and programs through its $50 million global XR Programs and Research Fund. This includes facilitating independent external research with Chuo University in Japan (on improving foreign language teaching and learning), Seoul National University and The University of Hong Kong (for research into safety, ethics and responsible design), the Centre for Technology, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence & the Law at the National University of Singapore (on topics such as privacy and data use), and Australia’s Project Rockit (on young people’s perspectives of their relationships with AR and VR and how to create safer online social communities).

In Latin America, with C-Minds Eon Resilience Lab in Mexico (economic opportunities, privacy and security, safety and gender), Fundación Universidad de San Andrés in Argentina (ethical and Human Rights challenges in immersive technologies, with particular focus on safety & gender), Instituto de Tecnologia e Sociedade in Brazil (identifying and informing opportunities and challenges of metaverse innovation in Latin America) and The Institute for Research on Internet and Society in Brazil (on privacy and data protection in immersive technologies).

Through the fund, Meta has also invested in a number of initiatives with partners around the world, like the Organization of American States on job training and skills development for students, creators and small business owners, Women In Immersive Tech to support women and underrepresented groups in Europe’s VR, AR and MR sectors, and Africa No Filter, Electric South and Imisi3D to support creators who have been pushing the boundaries of digital storytelling using immersive technology through an initiative called Amplifying African Voices.

In the US, Meta is partnering with Jobs for the Future to demonstrate how AR/VR technologies can strengthen the competitiveness of small- and medium-sized businesses by upskilling workers, particularly those who have been disadvantaged in the labor market.

The intention of these sorts of initiatives is not to somehow spin away Meta’s own responsibilities. They are attempts to engage early and often with independent experts, academics and civil society on some of the areas where foundational work needs to take place in order to ensure these technologies are developed responsibly.

Nobody wants big tech companies to plow ahead without thought for the impact of their advances on society, nor do they want them to do all the thinking themselves behind closed doors. Initiatives like these are necessary but nowhere near sufficient. They are the first steps in a long journey that will only be effective when we all come together to agree on enforceable rules and industry-wide standards.

The metaverse is coming, one way or another. The future of the internet will be more human than the way we experience it today — more physical, interactive, and speech-based than flat screens filled with text and images.

It won’t be ownable, by Meta or anyone else, just as today’s internet isn’t. Meta has been upfront about the role it hopes to play in developing and establishing these new technologies, and how it is investing heavily to make them a reality. But it is being equally open about the manner in which it wants to go about developing them: collaboratively, transparently, and in full recognition of the social responsibilities inherent in the endeavor.

The metaverse will bring with it huge potential for social and economic progress. And it will bring risks and challenges, many of which can be anticipated. Our hope is that the lessons of previous technological advances can be learned, and that the rules, standards and norms that will govern the metaverse can be developed in tandem with the development of the technologies themselves.

Texto por Nick Clegg, https://nickclegg.medium.com/making-the-metaverse-what-it-is-how-it-will-be-built-and-why-it-matters-3710f7570b04

É só o começo.

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Depoimentos de empreendedores

Conversa com Maurício Chamati,
Founder do Mercado Bitcoin

Autor do post Por Michell Lucino
Data de publicação maio 26, 2022
Nenhum comentário em Conversa com Maurício Chamati,
Founder do Mercado Bitcoin

Conversa com Maurício Chamati,
Founder do Mercado Bitcoin

Maurício Chamati, fundador do Mercado Bitcoin (um dos unicórnios brasileiros). Também é empreendedor Endeavor em um bate papo sobre como foi o começo, como construiu um negócio incrível, perrengues e tudo mais.

É só o começo.

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Depoimentos de empreendedores Foco

“Como o foco realmente é no dia a dia de startups?”
pelos Founders da Omie, Sallve e Cayena

Autor do post Por Michell Lucino
Data de publicação maio 26, 2022
Nenhum comentário em “Como o foco realmente é no dia a dia de startups?”
pelos Founders da Omie, Sallve e Cayena

"Como o foco realmente é no dia a dia de startups?" pelos Founders da Omie, Sallve e Cayena

Pergunta do Edson Rigonatti: O que é foco na realidade? Até onde temos que focar mesmo na ICP (Ideal Customer Profile)? E focar em fonte de geração de lead? E focar em canal? Isso é coisa de investidor doido?

Daniel, fundador da Sallve:

Além do foco ser possível, ele é necessário. Sempre que eu passei por problemas e crises na empresa, parei para pensar depois no que havia acontecido pra analisar e identifiquei esses problemas como falta de foco.

E quando vem de uma rodada de investimento, o foco é mais importante ainda. Existe uma correlação muito grande entre receber uma rodada de investimento e desfocar. É difícil internalizar esse aprendizado, você passa por isso na Série A, depois na B e depois na próxima empresa se não se disciplinar (kkkkk).

Marcelo Lombardo, fundador da Omie:

Foco é fundamental, mas dependendo do estágio em que está. Explicando: fazer muita coisa diferente sem “ter musculatura” (track record) é impossível.

Teve um investidor bem early stage na Omie que investiu em outras duas startups junto e as 2 não sobreviveram: a diferença foi o foco que a Omie tinha. Enquanto eles queriam vender pra pequenas, médias e grandes empresas através de parceiros, field sales e tudo mais, eu tinha uma persona e um canal muito bem definido.

Sem foco, a única certeza é que você vai fazer todas as iniciativas mal feitas. Tem um momento muito difícil que é dar o all in em UMA só, mesmo que tenha um outro funcionando mais ou menos, mesmo querendo fazer mais coisas – o negócio é que, sem focar, nenhuma das iniciativas vai sair bem feita e o que for super promissor vai afundar e vai acabar sendo uma startup vendida por um real pra alguém.

Já em estágios mais posteriores, com uma possibilidade de captação de investimento maior e estrutura de gestão, isso pode se inverter. Talvez na rodada de investimento você tenha que expandir canais, MAS ISSO SÓ PODE SER FEITO COM UM MANAGEMENT TEAM EM PARALELO FAZENDO O “BUSINESS AS USUAL” CRESCER, ou seja, se o business original da empresa estiver super bem alinhado e gerenciado. A RD foi investir em segundos e próximos canais só com 50 milhões de receita recorrente. Abrir 2 ou 3 frentes vai chegar em lugar nenhum com nenhuma, não existe ilusão pra isso.

O gestor da empresa nada mais é do que alocador de capital e tem que priorizar apostas em cada estágio. Não é necessariamente dispersão de foco se levar em consideração O MOMENTO em que vai fazer.

Pedro Carvalho, fundador da Cayena:

Concordo e assino embaixo de tudo (depois entrou em outro assunto).

38 min é o momento certo desse documento, caso alguém queira assistir também

É só o começo.

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Product/market fit

12 lições sobre Product Market Fit

Autor do post Por Michell Lucino
Data de publicação maio 26, 2022
Nenhum comentário em 12 lições sobre Product Market Fit

A dozen lessons about
product market fit

1: Um jeito de olhar venture capital é pensar em construir algo com um tripé: pessoas, mercados e produtos inovadores. Todas os 3 pés são necessários para o sucesso. Dentro disso, existem diferentes VCs que priorizam diferentes partes, mas é uma boa abordagem considerar sempre o mercado como o mais importante, porque depois podemos mudar as pessoas ou o produto – mas nunca o mercado.

2: Uma hipótese de valor é uma tentativa de articular a principal suposição de por que um cliente pode usar seu produto. Product market fit é encontrar uma hipótese de valor que se prove. Você pode ser muito bom no que faz, mas se o mercado não gosta, não adianta. Ao mesmo tempo, você pode não ser tão bom no que faz, mas se o mercado gostar, algo especial vai acontecer (“first market, then your team”). Alguns VCs colocam a ênfase no empreendedor primeiro, mas é uma questão de ênfase e também de timing.

3: Por muitas vezes, você tropeça no product market fit por acaso – mas o processo pra você chegar a tropeçar no PMF é incrivelmente consistente (Andy Rachleff). Tem o curso do Rachleff em Stanford chamado “Aligning startups with their markets”. Steve Blank também, mesma coisa: comece com uma hipótese, teste ela, prove ela e depois siga em frente. A hipótese de valor tenta definir o que você vai construir, quem está desesperado por isso e qual o modelo de negócio usado para entregar isso. PMF emergem de experimentos, simples assim, é através de uma série de experimentos de construir/medir/aprender. Não é um momento “a-ha”.

4: Dá pra sentir quando ainda não atingiu o PMF: clientes não percebem tanto valor, boca a boca não espalha tanto, uso não cresce tanto etc. Também dá pra sentir quando atingiu.

5: Existem empreendedores que confundem product market fit com growth e métricas de vaidade (curtidas, seguidores etc). Nada ilustra tão bem o PMF do que vendas.

6: Muitas startups acham que chegaram ao PMF, mas na verdade não chegaram. Idealmente nos estágios mais iniciantes no processo de desenvolvimento de produto o mercado “puxa o produto” da startup organicamente.

7: Ser o primeiro no mercado raramente importa. Já ser o primeiro a ter o PMF é quase sempre o fator vencedor no longo prazo.

8: O PMF não é um “big bang event”. Não é tão óbvio quando você realmente tem o PMF. Ao alcançar o PMF, você pode perdê-lo (embora seja difícil). Mesmo alcançando o PMF, você vai ter que ralar contra a concorrência. É necessária constante adaptação para alcançar o PMF (palestra Rodrigo Tognini falando do Conta Simples).

9: Startups precisam normalmente de 2 a 3x mais tempo do que acreditam para encontrar o PMF. Precisam tomar cuidado com escalar prematuramente (investir recursos antes dessa clareza), principalmente por causa da pressão pelo ROI. Em um estudo, aproximadamente 70% já escalou prematuramente em algum âmbito e isso pode ser causa de 90% de mortes de startups.

10: O processo de experimentação com base em descobertas é necessário – pense em melhorar seu produto apenas depois de encontrar o PMF. Pense também que o mercado não se importa se seu time é bom – somente se importa se seu time entrega/produz o produto viável para resolver sua dor. Se praticamente todo mundo no business estiver focado em preencher essa demanda pelo produto em vez de imaginar novas features pra criar demanda, muito provavelmente você alcança o PMF.

O PMF não é mágica – e também não é a fórmula mágica pra tudo. Depois dele, você precisa construir um modelo de negócio sustentável e criar uma proteção contra competidores. O que o PMF faz é evitar com que você gaste todo seu dinheiro em algo que vai falhar.

11: No geral, contratar antes do PMF te desacelera e contratar depois do PMF te acelera. Pense em iterações e faça o máximo possível. É isso que é preciso para o PMF. Faça o que for necessário para atingi-lo. Depois de alcançá-lo, ignore quase todo o restante.

12: Chris Dixon diz que founders precisam escolher um mercado bem antes de ter alguma ideia (founder market fit).

É só o começo.

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Depoimentos de empreendedores Validação

Conversa com Rodrigo Tognini,
Founer da Conta Simples

Autor do post Por Michell Lucino
Data de publicação maio 26, 2022
Nenhum comentário em Conversa com Rodrigo Tognini,
Founer da Conta Simples

Conversa com Rodrigo Tognini,
Founer da Conta Simples

Rodrigo Tognini: 9 anos de jornada de tentar empreender, 4 anos de Conta Simples. Tentou empreender com fazer bonés, ficou no zero a zero. Tentou abrir uma fintech (CitraPay) também pra desintermediar maquininhas de pagamento.

Primeiro erro: alugaram um coworking pra desenhar o produto. Quando lançaram, foi fracasso total. Frustração absurda e desalinhamento de sociedade. E ELE FEZ O CURSO DO STEVE BLANK ouvindo get out of the building e tudo mais.

Conta Simples hoje: tese não é hoje o que era. Tem 180 funcionários, 650m transacionados, 150m em investimentos, 200m em saldo e faturando dezenas de milhões por ano. Começaram com banco digital pra empresas e mudaram pra plataforma com sistema de gestão + conta + cartão focada em empreendedores da nova economia.

1 produto, 1 canal, 1 persona, 1 dor. Foco. NICHE TO WIN (procurar paper). Decisões difíceis demais de escolher o que atacar e o que não atacar. Bateu na porta de 80 investidores pra ouvir 5 “sim”. Primeira rodada foram só R$160k. Trabalhava de Reveillon e tudo mais no começo.

Quanto antes você conseguir colocar um protótipo realista na mão do cliente, melhor. Tangibilidade. Essa foi a primeira etapa.

Qual o principal KPI agora? Era receita. Segmentaram clientes por receita e fizeram análise de concentração e encontraram um super pareto (90% receita de 10% clientes). Pega telefone, liga, entrevista presencial, fala tudo e pergunta tudo.

“Sei que não é sexy, mas é o que dá resultado – por que não focar ali? Find 100 customers that love your product” – Aaron Harris.

Do things that don’t scale. Ligava pra todos os clientes que paravam de usar, um a um. Mostrou agenda telefônica de cliente absurdamente grande que normalmente a galera negligencia. PRECISA SENTIR CHEIRO DO CLIENTE. Pede licença, mas não pede desculpa. Se quer ser empreendedor de sucesso, vai ter que “atrapalhar os outros”.

Definição de responsabilidades bem clara (desde o início, foi bem claro por causa de skills dos sócios). Tech tem que ser in house. Um dos sócios ficou 3 meses contribuindo de graça, querendo ajudar, e só depois foi convidado pra sociedade – dava pra ver que o cara estava lá pelo desafio. Fundador do Tinder tá no board dele.

Humildade, trabalho duro, energia e visão de longo prazo. Era isso ou nada.

Ausência de vaidade ao dar sociedade pra turma, pra não ficar chateado que uma pessoa saiu da empresa e depois tá pensando em voltar. EXTREME OWNERSHIP do Jocko é entregue pra todo mundo quando entram na empresa. Isso é construção de cultura.

Tem que ser cara de pau. Se preparava absurdamente pra cada reunião, fazendo perguntas difíceis (e perguntas certas) e passando a melhor impressão possível – mesmo que o cara não tenha interesse em investir em você, você precisa passar essa impressão impecável.

Cultura no início foi “por osmose” – mas osmose é falar sobre, deixar explícito – vivendo com a turma ali. Traz gente parecida. Quando começou a crescer, aí mudou: quando entram novas pessoas na empresa, não é “por osmose”, tem que ter processo e ritual (por exemplo, toda 2ªfeira tem evento pra lembrar da cultura, avaliação de desempenho é com base nisso, processo de contratação tem isso).

Sales pra potencializar processo, mas precisa ser sales driven. Primeiro ter um produto bom e depois vender. DIFERENÇA DE OPINIÃO AQUI ENTRE RODRIGO E CAÍQUE. Tinha um sócio com foco em Vendas desde o início e não foi um processo subestimado. “Vendas é potencializador de um produto bem estruturado”.

Não sabe por onde começar? Joga a rede grande no mar e veja qual peixe vem. Dar a cara a tapa e faz teste teste teste.

É só o começo.

Av. Brigadeiro Luís Antônio, 4980, Jardim Paulista, São Paulo – SP, Cep 01402-002

contato@lsb.com.br

+55 11 93098-6541

Tags historias de empreendedores, Product market fit, Validação

Uma aula de empreendedorismo em Berkeley

É só o começo.

contato@lsb.com.br

+55 11 93098-6541

Conversa com Franco Pontillo, Manager da Domo Invest

É só o começo.

contato@lsb.com.br

+55 11 93098-6541

Estudo sobre "Jobs To Be Done"

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Palestra Elon Musk

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Existe "business as usual" em startups?

É só o começo.

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Making the metaverse: What it is, how it will be built, and why it matters

And all of us have a stake in the metaverse. It isn’t an idea Meta has cooked up. There won’t be a Meta-run metaverse, just as there isn’t a ‘Microsoft internet’ or ‘Google internet’ today.

Done well, the metaverse could be a positive force for inclusion and equity, bridging some of the divides that exist in today’s physical and digital spaces.

We already have the internet — do we really need the metaverse?

There are three key factors that will make interactions in the metaverse feel more like those we have in our daily lives: ephemerality, embodiment and immersion.

The possibilities for education, health and economic opportunity

A white paper produced for Meta by the independent economic consultancy Analysis Group has estimated the metaverse economy could be worth more than $3 trillion globally in a decade.

In its infancy, no one could have imagined the overwhelming impact the internet would have on commerce. And it is the same right now with the metaverse.

Ensuring an open metaverse

Of course, like the internet, the metaverse will be an interconnected system that transcends national borders, so there will need to be a web of public and private standards, norms and rules to allow for it to operate across jurisdictions.

Its development will likely follow the same path as the existing internet — piece by piece, standard by standard, driven by a mixture of public and private initiatives.

What sort of rules do we need?

The current debate about how to handle bad-but-not-illegal conduct on social media and the internet hints at the debates to come about how to treat anti-social behavior in the metaverse.

Time is on our side

É só o começo.

contato@lsb.com.br

+55 11 93098-6541

Conversa com Maurício Chamati,Founder do Mercado Bitcoin

É só o começo.

contato@lsb.com.br

+55 11 93098-6541

"Como o foco realmente é no dia a dia de startups?" pelos Founders da Omie, Sallve e Cayena

É só o começo.

contato@lsb.com.br

+55 11 93098-6541

A dozen lessons about product market fit

É só o começo.

contato@lsb.com.br

+55 11 93098-6541

Conversa com Rodrigo Tognini,Founer da Conta Simples

É só o começo.

contato@lsb.com.br

+55 11 93098-6541

Ser mulher significa muita coisa, significa ser amor, ser bondade, ser doçura e felicidade. Mas vamos combinar que também passamos por poucas e boas, todos os dias resolvemos milhares de perrengues e nos viramos nos 30 para dar conta de tudo que precisamos.

Sobre e.pipi

Fale conosco

se quiser tomar um café

Precisa de ajuda?

siga nas redes sociais

Formas de pagamento

Uma aula de empreendedorismo
em Berkeley

Conversa com Franco Pontillo,
Manager da Domo Invest

Making the metaverse:
What it is, how it will be built, and why it matters

Conversa com Maurício Chamati,
Founder do Mercado Bitcoin

A dozen lessons about
product market fit

Conversa com Rodrigo Tognini,
Founer da Conta Simples