MCM_5975

Jay Z + Me

Personal

I think it was Dustin Curtis who said something along the lines of “you can learn a lot about someone by their bucket list,” and he had posted his publicly recently. (Posting it is a great idea by the way, people will help you with it.) I began to think about mine, which was a little strange because I’ve been trying to move away from desiring things or experiences and just be more grateful in the present, but immediately a few music ones came to mind: have WordPress name-checked in a major hip-hop song, be in a rap video, and perform with one of my favorite artists (somehow).

It was less than a week later I got an email from a friend who was helping organize a hush-hush event where Jay-Z would sing his song Picasso Baby over and over 6 hours while interacting with various artists and an audience as a performance piece, and there might even be an opportunity to be one of the people he interacted with. My jaw dropped.

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Naval describes the venture model while suggesting a way for firms to differentiate.

We help our customers but don’t tell them exactly how. Our core product is a commodity, yet we don’t disclose pricing. Even when we do, there are substantial hidden costs. It has to be bought in bulk, more than they want. We can take months to onboard a customer. We reject most of them but don’t actually give them a straight answer. They don’t get dedicated support. They don’t get to choose or replace their representative. We don’t commit to serve them in the future. We have hundreds of competitors with the same strategy. Now where’s my check?

Bookend Gifts

Art

The news came out this weekend on Mercury News and the Chronicle, so it’s worth addressing here: The Bay Lights, a public art project that uses San Francisco’s Bay Bridge as its canvas, is a project I’ve supported since I first heard of it and the idea captured my imagination. I was happy to make the first monetary donation when the project got started, and as of last week I was able to make a closing bookend donation for the remaining amount they needed, a bit above $1.5M. It was an honor to chip in along with the thousands of other supporters who have already donated to make the project a reality.

The purpose of art is washing the dust of daily life off our souls. — Pablo Picasso

My hope is that over the next few years, and perhaps beyond that, the lights brighten people’s experience of San Francisco whether they see them every night or they’re one of the 16 million that visit the city every year. Hopefully that effect, however small, spreads to their other interactions long after the lights are off and the sun comes up. There are countless good causes around the world, some which I support regularly are listed on my about page, and I hope to have the opportunity to support many more in the future, but this close-to-home gift to a city that has given me so much seemed like the right thing right now.

If you haven’t seen them yet, here are the lights in action, more on the tech fixes happening to the lights on TBL, and photos I took climbing the bridge a few months ago: