Lucadg

I think we should not force ourselves to become something we are not.

If you've got the Unicorn CEO personality, go for it as it would be a pity to be stopped by fear.

If you don't have it, why chase the social norm of the day? You won't make it and you'll be miserable.

Again, not everyone has to be a CEO.

You can be great at something else but you need to be blind to the social requirements of your age.

What is cool today wasn't cool 20 years ago and won't be cool in 20 years time, anyway, understand this and you are free.

Maybe we will look back at the "be big or go home" days as a skewed approach to business fuelled by VCs need for high returns.

And yes, today I look for partners who can complete me, as I have millions ideas but I only enjoy the first part, where you go from 0 to 10, growth 10 to 1000 is boring for me and I'm not good at it.

BTW, if anyone is good at it, I have great ideas in the Vacation Rentals (Airbnb) market, my contacts are in the profile.

I guess you are right. I think my biggest block to success was that I was just to happy! :) The very reason I had started that business in 2001 was because I wanted to travel full time.

I managed to do that and I was already in a "too good to be true" state of mind.

The happiness and fulfillment I got from those years are now my own "essential oils" for the occasional hard times. When something goes wrong I just have to go back, smell a drop of that, and I'm back on my feet in no time.

I wasn't just looking to grow the business, it was a mean to an end.

Wow. Thanks for that.

When Airbnb popped up on my screen I was in Siberia having my website rewritten from scratch after 8 years of spaghetti code.

It was the same thing and Airbnb which was just designed better (in 2008).

When a couple of years later I finally realized they destroyed my business it took me some time to admit I didn't really miss a chance: I had none to begin with.

I just don't have what it takes to grow a business to those levels.

In my case it's probably not an emotional issue, but it has still a lot to do with personality.

I guess my takeaway is: not everyone can be a CEO of a unicorn and this is fine.

True. And yet some are really good and I wouldn't miss them.

But I've been and spoken to many conferences this year and I have to admit it was hard to sit and listen to presentations.

I wanted to meet people and exchange ideas instead.

There's a couple of interesting formats:

- network centric conference with few and great speeches in non sterile locations. See WRWS in a theater in Como for instance.

- smaller ones with workshops. We co-organized one in Milan this year and we were given a 30 people room. It was packed with interested people all day for the simple reason that they chose to be there.

Now we are playing with the idea to spend a weekend in some Tuscany villa where everyone sleeps and eats there during the conference in an effort to maximize networking and workshops over speeches.

In short: it's diverse and evolving.

How did you starve Booking? Didn'it just happen?

My point is that in this market it's really hard to attain channel balance.

It seems the OTAs alghoritms absolutely favour cannibalization.

I guess this heavily depends on markets. I'm often frustrated by the hotel's reply: book on booking.com

It could make sense because you are at constant risk of deplatforming and having a second provider is a backup plan. Unfortunately it's really rare to be able to get bookings from two platforms in a balanced way. I'm still trying to understand why. Any ideas?

There's a substantial difference between:

- I walk down the street and everybody can see me.

And

- I walk down the street and my moves are recorded and stored forever in some db which may be abused or leak.

The chances of that piece of information coming back to hurt you in the course of the next decades are so much higher.

I work from home, a bar or coworking and I mix this with work trips abroad lasting 3 to 10 days where I get my share of social interaction.

It also makes me appreciate time with my family more.

Balance is the key.

It's very subjective and varies but I find it not too hard to attain.

P.s. I've been working remotely for 18 years now.

Potentially similar story at an earlier stage: Oyo, a budget hotel chain from India.

They raised 1.7 B, mostly from Softbank, and are now getting in the vacation rentals space in Europe.

Their approach is unclear. I spoke to their representatives and it seems unclear for them too.

Nothing seems to make sense in what they are doing in this vertical.

The only logical explanation seems that they are trying raise the valuation of the brand.

It could be the next WeWork.

I've seen a shop owner in Gokarna cleaning very carefully the shop and then getting an icecream and throwing the paper right at his own doorstep. I've seen a lady in a second class train in Mumbai throwing plastic out of the window. And many other similar things. It's a cultural thing. Rome is dirty, milan is less and Munich is clean. It's cultural. Period.

Maybe a renovation for a new grand opening? Although improbable nothing surprises me anymore in this story.

a week ago I passed in front the One Coin shop in Sofia. It was open.

I was surprised as It had been closed for a long time.

I had listened to the BBC podcast and was curious so I tried to enter.

It was locked and a lady came to open. There were a couple of people, maybe customers. There were books, CDs and other material.

I stayed two minutes and head to the exit. The door was locked and the lady came to open.

That's all.

It felt weird.

Fintech only provides better UX on the same old system of banking. The real issue with banks is the staggering amount of regulation which acts both as an innovation killer and as a high barrier to entry, which in turn stifles innovation even more.

It's the golden cage dilemma banks find themselves into.

Fintech looks cool until it stops working, then you discover it's the same system, only run by a startup.

I guess it's subjective but here's my list:

- no cars. This alone raises the quality life by an amazing degree.

- 100% walkable.

- you meet people you know all the time. Feels like a village.

- international. Many interesting characters live there. A village but an international one.

- beautiful and decadent.

And of course there's also a long list of negatives such as expensive, uncomfortable, wet, touristy etc....

And yet there it was, right in front of your eyes, right in the middle of the tourists.

When I walk in Venice I constantly meet locals I know, going around their daily life.

It's hard to see this unless you are with some of them.

And even if you see it, it won't tell you anything unless you are part of it.

It's fascinating to see how two different "species" of animals coexist and barely interact on a meaningful level.

I'm not saying it's a good situation but it's not a living museum, people live, work, love and fight there.

We can't dismiss them because we don't see them.

You could say the same about climate change. It's a collective mistake, everybody knows about it, yet we can't fix it.

It's YOUR planet, why aren't YOU saving it? As an earthling I've seen a lot of amazing nature everywhere on earth but a lot of it is left to wither. No one seem to be interested in taking care of it.

We are hopeless in long term thinking.

Ok mutism is a great use case, thanks. Still, the problem is solved also with normal text to speech software

Again this is a good use scenario which seems to bring less benefit than the damage a bad use case scenario.

Cheaper games vs distressing phone calls in this case.

I'm open to better use cases but for now I haven't heard any.

Yes. Tech is probably developing faster than our ability to adapt.

You live with what you have. Tourists are both invading and bringing money, both a curse and a blessing.

Some cultures seem more fit than others to deal with it.

Some are overwhelmed, others learn to manage.

I meant Bali the island, sorry

real life interaction is going to be more and more valuable. So, "we won't need to travel again because of videos calls" is not going to happen any time soon, it seems.

And public/private key validation may become invaluable.

I can understand it feels like this, but I assure real people live and work there, and there is a real local culture and authentic life.

I lived there and I lived in many other cities like Paris, London, Munich, Krakow, Bangkok and Bali.

Venice is one of the most authentic cities of them all.

The language is alive and evolving.

It's a bit like the fight club, real locals recognize each others, while the tourists think it's just a Disneyland.

Quite fascinating!

Venice is actually a great place to live if you don't prioritize for comfort but appreciate other aspects of life.

I guess it really depends on each person but not having cars really makes up for many other disadvantages.

Which makes you think how bad cars in the city are in general.

You don't really appreciate this until they are gone.

I hate sharing FB but this is where we can see some recent pics and videos as posted by Venitians today https://www.facebook.com/1292366660/posts/10215308807895434/

not really, source please

At first glance there seems to be more more malicious uses than good ones with voice. Yes, hearing someone dear to me say things he/she never said maybe comforting. Anything else?

Maybe some movies with the deceased actor's voice?

But what if someone who wants to hurt me sends me files (or phone calls) from the deceased person saying horrible things like:

- "I am still alive but left as I was tired of you"

- "oh Jan, I love you" [fake phone call from the past, where Jan is a lover which never existed]

or even from alive people:

- "I am leaving you"

- or my live voice saying stuff which gets me fired or in prison.

We will never be able to believe voice again...how will we adapt?

If you don't mind me asking what's the law you are referring to?

Web rings were indeed great. "Sites similar to ..." queri3s in search engines are not a good replacement.