An Open Letter: On Community

 

Community building isn’t easy. This weekend, everything went wrong.

It started with a weird bug that was causing us a few problems. Here and there, a paying customer would write to ask “Why am I receiving a rejection email?”, or something similar. We would explain it away and change a setting to prevent it, but it kept happening. And then on Saturday at 3:15 a.m. EST, a deluge of angry, confused or sad emails bombarded my inbox.

Behind the scenes, the 2PM Inc. organization is seven people large. I am the only full-time worker, like Sahil Lavingia’s lean strategy at Gumroad. That’s not to slight our team, however: four contractors and two paid interns are incentivized and capable of doing great things with the time that they share with the company. The 2PM team is so talented and consistently productive that the company would have to be venture-backed to afford each of them. I am working to get to the point where cash flows can support them. They are the best at what they do. We scrappily do the work of many, three days per week. If memberships are low for one week, I can at times feel like I disappointed them. This weekend, I disappointed far more than my team.

Why am I being rejected from something that I didn’t apply to?

In that moment, your entire business rests in the balance. Dozens upon dozens of loyal members opted out of auto-renew, angry at the insult. One email reply was: “You’re dead to me.” Another member wrote: “A real polymath would be smart enough to turn off automated emails before deciding who they want in their stupid little club.” He would later reply: 

I should have given you the benefit of the doubt and instead I sent a mean email. Thanks for clarifying. I enjoy your work so I was extra sensitive.

They were not mad because they were interested in joining 2PM’s growing community but because the email itself was incredibly callous. The subject line read: “You’ve been rejected from Polymathic.” And in the body of the email: “A staff member rejected your account.” Neither were true. Our community software sent that email from its servers with our branding but without any of the following: our permission, copywriting, or basic understanding of how 2PM’s community works.

Discourse, an open source community software, sent thousands of emails that we didn’t author after an admitted API bug between their backend and Memberful’s membership and paywall software. I emailed their support but the office is closed on weekends. By that morning, I had to send an email addressing the issue. It would be the first time that I’d ever send an email of that sort. I moved as quickly as I could, hoping that the vast majority of those offended would see it.

Sin título

The one and only ⁦@web⁩ wrote this for your swipe files. Put it under “how to apologize when something beyond your control goes wrong”. We’ve all been (or will be) there. Well done, Web. pic.twitter.com/z97dH3zu2p

Meanwhile, communication between 2PM and Discourse’s teams moved slowly back and forth through email. I tried to communicate the severity of the situation; they tried to communicate how inconsequential the trigger that caused the fallout was. It would be 20+ hours of synchronous communication before this stalemate broke.

By this morning, Jeff Atwood, the Co-Founder of Discourse, chimed in, perhaps the first sign of affirmation that our hosting company recognized the severity:

We’ll be happy to send out individual apology emails to all affected users, taking FULL responsibility for that erroneous email – because that was absolutely our fault! I can offer to personally send them signed Stack Overflow stickers, if that helps (not sure if your audience uses / knows Stack Overflow, but I was a co-founder). I will write these apology emails myself, and send them from my personal email account.

I chose to opt out of this email. For one, our members don’t need another email from Discourse – even if it does provide 2PM’s vindication. And unless they were willing to apologize for the copywriting and flaws that relinquish the control of their clients, I wasn’t interested in continuing the conversation.

What we’re building at Polymathic

Anyone who reads 2PM understands the value of deep generalism (or polymathy) as an educational pursuit. Each newsletter’s curations are broad and cross-disciplinary. The Polymathic community that we are building for members is the next step in this process. We encourage the sourcing of reports, data, and insights in economics to art history to the sciences or real estate. It is my belief that the study of broad subjects unlocks deeper knowledge of your own industry. I often share the obscure Henry Ford anecdote as an example:

Henry Ford’s great technological breakthrough didn’t come by way of his own Industry. He visited a Chicago meat packing plant, watched the disassembly process, and reverse engineered the idea for his factory’s manufacturing revolution.

It has been a slow build, sometimes just adding 4-7 people per month across a spectrum of professional and academic specialties. Each of these members share a desire to contribute and learn from the woman or man next to them. The goal is an ambitious one: Polymathic is to become a school of thought for thousands. One where any long-term Executive Member can one day join and contribute and learn. In short, there are no rejections. That simply defeats the damn point of everything that I’ve worked to build.

When you are bootstrapping a company like this, you make several trade offs. In an ideal scenario, I’d build my own community server instead of whitelisting another’s but for the stage that the company is in, the current stack makes sense. Our technology stack consists of a number of outsourced solutions: WordPress, Memberful, Mailchimp, Discourse to name a few. But you never expect those platforms to do you active harm. The act of Discourse sending that email cost 2PM nearly $70,000 in short term business. The persisting problem with Discourse’s API connection to Memberful (who’s been a wonderful partner) is currently hindering nearly $1 million in long-term revenue for our company with no promise that it will return. But the lessons learned are far more important than money lost.

Community building is not easy, even when your software is working for you. I have never valued the grace and perspective of the 2PM community more than I do today. What it taught me was the power of the benefit of the doubt. Many in the community were apologetic after receiving the email that clarified what happened. An even larger number of community members waited for justification before assuming the worst, assuring me that I had done enough good with 2PM to know that we’d never send an email like this. But the most critical takeaway is that nothing matters more than the collective that you build around your products. In one weekend, five years of hard work was threatened. It was the community that kept it together as technology failed them.

Por Web Smith

Here is Discourse’s official apology.

Memo: DeFi and The Explorer’s Principle

There is no more undiscovered physical land; there are only ideas that may develop into new land of its own.

Consider Bitcoin, the first blockchain, and the genesis story of decentralized currency. An idea became new land, albeit digital. On that land, systems were built and exchanges were founded. New products like fungible tokens and non-fungible tokens enabled trade. Explorers mined and profited off of a new land that literally came of nothing but an idea. Consider the conclusion of the Bitcoin white paper, released in 2009.

The network is robust in its unstructured simplicity. […] Any needed rules and incentives can be enforced with this consensus mechanism.

Unstructured simplicity, needed rules, and consensus. The land analogy holds true. Ideas can become so powerful that new ground to build upon can take shape. It’s time that we develop new systems around the mining of ideas and how we compensate explorers for them. Those ideas commonly lead to new opportunity.

The idea of ideas is misunderstood. We would, once, find a great thinker and wait for her validation. Before too long, the ideas would be co-opted by a larger, more official organization. The idea would be watered down and misappropriated, losing its original potency. By the third or fourth iteration of the original idea, the concept would lose its luster. The idea would meld into something that already existed, something safe and calculated and easy to communicate. And then no new land would be discovered.

Today’s land grab is different. We listen to new ideas from obscure voices on Clubhouse. Their ideas are transcribed and acted upon, losing their luster but not enough to hinder the well-resourced listener from profiting. We witness creativity on TikTok or SnapChat or Dispo that we could have never imagined. Then, the techniques, dances, or meme formats become public domain. We even attach ourselves to foreign creators who’ve captivated American audiences through their intensity, prolific work, and enthusiasm. And then we remove many of their mechanisms for compensation, leaving well-heeled pattern matched men to extract and refine, extract and refine.

The largest audiences of the early-internet era were the victors with the spoils, but the creator economy is surfacing new ideas at their very core. The convention of pattern matching is slowly giving way to the merit of the thinker. But thinking and merit are not enough. Ideas have never been more monetizable than they are today. Our financial systems should reflect this. Land discovery should go to whomever gets there first. The ideal is simple: we should be incentivized to pay our thinkers for the new land they’ve conjured from thin air.

DeFi and The Explorer’s Principle

The creator economy is paywalled. Purchases are one-click. Audio is push notified. But like physical land, virtual land has boundaries. In The Smartest in the Room, I wrote about an obscure newsletter publisher from Honduras named Andrea Hernandez. A lot has happened in the nearly three months since. She’s gained enterprise clients, hundreds more subscribers, and a Clubhouse audience that will surely lead her to greener pastures.

A native of San Pedro Sula, Cortés, Honduras, her audience around Snaxshot has begun to transcend its niche. When she writes about CPG, I listen. Her ideas have been incredibly valuable and the Snaxshot brand will grow because of them. But like many others, I only recently began compensating her for her ideas through a Patreon link that she’s set up for her Substack.

Sin título

it’s so upsetting to me someone literally offered me a $25 Amazon Gift card to pick my brain for ONE HOUR is this what you guys think of me?

Hernandez cannot paywall her Substack because there isn’t access to Stripe in Honduras. Additionally, American corporations who hope to retain her coveted consulting services must pay through Paypal, but only after steep international taxes and other fees. She’s accomplished one of the toughest tasks in the global economy: building an American audience with nothing but consistency, enthusiasm, and ideas. When a resource is mined without proper compensation, it can feel like an exploitation. Hernandez was sure to point me to The United Fruit Company and the era of the banana republic.

She should be compensated for her impact and decentralized finance (DeFi) is the key. In a recent Clubhouse conversation with Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong, Initialized Capital co-founder Garry Tan shared an interesting thought:

The operating system of the global brain is booting up.

There is no operating system without transactions. One solution is DeFi, a financial system that allows for independent operation. The system doesn’t rely on banks, insurance, credit unions or any other financial intermediaries. Consumers can invest, trade, transact, and transfer using currencies like Ethereum and Bitcoin. To better understand the value of these two blockchains, consider that as of this week, the asset trade over the Ethereum blockchain surpassed $8 million in daily sales.

Ethereum, because of this added value, is now the world’s second-highest valued cryptocurrency by market capitalization. But this isn’t about the technology, just like retail isn’t about the store aisles and film isn’t about the physical theater. The value transferred in the store or theater is what defines the success of the store of value. [2PM, 1]

Digital assets can be transferred through smart contracts, digital agreements that trigger the transaction upon fulfillment of the agreement. And all creators should be able to benefit from their ideas in a platform agnostic manner, across any and every geographic region on Earth. The next great innovation in the creator economy is the DeFi layer that allows for the global brain to properly compensate its best cells.

The removal of any and all friction from online transactions, whether through fiat currency or cryptocurrency is one of the chief business conundrums of our time. One example of a company aiming to solve the problem is a small, intermediary financial tech company. Uquid believes that creators and retailers can grow quicker by reaching a broader cross-section of potential consumers.

Uquid has come a long way since its launch in 2016. The company describes itself as one of the earliest cross-border digital service providers with a blockchain-friendly payment system. A priority for the team has been to build the ecosystem organically while continually making improvements that ensure it is safe and secure for its customers. [2]

But even their technologies have their limits. Smart contracts, blockchains, and The Explorer’s Principle collide in predictable ways. But it’s the unpredictable nature of ideas and their originators that could benefit greatly from our new infrastructural systems that were merely ideas in 2009 (Bitcoin) and 2013 (Ethereum). Ideas are best carried forward by their creators, the center of today’s digitally-native economy. Whether they’re based in New Zealand, Honduras, Mexico City, or rural Wyoming: we should honor creators by providing them the resources to see their ideas through. As Tan said, “The operating system of the global brain is booting up.” We are long past intermediaries and traditional banking systems being able to support the global nature of our ideas and the commerce that follows.

Imagine if the Bitcoin white paper was published by a second or third-hand observer of Satoshi’s early ideas around decentralized finance. It’s likely that the revelation wouldn’t have been as poignant, useful, or lasting.

Find the creators with new and great ideas, subscribe to them, and pay them. There won’t always be breakthroughs with every conversation or newsletter. But you will eventually find the one idea that may change things and proximity to source is incredibly powerful. That creator will be passionate about the concept and how she fostered it from simple thought to brilliant essay. If we can do better by creators, I believe that we will see more ideas carried to the finish. And perhaps there will be another idea-turned-new-land for the rest of us to explore for ourselves. There’s no physical land left to explore; there are only ideas. There may be nothing more valuable.

Por Web Smith | Redactora: Hilary Milnes | About 2PM

Memo: De buena manera

Los méritos de la venta minorista de moda nunca han sido lógicos, pero para los mejores operadores hay una forma de dar sentido al caos.

La simpatía, el valor de la marca y el atractivo pueden cambiar en un instante. Pero hay factores que predicen el éxito y el fracaso. Los puntos de referencia históricos han servido durante mucho tiempo de guía a los minoristas más astutos a la hora de navegar por los tumultuosos tiempos actuales. Los fabricantes han prosperado durante la guerra, la recesión, las protestas y las pandemias, y sólo los que obtuvieron peores resultados citaron los factores externos como motivo de preocupación.

Una idea errónea muy extendida en el sector de las marcas verticales nativas digitales es que el año anterior de la pandemia está frustrando el crecimiento de los minoristas de moda, perjudicando las previsiones de ventas, ahogando el crecimiento o cerrando puertas. Los datos concretos sostienen que hay algo más. De las 100 marcas de venta directa al consumidor de mayor crecimiento registradas por 2PM, 40 son minoristas de moda, y cuatro están entre las 10 primeras. Este ha sido un año decisivo para la moda.

Actualizado para la semana del 2/8/2021

Varias marcas modernas profundizaron en la comunidad y desarrollaron bases para un crecimiento explosivo en los últimos 12 meses: Parade, Rowing Blazers, Madhappy, Aime Leon Dore, Tracksmith, Buck Mason, Gymshark y Monica & Andy son sólo algunas de ellas. Para los minoristas que pasaron apuros el año pasado, este memorándum puede servir de útil reseteo.

El estadounidense medio compra una prenda de ropa cada cinco días. Un estudio de las crisis históricas demostrará que nuestro comportamiento no se detiene en momentos de angustia. Por el contrario, cambian; asignamos nuestro gasto de forma diferente. Limitamos nuestras compras a "placeres asequibles" o cambiamos a estilos diferentes que representan la sensación del momento en cuestión. Estamos programados para comprar cosas que ponernos y lo hacemos con frecuencia, incluso los más frugales. Lo que cambia es cómo expresamos nuestra individualidad en tiempos cambiantes.

Pensemos en el ascenso de Ralph Lauren a finales de los setenta y principios de los ochenta a pesar de la catastrófica recesión estadounidense. Un artículo publicado en 1990 en el diario de Utah Deseret News, de 171 años de antigüedad, comenzaba así:

Si los años ochenta fueran una película -y la metáfora es casi inevitable dado el dominio de la década por parte del actor y presidente Ronald Reagan-, los títulos de crédito tendrían que incluir vestuario de Ralph Lauren. [1]

El diseñador identificó y avanzó en un nuevo enfoque de una idea establecida, explica el artículo: El Nuevo Tradicionalismo o "la kitschificación de la edad madura por el baby boom". Lauren no fue la primera; un ejemplo aún mayor de esta estrategia es el lanzamiento en 1947 de la primera línea del entonces oscuro diseñador Christian Dior.

En 1947, mi primera colección tuvo un éxito que superó todos mis sueños. 

Tras abandonar el ejército en 1942, Dior, de 37 años, se incorporó a la casa de modas Lucien Lelong junto a un caballero llamado Pierre Balmain, el otro diseñador principal de la casa. Dior, junto con Lelong y Balmain, trabajó para mantener la industria de la moda francesa durante la II Guerra Mundial. Cinco años más tarde, Dior lanza la primera fragancia de su casa. El perfume Miss Dior, embotellado, era un homenaje a su hermana Catherine, liberada de un campo de concentración apenas dos años antes. Inspirándose en el periodo dela Belle Époque de finales del siglo XIX, Dior precedió a Ralph Lauren en un retorno a la tradición. 50 años después, su admiración por este periodo influyó en la feminidad de sus creaciones, que acabaría conquistando el mundo de la moda contemporánea.

La moda nunca ha sido lógica. A veces, la oportunidad es un factor tan importante como cualquier otro. Para Dior, el momento no podía haber sido mejor. Liz Segran, de Fast Company, cubrió recientemente el efecto de COVID-19 en las tendencias de la moda. Citaba la clarividente estrategia de Dior y su brillante sincronización:

Durante la Segunda Guerra Mundial, por ejemplo, las mujeres llevaban vaqueros y monos y ocupaban los puestos de los hombres. En 1947, Christian Dior presenta su primera colección, con chaquetas ceñidas, cinturas entalladas y faldas en forma de A. Un look radicalmente femenino, que repudia las prendas utilitarias y masculinas de los años anteriores. Era un look radicalmente femenino que repudiaba las prendas utilitarias y masculinizadas de los años anteriores, y de eso se trataba. En todo el mundo, las mujeres se enamoraron de este estilo, apodado "New Look", que se convirtió en la tendencia de moda dominante a finales de los años cuarenta y principios de los cincuenta [2].[2]

La siguiente parte es clarividente. En el reportaje de Fast Company, Segran explicaba la dinámica de las mujeres que vestían ropa de trabajo masculina, como monos y vaqueros, durante la guerra. Citaba a la autora Kimberly Chrisman-Campbell, que explicaba cómo, incluso después de que la guerra terminara y el péndulo se inclinara hacia un look radicalmente femenino, las tendencias de la moda de la guerra persistieron:

Tras una crisis, se produce una reacción, pero también un efecto duradero. Ambas cosas pueden ocurrir al mismo tiempo.

Los años de la guerra normalizaron una nueva era para la ropa de mujer, incluyendo pantalones y prendas que nunca antes se habían considerado habituales. Esto arroja luz sobre los posibles comportamientos pospandémicos de hoy en día.

El sector minorista ha sufrido problemas de base. La dependencia del apalancamiento de la deuda para financiar el crecimiento y el inventario ha contribuido a que las empresas heredadas se declaren en quiebra. Entre ellas, J.Crew, Brooks Brothers, JCPenney y Neiman Marcus.

Sin embargo, al igual que ocurrió con la moda femenina tras la II Guerra Mundial, el cambio no está tan claro como se pensaba. Es probable que la comodidad actual de los estadounidenses con la ropa informal persista en el hogar y en los lugares de trabajo durante los próximos años. Los consumidores sí compraron ropa para vestir durante la pandemia, a pesar de la tendencia al trabajo a distancia, las órdenes de quedarse en casa y el aprendizaje a distancia. La ropa o los mensajes de los minoristas eran simplemente exclusivos de la época.

Buena Moda, Mal Todo

Este año, minoristas tradicionales como The North Face, de VF Corporation, han ganado protagonismo gracias a una cuidadosa comercialización, la adopción de ropa de calle y colaboraciones inteligentes(véase Gucci). Las acciones de Lululemon cotizan cerca de máximos históricos. Y Gucci se ha convertido en la marca de lujo "preferida" de la Generación Z.

Mientras que muchas marcas están sufriendo, y algunas han tenido que tomar medidas drásticas como el cierre definitivo de tiendas, otras marcas como Dior o Louis Vuitton han obtenido buenos resultados, lo que indica que la pandemia está afectando más a las marcas con condiciones preexistentes.[3]

Marcas directas como Parade pasaron de una relativa oscuridad a unos ingresos anuales de 10 millones de dólares. Rowing Blazers, un minorista tradicional de ropa masculina, apareció en todo tipo de prendas, desde estrellas de la NBA hasta la princesa Diana en la serie de Netflix The Crown. Madhappy utilizó un merchandising inteligente, un mensaje persistente y su asociación con LVMH para ganarse la atención de Lebron James en la burbuja de la NBA. La marca es ahora una de las marcas de streetwear más codiciadas nacidas en los últimos cinco años. Gymshark aceptó su primera financiación, aterrizando con una valoración superior a los 1.000 millones de dólares. Y Tracksmith, la marca de running para aficionados, llamó por fin la atención del gran público tras años de crecimiento discreto. Ahora está presente en todas las ondas gracias al éxito de su estrategia publicitaria sucinta y aspiracional.

Al igual que Ralph Lauren, que alcanzó la fama durante una recesión económica y un cambio político y cultural, y Christian Dior, que estableció un nuevo tono de posguerra para las mujeres estadounidenses que iba en contra de otras tendencias, las marcas que triunfaron durante nuestra crisis mundial más reciente lo hicieron porque estaban bien equipadas. En todos los casos, comparten (1) un marketing inteligente, (2) un merchandising astuto, (3) una estrategia de mensajería que atraviesa el ruido de la preocupación y, lo que es más importante, (4) el aprecio por la historia de la industria.

Para las marcas que luchan por recuperar su equilibrio, falta al menos una de las cuatro anteriores. La pandemia ha servido de espejo tanto para los minoristas modernos como para los tradicionales. Entre en una tienda J.Crew y sentirá que carece de alma. Entre en una tienda Rimowa y sentirá la sensación de Nuevo Tradicionalismo que catapultó a Dior y Ralph Lauren al éxito generacional. La excesiva dependencia de la distribución física, la publicidad de pago por clic, los ciclos tradicionales de comercialización, las estrategias de marketing académicas y las interpretaciones anquilosadas de los perfiles de los clientes son las condiciones preexistentes que culminaron con el actual estado de angustia del comercio minorista.

No tiene por qué ser así. Estudie las mejores prácticas del pasado. Siempre habrá cambios de impulso, de ida y vuelta, a lo largo del tiempo. Las marcas que sobreviven estudian la sociología, la comprensión del cliente, la historia de la marca, la comunicación y las experiencias que elevan un producto a un momento. Estas marcas captan algo más que globos oculares: captan la imaginación. Es la única constante de una marca perdurable a lo largo de décadas de flujos y reflujos.

Por Web Smith | Editor: Hilary Milnes

¿Eres nuevo en 2PM? Lee el resto de la 662ª edición.