The concept of opportunity is deeply personal to me. Opportunity is earned through hard work, proximity, favor, and luck. For many, luck is the variable that wavers. But for others, it is often proximity. One of the last obstacles in eCommerce is the democratization of access and proximity to opportunity.
The true measure of retail’s direction is the attention focused on the technologies that provide the most serendipity. Physical retail will always have its place and online retail will likely never be the majority of all sales velocity. But consider this question:
If you were starting a brand right now, where would you go for serendipity?
In the two years that I sat at that Austin coffee house each day, it felt like I found an arbitrage opportunity: a free education. But the credit was none my own. The room over-indexed on successful executives and entrepreneurs who’d seen material success in the booming Texas city. I listened intently. The majority of the ideas came from business partners, waiters, investors, entrepreneurs, clergy, artists, and bystanders who were enthusiastic about their pursuits. Their conversations filled gaps in my thinking. It was a period of information synthesis: a process of integrating information from disparate sources into a coherent whole.
