#how to scale a startup

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Scaling Without Stumbling: Keys to Success for Startup Growth

Introduction: Scaling a startup can be a daunting task, with numerous challenges and pitfalls along the way. However, with the right strategies and mindset, it is possible to grow and expand a startup without stumbling. In this article, we will discuss the key factors that entrepreneurs need to consider in order to successfully scale their startup and achieve sustainable growth. Section 1:…

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Adapt and Evolve: Why a Website Makes Scaling Your Startup Easier

In today’s fast-paced digital world, having a killer idea for a startup isn’t enough—you need the tools to grow it, fast and smart. That’s where a website comes into play. Think of your website as the control center of your startup. It’s the place where ideas meet execution, customers meet your brand, and growth opportunities start multiplying. Whether you’re just starting out or trying to push past a growth plateau, a well-designed website is your ultimate scaling partner. Let’s dive deep into how and why a website can make scaling your startup not just easier, but almost inevitable.

Understanding the Concept of Scaling a Startup

What Does Scaling Really Mean?

Scaling isn’t just about getting bigger; it’s about getting better and faster without letting your quality slip. In business lingo, scaling means increasing revenue without a significant increase in operational costs. It’s like adding more floors to your building without needing to redo the entire foundation. You want more customers, more sales, more brand love—but you want to manage all that without burning out or breaking the bank.

When a startup scales properly, it’s able to handle an increase in demand, expand to new markets, and boost profitability—all while maintaining a lean, mean operational setup. Sounds dreamy, right? But achieving this requires the right digital infrastructure, and a strong website is the foundation.

The Challenges Startups Face When Scaling

Scaling sounds glorious, but the road to it is paved with challenges. First, you’ve got resource constraints. Many startups don’t have huge teams or endless budgets. Second, maintaining consistent customer experience becomes harder as you grow. Third, without streamlined systems, chaos can easily creep in—missed orders, slow responses, clunky service. Not to mention competition; everyone’s racing to scale, and if you move too slow, you might get left behind.

This is where a professionally crafted website comes to the rescue, serving as the growth engine that smooths out many of these bumps in the road.

The Role of a Website in Modern Business Growth

Digital Presence: The New Business Card

Once upon a time, businesses handed out glossy cards to make an impression. Today, your website is your business card—times a thousand. It’s the first thing potential customers check out when they hear your name. Without a solid online presence, you might as well be invisible. Having a website means you’re not only visible but also available, approachable, and ready for business, even when you’re asleep.

A website allows your brand to live beyond your local community and opens the gates to a global audience. It shows you're serious, you're real, and you're ready to serve.

How Websites Drive Visibility and Credibility

Visibility and credibility go hand in hand. A sleek, professional website with real testimonials, case studies, and a clear value proposition builds instant trust. It’s human nature—we trust what looks polished and legitimate.

Think about it: would you buy from a business with a shoddy, half-baked website? Probably not. First impressions matter. A website not only makes you more discoverable via search engines but also reassures potential customers that you’re legitimate, organized, and reliable. And when you’re trying to scale, credibility can make or break your momentum.

Key Benefits of Having a Website When Scaling

24/7 Accessibility and Lead Generation

Imagine having a sales team that works around the clock without needing coffee breaks. That’s exactly what your website does. It’s your always-on representative, available to pitch, promote, and convert leads no matter the time zone.

Whether someone’s browsing at midnight or during their lunch break, your website captures interest through compelling calls-to-action, smart lead magnets, and easy-to-navigate interfaces. You can even automate responses and offer instant downloads, free trials, or appointment bookings, setting the stage for seamless scaling.

Establishing Brand Authority and Trust

Building brand authority is like building a reputation—it doesn’t happen overnight. A professional website filled with valuable content, insightful blogs, success stories, and expert insights positions your startup as a leader in your niche.

When people see that you’re consistently providing value and sharing expertise, they’re more likely to choose you over a competitor. And as you grow, this authority compounds, opening doors to partnerships, press opportunities, and bigger deals.

Cost-Effective Marketing and Outreach

Billboards and TV ads cost a fortune. Your website, on the other hand, is a relatively low-cost marketing powerhouse. By incorporating SEO, content marketing, email campaigns, and social media integrations, you can reach thousands (or millions) without breaking the bank.

You can also track exactly what’s working through website analytics, so you’re not throwing spaghetti at the wall and hoping it sticks. Every dollar you spend can be strategic, measurable, and, most importantly, scalable.

How a Website Helps Streamline Operations

Automation of Sales and Customer Service

Manual work is the enemy of scaling. The more you can automate, the faster and cleaner your growth will be. Your website can automate many critical functions:

Handling orders

Managing bookings

Responding to FAQs via chatbots

Delivering onboarding materials

Automation not only saves time but also reduces the chances of human error, ensuring a smoother experience for both your team and your customers.

Centralized Information Hub for Your Audience

When customers, partners, or investors want information, they don’t want to dig through endless emails or make a dozen phone calls. They want answers now. Your website becomes that centralized, reliable source.

Whether it’s product details, pricing information, service FAQs, blog resources, or contact forms, everything is available in one place. This reduces the load on your team and makes it easy for people to engage with your brand whenever they need.

Data Collection and Customer Insights

Knowledge is power, especially when you’re scaling. Every click, scroll, and form fill on your website gives you valuable data about your audience—what they want, what they don’t, and how they behave.

By analyzing website data, you can make smarter decisions about product development, marketing strategies, and customer support. It’s like having a crystal ball that shows you where to invest your time, energy, and money for maximum impact.

E-Commerce and Beyond: Expanding Revenue Streams

Selling Products and Services Online

Adding an e-commerce function to your startup website is like opening a store that never closes. Whether you sell physical products, digital downloads, or services, your website allows you to tap into global markets without the overhead of a physical storefront. Platforms like Shopify, WooCommerce, and Squarespace make it ridiculously easy to integrate an online store with your website, offering seamless payment solutions, inventory management, and order tracking.

By offering your products and services directly through your site, you remove the middleman and create an additional (or even primary) source of revenue. Plus, it gives you full control over the customer experience—from the branding to the checkout process. You can upsell, cross-sell, and offer exclusive web-only deals, making your site a profit-generating machine around the clock.

Subscription Models and Memberships

Want predictable, recurring revenue? Consider integrating subscription models or membership programs into your website. Whether it’s a subscription box for physical goods, premium access to digital content, or a VIP coaching membership, the possibilities are endless.

Membership sites also allow you to build an exclusive community around your brand, increasing customer loyalty and lifetime value. Plus, the data you gather from members can further guide your marketing and product development efforts.

In short, subscription and membership models aren't just trendy; they're sustainable growth strategies that let your startup scale without constantly hunting for new customers.

Enhancing Customer Experience Through Your Website

User Experience (UX) and Its Importance

Your website might look beautiful, but if it’s hard to navigate, slow to load, or confusing to use, you're driving potential customers straight into the arms of your competitors. User Experience (UX) isn’t just a buzzword—it’s the bedrock of customer satisfaction online.

Great UX means your site is easy to use, fast, accessible, and designed around the user’s needs. That means intuitive menus, clear calls to action, mobile-friendly layouts, and lightning-fast load times. It’s all about removing friction. The easier and more pleasant it is for visitors to get what they want, the more likely they are to convert.

Investing in UX design can lead to lower bounce rates, longer time on site, more conversions, and better overall brand perception. In the long run, a focus on UX isn’t just customer care—it’s a strategic advantage for scaling.

Personalization and Customer Retention

People love brands that "get" them. Personalization—think product recommendations, tailored content, and customized email journeys—creates a powerful emotional connection between your startup and your customers.

Your website can personalize the user experience by tracking behavior and using data smartly. Imagine greeting returning visitors by name, recommending products based on previous purchases, or delivering content that matches their interests. This level of customization makes customers feel seen, valued, and understood.

Personalization isn't just a nice-to-have; it significantly boosts customer retention, which is way more cost-effective than acquiring new customers. When your startup builds lasting relationships through personalized experiences, you’re setting the foundation for sustainable, scalable growth.

Leveraging SEO to Reach a Wider Audience

Organic Traffic vs Paid Ads: Why SEO Matters

Sure, paid ads can drive traffic fast, but they also burn a hole in your pocket quickly. SEO (Search Engine Optimization), on the other hand, is the gift that keeps on giving. It helps you earn organic traffic—people finding your website naturally through search engines like Google.

Good SEO makes your website more visible to people actively searching for what you offer. This means higher quality traffic, better conversion rates, and, best of all, free exposure over time. Through smart keyword targeting, technical optimization, high-quality content, and backlink strategies, SEO positions your startup as a trusted, authoritative option.

In a world where 68% of online experiences begin with a search engine, investing in SEO is like planting seeds that will grow into a lush forest of opportunities over time.

Building a Content Strategy That Scales

Content is the secret weapon behind effective SEO—and scaling startups. Blogs, videos, podcasts, infographics, and case studies not only boost your SEO but also position your brand as a thought leader.

A strong content strategy isn’t about churning out random blog posts; it’s about creating valuable, relevant, and engaging material that answers your audience’s questions and solves their problems. Think pillar content, topic clusters, and evergreen articles that drive traffic year after year.

When you align your content strategy with your business goals, you create an engine that attracts, educates, and converts prospects, all while building brand loyalty. And as your startup grows, your content can scale with you, expanding into new niches, industries, and markets.

Website Analytics: Measuring and Adapting

Understanding User Behavior

What’s the point of a beautiful website if you have no idea how it’s performing? Website analytics tools like Google Analytics, Hotjar, and Crazy Egg provide insights into how visitors interact with your site—where they click, how long they stay, where they drop off.

This data is gold. It tells you what’s working, what’s confusing visitors, and where you’re losing sales. Are people abandoning their carts? Maybe your checkout page needs a redesign. Are blog readers not subscribing to your newsletter? Maybe your CTAs need tweaking.

By constantly analyzing and adapting based on user behavior, you can optimize your website to be a lean, mean conversion machine.

A/B Testing for Continuous Improvement

Even the best-designed websites can be better. A/B testing (also called split testing) is the process of comparing two versions of a page or element to see which one performs better.

Maybe a green “Buy Now” button gets more clicks than a red one. Maybe a short headline beats a longer one. Maybe showing testimonials above the fold increases trust. A/B testing removes the guesswork from optimization.

The beauty of A/B testing is that it promotes a culture of continuous improvement. When you treat your website as a living, breathing asset that evolves based on real-world feedback, scaling becomes not just easier, but almost inevitable.

Website Scalability: Planning for Growth

Choosing the Right Platform and Hosting

Not all website platforms are created equal. If you plan to scale, you need a platform and hosting service that can handle traffic spikes, offer top-notch security, and provide room for feature expansion.

Platforms like WordPress, Shopify, and Webflow offer scalability, while cloud hosting providers like AWS, SiteGround, and Bluehost offer flexibility and reliability. Choosing the wrong foundation can cause nightmares down the road—slow sites, frequent crashes, or costly migrations.

When you choose wisely from the start, scaling becomes a natural progression rather than a series of technical headaches.

Designing for Future Expansion

Today you might need a simple landing page, but what about tomorrow? You might need a full-blown e-commerce store, a multilingual blog, a partner portal, or a learning management system.

Scalable website design means planning for what’s next. Build with modularity in mind, use flexible CMSs (Content Management Systems), and adopt a mobile-first mindset. Also, maintain clean coding standards and documentation so that new developers or designers can easily jump in as you expand.

Future-proofing your website design today saves massive amounts of time, money, and stress tomorrow.

Integrating Other Digital Tools with Your Website

CRM Systems and Email Marketing

Scaling isn’t just about attracting new customers—it’s about managing relationships with the ones you already have. That’s where integrating a CRM (Customer Relationship Management) system with your website becomes crucial. CRMs like HubSpot, Salesforce, and Zoho track customer interactions, manage leads, and automate communications.

A website integrated with a CRM allows you to capture lead data instantly through forms, automate email follow-ups, and segment your audience based on behavior. Combine that with a robust email marketing platform, and you can nurture leads efficiently, boosting conversion rates without overwhelming your sales team.

Personalized email campaigns triggered by user behavior—like abandoned cart reminders, birthday discounts, or product recommendations—keep your brand top-of-mind and drive consistent revenue growth. The beauty? All of this runs in the background, freeing you up to focus on the bigger picture.

Chatbots, AI, and Automation Tools

Today’s websites are smarter than ever, thanks to AI and automation. Adding chatbots like Drift, Intercom, or Tidio to your site can provide instant customer support, qualify leads, and even close sales while you sleep.

AI tools can analyze website traffic patterns, personalize user experiences, and optimize content for better engagement. Automation tools like Zapier can connect your website to other software (CRM, Slack, Google Sheets, etc.), creating seamless workflows that save time and eliminate repetitive tasks.

When your website harnesses the power of AI and automation, scaling isn't just possible—it becomes practically effortless.

Case Studies: Startups That Scaled Successfully with a Strong Web Presence

Notable Success Stories and Their Strategies

Let’s take a moment to look at real-world proof. Companies like Warby Parker, Dollar Shave Club, and Casper didn’t start as billion-dollar brands. They started as scrappy startups with strong websites that acted as the hub for all their growth activities.

Warby Parker built a sleek, easy-to-use website that let customers try on glasses virtually, eliminating the biggest friction point in buying eyewear online.

Dollar Shave Club leveraged hilarious, shareable video content and directed traffic to a simple, effective website that funneled visitors into subscription plans.

Casper created a content-rich website with detailed product pages, customer reviews, and sleep guides, making it easier for customers to trust them without physically trying a mattress.

These brands show that with the right website, smart strategies, and customer-focused innovation, scaling isn't reserved for tech giants. It's available to any startup willing to invest wisely.

Common Mistakes Startups Make with Websites

Underestimating Mobile Optimization

More than half of all web traffic now comes from mobile devices. Yet countless startups still treat their mobile site like an afterthought. Huge mistake.

If your site isn’t mobile-optimized—meaning it looks great and functions perfectly on smartphones and tablets—you’re losing business. Fast. Google even uses mobile-first indexing, meaning the mobile version of your site is what gets ranked.

Prioritize responsive design, fast load times, and thumb-friendly navigation. If visitors have to pinch and zoom to read your content, you’re dead in the water. A seamless mobile experience is not optional; it’s survival.

Neglecting Regular Updates and Security

Websites are not “set it and forget it” projects. They need regular updates to stay secure, functional, and competitive. Outdated plugins, unpatched software, and expired SSL certificates are basically invitations for hackers and technical glitches.

Also, an outdated design or stale content can make your brand look lazy or irrelevant. Keep your website fresh with new blog posts, updated testimonials, refreshed designs, and regular performance checks. It's the digital equivalent of keeping your store clean and stocked.

A neglected website isn't just bad for your reputation; it's bad for business.

Preparing Your Startup Website for Global Reach

Multilingual Support and Localization

If you’re aiming to scale internationally, your website needs to speak the language—literally. Offering multilingual support opens doors to new markets and makes your brand more accessible.

But it’s not just about translating text; it’s about localization. That means adapting currency formats, measurements, images, and even cultural references to fit local expectations. Tools like Weglot and WPML make adding multilingual capabilities a lot easier.

A localized website shows respect for your audience’s culture and dramatically increases the chances of converting visitors into customers.

International SEO Best Practices

If you want to be found internationally, you need to think beyond Google.com. Search engines like Baidu in China or Yandex in Russia have different algorithms and user behaviors.

Implementing hreflang tags, using country-specific domains or subdomains, optimizing for local search engines, and translating keywords properly are all crucial steps for international SEO.

A one-size-fits-all approach won’t work. Tailoring your SEO strategy for each target market ensures that your startup doesn’t just survive overseas—it thrives.

Future Trends: How Websites Will Evolve for Startups

AI, VR, and Immersive Experiences

The future of websites isn’t static pages and basic animations—it’s immersive, interactive experiences powered by AI, VR (Virtual Reality), and AR (Augmented Reality).

Imagine letting customers try out products virtually, take 3D tours of your facility, or interact with AI-driven shopping assistants who can recommend products in real time. These technologies aren’t just sci-fi dreams; they’re becoming standard expectations.

Startups that embrace these emerging trends early will not only stand out but will also create experiences so compelling that customers can't help but come back for more. Future-proofing your website means staying curious, adaptable, and ready to innovate at every turn.

Conclusion

Scaling a startup is like building a rocket ship while you're already flying. It's thrilling, terrifying, and requires every bit of smart planning you can muster. Having a website that's built for growth is one of the smartest, highest-leverage moves you can make.

Your website isn’t just a marketing tool—it’s your 24/7 salesperson, customer service rep, brand ambassador, and data analyst all rolled into one. Done right, it helps you attract customers, build trust, streamline operations, gather insights, and adapt quickly to changing markets.

In today’s hyper-connected world, the startups that succeed aren’t necessarily the ones with the most funding or the flashiest branding. They're the ones with the strongest, smartest foundations—and a powerful, scalable website is right at the heart of that.

So, if you’re serious about scaling your startup, it’s time to stop thinking of your website as just a "nice to have." It's a "must-have"—your launchpad to the next level.

FAQs

1. How soon should a startup invest in a website? Immediately. Even a basic, well-designed site can start building credibility and capturing leads from day one.

2. What’s the biggest mistake startups make with websites? Neglecting mobile optimization and not updating regularly—both can kill growth opportunities fast.

3. How can a website help with customer retention? By offering personalized experiences, valuable content, loyalty programs, and responsive customer service features.

4. Can a website really replace traditional marketing methods? While it shouldn't replace everything, a strong website can significantly reduce the need for expensive traditional ads by serving as a 24/7 marketing machine.

5. What are the key features every startup website should have? Clear navigation, strong CTAs, mobile responsiveness, SEO optimization, analytics tracking, and fast load times are non-negotiables.

[phantomrose96]

If anyone wants to know why every tech company in the world right now is clamoring for AI like drowned rats scrabbling to board a ship, I decided to make a post to explain what's happening.

(Disclaimer to start: I'm a software engineer who's been employed full time since 2018. I am not a historian nor an overconfident Youtube essayist, so this post is my working knowledge of what I see around me and the logical bridges between pieces.)

Okay anyway. The explanation starts further back than what's going on now. I'm gonna start with the year 2000. The Dot Com Bubble just spectacularly burst. The model of "we get the users first, we learn how to profit off them later" went out in a no-money-having bang (remember this, it will be relevant later). A lot of money was lost. A lot of people ended up out of a job. A lot of startup companies went under. Investors left with a sour taste in their mouth and, in general, investment in the internet stayed pretty cooled for that decade. This was, in my opinion, very good for the internet as it was an era not suffocating under the grip of mega-corporation oligarchs and was, instead, filled with Club Penguin and I Can Haz Cheezburger websites.

Then around the 2010-2012 years, a few things happened. Interest rates got low, and then lower. Facebook got huge. The iPhone took off. And suddenly there was a huge new potential market of internet users and phone-havers, and the cheap money was available to start backing new tech startup companies trying to hop on this opportunity. Companies like Uber, Netflix, and Amazon either started in this time, or hit their ramp-up in these years by shifting focus to the internet and apps.

Now, every start-up tech company dreaming of being the next big thing has one thing in common: they need to start off by getting themselves massively in debt. Because before you can turn a profit you need to first spend money on employees and spend money on equipment and spend money on data centers and spend money on advertising and spend money on scale and and and

But also, everyone wants to be on the ship for The Next Big Thing that takes off to the moon.

So there is a mutual interest between new tech companies, and venture capitalists who are willing to invest $$$ into said new tech companies. Because if the venture capitalists can identify a prize pig and get in early, that money could come back to them 100-fold or 1,000-fold. In fact it hardly matters if they invest in 10 or 20 total bust projects along the way to find that unicorn.

But also, becoming profitable takes time. And that might mean being in debt for a long long time before that rocket ship takes off to make everyone onboard a gazzilionaire.

But luckily, for tech startup bros and venture capitalists, being in debt in the 2010's was cheap, and it only got cheaper between 2010 and 2020. If people could secure loans for ~3% or 4% annual interest, well then a $100,000 loan only really costs $3,000 of interest a year to keep afloat. And if inflation is higher than that or at least similar, you're still beating the system.

So from 2010 through early 2022, times were good for tech companies. Startups could take off with massive growth, showing massive potential for something, and venture capitalists would throw infinite money at them in the hopes of pegging just one winner who will take off. And supporting the struggling investments or the long-haulers remained pretty cheap to keep funding.

You hear constantly about "Such and such app has 10-bazillion users gained over the last 10 years and has never once been profitable", yet the thing keeps chugging along because the investors backing it aren't stressed about the immediate future, and are still banking on that "eventually" when it learns how to really monetize its users and turn that profit.

The pandemic in 2020 took a magnifying-glass-in-the-sun effect to this, as EVERYTHING was forcibly turned online which pumped a ton of money and workers into tech investment. Simultaneously, money got really REALLY cheap, bottoming out with historic lows for interest rates.

Then the tide changed with the massive inflation that struck late 2021. Because this all-gas no-brakes state of things was also contributing to off-the-rails inflation (along with your standard-fare greedflation and price gouging, given the extremely convenient excuses of pandemic hardships and supply chain issues). The federal reserve whipped out interest rate hikes to try to curb this huge inflation, which is like a fire extinguisher dousing and suffocating your really-cool, actively-on-fire party where everyone else is burning but you're in the pool. And then they did this more, and then more. And the financial climate followed suit. And suddenly money was not cheap anymore, and new loans became expensive, because loans that used to compound at 2% a year are now compounding at 7 or 8% which, in the language of compounding, is a HUGE difference. A $100,000 loan at a 2% interest rate, if not repaid a single cent in 10 years, accrues to $121,899. A $100,000 loan at an 8% interest rate, if not repaid a single cent in 10 years, more than doubles to $215,892.

Now it is scary and risky to throw money at "could eventually be profitable" tech companies. Now investors are watching companies burn through their current funding and, when the companies come back asking for more, investors are tightening their coin purses instead. The bill is coming due. The free money is drying up and companies are under compounding pressure to produce a profit for their waiting investors who are now done waiting.

You get enshittification. You get quality going down and price going up. You get "now that you're a captive audience here, we're forcing ads or we're forcing subscriptions on you." Don't get me wrong, the plan was ALWAYS to monetize the users. It's just that it's come earlier than expected, with way more feet-to-the-fire than these companies were expecting. ESPECIALLY with Wall Street as the other factor in funding (public) companies, where Wall Street exhibits roughly the same temperament as a baby screaming crying upset that it's soiled its own diaper (maybe that's too mean a comparison to babies), and now companies are being put through the wringer for anything LESS than infinite growth that Wall Street demands of them.

Internal to the tech industry, you get MASSIVE wide-spread layoffs. You get an industry that used to be easy to land multiple job offers shriveling up and leaving recent graduates in a desperately awful situation where no company is hiring and the market is flooded with laid-off workers trying to get back on their feet.

Because those coin-purse-clutching investors DO love virtue-signaling efforts from companies that say "See! We're not being frivolous with your money! We only spend on the essentials." And this is true even for MASSIVE, PROFITABLE companies, because those companies' value is based on the Rich Person Feeling Graph (their stock) rather than the literal profit money. A company making a genuine gazillion dollars a year still tears through layoffs and freezes hiring and removes the free batteries from the printer room (totally not speaking from experience, surely) because the investors LOVE when you cut costs and take away employee perks. The "beer on tap, ping pong table in the common area" era of tech is drying up. And we're still unionless.

Never mind that last part.

And then in early 2023, AI (more specifically, Chat-GPT which is OpenAI's Large Language Model creation) tears its way into the tech scene with a meteor's amount of momentum. Here's Microsoft's prize pig, which it invested heavily in and is galivanting around the pig-show with, to the desperate jealousy and rapture of every other tech company and investor wishing it had that pig. And for the first time since the interest rate hikes, investors have dollar signs in their eyes, both venture capital and Wall Street alike. They're willing to restart the hose of money (even with the new risk) because this feels big enough for them to take the risk.

Now all these companies, who were in varying stages of sweating as their bill came due, or wringing their hands as their stock prices tanked, see a single glorious gold-plated rocket up out of here, the likes of which haven't been seen since the free money days. It's their ticket to buy time, and buy investors, and say "see THIS is what will wring money forth, finally, we promise, just let us show you."

To be clear, AI is NOT profitable yet. It's a money-sink. Perhaps a money-black-hole. But everyone in the space is so wowed by it that there is a wide-spread and powerful conviction that it will become profitable and earn its keep. (Let's be real, half of that profit "potential" is the promise of automating away jobs of pesky employees who peskily cost money.) It's a tech-space industrial revolution that will automate away skilled jobs, and getting in on the ground floor is the absolute best thing you can do to get your pie slice's worth.

It's the thing that will win investors back. It's the thing that will get the investment money coming in again (or, get it second-hand if the company can be the PROVIDER of something needed for AI, which other companies with venture-back will pay handsomely for). It's the thing companies are terrified of missing out on, lest it leave them utterly irrelevant in a future where not having AI-integration is like not having a mobile phone app for your company or not having a website.

So I guess to reiterate on my earlier point:

Drowned rats. Swimming to the one ship in sight.

[newbusinessideas]

How to Start a Knit Fabric Manufacturing Business

Thinking about starting a Knitting Fabric Manufacturing Business with a machine? 🧶🚀 Check out this for all the tips you need to get started! Don't forget to follow for more business ideas! #KnittingBusiness #EntrepreneurLife #businessideas

Starting a knit fabric manufacturing business with a knitting machine might seem like a big leap, but it’s easier than you think! Starting a knitting manufacturing business can be a lucrative opportunity with the right approach and market understanding. With a Knitting Machine, you can produce s efficiently and cater to diverse customer needs. From choosing the right machine to scaling your…

[mariacallous]

The Ocean Sciences Building at the University of Washington in Seattle is a brightly modern, four-story structure, with large glass windows reflecting the bay across the street.

On the afternoon of July 7, 2016, it was being slowly locked down.

Red lights began flashing at the entrances as students and faculty filed out under overcast skies. Eventually, just a handful of people remained inside, preparing to unleash one of the most destructive forces in the natural world: the crushing weight of about 2½ miles of ocean water.

In the building’s high-pressure testing facility, a black, pill-shaped capsule hung from a hoist on the ceiling. About 3 feet long, it was a scale model of a submersible called Cyclops 2, developed by a local startup called OceanGate. The company’s CEO, Stockton Rush, had cofounded the company in 2009 as a sort of submarine charter service, anticipating a growing need for commercial and research trips to the ocean floor. At first, Rush acquired older, steel-hulled subs for expeditions, but in 2013 OceanGate had begun designing what the company called “a revolutionary new manned submersible.” Among the sub’s innovations were its lightweight hull, which was built from carbon fiber and could accommodate more passengers than the spherical cabins traditionally used in deep-sea diving. By 2016, Rush’s dream was to take paying customers down to the most famous shipwreck of them all: the Titanic, 3,800 meters below the surface of the Atlantic Ocean.

Engineers carefully lowered the Cyclops 2 model into the testing tank nose-first, like a bomb being loaded into a silo, and then screwed on the tank’s 3,600-pound lid. Then they began pumping in water, increasing the pressure to mimic a submersible’s dive. If you’re hanging out at sea level, the weight of the atmosphere above you exerts 14.7 pounds per square inch (psi). The deeper you go, the stronger that pressure; at the Titanic’s depth, the pressure is about 6,500 psi. Soon, the pressure gauge on UW’s test tank read 1,000 psi, and it kept ticking up—2,000 psi, 5,000 psi. At about the 73-minute mark, as the pressure in the tank reached 6,500 psi, there was a sudden roar and the tank shuddered violently.

“I felt it in my body,” an OceanGate employee wrote in an email later that night. “The building rocked, and my ears rang for a long time.”

“Scared the shit out of everyone,” he added.

The model had imploded thousands of meters short of the safety margin OceanGate had designed for.

In the high-stakes, high-cost world of crewed submersibles, most engineering teams would have gone back to the drawing board, or at least ordered more models to test. Rush’s company didn’t do either of those things. Instead, within months, OceanGate began building a full-scale Cyclops 2 based on the imploded model. This submersible design, later renamed Titan, eventually made it down to the Titanic in 2021. It even returned to the site for expeditions the next two years. But nearly one year ago, on June 18, 2023, Titan dove to the infamous wreck and imploded, instantly killing all five people onboard, including Rush himself.

The disaster captivated and horrified the world. Deep-sea experts criticized OceanGate’s choices, from Titan’s carbon-fiber construction to Rush’s public disdain for industry regulations, which he believed stifled innovation. Organizations that had worked with OceanGate, including the University of Washington as well as the Boeing Company, released statements denying that they contributed to Titan.

A trove of tens of thousands of internal OceanGate emails, documents, and photographs provided exclusively to WIRED by anonymous sources sheds new light on Titan’s development, from its initial design and manufacture through its first deep-sea operations. The documents, validated by interviews with two third-party suppliers and several former OceanGate employees with intimate knowledge of Titan, reveal never-before-reported details about the design and testing of the submersible. They show that Boeing and the University of Washington were both involved in the early stages of OceanGate’s carbon-fiber sub project, although their work did not make it into the final Titan design. The trove also reveals a company culture in which employees who questioned their bosses’ high-speed approach and decisions were dismissed as overly cautious or even fired. (The former employees who spoke to WIRED have asked not to be named for fear of being sued by the families of those who died aboard the vessel.) Most of all, the documents show how Rush, blinkered by his own ambition to be the Elon Musk of the deep seas, repeatedly overstated OceanGate’s progress and, on at least one occasion, outright lied about significant problems with Titan’s hull, which has not been previously reported.

A representative for OceanGate, which ceased all operations last summer, declined to comment on WIRED’s findings.

[aerofbreath]

Actually writing something based off of this post. Y'all really seemed to like it and I got scared LOLOL

(How it will probably go (written poorly written cause it's almost 7AM and I haven't slept yet) . Also I have no idea what I'm doing. This will be rewritten better in a fic maybe.)

Jason sighed as he made his way into Gotham University's gym. It was the middle of the day and Jason was there at a Startup Event posing as a guy who was interested in what people had to offer. He had only had maybe a total of four hours of sleep since he had patrol the night before. Granted, this wouldn't have affected him as much if he was more mentally prepared to be awake. The only reason why he's out here was because Bruce had woken him up an hour ago to tell him a little last minute about what he needed to do today. Originally, the plan was to do absolutely nothing. But now he has to investigate a guy that Bruce had his eye on as of lately.

The person he's looking for is a man named Danny Nightingale. Apparently he's been in Gotham for a couple years and only recently started making a mess of things. How it went under Bruce's nose is beyond him considering how freaked out Bruce was once he did find out.

Apparently, the guy has been making life changing machines. Little mechanical bees have been flying around Gotham really just sucking up all the pollution in the air and just depositing it somewhere. According to the media, they go back to some headquarters and into a bee hive looking structure to deposit all the pollution and sludge. From the photos shown, it's actually pretty impressive. Some guy actually making a change around here.

For Bruce- no. For Batman, this is just highly suspicious. Why would some guy make these positive life changing machines? For the better? No. No genius with the power to change the world would do it for the better. There's got to be some ulterior motive behind it.

At least, that's what Batman thinks.

Jason thinks it's all interesting. Maybe there is an ulterior motive but even then, at a scale so large that it's literally affecting the city in a positive way? You've got to be literally more insane than the Joker if you wanted to plaster your face everywhere at an event like this. Everyone else at this event seemed to show promise but compared to Danny Nightingale's company? They're literally all small fry.

Surprisingly enough, however, no one else seems to be at Danny's booth. Not even Danny. Jason frowned as he approached the booth and just looked at the machines on them. The Bees are kind of just flying in place and the moment that Jason even looked at them, the Bees immediately got to work. They flew around him like a puppy with wings, nuzzling against him and bumping into him so dumbly. And honestly?

It was actually kind of cute. You would think that being on such little hours of sleep and being grumpy the whole morning would really affect the pits inside him but no. He's surprisingly calm.

"Oh my gosh, I am so sorry! They don't usually act like this," a voice stuttered out. A man hastily walked towards Jason as he gently plucked the Bees out of the air and brought it close to him.

"Uh, don't worry about it. I thought it was kind of..." Jason trailed out before locking eyes with the man who spoke.

This was Danny Nightingale. He was much shorter than Jason, only standing tall at 5' 5". His hair was fully black with only a white money piece right on his bangs. And his eyes? An alluring blue with only a hint of green at the center of his eyes. Honestly, the sight of Danny just about took Jason's breath away.

There was a subtle glow to him, almost making Jason think of there being some sort of meta activity going on but looking around the people in the area, no one but him seems to notice. Danny was concerned about Jason, that much is obvious. The way his eyes burrowed in concern then into confusion. It's strange why just looking at him made Jason's heart skip a beat, even though in hindsight, Danny looks much worse off than Jason.

That man looks like he hasn't slept in 3 weeks. But even then he was...

"Cute..." Jason finally finished his sentence a little too late.

Danny blinked in confusion, tilting his head to the side. His bangs fall freely over his eyes. Just the sight of that almost made Jason blush. "My bees were cute?" Danny spoke, the tone of his voice (very tired) sounded like a sweet harmony in Jason's ears. "Oh! You're interested in Nightech? No one else seems to be interested in my stuff yet. I can tell you all about this company and how it works? I put in a lot of work and love into these little guys and I'm sure you would love them too!"

Blah blah blah. Proper name. Place name. Backstory stuff.

Nothing of what Danny is saying is registering in Jason's brain right now. Maybe some. ("I... Love... You...")

"I love you too!!" Jason blurted out.

Danny blinked before widening his eyes. "Wh-What...?" There was that look of concern again but now there's another look. Recognition...

Whatever. None of that right now. This is embarrassing!

"I-I said I love your company. Uh. Do you have a business card? I can let Bruce Wayne know about this."

Wordlessly, Danny gave an information card to Jason before that poor brick of a man just ran out of there, not once even looking back. Honestly, from the way it's playing out in Jason's head right now, he feels like a princess running away from her prince at the stroke of midnight. The earpiece crackled before a voice started to speak.

"Jason? What the hell was that?" Bruce's voice questioned.

It was only when Jason left the gymnasium that he answered, "Me digging my own grave for the second time, old man. Let me go die in peace."

"No, no," Dick's voice chimed in, "Only after we replay that very short conversation about 50,000 times. Thank you very much."

Jason only groaned in response.

Danny, back in the gymnasium, only stared at the door that Jason left from in horror. The only way for people to react that way to him like that is for them to be dead or liminal. Now he has to figure out a way to tell Bruce Wayne that this person that he seems to know is a little bit dead!

This actually is a part of whatever the fuck I'm writing. I'm still thinking of a fic name. But all of the random posts go together in some way.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

What kind of bubble is AI?

My latest column for Locus Magazine is "What Kind of Bubble is AI?" All economic bubbles are hugely destructive, but some of them leave behind wreckage that can be salvaged for useful purposes, while others leave nothing behind but ashes:

https://locusmag.com/2023/12/commentary-cory-doctorow-what-kind-of-bubble-is-ai/

Think about some 21st century bubbles. The dotcom bubble was a terrible tragedy, one that drained the coffers of pension funds and other institutional investors and wiped out retail investors who were gulled by Superbowl Ads. But there was a lot left behind after the dotcoms were wiped out: cheap servers, office furniture and space, but far more importantly, a generation of young people who'd been trained as web makers, leaving nontechnical degree programs to learn HTML, perl and python. This created a whole cohort of technologists from non-technical backgrounds, a first in technological history. Many of these people became the vanguard of a more inclusive and humane tech development movement, and they were able to make interesting and useful services and products in an environment where raw materials – compute, bandwidth, space and talent – were available at firesale prices.

Contrast this with the crypto bubble. It, too, destroyed the fortunes of institutional and individual investors through fraud and Superbowl Ads. It, too, lured in nontechnical people to learn esoteric disciplines at investor expense. But apart from a smattering of Rust programmers, the main residue of crypto is bad digital art and worse Austrian economics.

Or think of Worldcom vs Enron. Both bubbles were built on pure fraud, but Enron's fraud left nothing behind but a string of suspicious deaths. By contrast, Worldcom's fraud was a Big Store con that required laying a ton of fiber that is still in the ground to this day, and is being bought and used at pennies on the dollar.

AI is definitely a bubble. As I write in the column, if you fly into SFO and rent a car and drive north to San Francisco or south to Silicon Valley, every single billboard is advertising an "AI" startup, many of which are not even using anything that can be remotely characterized as AI. That's amazing, considering what a meaningless buzzword AI already is.

So which kind of bubble is AI? When it pops, will something useful be left behind, or will it go away altogether? To be sure, there's a legion of technologists who are learning Tensorflow and Pytorch. These nominally open source tools are bound, respectively, to Google and Facebook's AI environments:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/18/openwashing/#you-keep-using-that-word-i-do-not-think-it-means-what-you-think-it-means

But if those environments go away, those programming skills become a lot less useful. Live, large-scale Big Tech AI projects are shockingly expensive to run. Some of their costs are fixed – collecting, labeling and processing training data – but the running costs for each query are prodigious. There's a massive primary energy bill for the servers, a nearly as large energy bill for the chillers, and a titanic wage bill for the specialized technical staff involved.

Once investor subsidies dry up, will the real-world, non-hyperbolic applications for AI be enough to cover these running costs? AI applications can be plotted on a 2X2 grid whose axes are "value" (how much customers will pay for them) and "risk tolerance" (how perfect the product needs to be).

Charging teenaged D&D players $10 month for an image generator that creates epic illustrations of their characters fighting monsters is low value and very risk tolerant (teenagers aren't overly worried about six-fingered swordspeople with three pupils in each eye). Charging scammy spamfarms $500/month for a text generator that spits out dull, search-algorithm-pleasing narratives to appear over recipes is likewise low-value and highly risk tolerant (your customer doesn't care if the text is nonsense). Charging visually impaired people $100 month for an app that plays a text-to-speech description of anything they point their cameras at is low-value and moderately risk tolerant ("that's your blue shirt" when it's green is not a big deal, while "the street is safe to cross" when it's not is a much bigger one).

Morganstanley doesn't talk about the trillions the AI industry will be worth some day because of these applications. These are just spinoffs from the main event, a collection of extremely high-value applications. Think of self-driving cars or radiology bots that analyze chest x-rays and characterize masses as cancerous or noncancerous.

These are high value – but only if they are also risk-tolerant. The pitch for self-driving cars is "fire most drivers and replace them with 'humans in the loop' who intervene at critical junctures." That's the risk-tolerant version of self-driving cars, and it's a failure. More than $100b has been incinerated chasing self-driving cars, and cars are nowhere near driving themselves:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/09/herbies-revenge/#100-billion-here-100-billion-there-pretty-soon-youre-talking-real-money

Quite the reverse, in fact. Cruise was just forced to quit the field after one of their cars maimed a woman – a pedestrian who had not opted into being part of a high-risk AI experiment – and dragged her body 20 feet through the streets of San Francisco. Afterwards, it emerged that Cruise had replaced the single low-waged driver who would normally be paid to operate a taxi with 1.5 high-waged skilled technicians who remotely oversaw each of its vehicles:

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/03/technology/cruise-general-motors-self-driving-cars.html

The self-driving pitch isn't that your car will correct your own human errors (like an alarm that sounds when you activate your turn signal while someone is in your blind-spot). Self-driving isn't about using automation to augment human skill – it's about replacing humans. There's no business case for spending hundreds of billions on better safety systems for cars (there's a human case for it, though!). The only way the price-tag justifies itself is if paid drivers can be fired and replaced with software that costs less than their wages.

What about radiologists? Radiologists certainly make mistakes from time to time, and if there's a computer vision system that makes different mistakes than the sort that humans make, they could be a cheap way of generating second opinions that trigger re-examination by a human radiologist. But no AI investor thinks their return will come from selling hospitals that reduce the number of X-rays each radiologist processes every day, as a second-opinion-generating system would. Rather, the value of AI radiologists comes from firing most of your human radiologists and replacing them with software whose judgments are cursorily double-checked by a human whose "automation blindness" will turn them into an OK-button-mashing automaton:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/23/automation-blindness/#humans-in-the-loop

The profit-generating pitch for high-value AI applications lies in creating "reverse centaurs": humans who serve as appendages for automation that operates at a speed and scale that is unrelated to the capacity or needs of the worker:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/04/17/revenge-of-the-chickenized-reverse-centaurs/

But unless these high-value applications are intrinsically risk-tolerant, they are poor candidates for automation. Cruise was able to nonconsensually enlist the population of San Francisco in an experimental murderbot development program thanks to the vast sums of money sloshing around the industry. Some of this money funds the inevitabilist narrative that self-driving cars are coming, it's only a matter of when, not if, and so SF had better get in the autonomous vehicle or get run over by the forces of history.

Once the bubble pops (all bubbles pop), AI applications will have to rise or fall on their actual merits, not their promise. The odds are stacked against the long-term survival of high-value, risk-intolerant AI applications.

The problem for AI is that while there are a lot of risk-tolerant applications, they're almost all low-value; while nearly all the high-value applications are risk-intolerant. Once AI has to be profitable – once investors withdraw their subsidies from money-losing ventures – the risk-tolerant applications need to be sufficient to run those tremendously expensive servers in those brutally expensive data-centers tended by exceptionally expensive technical workers.

If they aren't, then the business case for running those servers goes away, and so do the servers – and so do all those risk-tolerant, low-value applications. It doesn't matter if helping blind people make sense of their surroundings is socially beneficial. It doesn't matter if teenaged gamers love their epic character art. It doesn't even matter how horny scammers are for generating AI nonsense SEO websites:

https://twitter.com/jakezward/status/1728032634037567509

These applications are all riding on the coattails of the big AI models that are being built and operated at a loss in order to be profitable. If they remain unprofitable long enough, the private sector will no longer pay to operate them.

Now, there are smaller models, models that stand alone and run on commodity hardware. These would persist even after the AI bubble bursts, because most of their costs are setup costs that have already been borne by the well-funded companies who created them. These models are limited, of course, though the communities that have formed around them have pushed those limits in surprising ways, far beyond their original manufacturers' beliefs about their capacity. These communities will continue to push those limits for as long as they find the models useful.

These standalone, "toy" models are derived from the big models, though. When the AI bubble bursts and the private sector no longer subsidizes mass-scale model creation, it will cease to spin out more sophisticated models that run on commodity hardware (it's possible that Federated learning and other techniques for spreading out the work of making large-scale models will fill the gap).

So what kind of bubble is the AI bubble? What will we salvage from its wreckage? Perhaps the communities who've invested in becoming experts in Pytorch and Tensorflow will wrestle them away from their corporate masters and make them generally useful. Certainly, a lot of people will have gained skills in applying statistical techniques.

But there will also be a lot of unsalvageable wreckage. As big AI models get integrated into the processes of the productive economy, AI becomes a source of systemic risk. The only thing worse than having an automated process that is rendered dangerous or erratic based on AI integration is to have that process fail entirely because the AI suddenly disappeared, a collapse that is too precipitous for former AI customers to engineer a soft landing for their systems.

This is a blind spot in our policymakers debates about AI. The smart policymakers are asking questions about fairness, algorithmic bias, and fraud. The foolish policymakers are ensnared in fantasies about "AI safety," AKA "Will the chatbot become a superintelligence that turns the whole human race into paperclips?"

https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/27/10-types-of-people/#taking-up-a-lot-of-space

But no one is asking, "What will we do if" – when – "the AI bubble pops and most of this stuff disappears overnight?"

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/12/19/bubblenomics/#pop

Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg

CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en

--

tom_bullock (modified) https://www.flickr.com/photos/tombullock/25173469495/

CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

[mortalityplays]

Forgive me if I'm mistaking you for another person, but I remember you speaking at multiple points on the unsustainability of free social media services (I think especially in response to the cohost collapse?), and I'm curious on what your thoughts on bluesky are so far. I'm not an expert on the subject, but from what I've read previously it seemed like they were on track to be financially sustainable, but I don't know if the recent floods of users has thrown those projections off. Sorry if I'm mixing you up with someone else on my timeline, in that case just ignore me.

bluesky will almost certainly follow the same trajectory of monetisation => bloat => enshittification => decline as every other major platform built on venture capital and user hoarding. it's a terrible model that only works in the short term as a mirage for attracting funding and making founders look good for a year or two before they sell.

you can see the same effect in the decline of all the subscription box services that came into vogue just before covid: they feel great to use for as long as the initial injection of venture funding lasts, because the purpose of that funding at that stage is to attract users and impress the next round of funders with how pleasant/intuitive/efficient/ethical/good value the service is. that's the stage where they're handing out freebies and bowling over influencers, and every ingredient in the box is fresh and high quality and locally sourced. wow what a good deal, what a great system!!! why hasn't anyone done this before? the answer is because it's unsustainable by design. they rack up good reviews, sign on a billion new users, attract new funding from a bunch of much more credulous investors, and then gut all of the expensive parts. portions get smaller, ingredients get worse, packaging gets flimsier, prices go up, freebies turn into "5% off your first 9 boxes when you invite 3 friends", and customer service vanishes.

with social media (and platforms like discord) the logic is the same, it's just a little less glaringly obvious to the end user because they're not coming home to leaking packages of rancid chicken on the doorstep. bluesky has an advantage over tiny operations like cohost because it was founded by a billionaire making a point for the sake of his own image. it got a really significant chunk of startup funding, and the owner had existing connections and rep in the space to attract more. That's why it has survived the goldrush period, why it still feels good to use, and why users who have been burned so many times before are finally accepting it as a stable, reliable option. It's still in its venture capital honeymoon phase where the only thing worth spending money on is making the service attractive to users.

What I expect we will see next, with another mass influx of users from twitter and new funding from a rogue's gallery of tech venture sickos led by Blockchain Capital is a strong ramp up into monetising that userbase. They've already been pretty forthright about how they plan to do this, and I think it's a solid roadmap of how Bluesky will bloat and decay over the next few years:

this is a huge lol. don't worry, we're not going to hyperfinancialize the social experience through NFTs. the thing even crypto freaks started feigning amnesia about a year ago. real "our health conscious sodas are 100% arsenic free" messaging here. They know perfectly well that rubes users are suspicious of their typical 5 dimensional tech finance chess games and are patting our hands about last week's bogeymen so nobody worries too hard about whatever 'decentralised developer ecosystem' just happens to be helmed by a bunch of crypto guys. this definitely means something good and based and not a google-like single sign on user data harvesting operation.

This is the same shit that's currently rotting the floorboards of discord. Bluntly, there is no way to run a platform on this scale without gating functionality behind paid services. Discord has been squeezing free-tier file uploads and call quality etc. down steadily and cranking up subscription costs over the last year or two, throwing in chaff like animated avatar frames to try and justify the user cost. They're also doing the same misdirection thing again here, pointing to Thing We All Hate to deflect from thing we might not like very much when they do it. Booo elon booo we all hate elon!!! wait how do we feel about subscription models again,

watch out for this to kill porn on bsky like it has killed porn on every other social platform 👍 boooo we hate elon boooo stupid idiot and his 'everything app' booooo wait why do you need my tax information, what's that about mastercard,

Look, we are all aware social media is a money pit. Let's not forget dorsey was looking to sell twitter in the first place, long before elon's very public plunge into total online derangement. Subscription services are not going to plug the hole, so we are gradually going to see more and more spaghetti thrown at the wall while early funders shuffle cards and do their pyramid scheme bit bringing in stupider and stupider investments. this is the window in which bluesky will be temporarily worth using for us, for the idiot public, the poorly rendered crowd jpegs in the background of their venture capital MOBA. it's in their interests to slow and pad the decline as much as possible, because that is how they get maximally paid.

Given the scale of the money involved, and dorsey's weird ego investment, I think bluesky will probably manage a controlled drift for a good few years before it gets really bloated and painful. and by then we will all be so used to the *checks notes* decentralised developer ecosystem that we'll just be posting through it, watching another generation of columnists call another collapsing platform 'their beloved hellsite' and passing around that meme about not getting out of our chairs no sir until idk we all get on a fediverse neurolink alternative to stick it to the elongated muskrat and our brains pop peacefully in our sleep. which I guess is the closest thing to viability any social media platform can achieve.

anyway diogenes the cynic is also on bluesky

[castillon02]

Tim reviews Jason's operations management and makes a suggestion.

"Your first move: hire a head of sanitation," Tim said.

"You think a janitor's gonna solve my suddenly-successful-startup problems? What, by sweeping them away?" Jason rolled his eyes.

Tim steepled his fingers. “The good news,” he said, “is that your drug distribution and community norms enforcement hierarchy is very clear. You also have people doing marketing, program management, HR, facilities, and admin. Your system of rotating duties when people get injured isn’t bad—people generally benefit from cross-training—but you should formalize the top positions and compensate your new leadership team. Including sanitation.” 

“Sure, sure, I'll just tell one of my guys their job is to be head shit-scrubber instead of a badass neighborhood protector!" Jason threw up his hands.

Tim raised his eyebrows.

“It’s bad enough getting them to clean up a crime scene when they’re on my literal shit list! A couple of them thought that lighting the building on fire was an easier way to get it to stop smelling bad and having DNA. Guess who had to add five new slides to his powerpoint about evidence disposal?" Jason glared.

Tim grimaced. "I had an intern in the office who thought that he could just throw trash off his desk for the cleaning staff to pick up."

He and Jason shared a commiserating look that silently said, We were both stupid enough to work with the League of Assassins, and even we wouldn't do that.

“Anyway," Tim continued, "since you're dealing with...that...you can just hire an outside party. Lots of people in Gotham know how to clean up dead bodies and keep their mouths shut. I can advertise the position and send you the likeliest candidates for an interview. I’ll have to incorporate you, of course, but I’ve had the paperwork ready since I got back from the Middle East.” 

“Incorporate me?” 

“Red Hood LLC, technically."

Jason's breathing became calculatedly even.

"Once you’re legit in the eyes of the law, we can work on squaring away everyone’s taxes and keep you from getting Capone’d.” 

“I’m as legit as one of Two-Face’s two-dollar bills!” 

“Yeah, but when you’re an LLC, all your crimes are white-collar crimes, and no one cares about those.” Tim shrugged.

“...Pretty sure that’s not how that works, bud.” 

“It’s how the court of public opinion works. And if anyone tries to say that Red Hood, CEO of Red Hood LLC, and Red Hood, notorious vigilante, are the same person? Tell them to prove it. So what if you have the same outfit? It’s a free country and people can wear what they want. And if they ever get your DNA results, Oracle says no they didn't.”

Jason tilted his head and started smiling. "You want Red Hood to be the Scarlet Pimpernel and Percy Blakeney. At the same time."

"The more blatant you are about it, the better. Rub elbows with Gotham's elite and tell them that you can't imagine why someone would let a Crime Alley vigilante ruin their ability to wear a red hood as a fashion statement, but in your company, people have spines. Especially when they're job creators. If you play your cards right, red headgear will be back in fashion."

"And then?"

"And then," Tim's eyes gleamed, "you start selling merch."

"Oh, shit." Jason's smile turned into a full-on smirk.

"On a sliding scale, of course."

"Those nepo babies are gonna pay me so much money to look cool."

Tim smiled. "And that's how hiring a head shit-scrubber is going to mitigate your high growth and cash flow problems."

[desiree-uk]

DXVK Tips and Troubleshooting: Launching The Sims 3 with DXVK

A big thank you to @heldhram for additional information from his recent DXVK/Reshade tutorial! ◀ Depending on how you launch the game to play may affect how DXVK is working.

During my usage and testing of DXVK, I noticed substantial varying of committed and working memory usage and fps rates while monitoring my game with Resource Monitor, especially when launching the game with CCMagic or S3MO compared to launching from TS3W.exe/TS3.exe.

It seems DXVK doesn't work properly - or even at all - when the game is launched with CCM/S3MO instead of TS3W.exe/TS3.exe. I don't know if this is also the case using other launchers from EA/Steam/LD and misc launchers, but it might explain why some players using DXVK don't see any improvement using it.

DXVK injects itself into the game exe, so perhaps using launchers bypasses the injection. From extensive testing, I'm inclined to think this is the case.

Someone recently asked me how do we know DXVK is really working. A very good question! lol. I thought as long as the cache showed up in the bin folder it was working, but that was no guarantee it was injected every single time at startup. Until I saw Heldhram's excellent guide to using DXVK with Reshade DX9, I relied on my gaming instincts and dodgy eyesight to determine if it was. 🤭

Using the environment variable Heldhram referred to in his guide, a DXVK Hud is added to the upper left hand corner of your game screen to show it's injected and working, showing the DXVK version, the graphics card version and driver and fps.

This led me to look further into this and was happy to see that you could add an additional line to the DXVK config file to show this and other relevant information on the HUD such as DXVK version, fps, memory usage, gpu driver and more. So if you want to make sure that DXVK is actually injected, on the config file, add the info starting with:

dxvk.hud =

After '=', add what you want to see. So 'version' (without quotes) shows the DXVK version. dxvk.hud = version

You could just add the fps by adding 'fps' instead of 'version' if you want.

The DXVK Github page lists all the information you could add to the HUD. It accepts a comma-separated list for multiple options:

devinfo: Displays the name of the GPU and the driver version.

fps: Shows the current frame rate.

frametimes: Shows a frame time graph.

submissions: Shows the number of command buffers submitted per frame.

drawcalls: Shows the number of draw calls and render passes per frame.

pipelines: Shows the total number of graphics and compute pipelines.

descriptors: Shows the number of descriptor pools and descriptor sets.

memory: Shows the amount of device memory allocated and used.

allocations: Shows detailed memory chunk suballocation info.

gpuload: Shows estimated GPU load. May be inaccurate.

version: Shows DXVK version.

api: Shows the D3D feature level used by the application.

cs: Shows worker thread statistics.

compiler: Shows shader compiler activity

samplers: Shows the current number of sampler pairs used [D3D9 Only]

ffshaders: Shows the current number of shaders generated from fixed function state [D3D9 Only]

swvp: Shows whether or not the device is running in software vertex processing mode [D3D9 Only]

scale=x: Scales the HUD by a factor of x (e.g. 1.5)

opacity=y: Adjusts the HUD opacity by a factor of y (e.g. 0.5, 1.0 being fully opaque).

Additionally, DXVK_HUD=1 has the same effect as DXVK_HUD=devinfo,fps, and DXVK_HUD=full enables all available HUD elements.

desiree-uk notes: The site is for the latest version of DXVK, so it shows the line typed as 'DXVK_HUD=devinfo,fps' with underscore and no spaces, but this didn't work for me. If it also doesn't work for you, try it in lowercase like this: dxvk.hud = version Make sure there is a space before and after the '=' If adding multiple HUD options, seperate them by a comma such as: dxvk.hud = fps,memory,api,version

The page also shows some other useful information regarding DXVK and it's cache file, it's worth a read. (https://github.com/doitsujin/dxvk)

My config file previously showed the DXVK version but I changed it to only show fps. Whatever it shows, it's telling you DXVK is working! DXVK version:

DXVK FPS:

The HUD is quite noticeable, but it's not too obstructive if you keep the info small. It's only when you enable the full HUD using this line: dxvk.hud = full you'll see it takes up practically half the screen! 😄 Whatever is shown, you can still interact with the screen and sims queue.

So while testing this out I noticed that the HUD wasn't showing up on the screen when launching the game via CCM and S3MO but would always show when clicking TS3W.exe. The results were consistent, with DXVK showing that it was running via TS3W.exe, the commited memory was low and steady, the fps didn't drop and there was no lag or stuttereing. I could spend longer in CAS and in game altogether, longer in my older larger save games and the RAM didn't spike as much when saving the game. Launching via CCM/S3MO, the results were sporadic, very high RAM spikes, stuttering and fps rates jumping up and down. There wasn't much difference from DXVK not being installed at all in my opinion.

You can test this out yourself, first with whatever launcher you use to start your game and then without it, clicking TS3.exe or TS3W.exe, making sure the game is running as admin. See if the HUD shows up or not and keep an eye on the memory usage with Resource Monitor running and you'll see the difference. You can delete the line from the config if you really can't stand the sight of it, but you can be sure DXVK is working when you launch the game straight from it's exe and you see smooth, steady memory usage as you play. Give it a try and add in the comments if it works for you or not and which launcher you use! 😊 Other DXVK information:

Make TS3 Run Smoother with DXVK ◀ - by @criisolate How to Use DXVK with Sims 3 ◀ - guide from @nornities and @desiree-uk

How to run The Sims 3 with DXVK & Reshade (Direct3D 9.0c) ◀ - by @heldhram

DXVK - Github ◀

[champstorymedia]

Blueprint for Success: Essential Tips for Aspiring Entrepreneurs Building Their Business

Introduction Are you an aspiring entrepreneur looking to build a successful business from the ground up? If so, you’ve come to the right place. In this article, we will discuss the essential tips for achieving success in the world of entrepreneurship. From creating a solid business plan to building a strong team, we’ll cover all the key aspects you need to consider on your journey to…

[entrepreneurial1era]

Beyond Entrepreneurship: Turning Your Business into an Enduring Great Company

Beyond Entrepreneurship: Turning Your Business into an Enduring Great Company

Starting a business is one thing, building one that lasts is something entirely different. In the early stages, most entrepreneurs are laser-focused on the fundamentals: developing a viable product, finding market fit, securing funding, and gaining traction. These are critical milestones but they represent only the beginning of the journey.

Once a company achieves initial success, many founders are faced with an entirely new challenge: how to grow without losing direction, culture, or clarity. It’s one thing to hustle your way to early wins, but quite another to evolve into a sustainable, values-driven, high-impact business that can thrive for decades.

That’s where the philosophy of Beyond Entrepreneurship steps in.

Coined and expanded upon by legendary author Jim Collins in his book BE 2.0: Turning Your Business into an Enduring Great Company, this approach moves beyond the traditional startup mindset. It challenges founders not just to think like entrepreneurs but to lead like builders of greatness. It asks important questions:

What does it take to create a company that stands the test of time?

How can you scale without breaking your culture?

How do you keep your purpose alive as your business grows?

And how do you lead with both humility and unshakable resolve?

In today’s hyper-competitive, fast-moving market, longevity is the ultimate advantage. And yet, it's often overlooked in favor of speed and short-term gains. The truth is, the most iconic companies, the ones that continue to innovate, inspire, and influence aren’t built on quick wins. They’re built on clarity of purpose, disciplined leadership, and strategic evolution.

At Entrepreneurial Era Magazine, we believe this long-term thinking is what separates fleeting success from enduring greatness. That’s why we’ve made it a cornerstone of our editorial focus spotlighting the founders, frameworks, and philosophies that help businesses go the distance.

If you're a founder who’s ready to think bigger than the next quarter, and you're asking yourself how to future-proof your business, Beyond Entrepreneurship is your blueprint and we’re here to help you bring it to life.

The Jim Collins Framework: BE 2.0

The original Beyond Entrepreneurship, co-authored by Jim Collins and Bill Lazier, was a powerful but often overlooked gem in the world of business literature. With the release of the updated edition BE 2.0: Turning Your Business into an Enduring Great Company Collins breathes new life into the original work, integrating decades of research, real-world case studies, and strategic insights that go far beyond startup fundamentals.

BE 2.0 is not your typical business book filled with surface-level tactics or fleeting buzzwords. Instead, it serves as a comprehensive roadmap for founders and business leaders who want to build companies that not only survive, but thrive for generations. Collins doesn’t just talk about success he breaks down what sustained greatness looks like and how to achieve it deliberately.

The book presents a powerful set of guiding principles rooted in years of research into what separates enduring companies from the rest. These principles include:

🔭 Crafting a visionary purpose that becomes the north star for decision-making. Collins stresses that great companies are not driven solely by profit but by a deep, enduring reason for existing something that galvanized teams and guides strategy across every phase of growth.

🧱 Building a values-based culture from day one. Culture isn’t something you tack on later, it's baked into the DNA of the organization. BE 2.0 emphasizes the importance of defining and protecting your company’s core values early, ensuring that they shape hiring decisions, customer experiences, and leadership behavior.

🧠 Developing Level 5 leadership. This concept, introduced in Good to Great and expanded in BE 2.0, refers to a unique blend of personal humility and fierce professional will. These are leaders who put the mission and the team above ego and who consistently make disciplined, high-impact decisions over the long haul.

⚙️ Creating systems that scale, so your business can grow without chaos. Collins walks readers through how to implement structures that support innovation, maintain alignment, and enable adaptability so you're not constantly rebuilding as you expand.

🧭 Outlasting competitors in turbulent markets. Perhaps most important of all, BE 2.0 equips leaders to build companies that are resilient, responsive, and rooted, able to navigate change, seize opportunity, and come out stronger on the other side.

At Entrepreneurial Era Magazine, we frequently reference Collins' framework because it aligns perfectly with the mindset shift we encourage: from founder to long-term leader. In a world where many businesses rise fast and fall faster, BE 2.0 provides the wisdom and tools to help you build something truly exceptional and enduring.

Why This Matters for Founders Today

In today’s high-speed, hyper-competitive startup landscape, entrepreneurs are constantly bombarded with the latest trends, growth hacks, and “overnight success” formulas. The pressure to scale quickly and pivot rapidly is intense. While speed and adaptability are important, true business greatness isn’t built on viral moments or trendy tactics, it's built on principles that stand the test of time.

Jim Collins’ work reminds us that endurance beats excitement. The companies that achieve long-term relevance don’t just chase what’s popular today they build from a place of discipline, purpose, and strategic clarity. They lay solid foundations before stacking growth, and they stay true to their core mission even as the world around them shifts.

At Entrepreneurial Era Magazine, we’ve seen this play out across countless founder journeys. The entrepreneurs we admire most the ones who scale with integrity and consistency aren’t necessarily the loudest or fastest movers. They’re the ones who think long-term. They design cultures that last, lead with humility, and invest in systems that outlive any single product or campaign.

Many of the founders we interviewed and spotlight didn’t start with massive resources or flawless plans. What set them apart was a deep commitment to building something that matters, something worth passing on. They didn’t just want to “win the market.” They wanted to build a legacy.

Enduring companies don’t merely react to the environment; they read it, anticipate it, and strategically evolve through it. They are proactive, not reactive. Resilient, not rigid. Focused, not frantic. And they are built by founders who choose the long game, even when the short-term gains are tempting.

This mindset shift from hustling for traction to building for the future is exactly what Beyond Entrepreneurship champions. And it’s at the heart of everything we share through Entrepreneurial Era Magazine. Because we believe the next wave of legendary companies will come from those who build with intention, lead with vision, and grow with purpose.

Entrepreneurial Era’s Take on Long-Term Success

At Entrepreneurial Era Magazine, we believe that building a lasting company isn’t just an ideal it’s a discipline, one that can be learned, refined, and mastered. That’s why we go beyond surface-level advice and dive deep into the philosophies and strategies that empower entrepreneurs to think beyond the next quarter and start planning for the next decade.

Each month, our editorial team curates actionable insights drawn directly from foundational texts like BE 2.0 and real-world startup case studies. We don’t just quote the greats, we show how modern founders are putting those principles into practice in today’s fast-changing business environment.

Here’s what you’ll find inside every issue:

🔍 Leadership Spotlights We feature in-depth interviews with startup leaders who are building more than just scalable products; they're building resilient teams, strong cultures, and organizations with clear missions. These stories offer firsthand wisdom on navigating uncertainty while holding onto your vision.

📈 Scaling Strategies Our growth features highlight how smart founders prioritize systems, structure, and sustainability over rapid (and risky) expansion. From operational frameworks to talent development and customer experience, we spotlight how long-term thinkers scale without burning out or breaking their business.

🌍 Startup Ecosystem Features From Silicon Valley to rising hubs around the world, we explore how ecosystem dynamics, mentorship, funding access, community support, and policy shape business longevity. Learn how founders can tap into the right environments and partnerships to go further, faster, and stronger.

In every article, our goal is to bridge the gap between inspiration and execution. Whether you’re a first-time founder or a seasoned entrepreneur, Entrepreneurial Era Magazine equips you with the tools, context, and clarity to build something meaningful and make it last.

Key Takeaways for Founders Who Want to Go Beyond

If you're ready to evolve from the day-to-day hustle of startup life into the visionary role of a long-term builder, it starts with a shift in mindset and a commitment to play the long game. The most enduring companies didn’t just grow fast they grew smart, guided by a deeper purpose, intentional culture, and strategic structure.

Here are five actionable principles that can help you transition from founder to legacy leader:

🔍 1. Define Your Core Purpose Beyond Profits

Growth is important, but why you grow matters more. Clarify the deeper mission behind your business. What problem are you solving? Whose life are you improving? A clear purpose becomes your compass in moments of doubt and your rallying cry during scale.

🤝 2. Build a Culture That Lasts Hire for Values, Not Just Skills

Your team is your company’s backbone. Prioritize hiring people who align with your values, not just your current needs. Culture is what scales trust, fuels retention, and turns a good company into a great one. It’s not just a “nice to have” it’s your foundation for endurance.

⚙️ 3. Invest in Systems Early Stop Firefighting, Start Scaling

If your business can’t run without you, it’s a bottleneck. Start building repeatable systems and processes that allow your business to grow without burning you out. From operations to customer experience, create infrastructure that supports both agility and consistency.

🎯 4. Focus on Customers, Not Competitors

While others obsess over the competition, focus on delivering unique, undeniable value to your customers. Innovation rooted in service and authenticity creates a moat no competitor can cross. Your goal isn't to win a race, it's to change the game.

📚 5. Read, Learn, and Stay Strategic

Founders who lead enduring companies are students for life. Books like Beyond Entrepreneurship offer timeless frameworks, while regular reading of Entrepreneurial Era Magazine gives you access to modern insights, case studies, and leadership strategies that keep you grounded, focused, and ahead of the curve.

Ready to Build a Company That Lasts?

Don’t just aim for quick wins, aim for greatness. In a world obsessed with rapid growth and overnight success, it takes boldness and clarity to build something that truly endures. Whether you're launching your first venture or scaling a thriving business, the real path to longevity lies in intentional leadership, purpose-driven culture, and a long-term mindset.

📘 The journey isn’t always easy but you don’t have to take it alone.

✅ Subscribe to Entrepreneurial Era Magazine and get exclusive access to the tools, strategies, and stories that empower visionary founders to go beyond the startup phase and build companies that evolve, inspire, and stand the test of time.

Your legacy starts with what you build today. Let us help you build something that lasts.

FAQs

1. What makes Beyond Entrepreneurship different from other startup books?

Beyond Entrepreneurship (BE 2.0) isn’t just a guide to launching a startup, it's a roadmap for building a company that lasts. Unlike books focused on fast growth or early traction, BE 2.0 dives into the principles of leadership, culture, purpose, and long-term strategy. Jim Collins combines data-driven insights with timeless wisdom, making it ideal for founders who want to build mission-driven, resilient companies. It’s about shifting from hustle to legacy and crafting a vision that can adapt and thrive over decades, not just years. That’s why Entrepreneurial Era Magazine often references it in our leadership and growth strategy features.

2. How does Entrepreneurial Era Magazine help startup founders?

Entrepreneurial Era Magazine delivers real-world business insights specifically tailored to entrepreneurs and growth-focused founders. Each issue includes expert interviews, startup spotlights, and deep dives into strategic topics like leadership, scaling, product-market fit, and ecosystem building. Unlike generic business blogs, EE curates actionable lessons from experienced entrepreneurs and connects them with modern-day challenges. Whether you're bootstrapping, raising capital, or scaling systems, our content helps you think more strategically and execute more confidently. Our subscribers stay ahead of the curve by applying proven frameworks, avoiding common pitfalls, and evolving with the rapidly changing entrepreneurial landscape.

3. Why is long-term vision important in a startup?

A long-term vision gives your startup direction beyond initial goals or hype. While early traction and funding can fuel short-term success, only a well-defined mission can keep a business grounded during uncertainty. Vision helps attract the right people, guide decision-making, and shape a sustainable company culture. Startups without long-term clarity often burn out or lose relevance. With a strong vision, founders build something bigger than themselves, something that can evolve and endure. That’s why books like BE 2.0 and insights from Entrepreneurial Era Magazine emphasize vision as a cornerstone of strategic leadership.

4. How do I build a startup culture that scales?

Scalable culture starts with defining clear values early on and consistently living them. Hiring people who align with your values (not just your job descriptions) is crucial. As your team grows, systematize those values through rituals, feedback loops, and leadership behaviors. Culture isn’t just “feel-good” work, it's the glue that holds teams together during pressure and transition. Strong cultures drive performance, retention, and adaptability. Entrepreneurial Era Magazine regularly features founders who’ve scaled their teams while staying true to their core culture, helping readers replicate their success through intentional design and leadership.

5. What are some common mistakes that prevent long-term success?

Founders often focus too much on short-term wins like vanity metrics, fast fundraising, or chasing trends. Others neglect building systems, ignore culture, or resist adapting to market shifts. These mistakes can stall growth or lead to burnout. Another big one? Failing to clarify purpose and vision. Companies without direction lose focus or fizzle out. At Entrepreneurial Era Magazine, we help entrepreneurs identify and avoid these common traps through expert-backed content, real-world examples, and frameworks from books like Beyond Entrepreneurship and Good to Great turning short-lived startups into lasting companies.

6. How can I create a business that runs without me?

To build a self-sustaining business, focus on creating repeatable systems and empowering others to lead. Document your processes, build leadership capacity within your team, and define metrics for accountability. It’s about shifting from doing to designing so the business can grow beyond your direct input. This allows you to step back and focus on vision, partnerships, or innovation. Books like The E-Myth Revisited and tools shared in Entrepreneurial Era Magazine can help you create this infrastructure early so you’re not the bottleneck in your own business.

7. How can startup founders deal with uncertainty and change?

Embracing uncertainty is a key trait of successful founders. The best way to deal with change is to stay flexible in execution while staying firm in purpose. Develop mental resilience, build a strong advisory circle, and keep refining your strategy with feedback from customers and your team. Reading the right material like The Hard Thing About Hard Things or The Innovator’s Dilemma gives context and tools. At Entrepreneurial Era Magazine, we profile founders who’ve navigated pivots, recessions, and industry disruptions, sharing their stories and strategies so you can apply them to your own journey.

8. How important is the startup ecosystem to long-term success?

Your environment can accelerate or stall your growth. Being part of a supportive ecosystem filled with mentors, investors, collaborators, and learning communities gives you access to resources, feedback, and credibility. Ecosystems create momentum and open doors that solo efforts can’t match. Books like The Startup Community Way explore this in depth, and Entrepreneurial Era Magazine frequently highlights how founders leverage their local and global ecosystems to grow smarter and faster. Founders who engage with their environment proactively tend to build more resilient and enduring companies.

9. What’s the best way to scale a startup sustainably?

Sustainable scaling means growing without breaking your team, systems, or customer experience. This involves setting clear priorities, tracking meaningful metrics, and refining your operations before expanding. Avoid over-hiring or over-promising just to chase growth. Instead, develop a roadmap that includes people, processes, and culture. Books like Traction and Blitzscaling offer structured approaches, while Entrepreneurial Era Magazine shares how modern founders scale with stability by focusing on long-term performance instead of short-term hype.

10. Why should I subscribe to Entrepreneurial Era Magazine?

If you're serious about building a business that endures, Entrepreneurial Era Magazine is your monthly strategic advantage. We combine timeless lessons from the world’s top business books with real-time insights from active entrepreneurs. Each issue is packed with growth frameworks, founder interviews, and actionable content across leadership, culture, funding, operations, and innovation. Our readers are not just looking for hacks, they're building legacies. Subscribing means staying ahead of the curve, avoiding common pitfalls, and learning directly from those who've turned startups into long-lasting companies. It’s your blueprint for smarter, stronger, and more sustainable entrepreneurship.

[patricia-taxxon]

When I was a teenager, I had this idea for a movie that could never be made. Basically it'd be a small scale story about a girl who lives in a fantasy village, with a small scale conflict that ends with the main character failing and being banished for whatever reason. However, this would only encompass the first 40 minutes or so of the film, it would continue for much longer after that, showing the further adventures of this girl as she wanders aimlessly coming across new dangers and conflicts in an episodic manner. But then even this would begin to dissipate, the conflicts being solved by running away, or hiding, or just getting lost someplace else. Hours and hours would come to pass of almost nothing happening, just following this character wandering through increasingly abstract terrain.

I envisioned it as a representation of what long movies felt like to me when I was very young, Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind was so long I could barely hold the ending and the beginning in the same place in my head. I remembered skipping to the end and feeling like I was out in space, someplace I could never have gotten by just watching the movie all the way through. This visceral sense of scale is harder to come by as an adult who knows how long days are. I've experienced it a couple times though, like skipping halfway into that video of the windows 7 startup sound stretched to 24 hours and realizing the remaining half-day of sound was literally just the jingle's reverb tail echoing slowly into the distance, skipping halfway through that 6 hour flat earth documentary and seeing footage of the guy just idly panning through an image of stars & feeling like I was stranded in the middle of the arctic ocean, discovering Bull of Heaven for the first time, etc. It's a very precious sensation that I cherish every time I get to experience it, a multi hour project that feels immense even in its isolated parts.

so then i made techdog.

[whereserpentswalk]

Every alien civilization has defining traits. All across known space you see species being referred to as having certain traits as part of their civilization. Warrior species, merchent species, scientific species. But almost none of those stereotypes predated their invention of hyperspace gates, almost every time a species gains such traits after its exposed to the rest of the galaxy and has to define itself based on how other species interact with it. Early in their development species have a balance of most traits, and usually end up only gaining a niche once they're part of the galactic economy.

For example, the Reneyth, the archtypical proud warrior species, weren't thought of as war like early in their history. Any physical adaptations people thought was originally evolved for war had much different purposes on their homeworld. But still, they are strong, and powerful. And because of that when they joined the galaxy's economy as a new race with few natrual recourses and little knowledge of the broader situation beyond their homeworld, they could only find work as mercenaries. It's all anyone wanted to hire them for. Some resisted at first but by now the business interests of the galactic megacorporations have made it so that mercenary work was the only real economy they could export to the rest of the galaxy. Now their culture surrounds war entirely, to the point where even their children are raised knowing that they will one day fight and likely meet a brutal end, and to the galaxy this is profitable.

Or take the Nimuryians. They're thought of as a race of peaceful clerics but it's really just because of how they made first contact. They were invaded, and though they weren't conquered most of their species died in that conflict. After finally being able to have peaceful contact with the rest of the galaxy the destruction to their economy left them in a state of constant poverty, unable to export themselves to do anything profitable. So they turned to their religion, and took an extremely conservative shift, killing off most of their planet's marginalized groups and letting their preists basically run their government. They now make what money they can selling their culture to tourists. And people just assume both their poverty and their conservativism is part of their blood, and that it would be wrong to try to change it.

Even the relatively well off Rexxins weren't originally a industrial race. They just happened to be on a planet with a lot of unique recourses, a large population, and a good place on hyperspace routes. Their planet becoming filled with factories and industry, with its many poor working in their constant industrial sites, and their many rich prospering well off of such things, is all due to the megacorporations being able to profit off of a society that was once no more industrial then any other planet of its scale. They never asked for their sky to be so rich with smog that no soul on their homeworld will ever see the star that they orbit. But it's better to have too much work then too little.

Even humans, as monstrous as they are, weren't always such an abnormal race. They might be an ancient race but we know what they are. Before they were nomadic cyborgs, raiding some, trading with others, and almost never touching down on planets, they were just a normal species. They were tricked into selling their homeworld to a startup upon first contact, in those ancient days. And they were forced to leave their homeworld very soon after. They only live exclusively in spaceships because they have no land of their own. They only modified their bodies in such horrifying ways, and turned to artificial reproduction, because that's what they had to do to survive. This may sound odd to some, because it happened so very long ago, but there were once humans who were born and died surrounded by nature, once lived alongside animals related to them, now only remembered in their art and mythology. There were once human lovers, who kissed under a golden sun. There was nothing about their species that made them what they are today before they lost their homeworld. But such is fate.

[newbusinessideas]

How to Start a Soft Drink Business on Small Scale

🎥 Ready to turn your soft drink dreams into reality? 🥤✨ Discover the step-by-step process of How to Start a Soft Drink Manufacturing Business on Small Scale! 💼💡 Let's make your beverage business go viral! #EntrepreneurLife #SmallScaleBusiness

Soft Drink Business – Soft drinks are popular beverages that contain sugar, flavourings, and carbonated water. They are loved by people of all ages and are available locally and abroad. Soft drinks from many foreign companies are also available in our country. Soft drinks have become an integral part of people’s lives in India, providing refreshments after a hot and tiring day. The soft drink…

[theme-park-concepts]

I know theme parks are a lot more expensive to make than movies and tv, however when I see the overall scale of the film industry and how small themed experiences are in comparison - can’t help but think there’s massive untapped potential even just within the states.

Like it’s not uncommon for a SMALL movie to cost 5-10 million these days. small production companies will make several of these a year. And big companies hell - these days a 100 million dollar movie is cheap. You could absolutely build GOOD themed entertainment for these costs

And honestly I’d argue the potential return is even greater considering most films don’t make their money back. Just need the people with money to see it.

Every once in a while I think about how the real barrier to more themed entertainment is just how complicated it is to get a project off the ground and those startup costs and complexities. And maybe there’s a world where a theme park could follow live theatre model

Like a main company builds the park itself and infrastructure, maybe even show buildings, but individual smaller business endeavors do individual attractions - not unlike a fair, worlds fair, or even how Knotts became what it is.