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As anything scales too effectively - from fashion to restaurants to music - the market opens for more non-scalable alternatives. Once Starbucks opens on every block, many of us crave the artisanal coffee shop. Once our favorite Italian restaurant becomes a chain of three, we grow tired of it. Why? First, so much of what we buy and do is tied up in ... See more

The draw of big cities, like New York, London, LA, or Tokyo is that they are made of a series of distinct, colorful neighborhoods, each with their own identity, vibe, and demographic. What makes them different are the small, local, mom-and-pop shops—not the chains of identical mass retail stores.

ideas and taste will (finally) be as (if not more) important and differentiating than skill.

Now that companies like Shopify have turned software into a commodity, what distinguishes you isn’t whether you can write code, but whether you have something to say and an audience to say it to.