Harley Finkelstein

You see what they're doing.

I sent a note over to David, who's the CEO of Roblox, and I was just explaining to them that the way my kids use Roblox is actually, yes, they're playing a game, but rather the game is almost...

passively in the background.

They're having a conversation.

And rather than looking at each other, they're looking at this game together, kind of playing.

But the actual, at least for my kids who are, you know, Bailey's eight years old, Roblox for her is simply a central chat room.

It is not actually about the game itself.

And rather than staring at the person's face on screen as being the main focal point, you know, the face is kind of in the bottom right corner.

The main focal point is in some random game.

and and rather you know it's maybe and david of course knows this but i was like what you've created is like a social network and like you call it a you know game ecosystem and all that but watching how people are using this technology is is remarkable and uh it's i think if you are a techno optimist and you're paying attention all these things that are happening it is tough not to be incredibly optimistic about like where we are and the world we're living in right now it's it's amazing

I think about this term, I mentioned a few times, life's work.

I think about this term, joie de vivre, which is joy of life, which is a beautiful French term that is, you know, for me, like Montreal is the joie de vivre capital.

Um, I want more of those things in my life.

I want to do more of my life's work.

I want to have more joie de vivre in my life.

And I don't want to, I don't want to sacrifice either of those things.

Um, I think that's what success looks like.

The, the, the harmonization of joie de vivre and life's work would be, um,

That would make me successful, I think.

So actually, I think this idea of the creator economy, it's just the economy, except that there's this really cool advantage, which is that you have a built-in audience for your products. And maybe third of all, just sort of on the larger companies, a lot of companies either never sold direct to consumer. If you think about the CPGs, for example, Heinz Ketchup has a store on Shopify.