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Publishing is broken.
More than 80 percent of Americans feel they have a book in them. Only about 1 percent ever publish it. The journey demands time, money, and flexibility most people don’t have. Advances are rare — and usually inadequate.
For those who’re able to pull it off, the chances of their book being discovered are abysmal: 9 out of 10 titles published by major publishers fail to be profitable. Only a small percentage of traditionally-published books have a marketing budget, and those are reserved for authors and ideas which have already been "discovered." What about self-publishing? It only gets worse. Self-publishing platforms like Amazon KDP don’t show authors where sales come from. Without attribution, marketing becomes guesswork.
The solution is simple: let anyone publish and let anyone discover and easily share with their social graph, who trust them to make authentic recommendations. And that's what we're doing. We're building an AI publishing platform and leveraging social, direct-to-customer commerce. The job of the author has always been curation – curating the right information, words, and imagery to communicate an idea worthy of an audience. AI enhances this ability. Our vision is to resolve the systemic inaccessibility in publishing, enabling a literary revolution, where the best ideas reach the masses.
More about Flowerburst and the four-phase plan we're currently executing can be found here.
The internet as we know it today was born out of a set of standardized rules which allow computers to communicate with each other in a network. These rules, together, form the TCP/IP protocol suite.
As we enter the age of quantum computing, AI, and automation, we need a new set of rules to allow all types of devices -- autonomous vehicles and their sensors, pacemakers, baby monitors, even "smart pills" -- to collaborate with each other in an open and secure way which can't be corrupted or abused.
Technology is not inherently good or evil; it's all about the intention of the person using it. Beyond creates a trusted environment which allows technology to be used for good during times when it seems like the pendulum might be swinging the other way.
You can read more about the founding philosophy of Beyond Protocol here and some of our hypotheses here.
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ink was started from my apartment in San Francisco. My Co-Founder, Denis Benic, and my vision was to create an evolved version of Fedex Office using modern technology, outside-the-box product design, and a memorable customer experience. Our intention is overtime to build technologies and products which stand out, delight, and empower customers to express themselves -- be it through photo, prose, postcards, etc. Our go-to-market was higher-ed.
In a blog post I published in 2019 entitled, "A Case Worth Reviewing: 'Print Kiosks' in Higher-Ed and the Digital Printing Industry," I discuss why, out of all industries, we decided to innovate in printing and the product problem we solved.