This serial novel showcases my much-praised design of a next-gen variant of LinkedIn.

You can capitalize on ​new equity-crowdfunding laws to become a part-owner of my planned startup.

Praise for a previous version of said design

From a 2004 ​email​ sent to ​me​ by Amazon.com’s first Director of Personalization​:

Frank, I just spent about an hour surfing around your website with a bit of amazement. I run a little company . . . We are a team of folks who worked together at Amazon.com developing that company’s personalization and recommendations team and systems. We spent about 1.5 years thinking about what we wanted to build next. We thought a lot about online education tools. We thought a lot about classified ads and job networks. We thought a

lot about reputation systems. We thought a bit about personalized advertising systems. We thought a lot about blogging and social networking systems. . . . I guess I’m mostly just fascinated that we’ve been working a very similar vein to the one you describe, without having a solid name for it (we call it “the age of the amateur” or “networks of shared experiences” instead of CLLCS [i.e., customized lifelong learning and career services], but believe me, we are talking about the same patterns and markets, if not in exactly the same way). Thanks for sharing what you have—it’s fascinating stuff.

FUN fact

Popularizing an implementation of my LinkedIn variant is foundational for establishing the eBay of customized education (CE). (For details, see chapter one of ​PRC​.)

Praise for my early work on CE

From a 1998 ​email​ sent to me by the then Manager

of the Learning Sciences and Technology Group at Microsoft Research:

Frank, you are a good man. Have you thought about joining this team? Your only alternative, of course, is venture capital. But their usual models require getting rid of the “originator” within the first eighteen months.

Re: the making of ​PRC

Since 2006 my primary focus has been learning how to run marketing as a profit center. More precisely, how to manage an analytics-​savvy​ variant of ​Alloy Entertainment​, a ​book packager​ and television- programming producer that was ​acquired​ for $100M in 2012. In 2011 I became aware that the U.S. Congress was working to legalize equity crowdfunding.

Re: the new equity-crowdfunding laws

Went into effect ​on June 19, 2015​. Key laws (apply

to 12-month periods):

Any non-wealthy adult (i.e.,​ ​non-accredited​ ​investor​) can invest up to 10% of her annual income in startups, or up to 10% of her net worth.

Any startup can raise up to $50M via equity crowdfunding.

Re: the premise of ​PRC

Winner-take-all markets are proliferating via infotech.

From 2014 book ​The Second Machine Age — Work, Progress and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies​, co-authored by MIT economist ​Erik Brynjolfsson​:

Call it talent-biased technical change. In many industries, the difference in payout between number one and second-best has widened into a canyon. . . .

Digitization creates winner-take-all markets . . .

Winning 101: Be in the “flow” state of mind as much as possible.

From 2014 book ​The Rise of Superman — Decoding the Science of Ultimate Human Performance​:

“Flow’s two defining characteristics are its feel- good nature (flow is always a positive exper- ience) and its function as a performance- enhancer. The [neuro]chemicals described herein are among the strongest . . . the body can produce.”

“A ten-year study done by McKinsey found top executives reported being up to ​five​ times more productive when in flow. Creativity and cooper- ation are so amplified by the state that [a] Greylock Partners venture capitalist . . . called ‘flow state percentage’—defined as the amount of time employees spend in flow—the ‘most important management metric for building

great innovation teams.’

. . . Flow ​feels​ like the meaning of life for good reason.”

Flow via collaboration often sparks ​romantic flowmantic attraction.

From ​The Rise of Superman​:

In jazz, the group has the ideas, not the individ- ual musicians . . .

When performance peaks in groups . . . this isn’t just about individuals in flow—it’s the group entering the state together . . .

[T]here are extraordinarily powerful social bonding neurochemicals at the heart of both flow and group flow: dopamine and norepi- nephrine, that underpin romantic love . . .

Unsurprisingly, flowmance is an ideal kind of

romance for many people.

From a December 31, 2010 ​article​ in​ The New York Times​:

“In modern relationships, people are looking for a partnership . . . [C]lose partners ‘sculpt’ each other in ways that help each of them attain valued goals.”

“Caryl Rusbult, a researcher at Vrije University in Amsterdam . . . called it the ‘Michelangelo effect’ . . .”

From a December 31, 2009 ​article​ on ScienceDaily.com:

A new international review of seven papers on “the Michelangelo phenomenon” shows that when close partners affirm and support each other’s ideal selves, they and the relationship benefit greatly.

So my/our LinkedIn variant will give rise to m-m-many flowmances.

Flowmance 101: Being polyamorous is often a key to maximizing one’s gains from collaborations.

From 1997 book ​Organizing Genius — The Secrets of Creative Collaboration​, by ​Warren Bennis​:

Great Groups are sexy places.

. . . [During Apple’s early years, Steve Jobs mandated that] employees share [hotel] rooms when they were at conventions and other professional meetings . . . to limit bed hopping . . .

From 2011 book ​Marriage Confidential — Love in the Post-Romantic Age​:

The “typical” open marriage today . . . is between well-educated middle-class or affluent professionals . . .

From the March 31, 2014 ​article​ in ​Rolling Stone titled “Tales From the Millennials’ Sexual Revolution”:

Termed “The New Monogamy” in the journal Psychotherapy Networker​, it’s a type of polyamory . . .