Tricia Becker

Interesting, and classic San Francisco... Why would anyone choose to live in a city where $109k counts as low income? Because San Francisco is not a normal labor market. It is a textbook case of tournament economics. On paper, Bay Area wages look extreme. In practice, they only make sense inside a winner-take-most system. When $109k is roughly 80% of area median income. and officially classified as low income, costs are no longer anchored to the median worker. They are anchored to the top of the income distribution. Tech firms in the Bay pay more because productivity is higher, not because of generosity. Agglomeration is also a factor. Capital, talent, and firms co-locate, reinforcing each other and creating a positive feedback loop. A small number of workers generate outsized value, and they are paid accordingly due to market demand. That narrow group sets the price level for housing, services, and daily life. This is the tournament. A handful of winners earn $300k–$400k+. Many more earn far less. The median lifestyle is defined by the winners, not by the median income. The failure to build housing intensifies the dynamic. Instead of wages equalizing across regions, rents become the clearing mechanism. The prize for winning the Bay Area tournament is access to extraordinary upside. The cost of losing is being priced out, even if your income would be considered strong almost anywhere else. Other areas are cheaper because they are not running the same tournament. Lower agglomeration, lower productivity, lower ceiling, lower costs.

6

1 Comment

Lots of people are being laid off because c-suite executives are convinced LLMs are going to replace skilled labor in multiple domains where it isn't even a relatively good fit. These people are going to need to be hired back (at renegotiated salaries) if the business has the cash flow and hasn't already made a fatal mistake. This isn't even considering that LLM usage is currently highly subsidized, and the companies developing them have not found market use cases which can bring in enough revenue to come even close to their spend. It will be interesting to see how this all pans out.

6

1 Comment

Why neutrality in #SoftFurnishings is harder than boldness (And why I’ll always choose it.) 1️⃣ Neutral isn’t minimal. People often confuse neutral palettes with playing safe. But designing a neutral space that feels complete takes far more restraint than going bold. It’s easy to fill a room with colours and patterns. Much harder to know when to stop. 2️⃣ It takes discipline to edit. When clients see an empty corner, their first instinct is: “Let’s add something.” My job is to pause, feel the energy, and ask, “Does the space need more? Or are we avoiding stillness?” #HealingSpaces often breathe through the things we remove. 3️⃣ Quiet choices hold deeper power. A soft textured rug or a muted sheer aren’t background details. They are anchors. They guide the way you feel, move, and think. 4️⃣ Neutrality requires deep listening. Not just to the client, but also to the space. The walls. The light. The emotional weight of what already exists. If you listen carefully, you’ll often realise: The space always says something. You just need to honour it. 5️⃣ Bold is easy, but balance is tricky. Using statement colours is easy.  It takes a calibrated mind to design a space that feels peaceful and subtle. That is what makes neutral spaces feel timeless. Not boring, but deeply human. 💬 Have you ever walked into a room and felt instantly calm, without knowing why? *********** 🏡 Follow Darsha Manek for more on Soft Furnishings. *********** #LuxuryDesign #Entrepreneurship #EnergeticAlignment #Fabrics #Trends #HealingSpaces #SoftFurnishing

13

This was a headline from a post today "This guy used one AI prompt to replace a $20K analyst report." Follow this logic with me... 1) We all know AI often "makes up" wrong answers (called hallucinations) 2) If you are otherwise paying for information...it probably means you don't know the answers 3) If you use AI instead of paying your analyst, and you don't know the answers, how do you know when your AI is feeding you bad information? 4) You don't. So that 20k you saved might cost your company millions in wasted time, effort, and opportunity cost.

16

1 Comment

riffboard.com is LIVE... "Asana for bands and labels" Riffboard is an example of a new wave of software that heavily leverages AI - without actually making a single LLM API call. Our approach is opinionated - people are increasingly building in-depth relationships with AI assistants, and we feel it's entirely pointless to add yet another one into the mix. The "BYO Agent" model is really powerful - Riffboard is a specialized UX surface with over 130 MCP tools baked in - allowing your agent (which is already trained up on you) to manage all aspects of your artist career on your behalf. We'll be producing tutorial videos that demonstrate just how revolutionary this is, since we already use it for our own artist operations. For example, we handed a Google Drive folder with various docs and spreadsheets storing our music catalog details and lyrics, publishing splits, etc. and told Claude to just transfer it all into Riffboard. And it did, in one shot. This totally transforms what "learning curve" and "onboarding" mean.

7

1 Comment

We don’t talk enough about this kind of leadership. Last week, forgecode shipped a feature that degraded response quality. Instead of hiding it, they: - Admitted the mistake publicly - Explained what went wrong - Fixed it promptly In the AI space, it’s easy to chase growth at all costs. But accountability is what builds real trust. The companies that own their mistakes and put customers first? They’re the ones that will win long-term. We need more of this energy in tech.

24