As a VC, ownership is a frequent topic, specifically having to do with equity ownership in companies, (ideally) the growth in value of that ownership, and incentive structures.
And, with the growing enthusiasm for Web3 and the possibilities of community ownership (DAOs - decentralized autonomous organizations), and individuals building NFT collections, publicly displaying their wares, ownership is front and center.
I’d like to take the opportunity to dive a bit deeper into different definitions of ownership, and how some forms of ownership are more transient and fragile than others.
For some, ownership is about security or the general feeling thereof; whether or not it is a matter of perception is ignored. For example, owning a house, a series of bank accounts, an extensive collection of physical items, a car, a vacation home, etc. All of which are paid for with cash, received as gifts or by inheritance, and transacted in retail settings or pop-up yard sales. For some, the higher the volume of tangible items owned, the more secure they feel.
In this version of ownership, all can be lost, whether instantly or gradually over time. A fire, a flood, a tornado, a robbery, financial devastation due to illness and subsequent medical bills (for those of us in the U.S.), a lawsuit or divorce, a poor decision with consequences, etc.
By contrast, I offer a collection of other definitions which have been on my mind recently.
Ownership of Place: ‘This is Mine’
As part of the first month of my sabbatical, I spent a little over a week in northern New Mexico.
My family landed in New Mexico over 100 years ago after fleeing Mexico during the Mexican Revolution. I affectionately refer to it as ‘the motherland’ and visit 1-2x every year, dating back to early childhood. In short, I know Southwest Airlines very well.
I vividly remember the look of satisfaction on my dad’s face each time our plane prepared to land at Albuquerque International Sunport (ABQ). He’d quietly utter a sigh of relief to be home, even though our actual house that we owned was 800 miles away in Long Beach, California.
My family isn’t wealthy. We weren’t landowners. There aren’t any school auditoriums, libraries, or streets named after us. Yet even now, 10 years after my dad died, I find myself uttering the same, hardly audible sigh of relief when I land at ABQ. I’ve come to realize this stems from a sense of ownership of New Mexico, and not the kind that can be traced back to a deed or ledger.
I know how to navigate the majority of the state without GPS. Pretty much everyone you encounter with the last name ‘Villa’ is my cousin, no matter the city you’re in. My 89-year-old Aunt Clare is a beloved artist and her retablos and art can be found in almost every gift shop. One of my uncles was a high school music teacher half a century ago and his students are in every corner of the state and still remember him. Another uncle was a social worker and his mentees recall his memory with fondness and gratitude. The list continues.
My dad, his siblings, and both parents worked in the cotton fields for several decades. My grandfather was recruited to the U.S. to help build the original railroad. There was an intimate knowledge of the land passed down through generations, pride in hard, honest work, and the grit it took to make something out of nothing. Now, many of them occupy plots in the Santa Fe National Cemetery.
I think of wineries and farms and other examples of land with deed-holding owners, and the laborers who feel connected to the land not by literal ownership but by their unique knowledge of it. This unique knowledge is arguably a more durable form of ownership than the literal version.
This being said, I think the primary risk of losing ownership of a place that someone doesn’t ‘tangibly’ own is having the memories slip through the cracks of future generations if they exist at all. Perhaps this version of ownership falls into the bucket of the potential to be gradually lost, rather than at risk of sudden loss.
In the meantime, I feel confident when I say that the Villa family owns a big piece of New Mexico.
Ownership of Sound & Aesthetic
Okay, now is the moment where I invite you to be honest. Have you, or haven’t you, turned up the volume on the car stereo just in time for Phil Collins’ epic drum fill at the start of ‘In The Air Tonight’? Shoutout to this awesome person who looped the drum fill for a full 30 minutes in this YouTube video.
There are certain artifacts from various forms of art that transcend time and place and become iconic. One example would be Phil Collins and his drumming. There are drums before and after Phil Collins released ‘In The Air Tonight’ in 1981. Most anything released after 1981 that sounds remotely similar to Phil Collins’ iconic drum fill will remind people immediately of Phil Collins.
Phil Collins was the sole writer of the song and co-produced the track with Hugh Padgham. This means Phil owns the publishing and a portion of the master for the song itself, therefore is a quite literal owner of the song and recording. However, the iconic sound of his drum fill is something that will likely be repurposed or serve as sonic inspiration for other drummers, all of which Phil Collins does not tangibly ‘own’ a piece of. This version of ownership transcends the literal version. It does not hold the same monetary value, though is central to his legacy.
The same can be said of fashion designers, architects, painters, sculptors, celebrities, and other creators of iconic aesthetics. The scale and reach of this form of ownership are exponential, or ‘viral’ when restated in today’s lexicon.
And for artists and true creators, creating something iconic is oftentimes the form of ownership they care about most. Perhaps they are acutely aware of how flimsy monetary ownership truly is, and how legacy will ultimately transcend.
I believe there are opportunities for blockchain technology and Web3, along with image search and recognition, to better organize aesthetic and sonic influences and trace them back to their origins. Creative attribution without the need for monetary compensation is an interesting thread I’d love to pull.
Ownership of Self
I won’t spend too much time on The Great Resignation as this topic continues to trend well into the second quarter of 2022. My choice to take a sabbatical is unoriginal, following a record-breaking year in 2021 where 47 million Americans chose to leave their jobs in a mass exodus. I’ll be curious to see the numbers from 2022 when they become available.
One of the biggest curiosities that came to my mind during The Great Resignation was how people seemed to be reclaiming ownership of their time, or selves. If time is our most precious asset, how can we best manage that asset? We are asset managers of (drum roll please, Phil) ourselves. I for one can relate to how it felt before this revelation. As someone beholden to an unforgiving calendar, my bank account balance (especially early in my career), and a litany of other responsibilities to various people, the concept of reclaiming ownership of self feels revolutionary.
It also infuriates me to think of the millions of people living paycheck to paycheck drowning in student loans, medical debt, and other financial handcuffs requiring them to fully turn their life over to a thankless and physically unsustainable cycle of work. These are the people who do not have the luxury I have now to take a sabbatical and contemplate their relationship to work. They arguably do not own themselves, but rather are owned by a predatory financial system.
I’m personally very interested in technology dedicated to better serving the financially vulnerable, ultimately reinstating ownership of self, whether in full or in part.
As usual, this piece is getting long so I’m going to share a few more notes from my notebook on the Ownership motif, though will likely pick up this topic again in the future.
Other examples of Ownership:
Protected/Personal Health Information (PHI) - Patients struggle to track down and claim ownership of their health data, though new technologies along with public pressure pose the question of who exactly this information should belong. There is much work to be done here to better serve and empower patients while funneling data to the appropriate care providers for evaluation, diagnostics, and treatment.
SMBs and Sole Proprietors - Small business creation is expected to set another record in 2022, with entrepreneurs launching new businesses further blurring the lines between business and consumer. There is a series of microdecisions and implied autonomy in running a business that translates to a sense of ownership over one’s future. What you as the owner puts in, and the uniqueness of insight aligned with market opportunity is what the owner can get back out.
Impact on Climate & Environment - With the staggering data continuing to emerge around the effects of climate change, individuals and companies alike are considering what going carbon neutral can look like, and what steps are required. This is an exercise in reframing personal choices and the ramifications of choices made.
WWW - Ownership of the internet once upon a time included buying up URLs as digital real estate. Now with the chatter around Web3 and DAOs, digital assets such as NFTs and cryptocurrencies offer a new set of technological infrastructure for ownership, society, and engagement.
Image & Likeness - This is another tricky one. Social media sites continue to collect personal information and images of users, setting off personal data alarms around who exactly someone’s image and likeness belongs to - the individual or the corporation. Supermodel Emily Ratajkowski published a groundbreaking article in 2020 on the topic of ownership entitled Buying Myself Back, where she opened up about her experiences encountering images of herself being used by people who ‘owned’ them, even though she was the subject.
Place (cont.) - A favorite learning while in New Mexico this past month was a story about Georgia O’Keeffe and her obsession with the Pedernal Mountain visible from her famed studio at Ghost Ranch. She painted it 28 times in an attempt to ‘own’ the mountain she held so much affection for:
“It’s my private mountain. It belongs to me. God told me if I painted it enough, I could have it.”
-Georgia O’Keeffe
The list continues, but I will stop here for now. I hope to continue exploring the Ownership motif in the future. Thank you for reading.
Beautiful writing. I can imagine that your exploration of ownership will take you through the ownership of "rights".
I too have drawn many a plateau and jagged mountains in Northern New Mexico with hopes of one day owning my little piece of paradise.