I’m excited to bring you our second Tiny Digital Worlds profile (Ryan Holiday being the first one in Issue 4).
I’m tracking an ever-expanding list of digital properties, each offering unique perspectives and lenses on the art of building digital worlds.
The real challenge, and a decision that carries weight, is in choosing a property that most vividly reveals (unseen) elements of world-building I can draw attention to, presenting an opportunity for us all to learn from.
For this issue, I wanted to present a new, growing digital world that provides a striking contrast to the one I explored before.
I want to broaden our perspective on different approaches to digital world-building and the unique challenges and opportunities each presents.
To that end, I zeroed in on a software tool/service/platform of sorts that I’ve been using (and have been a Believer member of) since November 22, 2023.
It’s called Sublime.
“Sublime is a labor of love by a small team of designers, engineers, and storytellers. We create with the belief that attention, ideas, and creativity are sacred.”
This profile of Sublime includes both praise and criticism. I aim to provide a balanced perspective, acknowledging that we all have biases and blind spots.
Backstory: Sublime
Sublime is a platform.
Well, sort of.
Sublime started with a different premise and under a different name (Startupy). I won’t cover that ground here, but if you’re curious, see here and here.
Startupy was founded in April 2022. The shift from Startupy to Sublime took a year. Sublime launched in August 2023.
Tiny Digital Worlds are created and grow around a unique or central concept, personality, or both. This foundation attracts a collective of individuals who resonate with the essence of what’s being built because it fulfills their needs in some meaningful way.
I’m doing that here with Tiny Digital Worlds.
The central ethos of Sublime is to combine the focus and intentionality of a personal knowledge management tool with the sense of aliveness and serendipity of a network.
This idea is expanded in an earlier Manifesto:
Sublime is about increasing the chances of delivering just-in-time epiphanies: the right ideas, exactly when you need them.
- It’s about improving your thinking and uncovering unexpected connections.
- It’s about cultivating your taste.
- It’s about empowering you to mindfully curate the Internet, not mindlessly consume it.
- It’s about collecting the things we find valuable today, so we can give our future selves a gift.
- And it’s about assembling your resonance library in a way that feels equal parts personal and communal.
We love the metaphor of “trails” to describe Sublime. A trail is something you can create for yourself — making your personal internet more alive and useful. But it’s also something you leave behind for others — giving them jumping off points to research, wander, and create their own trails.
The digital world you create around your core idea or unique skills will be completely distinct from other examples like Sublime or Tiny Digital Worlds (apart from sharing some underlying fundamental principles).
Sublime is a web service that runs in your browser of choice.
It’s like a social network … yet, completely different.
If you come into Sublime expecting a social network, you’ll be disappointed. On social networks, you expect to see likes, comments, noise.
Sublime is less social network, more ambient co-presence.
As Sari Azout told me, “The feeling I’m aiming for is to combine the calm vibes of a library with the aliveness of a coffee shop.” It’s an interesting paradox.
Behind Sublime is an amazing individual — Sari Azout (on X and on Sublime).
On a friend’s recommendation (thanks, Paul), I’m currently reading/listening to Philip Pullman’s The Golden Compass: His Dark Materials (Book 1).
A fascinating aspect of Pullman’s universe is that every human has a special animal friend called a daemon. These daemons are physical manifestations of a person’s soul, taking the form of animals that reflect their personality and emotions.
This unique bond represents the deep connection between one’s inner self and outer expression, highlighting themes of identity and personal growth as they navigate their journey together.
As I wrote this email (and recognizing the comparison may seem slightly overdrawn), it dawned on me that Sari Azout and Sublime are like a human and its daemon. They’re emotionally connected yet distinct entities, each reflecting aspects of the other’s essence in a way that showcases their deep, intrinsic bond.
Her ethos embodies the tool that gives life and personality to a piece of technology that shouldn’t feel alive yet somehow does.
While Twitter/X, Bluesky, Threads, etc., connect people in multiplayer mode, they feel inanimate — just tools.
But Sublime feels more alive.
In researching Sublime, I found this:
“Above all, I’ve struggled with how difficult it is to obsess over something that is hard to describe in words. By the uphill search for the right words, language, and lens that can help others see Sublime as clearly as I do.” — Making Sublime, by Sari Azout
… which I loved, because I’ve had a similar struggle over the past year (all of 2023), trying to capture language to explain the essence of digital world-building as much to myself as you. Building a digital world can feel abstract and ineffable, making it, at times, difficult to describe in words.
Anyhoo…
So, what is Sublime?
Sari says, “The closest thing we’ve got to a tagline is this: a simpler, more communal way to build your second brain.”
I’m not a fan of the term ‘second brain’ because, as knowledge workers, it doesn’t capture how differently we all use ‘personal knowledge management’ (PKM) tools.
(Note: Sublime is not a PKM tool.)
For now, Sari reflects, “the idea of a ‘second brain’ has become a shorthand for people who understand the power of curating and cultivating a growing body of knowledge that is uniquely your own.”
In a 2023 end-of-year letter, Sari ended with this:
We began 2023 with a lingering question for Sublime: is there a there there? As we start 2024, I can honestly, genuinely respond with a resounding yes. The proof is in our customers and what they’re saying about the product.
The illegibility, the personal struggle to put Sublime into words is reflective of a universal shift. People are starving for something new and struggling to find the words.
In the same way that human language gives us a territory in which we can dwell — and it’s almost impossible to get outside of that, the web is a space of infinite potential but we can only go as far as our current interfaces let us go.
At Sublime, we’re excited about trying to make that space bigger — to create more land, more opportunities for self-expression, self-discovery, collective flourishing, and combinatorial creativity. We want to create software that ignites the human spirit.
It feels lofty and abstract because it is.
This gives you a sense of the Sublime’s backstory, and while it’s a software tool, the service feels more alive than it should.
Digital World-Building
We are the architects and engineers of our digital Worlds.
Initially, we start with a blank canvas and a singular (novel) idea.
While painting serves as an initial metaphor for creation, digital world-building diverges from this analogy. Unlike a painting, which reaches completion and finds its place on a wall or in a gallery, digital worlds are never truly finished. They evolve with marketing trends, business strategies, personal growth, and our taste, embodying a continuous journey rather than a destination.
Perhaps a more apt comparison is to view our work as akin to an artist’s lifelong pursuit of expression. Consider the work of an artist like Banksy, whose identity and creations form a vast, evolving canvas. His art — spanning iconic pieces like Flower Thrower, Balloon Girl, and Kissing Coppers — is not just about individual artworks but about a continuous exploration and expression of themes that resonate across time and space.
In this light, digital world-building is a perpetual act of creation, where the canvas continuously expands, the narrative unfolding over time, constantly adapting, always growing — and in doing so, attracting audiences into our folds.
As of writing this email, this is how I see the Sublime World:
- Sublime.app (home base)
- On Twitter/X
- Newsletter on Substack
- Limited edition print publication by Sublime (Can You Imagine?)
Some months ago, Sublime’s home page featured a link to a Notion doc containing their manifesto and FAQ. While the content was undoubtedly valuable, the presentation felt disjointed and, to this degree, I felt undermined the congruency of their world-building efforts.
Now, a more refined expression lives on the main site. The Sublime World is becoming more congruent. Elements of their manifesto now reside on the main site, seamlessly integrated into the overall one-page design, working together to convey their vision, values, and value proposition.
However, this doesn’t feel like a fully connected World, as visualized above. Not yet.
As I write this, Sublime.app is a single-page affair.
The single-page setup falls away once a user logs into Sublime, bringing multiplayer mode and the heart of the experience into focus.
To this degree, having the newsletter live externally on Substack works (because the front end can’t be accessed without first logging out).
But I’m conflicted about this.
There’s probably a more elegant solution allowing Sublime customers to access the heart of the service while still being able to navigate the “outer” World, read essays and published newsletters, and interact with peers on those pages (like article comments on Substack), perhaps using a service like FastComments, CommentBox.io, or Commento.
While Substack makes it easy to publish a newsletter for free with just a few clicks, this convenience comes with implications.
As I wrote on my Sovereign Creators page:
Being sovereign doesn’t mean you can’t use these platforms [Substack], but when we choose to, we do so with eyes wide open.
So that we’re all on the same page, here are some reasons why I dislike Substack for world-building (outside of a Substack-only business model):
You can only capture a subscriber’s email address — no names, preferences, tags, or email automations.
Even basic email automation allows you to send different content to different subscribers at different times, but this isn’t an option with Substack. While you can write and send content whenever you want, you cannot control what content subscribers receive.
There is no way to have a welcome sequence for new subscribers and a different one for new (Sublime) customers. Or any at all.
Moreover, new subscribers will never receive previously sent content without manually digging through the Substack archives.
From my perspective, this makes for an underwhelming experience.
Of course, Substack makes monetizing an audience easy. But Substack also takes 10% (which excludes what Stripe charges).
While there is arguably some discoverability natively built into Substack, from speaking to people who have tested Substack vs. direct, it’s unclear, outside of edge cases, how much love Substack contributes long-term, if anything.
These are just some of the cons I struggle to see past when considering Substack as an engine for a digital world that lives externally from the (Sublime) platform.
In the end, Sublime is a wonderful service that I hope will thrive. The heart and soul of Sublime are the people who use it, contributing to a collective knowledge graph.
Perhaps using Substack doesn’t undermine the experience as much as I think. In January 2024 Sari wrote:
It’s been four months since we first introduced Sublime to the world. And the early signs are very encouraging. We sold out of our zine. New people become Believers for our beta product every week. We’ve already built something 1,000 people love (and tens of thousands are waiting to try). Not love in a “I’ve created an account” way, but love in a “I’m telling all my friends about it“, “I’m bragging about it“, “take my hard earned cash”, “here’s a love note” sorta way.
However, I believe that creating a natively hosted world and utilizing a dedicated email automation service like ConvertKit would be a more effective long-term strategy.
This approach would provide a seamless and engaging user experience for non-customers and customers alike while allowing the team to focus their resources on the core driver of the business: developing and refining their innovative technology platform.
By entrusting email automation to a specialized service, Sublime can ensure that its communication efforts are more effective and fully integrated with its digital world without diverting too much attention from its primary mission.
Similar to my approach in the Ryan Holiday profile, I will conclude with a reflection that distinguishes the less successful from the most effective aspects, all through the lens of Tiny Digital World principles.
Conclusion
One of the core principles of Tiny Digital Worlds is wayfinding.
When our digital world is small at first, the benefits of wayfinding are less obvious and easy to overlook. However, digital wayfinding should be an architectural design decision from the beginning.
It helps orient new inhabitants, subtly guiding them toward meaningful locations and unfolding a loop of discoveries.
Wayfinding points to digital “doorways” to explore based on individual needs, creating a constant source of surprise and curiosity as new “locations” reveal themselves within the context of a non-linear digital world.
These breadcrumbs allow explorers to construct their own “choose-your-own-adventure,” ultimately ending up at the gates of Rome (another metaphorical principle).
In the case of Sublime, “Rome” is different depending on where a new explorer lands…
On Sublime.app, Rome is about joining — either the waiting list for free or becoming a customer and skipping the queue.
I really like Sublime’s pricing. It allows customers to pay yearly (and pick their own price across a sliding scale) and has a mechanism to parse out Believers early on with a lifetime offer (also across a sliding scale).
This is a smart way of price testing.
However, “Rome” on Substack is different — which is to subscribe to the newsletter. While this is fine, it draws attention to yet another downside of using Substack: it doesn’t support conditional formatting.
By this, I mean that the job of the newsletter is to be a vehicle of value, constantly and implicitly inviting non-members to become members.
However, there’s no advantage in making these subtle invitations to customers (for obvious reasons). Yet, there’s no way to improve this experience.
Encouraging new membership is critical to every business, but when email becomes a blunt force tool, treating everyone the same is not a great experience.
Email is our most powerful relationship-building tool, especially when we get to talk to non-customers and customers differently.
I say all of this not to minimize the monumental task of building thoughtfully designed software that emphasizes simplicity and usefulness. To create a world people want to call home, a space where citizens can feel part of something bigger.
I can’t imagine how challenging that is to build — software is a complex problem to get right.
However, it is my job to draw attention to the benefits of digital world-building for sovereign creators like us, and part of that commitment is being critical at times.
André