On December 4, 2025, I had the privilege of sharing a conversation with V4N during Chones Party!

V4N is the founder of Upe! You can follow her on X.

She shared about community, finding signal in the noise and fun.

Here are some highlights!

03:34 Tap into the fun in our DNA

Things can be hard and fun at the same time.

It was hard not to find the fun.

05:40 Making space for fun

It is really important to make time, but it’s easy to make excuses why not.

08:20 Intuition for discernment

Sometimes stepping back is allowing you to do what you want to do.

The game is for you to be a builder and create.

Humbly speaking, I know absolutely nothing.

I don’t want to comment on what you share today, because it’s actually part of a larger vision.

11:40 The more you know, the more you know you don’t know

I’m just one voice.

Living among creators and visionaries, when we’re in the process of this, it’s important to hold space for each other.

You have the experiment, it’s running, and then the thing you can do is give it time to breathe.

13:59 Upe origin story and inspiration

Upe

There’s some pillars that have been built before that get worked on.

There was this craving for information.

It was a lot more challenging to get people to care, because there’s so many digital properties out there.

We needed to figure out what people found important to them and would also want to share and take ownership of.

17:20 We asked people, what do you want?

Now, not only do we want people exposed to this (we have a local feed to browse and engage with), but consensus is what actually creates our digest.

18:30 Developing finding signal in noise

What speaks to communities that are so nuanced?

Allow the community to signal how they want to signal. That’s been critical for us.

19:15 Building for humans IRL

A lot of the technology being built today is to be terminally online.

There are quicker ways to engage that allow us to get on with our lives.

21:42 WTF Upe

I like to think of Upe as a digital commons right now, and we’re evolving more into a co-op model.

Our community is so kind, they don’t want to give a negative signal to anyone; they want neutral.

To make things easy and sharable is part of our vision.

In order to stay focused, we’re only building what the community has asked for.

27:14 Big dreams for Upe

I dream of a community that is empowered with the knowledge of what’s going on.

It’s the individuals who are going to steward and steer the collective.

It’s hard to have big dreams when you look at this brick by brick sometimes.

28:37 Potluck

I step back and watch you create, because your vision is so beautiful.

30:10 Niche guides & preferences

What we really love is the quietude of the platform because it isn’t cluttered with the noise of people going back and forth.

32:10 Communities response to advertising

I hear you, but that commentary is spoken in a vacuum.

We’ve run that experiment a few times and it’s just a quick buck.

Where do we make the space for it in the community, as opposed to just cramming it into the forefront of the community?

It would be interesting to see how many people want to engage with that stuff, as opposed to being forced into it.

35:11 Practicing discernment as we journey towards the future

Number one, you’re speaking to one node in a very large network.

It’s easy to have fun and do these things when you have a network around you that is in sync and in movement with you.

Surround yourself with people who are better and smarter than you and will also challenge you.

As long as you have the same broad goals, you can challenge each other towards the best solutions to those goals.

Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should.

Treat everything as the experiment that it is and then focus on the process and methodologies. 

The outcome is going to be whatever the outcome is and its important for you as the builder to understand why you got the outcome you did and what you’re going to do after you receive that outcome.

The big dream is to put one foot in front of the other and see where you go.

When you detach your ego from the outcome of all this and you realize that this is a service to the way you want to see the world, then you have to just let be, be.

The way it’s assembled is 10% of it, but the 90% of it is the community who it’s impacting, who’s actually using it.

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