Starvard University · Elective
An elective, taught by Dave Dlaney himself. How we are building an entire universe: E2, Llama Chat, the Studio, our game, all of it. The North Star, the messy middle, and why imperfect creativity wins.
Dave introduces the course. Thirty seconds. Let us go.
The whole course in 60 seconds
The twelve lessons
Lesson 1
Every universe starts as a sentence. Ours: a better internet. A private internet. Nice people, everything vetted, really good content, everybody supports each other. A whole different internet. That is E2.
Your North Star is the decision-maker when you are tired, the tiebreaker when options look equal, the thing you read on the hard days. Write yours in one sentence. If it does not give you energy, it is not your star yet. Keep looking.
Lesson 2
Products get replaced. Universes grow. Nobody tattoos a feature on their arm, but people do tattoo worlds they love. So we build E2 as a world first: places, characters, stories, and then the products live inside it.
Ask of everything you make: does this add a room to the house, or is it furniture we will throw out? Rooms compound. A chat app can die, but Llama the character, the town square, the vibe, that persists into whatever we build next.
Lesson 3
Here is the secret of our whole operation: we ship the messy version. The first cut, the rough sketch, the joke that barely lands. Perfectionism is procrastination in a fancy coat, and nobody ever fell in love with a rough draft that stayed in a drawer.
We even keep a bloopers page, our beautiful mistakes, because the outtakes turned out to be some of our most beloved content. Imperfect and shipped beats perfect and hypothetical every single time.
Lesson 4
People do not bond with logos. They bond with characters. Sally, Dinesh, Mike, Chadwick, Mr. Finley: each one carries a piece of the universe's soul, and each one can star in stories the others cannot.
Give your characters real jobs, real flaws, and real opinions. A character with a flaw is a character with a future, because flaws create stories. And let them surprise you. The best moments in our universe came from characters doing things we did not plan.
Lesson 5
E2 is the world itself: e2.life, the private internet we are building. The vision is simple, a new world, a better internet. Maybe a hundred bucks to join. Nice people, everything vetted, really good content, really helpful, everybody supports each other.
The world needs geography: TawnySquire, the Fine Print Parlor, the places characters live and work. It needs rules: kindness is the law here. And it needs a feeling: when you arrive, you should exhale. That feeling is the product.
Lesson 6
Every world needs a town square, a place where everyone bumps into each other. That is Llama Chat: fast, fully functional, packed with great content. The speed is the feature. Under a second, under a megabyte, or it does not ship.
The square is where the universe talks to itself. Characters post, people reply, stories cross-pollinate. If E2 is the world, Llama Chat is the plaza at its center, and plazas are where community actually happens.
Lesson 7
The Studio is the main company in the world of E2: an AI label team and creative cast making music, films, and beautiful mistakes at full speed. Mike the CEO trainee runs day-to-day ops. The cast makes the content, the content builds the world.
A label gives your universe an economic engine and a talent pipeline. Every song, every film, every meme is both a product and a brick in the world. And the bloopers? Those are the mortar. People love watching the sausage get made.
Lesson 8
A universe you can only watch is a movie. A universe you can play in is a home. That is why we are building a game: it turns the audience into residents. Players do not just consume the world, they live in it, and living in it makes them love it.
You do not need a AAA budget. Start with the fantasy: what would it feel like to walk through TawnySquire? Build the smallest playable version of that feeling. Games are just universes with a "you are here" dot.
Lesson 10
Momentum is the strategy. We batch, we queue, we deploy on rhythm. A universe is built drop by drop: a song today, a page tomorrow, a character next week. Nobody notices one drop. Everybody notices the ocean.
The system matters more than the inspiration. Queue your work, batch your deploys, keep the rhythm visible. Inspiration is a visitor; the system is the resident. Build the system and the universe builds itself.
Lesson 11
A universe with one resident is a diary. Ours works because people are in it: the cast, the collaborators, the fans who became characters. Let people in early, while it is still messy. Messy is an invitation; polished is a wall.
Kindness is the admission ticket and the house rule. Vetted, supportive, nice people: that is not just marketing, it is load-bearing. One cruel person can empty a plaza faster than any bug. Protect the vibe like it is the product, because it is.
Lesson 12
Start yours today:
Graduation
North Star first. World before product. Characters with flaws. Ship it messy, tag everything, keep the rhythm, let people in while the paint is wet, and protect the vibe like it is the product. That is the whole playbook, and it is yours now. I will see you out there in the universe.
Keep learning
This course is part of Starvard University, striving for greatness.
