Weber Wong is founder and CEO of FLORA: a powerful AI canvas, built specifically for creative work. The New York-based startup has raised more than $6 million, and built tooling that is loved by creatives at top studios like Pentagram, Instrument, and MSCHF.
Weber has a background with diverse experiences spanning venture capital, investment banking, poetry, history, and more recently, studies on interactive art at the NYU Tisch School of the Arts. We discussed how these experiences shaped his approach to building one of the most exciting startups in the space of design and creative work today; and his unique perspective on the present and the future of design.
From the conversation
Books
• Dieter Rams: The Complete Works by Klaus Klemp — https://link.amazon/B09agtQdV
• Digital Art: 1960s to Now edited by Pita Arreola, Corinna Gardner, and Melanie Lenz — https://link.amazon/B034nMmU2
• Hiroshi Fujiwara: Fragment — https://link.amazon/B00ri8nfW
• Hiroshi Fujiwara: Fragment #2 by Hiroshi Fujiwara — https://link.amazon/B0cLl6aPv
• Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike by Phil Knight — https://link.amazon/B076lI9lW
• Softwar: An Intimate Portrait of Larry Ellison and Oracle by Matthew Symonds — https://link.amazon/B08ZxksHr
• Source Code: My Beginnings by Bill Gates — https://link.amazon/B014Z8gf6
• Strategy: A History by Lawrence Freedman — https://link.amazon/B08dF5JwQ
• The Design of Everyday Things by Don Norman — https://jnd.org/books
• The Innovators by Walter Isaacson — https://link.amazon/B0hy92l8B
• The Power Broker by Robert A. Caro — https://link.amazon/B05tC9cyc
• Virgil Abloh: Figures of Speech edited by Michael Darling — https://link.amazon/B01okP5qf
Creative tools
• ComfyUI — https://comfy.org
• Cosmos — https://cosmos.so
• Cursor — https://cursor.com
• Midjourney — https://www.midjourney.com
• Pure Data — https://puredata.info
• Runway — https://runway.com
• TouchDesigner — https://derivative.ca
• Zapier — https://zapier.com
People and education
• Ethan Proia — https://ethanproia.com
• NYU ITP / IMA — https://tisch.nyu.edu/itp
• School of the Art Institute of Chicago — https://www.saic.edu
• UCLA Design Media Arts — https://dma.ucla.edu
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https://flora.ai | https://x.com/weberwongwong
