"Age of Miracles"

We shape our interfaces; thereafter, they shape us. Today, we’ll explore how those new interfaces and spaces might bring web3 mainstream: The Apps-Infrastructure Cycle An Incomplete History of Interface SuperCycles Web3 Interfaces Into the Future We'll dive into web3 worlds like Cyber, Decentraland, The Sandbox, and Somnium Space and wallets like MetaMask, Phantom, and Rainbow to guess what web3's...

Solana is one of the most valuable and fastest growing blockchains in the world. It can handle over 65,000 transactions per second, and transactions cost a fraction of a cent. Over the past few months, both the price of SOL, its token, and developer activity on top of Solana have exploded. Today, it has a $21.5 billion market cap with over 300 projects built on Solana. It's a leading contender to...

The way that companies tell stories and build narratives is changing -- from top-down storytelling to bottoms-up narrative-building. Because they're such empty vessels for narrative, NFT projects like CryptoPunks and Degenerate Ape Academy make a useful study. We’ll cover: From Storytelling to Narrative Building Narrative in Venture Capital and Startups Lessons from Crypto Read the full post at No...

You may not know Lithic. Until recently, it was called Privacy.com.  In May, it announced an Amazonian move: delivering the card issuing & processing infrastructure it built for itself via an API. Now, it's worth $800M and growing like a card rocket. This is a fun one. We'll learn about Lithic's pivot using the framework that Ben Thompson laid out in The Amazon Tax. Build primitives, incur high fi...

Equi is building one of the most impressive investment tech products I've ever seen.  The problem: Institutions & family offices have 50% in alternatives. Individuals have

Pinduoduo is the fastest company in history to reach both $5 billion in revenue and a $100 billion market cap. The Chinese ecommerce platform, famous for popularizing the team buying and consumer-to-manufacturer (C2M) model, was the talk of the town last summer, and it's had an even more fascinating intervening 12 months. I teamed up with Lillian Li of Chinese Characteristics to go deep, and give...

Bet you've never seen something like Axie Infinity.   April: $670k revenue   May: $3M  June: $12.2M  July (18 days in): $79.1M   Axie is a blockchain-based, Pokémon-like game pioneering a Play-to-Earn model. People work by playing video game.  It looks cute. It's so much more. You can read the full post at Not Boring here. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/ageofm...

This is the first episode of a new series we're doing: not boring founders. It's a behind-the-scenes look at the companies I'm backing with Not Boring Capital, from the mouths of the founders building them. We'll talk about their products, but we'll also dive deep into how the businesses work, how they think about company building, and the strategies they employ to win.  For our first episode, I'm...

Unit21 builds modern infrastructure for activity monitoring. It just raised a $34 million Series B from Tiger Global at a $300 million valuation to expand from its first use case -- AML / fraud -- to serve the wide variety of use cases in which operators and analysts write and deploy business logic. The company is bringing AI/ML to the people. We'll cover: Founder-Market Fit Meet Unit21 One Platfo...

We're switching it up this week. I asked Not Boring readers for questions on Twitter, and I answered ten of them.  Read the full post at Not Boring. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/ageofmiracles/message

NexHealth is a $400 million startup with a three-part master plan to accelerate innovation in healthcare: First, build a SaaS product for healthcare SMBs, starting with dentists, like Shopify. Then, use the integrations it accesses in step one to build APIs for healthcare, like Plaid. Then, use the doctors and patients and developers it acquires in steps one and two to build a three-sided platform...

Scale is a 5-year-old company building infrastructure for AI & ML. Already, it's achieved a lot: $100+ million in ARR, $7.3 billion valuation, and customers like the DoD, Lyft, Airbnb, & OpenAI. Today, we cover:  The State of AI and ML Getting to Scale Scaling Like Stripe The Bear Case for Scale The Bull Case for Scale Scale’s Compounding Vision You can read the full post at Not Boring here. --- S...

Cometeer makes my favorite coffee. I drink three a day. They arrive frozen, with the flavor locked in, and I just add water.  Today, in this Sponsored Deep Dive + Investment Memo, we cover: Founding Story and Team: Cometeer Co-Founder and CEO Matt Roberts used to be a Dunkin’ guy, until he went abroad and met George Howell, who turned him  on to the good stuff. He and his Co-founder/CTO Doug Hoon...

Zero-knowledge proofs let someone prove that they know or have something without giving up any information about what they know or have. ZKPs have the potential to eliminate a major trade-off inherent in living, working, and transacting online: the convenience, speed, reach, and scale of the internet in exchange for our privacy. They also allow for nuance in a privacy landscape that’s often black-...

Medicaid is a $613 billion market that, as of 2017, had only attracted $20-30mm in VC funding.  That left a massive, if complex, opportunity for someone willing to vertically integrate, take risk, and treat the whole person.  Meet Cityblock Health. Cityblock is literally keeping people out of the hospital and saving lives -- the things that make the company tick are the same: big market, business...

Cooperation is the winning strategy in the Great Online Game.  In this episode, we'll discuss why power is shifting from individuals to institutions, and how individuals can team up to accomplish bigger things together than any can alone. We'll cover:  The Big Smile LeBron and Super Teams Liquid Super Teams The Cooperation Economy in Action Cooperation as a Strategy You can read the full post at N...

Melio, which has raised $256 million and was recently came out of stealth valued at $1.3 billion by Coatue, makes it easy for SMBs to pay each other. It's a Venmo-like experience on the front, with powerful tech in the back-end. It's also executing brilliantly on the disruption playbook. Today, we’ll look at Melio’s story, product development, viral growth, and future through the lens of disruptio...

What if I told you about a business that:   Has strong network effects  Grew revenue 200x YoY  Is preparing to offer a 25% dividend  About to implement a permanent share buyback program?    That's pretty much Ethereum. This episode is my bull case on Ethereum. It is not financial advice.  Read the full post at Not Boring. Intro Song: I Will Derive - Ethereum --- Send in a voice message: https://po...

Prescription drug commercials are confusing. People eating ice cream while a voiceover talks about herpes. The Cialis couple in the bathtubs in a field (backstory revealed below). The long list of side effects that seem much worse than whatever disease the advertised drug claims to cure. I asked Nikhil Krishnan, the man behind healthcare newsletter/community/novelty product shop Out-of-Pocket to e...

We’re all playing a Great Online Game. How well we play determines the rewards we get, online and offline. The Great Online Game is played concurrently by billions of people, online, as themselves, with real-world consequences. Your financial and psychological wellbeing is at stake, but the downside is limited. The upside, on the other hand, is infinite. We cover:  What is a Video Game? The Great...

Truework is building the verified identity layer for the internet, starting with employment and income verification. The company has raised $45 million from Sequoia, Founders Fund, Khosla, and Activant, and is executing on a brilliant 10-year plan to win you back control of your most sensitive personal information. We cover:  Meet Truework How to Win a Legacy Industry Regulatory Counter-Positionin...

When Packy auctioned off his Power to the Person essay as an NFT that split proceeds with the people whose work Packy cited, Clint won the auction with a 2.19 ETH bid. We had to talk about it, and I'm glad we did. We covered:  The psychology of NFT buying The future of media and entertainment  How Clint sees Web3 and crypto changing the relationship creators have with their audiences And so much m...

I teamed up with Mario Gabriele, the author of The Generalist, to study Tata Group, the 152-year-old Indian conglomerate with public subsidiaries worth a combined $234 billion. We cover:   Tata’s rich history, beginning with the opium trade The complexion of a messy conglomerate The necessary moves to perpetuate the dynasty Read the full post at Not Boring. --- Send in a voice message: https://pod...

In today's Not Boring Guest Post, Ali Montag writes about the original multi-channel creator: Martha Stewart.  For more than five decades, Martha Stewart has evolved to stay one step ahead of the curve. Montag writes, "Martha Stewart has, over the course of a 50-year career, with mystically perfect timing, refashioned herself from Wall Street stock broker to Connecticut catering chef, from the U.S...

In 2020, startup employees left $4.9 billion on the table by not exercising their pre-IPO options. Employees at Snowflake, Airbnb, and DoorDash missed out the most. Most of that can be fixed with a little eduction, so today, in this sponsored post, we're going to explore startup stock options: How Startup Equity Works Why Employees Don’t Exercise Options Exercise Options Meet Secfi The CAC Arbitra...