"Age of Miracles"

This week, I teamed up with Lillian Li, the author of Chinese Characteristics, to write about Agora. I took the bull case, and Lillian took the bear case. We cover: Agora’s History $API’s API China’s Livestreaming Boom What Agora Looks Like Today The Bull Case for Agora The Bear Case Against Agora Bull or Bear? Read the full piece at Not Boring. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spot...

The first question anyone has when they hear about BlockFi is: “What’s the catch? 8.6% APY sounds too good to be true. That can’t be legit.” I went DEEP to understand how they do it, and it’s legit. Essentially, BlockFi arbitrages the fact that traditional finance and crypto don’t like to deal with each other. We'll cover: What Does a Bank Do? What BlockFi Does Stablecoins and 8.6% APY Grayscale B...

I'm minting a Not Boring essay, Power to the Person, as an NFT, auctioning it, and splitting the proceeds with the people whose work I referenced.  In today's Not Boring, we discuss:  Chris Dixon's canonical pieces: The next big thing will start out looking like a toy (2010) and What the smartest people do on the weekend is what everyone else will do during the week in ten years (2013) A new media...

Today, I'm sharing the Not Boring story as honestly as possible -- it often looks way easier from the outside -- with lessons I’ve learned on writing, growth, business models, investing, and creator psychology sprinkled in. We’ll cover: Getting Here: Per My Last Email → Not Boring Club → Not Boring Growth: Luck, Shares, Ups, Downs and Tommy The Writing Process and Psychology Business Model: Optimi...

If you're building a software company, you need security compliance certifications like SOC 2 and ISO 27001 to sell into large companies. It sounds boring and tedious, but it's fascinating. The story involves: - Russian hackers unleashing malware called NotPetya on the world and causing $10 billion in damages. - How startups are selling into large enterprises and big pools of revenue much earlier....

In this episode, Dror Poleg and I break down WeWork after the recent announcement that it's going public via SPAC at a $9 billion valuation.  We cover: The Royal We. Adam Neumann was narcissistic and brash… exactly what was needed to shake up office real estate. WeStory. From 3,000 sq ft in Soho to millions across the world, fueled by an epic hype flywheel. From WeWork to We. Neumann pushed the co...

Today, On Deck is announcing that it’s raising a $20 million Series A led by Keith Rabois at Founders Fund with participation from Learn Capital, Chamath Palihapitiya, Slack Fund, Village Global, Eric Yuan, Fred Ehrsam, Allison Picken’s The New Normal Fund, Charles Hudson at Precursor Ventures, Adam D’Angelo, Jen Rubio, Elad Gill, Julia DeWahl, Henry Ward, Afton Vechery, Jules Walter, Eric Su, Jul...

DAOs - Decentralized Autonomous Organizations - are the next stop down the Web3 rabbit hole after NFTs.  We explore:   - The DAO's $6.6b Hack  - What's a DAO?  - Coinbase vs. Uniswap  - $UNI vs $SUSHI - Progressive Decentralization  - 7 Powers Analysis  - The Future Read the full post at Not Boring. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/ageofmiracles/message

Epidemic Sound just raised $450 million at a $1.4 billion valuation to Soundtrack the World. Spotify's Stream On event showed the company is ready to do battle with the labels.   The time is right: Spotify should acquire Epidemic. We cover:  Spotify’s Problem with Labels Spotify Streams On Enter Epidemic Sound Spotify x Epidemic Read the full post at Not Boring. --- Send in a voice message: https:...

UserLeap helps product teams continuously discover customer needs and evaluate the user experience via short, highly targeted surveys (microsurveys) displayed contextually within the product. Companies use UserLeap to track NPS, iterate toward Product-Market Fit, improve onboarding, reduce churn, and make the myriad small improvements that make a great product. The magic of UserLeap is that it qua...

Edmund Zagarin is the co-founder and CEO of BidOps, a startup building strategic sourcing software powered by AI. We discuss the global supply chain, how survey design informs good procurement software design, and how college debate informs the way that Edmund approaches running a startup. Of course, we start out by asking Edmund to convince us that procurement is not boring.  If you want to learn...

Excel may be the most influential software ever built. If you want to see the future of B2B software, look at what Excel users are hacking together in spreadsheets today. Excel’s success has inspired the creation of software whose combined enterprise value dwarfs that of Excel alone. There are two main ways Excel has set the broad roadmap for the B2B software industry for decades, and will continu...

Why is Jack Dorsey so much worse at being the CEO of Twitter than he is at being the CEO of Square? Marc Rubinstein and I teamed up to tackle that question, and came away thinking that maybe Jack doesn't run the two companies so differently after all. We cover: Jackground Back to Square One Putting the Network Into Square Old Twitter Twitter’s New Groove Back to the Original Question You can read...

Beacons is building a link in bio into a competitive space, and I think it's going to win. The link in bio is the point of leverage in the Creator Economy value chain, and Beacons' early growth indicates that they are building something that stands above the rest. In this episode, we cover: Meet Beacons The Creator Economy Value Chain and the Multi-SKU Creator Competition, Growth, and Moats The Be...

It's been a wild month for the Passion Economy, crypto, and NFTs. While it feels frothy, and certain asset prices certainly are, I think it points to a larger future. This episode is a thought experiment based on three ideas: A main Not Boring theme that Genies don’t go quietly back into bottles. Chris Dixon’s famous line that “the next big thing will start out looking like a toy.” Ben Thompson’s...

AltoIRA makes it easy to invest in alternative assets like startups, real estate, private equity, and even crypto, all through your IRA.  I sat down with Alto's CEO, Eric Satz, to talk about why he started Alto, what they're building, and what he wants the CEOs of Southwest and BlackRock to say about Alto in the future. To learn more and sign up for Alto, use the Not Boring link and an Alto team m...

It feels like we're in a tech bubble, but what if I told you that the best startups and non-FAAMG public tech companies are actually undervalued?  In today's Not Boring, we cover a different way of looking at tech valuations, not P/E, P/S, or FCF Multiple, but Price/FAAMG, or the probability that younger tech companies can become as big as today's biggest. From that perspective, they're cheap... A...

In this not boring guest post, Dan Teran, founder of Managed by Q and early stage investor, argues that while the pandemic looks like a boon to third-party food delivery companies, it's actually the beginning of the end. He weaves together strategic frameworks from Porter, Christensen, and Peter Drucker, plus actual restaurant data, to show that the current, integrated model is unsustainable, and...

Twitter is getting its groove back. Smart acquisitions and product development, in addition to foundational work that the company is doing, might change the bearish narrative that's surrounded the company for half a decade.  We cover:  Prof G vs. Twitter. Scott Galloway ripped the company and its CEO, Jack Dorsey, last week. It’s a good summary of the critics’ view, and a bullish signal. If I Rule...

Brett Beller, my good friend and former Breather co-worker, was the first employee and practically co-founder at Drizly, which just sold to Uber for $1.1 billion. Brett tells the stories from Drizly's earliest days, goes deep on liquor laws, talks about why he sold a bunch of his shares a couple years ago, and walks through the emotional rollercoaster of learning that his company sold for $1.1 bil...

Supersapiens is energy management for athletes. It provides continuous glucose monitoring (CGM) via a biosensor and app, in partnership with Abbott. That partnership is a cornered resource that gives Supersapiens tremendous power.  Over the past year, wearables and connected fitness tech have been on fire. Google bought Fitbit for $2.1 billion, Lululemon bought Mirror for $500 million, and WHOOP r...

If you've been wondering what's going on with GameStop, WallStreetBets, and Robinhood, I got you. This was inevitable once Robinhood introduced free options trading. Robinhood bet that it could introduce tremendous amounts of risk into the financial system, push all of it onto its users and the market at large, and insulate itself from the consequences. And it would have gotten away with it too, i...

Dror Poleg, the author of Rethinking Real Estate, a good friend, and one of the longest-standing WeWork rationalists I know joins the not boring podcast on the heels of the WSJ report that WeWork may go public via SPAC. We discuss:   - WeWork's history, from 2010 founding to failed IPO  - Adam Neumann and SoftBank's Masayoshi Son  - WeWork's business model, competitive advantage, and challenges  -...

Podz is revolutionizing audio - the very format you're listening to right now - by using machine learning to solve the seemingly intractable audio discovery challenge. I sat down with Podz CEO Doug Imbruce to discuss building social apps, selling his first company to Yahoo!, the state of the audio landscape, and how Podz is going to bring some order to the chaos.  Download Podz now to try it out a...

You’re going to be hearing a lot more about Web3 (including DeFi), NFTs, and the Metaverse, so today, we'll try to define them and figure out how they fit together.  What is Web3 and Why is it Important? Non-Fungible Tokens and Digital Ownership. NFTs in the Wild. The Size of the Metaverse Prize. The Open Versus Closed Metaverse. Crucible and The Direct-to Avatar Economy. The Value Chain of the Op...