Saturday, May 14, 2022

News: May 14



Why we invested in Aramid I got to know Paul pretty well over a series of coffees and zoom chats over many months. I really enjoyed partnering with him on his pitch deck and strategizing on the round together. I learned a tremendous amount from Paul during our conversations.

Raising Capital: The Process is a Flywheel there is more to raising capital than a pitch deck and evidence of traction ....... their interest is far more than financial. They seek impact. ...... raising money isn’t analogous to the Sales Funnel throughout you just churn contacts until you close your round, it’s more like a flywheel: a cycle with which, over time, your impact grows, and delivers greater value and opportunity to investors. ......... first noting in The Western Druggist, in 1899, that the function of advertising was “to catch the eye of the reader, to inform him, to make a customer of him.” Little more than a decade later, his thesis developed, noting that advertising is meant “to attract attention, awaken the interest, persuade / convince.” .......



Musk's waffling ups Twitter 'chaos' Flex or not, work still drags for moms

Elon Musk's Fight With The Algorithms

Pitching Paul

Friday, May 13, 2022

The Coinbase Turmoil



Top of Mind: Staying Focused During Market Downturns In times like these we need to step back, and zoom out. Nothing about Coinbase changed this week, we are the same company we were yesterday, or a year ago. If anything, we are in an even stronger position given our balance sheet. .......... I don’t know how long this down-cycle will last, or if we are at the bottom. I just know that we will make it through to the other side, and we come out stronger than ever if we focus on what matters: building. ............ We are not our stock price, or the price of bitcoin. Maintaining our focus on the long-term mission, regardless of what the world is doing around us, is the only way we’ll succeed with ambitions as large as ours. ........ There is a real art to tuning out all the noise in the world, and focusing on the rare bit of signal which helps you develop your own convictions. ..... The down markets bring a focus on innovation, and the short term thinkers tend to get distracted and leave the ecosystem. In up markets we get to focus on scaling, and a massive wave of adoption introduces crypto to more people for the first time. Every time a new hype/despair cycle emerges, my main takeaway is to be thankful that we persisted through the last one with our long term thinking. ........ If you can’t ignore the hype while things are trending up, then you can’t ignore the despair when things are trending down. Stay strong, keep a long term perspective, and let’s keep building.



Crypto’s emergence as a geopolitical force

Thursday, May 12, 2022

May 12: News