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21 bookmarks

Ben Lang (@benln)

📅 Jul 7, 2025 · ❤️ 990 · 👁 110,687

For any pre-seed founders exploring accelerators, this is my shortlist:

• @HF0Residency (SF)
• @southpkcommons (SF/NYC/Bangalore)
• @Seqoia Arcm(US/EU)
• @pearvc PearX (SF)
• @AIgrant (global)
• @Neo (SF)
• @conviction Embed (SF)
• @ycombinator (SF)
• @FirstRound Product Market fit method (SF)
• @VillageGlobal Velocity (global)
• @a16z Speedrun (SF)

Dwarkesh Patel (@dwarkesh_sp)

📅 Feb 19, 2025 · ❤️ 6,191 · 👁 2,262,464

.@satyanadella on:

why he doesn’t believe in AGI but does believe in 10% economic growth
Microsoft’s new topological qubit breakthrough and gaming world models
whether Office commoditizes LLMs or the other way around

Links below. Enjoy!

Timestamps
0:00:00 - Intro
0:05:48 - AI won't be winner-take-all
0:16:02 - World economy growing by 10%
0:22:23 - Decreasing price of intelligence
0:31:03 - Microsoft's Quantum breakthrough
0:43:35 - Microsoft's gaming world model
0:50:35 - Legal barriers to AI
0:56:30 - Getting AGI safety right
1:05:43 - 34 years at Microsoft
1:11:31 - Does Satya Nadella believe in AGI?

📂 Also in: 🤖 AI & Agents, ⚡ Productivity & Self-Improvement

John (@FI_investor)

📅 Oct 7, 2024 · ❤️ 1,166 · 👁 4,705,382

20+ Reddit subreddits where you can submit your startup:

r/RoastMyStartup
r/IMadeThis
r/IndieBiz
r/AlphaandBetausers
r/GrowthHacking
r/Digitalnomad
r/SideProject
r/SmallBusiness
r/LifeProTips
r/lifehacks
r/explainlikeimfive
r/todayilearned
r/Promotereddit
r/Analytics
r/Content_marketing
r/Advertising
r/Entrepreneur
r/EntrepreneurRideAlong
r/Startups
r/Growmybusiness
r/Linkbuilding
r/SEO
r/Freepromote
r/SocialMediaMarketing
r/PPC
r/AskMarketing

Avoid direct self-promotion since the community usually hates it and you'll most likely get roasted.

Provide value and tell a story since that's what usually works. Then subtly mention your startup in the post or only mention it when someone leaves a comment and asks for it (safer option).

Luke Miler (@lukemiler)

📅 Oct 3, 2024 · ❤️ 2,521 · 👁 209,801

This is how I launch every product.

Distribution is everything.

AMA 👇 https://t.co/NacOnNvXyc

Bill Gurley (@bgurley)

📅 Sep 27, 2024 · ❤️ 1,094 · 👁 340,741

This is a “must watch” video. This ain’t your father’s venture capital market.

Reads with Ravi (@readswithravi)

📅 Aug 9, 2024 · ❤️ 1,081 · 👁 160,063

Sam Altman is the CEO of OpenAI, former president of Y Combinator.

He has recommended several books over the years which cover a wide range of topics including entrepreneurship, technology, psychology, history, and philosophy.

15 books recommended by @sama 🧵

1) Read Write Own by Chris Dixon

📂 Also in: 🤖 AI & Agents, 📚 Books & Reading, 🧠 Philosophy & Poetry

Startup Archive (@StartupArchive_)

📅 Aug 6, 2024 · ❤️ 531 · 👁 71,184

Uber founder Travis Kalanick: “Every angel deal that gets done is a momentum play”

Below are the key excerpts from Travis’s blog post Startup Seed Raising Skillzzz:

Priming the Pump. "Go to angel gatherings, industry conferences, any and all networking events. Meet people who are angels or who know angels. Give ‘em the elevator pitch… make sure you’re meeting with somebody new EVERY DAY."
Intro meetings. “Informal discussion where you pitch the company over a lunch/coffee/etc., and expand potential angel network through referrals. Get your pitch down to 5-10 minutes, and prepare a tight FAQ in your head so that you have tight answers to the top 20 questions. Let them pay. Be proud of your scrappiness."
ABC’s – Always Be Closing. "At the end of every meeting, get a clear understanding of where they stand on your deal opportunity."
Referrals are key. "Most angels will immediately offer up a couple folks they can hook you up with… always ask for more folks you can connect with."
Advisors: "Turn a couple of these potential angels into advisors. Having a few top-notch people in your corner can make all the difference in turning the tide in an angel round."
Thought Partner: "Pick one advisor, co-founder, or mentor who will be your thought partner in managing the process."
TheList: "Keep a list (aka pipeline) of the people you’re meeting with, the referrals that they provide you, and the level of their interest in the seed round. Stay on the ball…Always follow up."
Passion/Charisma. "Focus on the positive, have confidence, be amped, bring passion to your game, and share the love with the person across from you."
Credibility. "DO NOT FIGHT THE TRUTH… Do not try to spin out of what your weak points are. Do not try to make something certain that is not. Do not pretend to know something that you don’t. Credibility is the name of the game in fundraising."
Momentum and Urgency. "Investors are fickle creatures, they are motivated by fear and greed… Time IS NOT YOUR FRIEND! The longer the process drags out, the more it seems that nobody is interested in your deal, and the less likely you are to actually get one."
Getting the Lead. "Until you have a lead, you don’t have a deal… The way to get a lead is to spur one of the larger, most interested investors into making an offer."
The Competitive Deal – The Need for Speed. "The second you have a single term sheet, you need to move very quickly to get a second one. You don’t have a lot of time, because momentum at this point is crucial to closing… Your second term sheet will be easier to get than your first, but it will make a HUGE impact on your deal. Without a second termsheet, you will be in a position to take whatever crappy terms the original lead provided, and it’s quite possible that the terms could get worse (or even go away!) as the one-termsheet deal drags out."
Herding the cattle. "Once you start working the competitive leads, you need to start getting word out to ALL of the interested parties, that this deal is getting hot, and that you could start moving to close in very short order… This makes them anxious about the competitive situation you’ve created b/c now your deal has been validated."
Anti-Collusion. "The heavyweights in your deal will have the inclination to collude to make the terms better… Keep it short and sweet with each potential colluder, and draw a very straight firm line that the material terms are not changing."
Sprint through the close. "Until the deal is closed, you have at best a 50/50 shot of it happening. Keep working new seed investors, keep the competitive leads warm, get your deal oversubscribed, because until your deal is done, it’s just a nice fantasy in your head."

Video Source: @TechCoHQ

📂 Also in: ⚡ Productivity & Self-Improvement, 🧠 Philosophy & Poetry

Hadron Founders Club (@Hadronfc)

📅 Jul 27, 2024 · ❤️ 19 · 👁 2,178

We asked 50 founders about their favourite books

📚Here are the top 10 recommendations:

The Lean Startup
by Eric Ries (@ericries)
Start with Why
by Simon Sinek (@simonsinek)
The $100 Startup
by Chris Guillebeau (@chrisguillebeau)
The Hard Thing About Hard Things
by Ben Horowitz (@bhorowitz)
Entrepreneurial You
by Dorie Clark (@dorieclark)
Zero to One
by Blake Masters and Peter Thiel (@bgmasters @peterthiel)
The Startup Owner's Manual
by Bob Dorf and Steve Blank
Made to Stick
by Chip Heath and Dan Heath (@chipheath)
Fall in Love with the Problem, Not the Solution
by Uri Levine (@UriLevine1)
What Customers Want (PB)
by Anthony W. Ulwick

🌶️ Controversial picks:

• Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup
- by John Carreyrou (@JohnCarreyrou)

• How to Win Friends and Influence People:
- By Dale Carnegie (@DaleCarnegie)

• "To Sell Is Human”
- by Daniel Pink (@DanielPink)

📂 Also in: 🧠 Philosophy & Poetry

Andrew Yeung (@andruyeung)

📅 Jul 22, 2024 · ❤️ 2,776 · 👁 708,581

All the startup accelerators you can apply for:

PearX ($250k-$2m)
Accel Atoms ($500k)
Antler ($200k for 8%)
Soma Capital ($100k)
Sequoia Arc (Variable)
a16z Speedrun ($750k)
LAUNCH ($125k for 7%)
OpenAI Converge ($1m)
Techstars ($20k for 6%)
Alchemist ($25k for 5%)
NEO ($600k Uncapped)
AngelPad ($120k for 7%)
The Mint ($500k for 10%)
AI2 Incubator ($50-$150k)
HF0 ($125k for 7% + $375k)
AI Grant ($250k Uncapped)
Betaworks AI Camp ($500k)
500 Startups ($112.5k for 6%)
Entrepreneur First ($125k for 8%)
Y Combinator ($125k for 7% + $375k)
Conviction Embed ($150k Uncapped)
Founders Fellowship ($150k for 5-10%)
SPC Fellowship ($400k for 7% + $600k)

(More info below)

Who am I missing?

📂 Also in: 🤖 AI & Agents

Ash (@ahboyash)

📅 Jul 8, 2024 · ❤️ 842 · 👁 219,467

Token listing strategy playbook

📔 Founders especially, save this if you are planning to launch a token soon.

When discussing portfolio value add, it’s not just making introductions to other VCs/angels to fill up the fundraising round but actually getting hands-on with founders to devise a proper strategy for success. One of it includes a proper token listing strategy on trusted centralised exchanges (CEX).

Here is a high-level guide I’ve written to help you and your project navigate the murky waters of getting your token listed on a major CEX.

I’ll break it down into 5 sections:
• Token listing documents
• CEX and market maker negotiations
• Community
• Media coverage
• Misc

Before diving deeper, it is imperative to have a good fundraising plan before launching a token strategy.

Make sure you nail the following:
• Carve out a budget to pay for exchange listing fees (gets higher in a bull market) and market making (retainer) fees.
• Strategise on how to fundraise from the venture arm of large CEXes (@BinanceLabs, @cbventures, @OKX_Ventures) as it improves the chances of listing.
• Build relationships with VCs/ angels who have strong connections in the industry.

Token listing documents
In anticipation of a token launch, projects will need to prepare a few documents beforehand and they are the main requirements for a CEX listing.

This includes:
• A well written whitepaper (detailing the project’s vision and mission, explaining the protocol mechanism, team, roadmap).
• Tokenomics (token details, utility, vesting schedule, sustainable distribution).
• Protocol security and token audit from a trusted audit provider.
• Legal documents (entity documents, legal opinion from a lawyer).
• Investment and fundraising documents (last valuation raised at, cap table).
• Completed CEX listing forms (each CEX will have its own unique token listing form to fill up —> generally includes company incorporation, financial data, team, tokenomics, protocol mechanism, community and traction, legal documents).

CEX and market maker negotiations
(a) CEX
These days, every CEX listing involves a listing fee and these varies from paying in stablecoin USD terms to giving out a % of the token total supply. From our discussions, expect to pay a fee between $200k - $500k (sometimes more) or give out 5-20% of total token supply.

Apart from listing fees, projects can also be expected to pay for technical fees (audit, token integration), marketing fees and security deposits.

There is a backlog on every CEX now as more and more projects vie for a token listing. Building relationships + connections with the right people can expedite your success.

It is also crucial for founders to apply for listings on multiple CEXes to increase the chances of securing a token listing + use it for negotiations. Good to have a collaboration + marketing campaign with DeFi wallets of various CEXes for more eyeballs.

(b) Market Makers (MM)
Onboarding MMs is a necessary part of the listing process to maintain price stability and ensure healthy liquidity for the token.

MMs typically fall into 2 categories:
• Loan + option model: MM borrow tokens from the project to provide liquidity and are granted call options (the right to purchase the token at a cheaper price)
• Retainer + profit share model: project pay the MM monthly fees to maintain liquidity

@0xLouisT and @minjung_eth did some good research on MMs:
• https://t.co/5nOK7HTyIl
• https://t.co/hFUo85Q9zS

Community and socials
Form a strong (almost cult-like) and engaged community who will serve as your first set of users and word of mouth marketers.

Some tips:
• Discord <> Telegram/WeChat <> Twitter —> nail the trifecta of social media.
• Hire good community managers to manage Discord and Telegram groups, ecosystem/ BD leads to secure partnerships and localisation strategies (e.g. APAC lead/ head of marketing in Korea).
• Be active on Twitter from the main account + founder’s account to keep users informed with project updates + evangelise the product. Bonus if the project has a dedicated intern account/shitposter to get maximum mindshare (@intern <> @monad_xyz, @HugoMartingale <> @Polymarket).
• Integrate with major questing platforms for another source of GTM (e.g. @Galxe, @zealy_io and @layer3) and building communities.
• Founders need to be constantly evangelising their project and be excited about what they are building. (Study @keoneHD <> @monad_xyz, @Punk9277 <> @_kaitoai, @SmokeyTheBera <> @berachain, @taran <> @stix).
• Airdrops to power users + making them rich is one of the best ways to form a loyal set of users (albeit a bit hard these days with industrial farms and sybils).

Media coverage
Crypto Twitter (CT) is inundated daily with memes, shitposts, charts, project updates, threads. Projects need a well-designed + comprehensive marketing plan to ensure all angles are adequately covered.

High level strats:
• Publishing on major crypto news portals to get maximum coverage from publications like @TheBlock__, @Foresight_News, @BlockBeatsAsia and @panews.
• KOL marketing which usually involves paid promotion or letting them invest at a lower valuation in exchange for marketing content (threads, articles, videos, channel shoutout).
• Outsourcing to top tier marketing agencies. Some of the good ones I have had the pleasure of working with includes @snow949494, @cryptofreedman <> @hypepartners, @JiraiyaReal <> @TailoredWeb3, @ciaobelindazhou <> @ShardDXB.
• Publishing deep research articles: apart from the big bois like @Delphi_Digital, @MessariCrypto, @blockworksres, there are many high quality firms that can be used like @Ian_Unsworth <> @kairos_res, @Steve_4P <> @FourPillarsFP, @blocmates, @asxn_r and @Shoalresearch.

Misc
• @coingecko / @CoinMarketCap token listing.
• @dexscreener enhanced token information.
• @DefiLlama project listing.
• @DuneAnalytics dashboards to showcase relevant on-chain metrics and user analysis.
• @DeBankDeFi supported protocol.
• @tokenterminal data partnership.

I'll caveat this by saying that every token launch is unique and a cookie-cutter approach is usually NGMI.

A successful launch obviously involves way more than what I’ve covered here - this is just the tip of the iceberg.

If you’re working on a new project and want to learn more about the ins and outs of launching a token, feel free to reach out to @signum_capital or myself as we’re always looking to back bullish founders. Can’t leak too much alpha here :)

📂 Also in: ⛓️ Crypto & Web3, 💻 Dev & Engineering

Kathryn Wu (@kathrynwu1)

📅 Jul 1, 2024 · ❤️ 1,868 · 👁 208,294

Great book by @james406! The first time I read it was during YC, and many things seemed ambiguous. The second time, three months later on a flight, I was clearer about our level in this game. Will read it again with my cofounder after another three months. https://t.co/BVvSlB16zM

📂 Also in: 📚 Books & Reading

George from 🕹prodmgmt.world (@nurijanian)

📅 Jun 30, 2024 · ❤️ 3,752 · 👁 844,176

Startup Playbook by Sam Altman (first published a month before the founding of OpenAI in 2015)

Out of all the parts, great execution is my favorite (and is also the hardest) https://t.co/8z8qAeDxTb

📂 Also in: 🤖 AI & Agents

Startup Archive (@StartupArchive_)

📅 Apr 5, 2024 · ❤️ 733 · 👁 97,562

The five things Sam Altman looks for in a founder

In the clip below, Sam Altman talks through the five things he believes makes really great founders special and what he would look for in a cofounder.

1: “I always figure it out” and “I never give up”

“There are two phrases that come to mind if I were trying to pick what our top 10 most successful founders would have said about themselves when we were interviewing them at YC: ‘I always figure it out’ and ‘I never give up’… Everyone thinks that really matters is how smart they are, or their domain expertise, or their network… But it really is this kind of personality trait. People have different phrases for it: determination, relentlessly resourceful is one that Paul Graham uses. But that spirit is the most important factor, I think, in successful founders.”

2 Focus, self-belief, personal connections

“There are three things that we have observed about how successful founders get things done: Focus, self-belief, and personal connections… And in fact, if I were looking for a cofounder, I would look for that. Does this person have a relentless focus? Are they just going to get this one thing done and keep their blinders on and not get distracted by shiny objects along the way? Do they actually believe that this is possible? Because momentum is this crazily self-fulfilling prophecy. Can they form the personal connections that it takes to be successful? Will they be able to recruit and retain a world-class team? Will they be able to sell their product? Will they be able to raise money? Will they be able to talk to the press? The ability to form these personal connections is super important.”

3 Clear vision, thought, and communication

“Almost all of the best startups that we have ever been involved with, from the very first time we met those founders, they were able to very concisely and clearly communicate what they were doing in ~25 words. And I don’t know why this is so important—maybe that you need to spread the message. But I can certainly say that founders who aren’t good at this don’t really go on to be successful… You can prove this to yourself quickly by looking at the founders of really successful companies. They’re all good at this. So I think this is an area to invest in and get better at.”

4 Ability to attract people to work on the company

“Recruiting that 20th employee is really hard. You need an exciting vision and you need to be good at communication and personal relationships.

5 Ability to get a huge amount of work done themselves

“The best founders just get a huge amount of work done themselves. So in the early days especially, you kind of have to do everything and there’s a lot to do. And so having focus and maniacal productivity is really important.”

Video Source: @WaterlooENG

📂 Also in: ⚡ Productivity & Self-Improvement

david phelps (@divine_economy)

📅 Mar 27, 2024 · ❤️ 74 · 👁 17,800

Crypto Consumer Company Idea #2:
Permissionless Game Shows

For a few days each year, we all get excited about crypto consumer for one reason:

Game shows.

Mad Realities. Love on Leverage. Crypto the Game.

The challenge has been letting anyone make these sustainably.

Until now.

Imagine this. It’s a few years from now, and a protocol wants to run its own version of Shark Tank as a new kind of hackathon: one where its community tunes in to vote on their favorite projects.

The winning projects get huge rewards, the losing projects get recognition and onchain credentials for making it so far, and the audience at home gets points from both the chain and from every project they vote for.

Both contestants and voters pay in—because it’s worth it to them for the money, status, opportunities, social connections, and potential airdrops they all earn. And that lets game show creators earn big in a way they never could before.

Now imagine bigger. Survivor. The Voice. American Idol. The Bachelor. Love Island. All giving contestants and new ways to earn reputation, to earn rewards, and to collaborate socially.

Or think even bigger than that. A monetizable Product Hunt. Presidential Debates with an audience live-voting on responses. The Grammies and Oscars with audiences picking who wins.

Any creator could have game shows for their fans to decide who they partner with. What track they release. What’s the most persuasive case they can make for future trends.

And all of this would be built on financial and reputational rails for everyone to earn.

Which is to say:

All of this can only be done onchain.

And as of this week, it can be done right now through us at @jokerace_io. By anyone. Without needing to worry about a single line of code.

There’s a lot of reasons this wasn’t possible before now—high gas fees, high overhead for managing the tech, and challenges letting anyone pay in to vote—but the main one is that it’s been hard to offer meaningful rewards for everyone involved in a game show.

In game shows, there’s literally some reward that’s at stake. That reward is usually financial: you get prize money. Sometimes, it’s reputational: you want the status of winning or backing a winner. And on rare occasions, it’s social: you form a community with others to back a favorite candidate. The best game shows will often integrate elements of financial, reputational, and social rewards all at once.

A game show without any rewards at all is a fairly doomed category, and we have a name for this cursed vertical in crypto: governance. In a sense, governance is just a game show without incentives or rewards, and yet in an industry built on incentives and rewards, we’ve insisted that the only types of decisions that anyone can make onchain are rewardless governance. Why? You might argue that rewards corrupt the integrity of the decision (maybe), but the real answer is because we haven’t wanted to do anything onchain that would enable these rewards in the first place.

It wasn’t until last week, when fees fell over 100x with EIP 4844, that it started to become sustainable to run social processes onchain in the land of ethereum. It wasn’t until this week that there was a way for anyone to participate in voting onchain with our introduction of anyone-can-vote at @jokerace_io.

So this is first week that it’s even been feasible to build game shows like the ones above.

And now that it’s cheap and fast to operate onchain, we can see the rewards for running onchain game shows are, indeed, huge.

Let me break that down a bit deeper to show how wild this opportunity is for all parties: the contestants, the viewers, and the game show creator.

First, and most obviously, contestants can earn from winning. A recurring show might give rewards to all players and teams on a given night, including the lowest-ranking ones that get eliminated.

That seems clear enough, but let me emphasize: contestants can also earn from losing. Even if the losers earn nothing, they still earn onchain reputation.

Every single person who votes for a contestant is attesting that they liked them. That’s a powerful social graph of permissionless data that the contestants can leverage for future communities, job opportunities, status, social connections, and, yes, airdrops. (If you won on karaoke night, a music project could do worse than to airdrop you its token.)

Imagine running all tiers of a game shows—votes to decide the contestants, votes to decide the finalists, votes to decide the winners. The reputation that everyone earns will create powerful graphs of proof-of-value, a far more meaningful metric than proof-of-humanity to help individuals find the ecosystems where we’re most valued.

Second, audience members can also earn. American gambling rules restrict payouts to voters of winning contestants, but it’s possible to imagine betting opportunities, bribes, and rewards overseas.

And what about in America? Voters might still earn other way. For example, they could earn NFTs, tokens, or points every time they vote. The fees they pay to vote could be used to buy up a token. They might even be able to swap or sell their voting rights (not financial advice).

But again, they’d earn reputationally and socially no matter what. Imagine voting for a no-name contestant who later became a celebrity and being able to prove you not only helped discover them but propel them to glory.

Imagine you were able to develop friends around this contestant who you could reach around the world. And imagine all of this entitled you, once again, to future communities, status, social connections, and airdrops. The social graph alone for measuring shared tastes among users could become the most valuable protocol for building a friendship or dating app in existence.

And then, most importantly, the contest creators earn. And they can earn three ways:

I. Data.

By operating onchain, creators will be able to access onchain information about their participants—what DeFi protocols they use, what NFTs they buy, what communities they’ve joined.

The simplest way to leverage this data is for sponsorships. For example, @rehashweb3, which runs a regular mini-game show onchain on @jokreace_io to decide who will appear on its podcast, recently worked with @bellosights to determine that 20% of their users were @zerion users. That insight was enough to get Zerion to sponsor their whole season.

But this data can be massively useful in other ways. It can let creators understand their community’s values. It can give them leverage to draw other players and judges to the show who are provably popular in their community. And it can incentivize other game shows, products, and protocols to want to reward anyone who participated as well.

All of this represents a huge unlock for the show’s growth.

II. Tokenization.

Perhaps you need the token to vote. Perhaps voting entitles you to buy the token. Perhaps voting entitles you to get an airdrop for the token. Perhaps paying to vote serves to purchase you the token. Perhaps the token is just used to select the contestants who will appear on the show. Or perhaps the token is just used for the final round.

Endless gamification is possible to support a token for the project.

III. Directly from show itself.

Most importantly, contest creators can monetize directly from the show they run. In a game show with 1000 contestants and thousands of dollars in prizes, they might conceivably charge $10-20 per entry and make a few thousand dollars.

But in a game show with 8 contestants and tens of thousands of voters, they could let anyone pay per vote—say, $1 per vote—and potentially make far more. And that’s for a single episode with a relatively small viewership.

Now imagine how this can scale over time. As the contest creator raises the prices to play, they can use this money to offer bigger rewards. Bigger rewards can then justify higher prices to pay, and so on. Over the course of a few years, they can scale up the financial incentives exponentially—and sustainable.

Imagine this at scale, and creators are making millions.

I’m excited that this is what we’ve been building for two years at @jokerace_io—a way for anyone to run these contests. Game shows are just one use case, but they’re a major one: when @eigencloud featured eight contestants to pick as their next supported LST, they got tens of thousands of voters paying in to participate.

You can imagine what this would look like at scale for something like, say, Miss Bumbum: the Brazilian beauty pageant for “best buttocks” that’s gotten more than 2 million voters for a given contest.

What would (may God forgive me) Miss Bumbum look like onchain? Well, the incredible thing is that this wasn’t even possible until this week—not only because of low gas fees, but because we’re the first contest tool that has ever let anyone vote. Until now, letting anyone vote would have been a recipe for random bots to give random number of votes.

But when you build on monetary rails that let you charge per vote, you can open up contests to anyone, proportionate to how they pay. And given the potential rewards, as well as the fun of playing, people stand to pay in substantially—if you design your mechanics well.

Of course, part of the mechanics means building a strong social brand, livestreaming with platforms like @unlonely_app, and taking time to align incentives for everyone involved. Creating a good game show is not easy.

But this week, it at least became easier. Because if you make one—and really, anyone can make one today—you can build a whole business of your own in consumer social on blockchains.

Without writing a single line of code.

This is my second in a series of posts on entire consumer social businesses you can build on top of @jokerace_io — the first was on gamified hackathons. If you’re interested in building any of these, my dms are open, and I’d love to be in touch.

https://t.co/JRnRC1Jml9

thanks to @seanmc_eth, @ddwchen, @medeana, @winnyeth, @reka_eth, @daisandconfused, @bdguan, @gracewhiteguan @DevinLewtan for all their feedback and insight

📂 Also in: ⛓️ Crypto & Web3, 📚 Books & Reading, ⚡ Productivity & Self-Improvement, 🧠 Philosophy & Poetry, 💻 Dev & Engineering

Lenny Rachitsky (@lennysan)

📅 Mar 24, 2024 · ❤️ 332 · 👁 198,952

Kunal Shah (@kunalb11) is one of India's most admired and well-known product leaders. He is the CEO and founder of @CRED_club, an Indian-based fintech startup valued at over $6 billion. Prior to CRED, he founded three other startups, including FreeCharge, which he sold for over $400m to Snapdeal. He has also been an advisor to India’s most influential organizations, a part-time partner at Y Combinator, and an advisor at Sequoia Capital.

In our conversation, we discuss:
🔸 The prevalence of successful Indian immigrants in top CEO roles
🔸 Why companies in India can grow DAUs, but not ARPUs—and what the means for building products for India
🔸 The power of curiosity and second-order thinking
🔸 Challenges and opportunities in the Indian market
🔸 The Delta 4 framework for building new products
🔸 Lessons from building CRED (so far)
🔸 Lessons from failure
🔸 Much more

📂 Also in: 📚 Books & Reading

yuga.eth 🛡 (@yugacohler)

📅 Sep 17, 2023 · ❤️ 1,759 · 👁 976,298

With respect, I found @ErikVoorhees' keynote to be jejune, anti-democratic, and disingenuous. It may be effective as a rallying cry for libertarians, but as a strategic framework for the global adoption of crypto, it is so divorced from reality as to be worthy of ignoring.

The speech's strongest points centered around the notion that "code is better than law." There is merit to the claim that transparent, mathematically-based rule-making can yield superior results to an opaque, politically-based process. I also agree with his characterization of the right to transact as fundamental to human existence.

However, I disagree with the perspective that American democracy is so deserving of disdain as to be rejected. Voorhees' conflation of the "state" as a single entity ignores the variety of political systems across the world and their relative levels of freedom. Democracy is categorically better than totalitarianism, and to reduce both to the machinations of men with "dead eyes and weak hearts" is to deny millennia of political progress, as well as the suffering of those under more oppressive regimes than the one Voorhees himself is subject to.

Voorhees' political framework reveals a level of hypocrisy and immediately crumbles when applied to the real world. Does he not comply with the subpoenas issued to him by the regulators he calls out in the audience? Does he not pay the income taxes that he castigates at the beginning of the speech? Would he have the creation of roads, bridges, and highways mediated through smart contracts today? There is a place for decentralized finance; there is also a place for the actions of a centralized state on behalf of its people, and to deny that is childish.

Voorhees says: "The political class... that legion of bureaucrats suckling at the teat of plundered wealth, with all their ornaments of authority, with all their hubris masked as confidence, with the inauthenticity of their smiles matched only by the absurdity of their ideas, and I see no reason to submit to the permissions under which they seek to restrain me. To such people, we owe nothing."

The reality is that Voorhees - and all of us - do submit to these permissions because we recognize the rule of law under a democratic system, arrived at through voting and lawmaking. The process is never perfect; it can even be corrupt; yet, we comply because we have faith that the inclusive political institutions that propelled America to become the financial hegemon will eventually recognize the importance and utility of crypto. It is reasonable and just to seek the consent – i.e., the permission – of the governed; that is democracy.

I strongly question a strategy which alienates all those involved in government as weak-willed and immoral. What does painting with such a broad brush achieve beyond revealing your own biases? In government, like in crypto, there are good people and bad people. We should aim to excise the bad people and have the good people in both spheres work together towards an open, global financial system.

I have much respect for Voorhees as an OG of crypto, and I understand that his perspective is a large part of how crypto came to be as big as it is today. But it is an untenable perspective weighed down by its idealism, dogmatism, and hyperbole and will slow down the adoption of crypto as we approach its next phase of global adoption.

To wholly reject the democratic state is libertarian propaganda and is of no use for the growth of crypto as an open, global financial system. We should instead recognize the merits of democracy and use them to further expand the reach of crypto.

📂 Also in: ⛓️ Crypto & Web3, 📚 Books & Reading, ⚡ Productivity & Self-Improvement, 💻 Dev & Engineering

sharvil (@0xSharvil)

📅 Feb 13, 2023 · ❤️ 63 · 👁 15,646

VCs invest based on specific investment theses that define their preferred types of investments.

Tokenomics is one such make or break factor where investors are very particular about which models they invest in.

I've collated 45+ VC token theses from the top crypto funds 🧵

📂 Also in: ⛓️ Crypto & Web3

Trung Phan (@TrungTPhan)

📅 Dec 23, 2021 · ❤️ 1,729

12/ Manufacturing History

Even more than brand exposure, Red Bull Racing creates history, which ultimately reduces customer acquisition costs b/c:

◻️Fandom is heritable through generations
◻️Winning creates mythology around product
◻️Constant exposure creates deep affection https://t.co/PADzbRHeUV

📂 Also in: 📚 Books & Reading

Hiten Shah (@hnshah)

📅 May 21, 2021 · ❤️ 1,767

My simple explanation of startup pivots... https://t.co/m4VtFyRnnQ

Michael Saylor (@saylor)

📅 May 13, 2021 · ❤️ 18,204

Bitcoin Mining serves as the foundation of the monetary network - critical to its growth, stability, longevity, vitality, & integrity. The Proof of Work architecture is a masterpiece of engineering that anchors the system to the real world, providing Seven Layers of Security.

📂 Also in: ⛓️ Crypto & Web3, 💻 Dev & Engineering

Shreyas Doshi (@shreyas)

📅 Oct 6, 2020 · ❤️ 2,124

A thread of 15 principles for product work (most of which I learned the hard way)
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