First, some news. We now have a team behind the “Curated” newsletter. Let us know what you want us to focus on going forward in the comments. This is the last of the solo posts. With that (and for one last time), here is what I have been into recently,
Getting the background on Russia & Ukraine - with all that’s going on it’s worth investing some time in understanding the background. Among various resources Peter Zeihan stood out. You can find his writings on the topic in his free newsletter. This one is a good place to start. Needless to say this is only one interpretation of the events but it adds up. His most recent Disunited Nations is well worth reading - especially in the context of what’s going on right now. It talks about the impact of the power vacuum that’d open up as the United States pulls into their own affairs.
Angellist (revisited) - I have been doing some level of angel investing via the Angellist platform. I decided to hit pause for a while as 1) my portfolio got to a size I was ok with 2) I wanted to see a full cycle of a deal from my investment, (from exit to the actual reimbursements of funds) before I invested further. As a reminder, Angellist is mainly a start-up investment platform for (they also do a job board and a tech news feed). You can join various investment syndicates - which are essentially investment vehicles set up by GPs with access to deal flow around for specific deals. So it’s not a fund (although you can also invest in various funds on Angellist). Then you start getting invited to various deals coming from the syndicates you have joined. You can see a pitch deck, deal memo, valuation etc. You can invest or skip. The range of investment is also quite reasonable as most deals will accept 1000 USD min. investment. One of the companies I had invested in via Angellist was acquired 2 weeks ago. That gave me the full cycle view I was waiting for. I basically got funds in my Angellist account in 5-6 days after the news. That is very fast. Now this is a sample of one deal so not sure how representative this is of the platform / average times. I am happy with the experience so far. Although given the current state of the public markets it might be worth waiting for private valuations to get adjusted.
A new single from Röyksopp - Röyksopp is a Norwegian electronic music duo. They released a now classic album Melody A.M in 2001. Two songs from that album worth checking out (or refreshing the memory if you are in my generation) are Remind Me and Eple - recommend watching the videos of both songs. They released a new single, Impossible. I was happy to come across them again and the song is good.
Twitter Account of the Week - not sure if this will be an ongoing feature of this newsletter. There is one account I do want to share. He/she has been putting out thoughtful, innovative content around NFTs, web3, decentralization and (inevitably) how these interact / have implications for current events. It’s an anonymous account which uses a cyberpunk as their avatar. If you are following the price of cyberpunks you’ll know this person ‘made it’ so not an armchair thinker. Check it out.
🔥Time To Build An Open Metaverse 🔥 All 6529 mega-threads are pinned in this thread of threads: The team game plan is here: Hop on board fam, we are going to save the world.1/ On A Pathway To An Open Metaverse We are going to make a run at changing the arc of history. It is a Return of the Jedi vs the Death Star style mission. They have the money and the power. We mostly have our brains, our community and gm. But it might be just enough6529 @punk6529Book of the Week - Effortless by Greg McKeown. This is not a very deep read but it’s highly practical. Greg McKeown wrote Essentialism. That book basically said ‘focus’ - do the one thing that’ll make the difference. This one is about making things ‘easy’. Put yourself in the right state of mind, cut out needless work. Don’t do work for the sake of doing work. If you find yourself in endless tasks or with a feeling of doing a lot but not enough to show for, I highly recommend both of these books.