Here is what we have been into recently,
Decentralized Pictures - Legendary filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola has always been willing to take risks for his projects - self financing Apocalypse Now, One From the Heart and his new film Megalopolis - and adopt new technologies, but now his family members are also active in coming up with alternative solutions to the problem of film financing. His son Roman Coppola, an accomplished director in his own right, is one of the founders of Decentralized Pictures, a new non profit film fund that proposes to use blockchain to raise funds for filmmakers who might otherwise have trouble raising money. People would invest in films that they would want to see and that the community of members would decide which projects get made and have input throughout the production process. Funding would be raised through blockchain and NFT’s - the process is explained in depth here. Still in its early stages but represents the most significant use of blockchain and tokens in entertainment financing, and if successful could have huge repercussions in the way films are made in the future. This would democratise the entire process of production and give a voice to filmmakers who otherwise wouldn’t be able to find funds.
Glimpse & Google Trends Supercharge - Glimpse is a trend tracking service. They focus on product, company and industry trends. Unlike some of its kind, Glimpse is mainly based on tracking data - Google Trends data among others. They have now translated that expertise into an app called Google Trends Supercharge. Google Trends in its own right is a highly valuable tool to understand which searches are trending on Google. However, it is not always the most user friendly. Glimpse is a Chrome App, and sits on top of Google Trends. It provides volume data (not sure how) plus a useful trendline. It simply makes Google Trends more useful. You can read more about the app and download it here.
Oliver Stone Putin Interviews - Academy Award winner Oliver Stone explores the mind of Vladimir Putin in this four part series filmed between 2015 and 2017 and released the same year. Granted unprecedented access to Putin, Stone tries to understand the way Putin’s mind works, his worldview and Putin’s Russia. Viewed from the perspective of the past week and the events leading up to it, this makes for even more interesting viewing. Stone’s interviews were also released in book format. Probably the strangest sequence in the film is Stone and Putin watching Dr. Strangelove together. You can watch all four episodes on YouTube.
Y-Combinator top 100 companies - Y-Combinator (global top start-up incubator) releases a top 100 companies list every year. This year they have also added a Breakthrough Companies view to their list. This blog post goes into some insights. Here are some that caught our eye 1) 30% of companies are outside of the US 2) There is emerging market momentum 3) 11% of top companies are remote first (surprised this is not higher). The fastest valuation growth list is also worth digging into given how prominent Y-Combinator is in shaping tech. See below for the breakdown of top-10 (manually compiled)
Book of the Week - The Third Wave by Alvin Toffler. We are adding this book to the List of Books to Understand the World (alongside the 4th Turning, Lessons of History, Sovereign Individual…). This was written in 1980 and accurately predicts the changes the society is going through now. The Third Wave refers to the new civilization model which would replace the Industrial Society (the Second Wave). It talks about how technology will change family structures, business structures, energy, government and touches on many changes we are going through now (i.e. remote work, focus on sustainability, diversity, decentralisation).
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