🥾 Bootstrapping to $2MM a month, new web3 fund, digital twins, the importance of being curious & more inside.
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In this issue:
📈 Market Moves
📰 News & Views
🤝🏿 Deal Summary
🧰 Cool tools
Don’t miss: Bootstrapping to $2MM a month, digital twins, new web3 fund, and the importance of being curious.
As always, thanks for being here.
Juliet Lyall
📈 Market Moves
👍 Bitcoin | $38,596.60 | +0.60%
👍 Ethereum | $2,696.72 | +2.95%
👎 Shopify | $656.88 | -0.47%
👎 Coinbase | $189.79 | -1.44%
👎 Meta | $206.16 | -0.76%
📰 News & Views
Recent stories that resonated with us.
Certified Digital Twins
France-based art NFT platform LaCollection launched in September 2021 and entered into an exclusive agreement with their first partner - The British Museum.
The startup is betting big on the art NFT space by working with cultural institutions to create a new way of owning digital versions of a physical artwork. Like a limited edition ‘digital lithography’, collectors are now able to own certified digital twins of masterpieces from the world’s greatest museums, galleries and artists.
They offer the facility to buy and sell NFTs using a credit card or Ether and create your own personal gallery using Metamask or Fortmatic. There are three ways to buy: open auction, blind auction and fixed price.
LaCollection just closed a $10 million seed round and hopes to secure partnerships with more museums and artists, while growing a global team across Europe, Asia and the U.S.
From Creator to $2MM a Month SaaS Founder
Nathan Barry is the founder of the email marketing platform ConvertKit. He’s also one of our community members.
The company is 100% bootstrapped and Nathan has revealed every bit of his companies finances publicly since it was founded in 2013. As of writing, ConvertKit’s MRR is exactly $2,464,166. We know this because it updates regularly on their Baremetrics page.
There’s a lot to learn from Nathan’s processes and his approach to building a business with recurring revenue. You can also listen to the discussion on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.
Web3 Fund
A new €30 million EUR crypto/web3 investment fund: Cherry Crypto is a first-check fund dedicated to supporting entrepreneurs from the beginnings of their journey into web3. The fund will only invest in ~30 companies and projects - anywhere in the world.
Community Investment Programs
OpenSea announced two new community investment programs – Ecosystem Grants and OpenSea Ventures. They aim to support the creators, teams, and emerging technologies advancing the global growth of web3 and NFTs.
Be Curious
Walter Isaacson said in a recent interview that what separated Da Vinci, Franklin, and Jobs was not their intellect. It was their insatiable curiosity and desire to think about the countless things that other people stop noticing after a while. Unfortunately, it often feels like society is suffering from an extreme shortage of this curiosity these days.
Ted Lamade discusses a few of the things he’s curious about in 2022, and answers a bunch of questions like:
In a world overflowing with data, why are forecasts worse than ever?
What do value investors and energy companies have in common these days?
How are we supposed to understand a world in which a virtual Mega Yacht sells for $650,000 in a virtual world called The Sandbox?
Top Quote:
The most important thing is curiosity. Are you interested in learning about new things? Are you interested in meeting new people? Are you interested in listening to their ideas about a company and how they are going to change the world? If not, or if you lose this curiosity, then you become jaded and you should probably stop being an investor.
🤝🏿 Deal Summary
🔒 = Accredited Investors Only
None of these deals is a recommendation from investing.io. This content is for information purposes only. All returns listed are estimations from the respective platforms, and not advice from investing.io. Do your own research.
➽ Rentberry is a fully operational long-term rental platform that leverages technology to ensure a seamless rental experience - offering tenants the ability to save millions in rental deposits.
Price per Share: $0.87
Min. Investment: $300.15
Details on StartEngine.
➽ Ei Ventures: This Hawaii based company is poised to enter a combined $34.5 Billion market with its Novel Botanical Psychedelic Drug pipeline and Mental Wellness Platform.
Price per Share: $4.94
Min. Investment: $498.94
Details on Ei Ventures.
➽ GACW, based in Phoenix, Arizona, has literally reinvented the wheel with a patented, green technology that provides a cost effective alternative to rubber tires.
Price per Share: $1.75
Min. Investment: $248.50
Details on StartEngine.
➽ Tokenized shares in a 7 bed, 2 bath two-unit duplex in Chicago, IL hosted on the Algorand blockchain.
Potential return: 18.20%
Min. Investment: $50.00
Details on LoftyAI.
➽ Podetize: A high-growth platform for producing & monetizing podcasts with ads.
Recurring revenue generates a lifetime client value of $14,820.
Minimum investment: $100
Details on Republic.
➽ Ratio Finance: De-risking DeFi through protocol-owned risk assessment.
Only non-U.S. investors.
Minimum investment: $100
Details on Republic.
👩🏽🌾 Today’s Top Yields on Stablecoins
USDC/UST - Uniswap (Ethereum) - 158% APY
USDT - Bancor (Ethereum) - 26.92% APY
DAI - Bancor (Ethereum) - 26.63% APY
💲 DeFi Yields
Hundred.Finance (Fantom Chain) *note: We list the fully-boosted yields here MIM: 18.88 %, DAI: 14.23%, FRAX: 10.28%, USDC: 10.08%
Hakuswap via YieldYak (Avax Chain) UST-USDC: 24.00%
Pangolin via YieldYak (Avax Chain) UST-USDC: 18.5%
🧰 Cool Tools
»» LiveKit is an open-source platform that allows users to build live audio or video experiences into their apps or websites. It’s possible to build audio-only rooms that support up to 1,000 listeners or audio and video rooms with up to 400 viewers.
Best for those with mid-level tech knowledge.
»» Want to get someone’s attention?
Bigassmessage achieves that goal. Your messages must be short as you only get around 50 characters to make your point. This one’s for you.
»» Easily store and locate your graphics. If you’re like us, you have 100s of images, illustrations, icons and other graphics jammed into various folders. It becomes a nightmare to find exactly what you’re looking for.
With Eagle you can grab and save images from the web, screenshot whole pages or any part of a page, and organize and tag your images so you can quickly locate them.
»» Dualless: For those who don't have dual monitor. When you’re too cheap to buy another monitor - or just haven’t got around to it, Dualless splits your browser windows into two with just 2 clicks. You can also merge your split browser windows back to a single window. Available as a Chrome Extension.
🧙 Cartoon characters brought to life: FREE ROLL
Brought to You by Smash Digital
🦄 SEOs with Skin in the Game
Smash Digital - a growth agency, filled to the brim with unicorn images and SEO memes. A team of SEOs with actual skin in the game, ranking their own portfolio of profitable businesses, and offering the exact same services to clients.
An agency with so much link juice you’ll need a mop and bucket to clean it all up.
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Not financial, investing or tax advice. This newsletter is strictly for information, entertainment and education purposes. Nothing in here is investment advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any assets or to make any financial decisions. This newsletter is not tax advice. Talk to your professional advisors. Do your own research.
Wow you keep improving on the format Juliet, much better deals section today and I like the startup grid section at the end ;)