👋🏼 Goodbye, 7 FBA trends, first private crypto lending platform, troubled aggregator, Rising Stars: new fund for early stage companies...
Please note:
1. The intro to this letter is longer today (for a reason), but the news is shorter ( I see you pumping your fist in the air with delight)
2. Travis returns next week with another fascinating take on the investing world, along with his always unique stories.
Hi there 👋,
A personal note from this writer:
I arrived here by chance.
I'd never considered writing a newsletter until 2 years ago.
That's when my good friend Richard Patey reached out, asking for someone to help with his Website Investing newsletter. (All of the OGs here remember that publication).
I offered to give him a hand for a few weeks. We had so much fun working together that I assumed all the newsletter duties and continued our collaboration.
The Website Investing letter grew into one of the top 25 business letters on Substack (all credit for that belongs to Richard because he already had a loyal and engaged bunch of readers before I started).
Richard introduced me to the art, science, and discipline of newsletter writing, and I'm grateful to him for starting me on this journey. Plus, he’s been my greatest cheerleader😀.
Let's fast forward a few months to ~October 2020. That's when Travis teamed up with Richard to co-found investing.io.
I was part of a 'package deal.' I came along with the subscriber base, the newsletter, and a few doubts.
I didn't know what to expect.
I didn't know Travis.
I didn't want a 'job.'
I Googled Travis to find out some basic details. On paper (well, on my screen), he appeared intelligent, likeable, and sane.
That was a good start.
Over the past 18 months, the reality of working alongside Travis exceeded my expectations.
Travis has all of the qualities above, but he is also considerate, generous, astute, positive, and a patient listener (that's handy, because I can talk the leg off a wooden chair).
Every conversation with Travis left me with a smile on my face.
We've brainstormed community and marketing ideas, discussed newsletter options, and talked about health, travel, and the Stoics. We haven't yet solved the issues of world peace or climate change so watch out for an update on that.
It's been a rollercoaster ride. And now it's come to an end.
This is my last newsletter for the investing.io community.
This letter would not exist without you — our readers.
Thanks to all of you for your encouragement and support over the past 18 months. I've appreciated your emails, comments, and notes on our feedback forms — the good, the bad, and the ugly 😅
I arrived here by chance.
If there's a lesson here, it's that taking a chance in life can bring unexpected rewards.
A lucky break often hides in the detour you take. Try to avoid fixating on a single goal, because your next opportunity might be waiting on the winding road to your left.
For one last time: Thank you for being here.
Juliet Lyall
P.S. 'So long, and thanks for all the fish.' (Congrats if you get that reference)
📈 Market Moves
👎 Bitcoin | $37,099.10 | -6.48%
👎 Ethereum | $2,754.13 | -6.32%
👎 Shopify | $409.42 | -15.61%
👎 Coinbase | $115.65 | -11.14%
👎 Meta | $174.95 | -3.32%
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📰 News & Views
Recent stories that resonated with us.
Startup Snippets
★ The secret to startup success means never talking about your product. Confused? We were too, until we read Jeff Koser's article: 4 Important Lessons I Learned From Founding a Successful Startup That Has a 90% Close Rate.
★ Startup founders are either too conservative with their financial projections or overly optimistic. Neither is ideal.
STORY teamed up with the financial experts at ProjectionHub to determine and analyze how the most common startup business models project their financials. They analyzed 107 startups to come up with their data on revenues and growth rates across B2B tech, B2C tech, D2C products and marketplace startups. Take a look at How Different Startup Sectors Project Revenues and What It Means for Investors.
🩳The Shorts
🔹 We rarely (maybe never?) write about Elon Musk, but we can't resist commenting on the latest speculation that he intends to take Twitter public within 3 years. It reminds us of a website flip. Buy the platform, improve it, grow users, and then flip it for a profit. Watch this space.
🔹 Allocate, a digital investment platform providing investors access to top tier VC funds and co-investments, raised a $15.3M Series A led by M13.
🔹 Mueshi raised $3.3M to develop a fractionalized NFT marketplace for fine arts. We’ve seen enough movement in this space to believe that fractionalization of NFTs is trending. Here's Mueshi's website.
🔹 India launched an open network for digital commerce (ONDC) as the government tries to end the dominance of U.S. companies Amazon.com and Walmart in the fast-growing e-commerce market. The government platform will allow buyers and sellers to connect and transact with each other online, no matter what other application they use.
🔹 Speaking of e-commerce: Every FBA seller knows that the Amazon marketplace evolves at a rapid pace. To help you keep up, Quietlight noted the 7 Top Trends Affecting Amazon Businesses, along with an outline of the challenges to prepare for in 2022.
🔹 Under development and fine-tuning for the past 15 months, Sienna Network recently launched SiennaLend, a service the group claims to be the ‘first-ever’ private crypto lending platform.
With other platforms, a users' lending practices are out in the open and traceable. Built upon the privacy-preserving 'Secret Network', which leverages private smart contracts in combination with anonymised wallets, SiennaLend effectively puts an end to this practice. Full story here.
🔹 They grow up so fast: That feeling when you really want to plough some cash into a startup, but they’re just a little bit too young? Yeah, Techstars hates that too, so they debuted a new fund aimed at investing in earlier-stage companies.
🔹 CoinFLEX.US launched as a subsidiary of CoinFLEX, a leading crypto yield platform and futures exchange. The company will initially offer their flagship products and services to retail and institutional users across 49 states in the US. Offers include: Interest, flexUSD Minting, and Zero-fee Spot Trading.
🔹 Pay with Bitcoin: American crypto enthusiasts will soon be able to pay their utilities, mortgage payments, and even taxes with Bitcoin. Swedish startup Bitrefill, best known for its marketplace letting users spend their crypto on gift cards and mobile top-ups, announced that its Pay Bill service is now available to users in the U.S. There’s a waitlist due to some scalability constraints.
🔹 Troubled aggregator: Thrasio reportedly announced layoffs and plans to replace its CEO. The Amazon aggregator was most recently valued at $10 billion, but after nixing plans to go public last year, changes are afoot. These latest developments underscore some of the challenges in the aggregator business model.
Yields
👩🏽🌾 Top Yields on Stablecoins
USDC - Vires (Waves) 42.52% APY
USDT - Vires (Waves) 39.82% APY
USDC- Bancor (Ethereum) 28.73% APY
💲 DeFi Yields
Hundred.Finance (Fantom Chain) *note: We list the fully-boosted yields here MIM: 38.93%, DAI: 11.46%, FRAX: 15.25%, fUSDT: 17.78 %
Moremoney via YieldYak (Avax Chain) Moneycrv: 12.3 %
Echidna via YieldYak (Avax Chain) UST: 13.3 %
Pangolin via YieldYak (Avax Chain) UST-USDC: 14.1 %
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