🤑 Investing Updates (24 Nov)
This Thursday's top stories for online entrepreneurs turned investors, with updates on the markets, online business, real estate, startups, and crypto/NFTs.
MARKETS UPDATE
Markets are closed today :)
A new wave of COVID-19 in China shook global markets allowing the US dollar to rise against most major currencies.
The CEO of Frankfurt-based Commerzbank expects only a “mild recession” rather than a disaster.
Chart of the day
ONLINE BUSINESS UPDATE
Miami-based VentureKite buys and scales profitable websites in niche verticals such as education, personal finance, home improvement and sports. The digital media company secured $30 million in credit financing led by CoVenture, a firm that invests in technology startups. VentureKite has purchased 11 other digital brands over the past year and half, including TheGradCafe.com, ProductivitySpot.com and GolfSpan.com. As its focus is evergreen, it does not purchase websites that focus on topics like news, technology or gossip.
SaaS businesses are typically much easier to sell than agencies. Although they require a bigger initial investment (you need to hire the technical people to build the product), they can scale far beyond an agency in revenue. nDash founder, Michael Brown, scaled up his content writing agency into a marketplace where companies can source high-quality content writers. Eventually, Michael realized it made sense to let his clients use the platform and select the writers for themselves.
The
Discord just hit over 2000 members, with 1.8K messages sent over the last year. There are 12 alternative asset discussion channels and it’s free to sign up here.This week’s
Deal Flow newsletter by Richard Patey featured 1 Website on Flippa, 3 Aged & 6 Brandable Domains, plus the launch of a newsletter Sponsorship as a Service:
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STARTUPS UPDATE
Entrepreneur Elizabeth Holmes was sentenced to 11 years in prison. She was found guilty of defrauding investors with her startup, Theranos.
Mark Cuban's interactive streaming app Fireside has acquired Stremium to launch on smart TVs, Amazon Fire TV and other devices.
NFT startups have been struggling in the second half of 2022. VC deals could drop by 80% from the the Q1 peak.
Blaming “financial hardships”, it was announced that financial services startup GloriFi will suspend its operations. CMO Cathy Landtroop said that “"startup mistakes, the failing economy, and reputational attacks” were also to blame for the move.
PE firms completed their purchase of Zendesk, taking it private in a $10.2B deal.
🦄 SEOs with Skin in the Game
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An agency with so much link juice you’ll need a mop and bucket to clean it all up.
CRYPTO / NFT UPDATE
Sam Bankman-Fried apologizes to FTX Employees, but does not address concerns about customer funds being misappropriated.
The ApeCoin community now has its own marketplace for Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs. Snag Solutions built the marketplace with 88% positive votes from token holders. Magic Eden and Rarible failed to win the community’s support to build the marketplace. The marketplace offers lower fees OpenSea’s 2.5%, and offers deeper ecosystem integration than typical NFT marketplaces.
Horizen Labs announced that the Apecoin staking website will go live on December 5th, however, the site will only available to users outside of North America. Solutions being proposed by members of the community included using a VPN, other front-end sites, or interacting directly with the contract.
There wasn’t a dedicated space for entrepreneurial investors like us… So we created one.
Join over 150 members interested in digital asset and startup deal flow in our paid Discord community. Plus get access to our forum with resources such as our Website Investing SOPs.
REAL ESTATE UPDATE
Home sales fell for a ninth consecutive month according to the National Association of Realtors. October sales were down 5.9% from September.
According to the Mortgage Bankers Association, new home purchase mortgage applications saw a 13% month over month decline in October.
Wall street is bidding up housing stocks, in the hope of a market rebound.
Property management startup, Proper, raised about $3 million in its seed fund round, led by ALFA Ventures and 14Peaks Capital.
Ukio, the European premium apartment rental platform, has raised a €28M Series A led by Felix Capital.
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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.