🔥Tips for deal sourcing in Europe, new domain marketplace, Flippa exclusive, hot funding trend...
Plus: domain news, Web3 funding and cool tools.
Hi there 👋,
In a bizarre move this week, AMC Entertainment (AMC) diversified into…wait for it…
gold mining.
The CEO of AMC Theatres, Adam Aron, announced the investment in a tweet.
We guess that owning a gold mine gives him even more opportunities to say stuff and attract attention. Plus, the meme factory is gearing up for new growth.
In this issue:
📈 Market Moves
📰 News & Views
🤝🏿 Deal Summary
🍿 Domain Snacks
🧰 Cool tools
Don’t miss: Tips for doing deals in Europe, a brand new domain marketplace, forget funds: the hottest trend is backing operators, and a few surprises below.
As always, thanks for being here.
Juliet Lyall
P.S. If you're claiming Irish Heritage today, this is for you. The Dark Hedges are surreal.
📈 Market Moves
👎 Bitcoin | $40,919.10 | - 0.50%
👍 Ethereum | $2,816.59 | + 1.51%
👍 Shopify | $635.89 | + 2.05%
👍 Coinbase | $173.88 | + 0.78%
👍 Meta | 0.78% | $204.94 | + .65%
Sponsored by Flippa
🌟Exclusive
Flippa is launching off market deal access!
Carefully curated and vetted deals will be released via their community each week. These deals are only available privately, and accessible to the community first.
On March 20th, the team will drop their first five deals.
Why join?
1. Access deals before the rest
2. Get exclusive deal tips
3. Receive free Escrow and due diligence
👨🏾💻 Join now for the March 20 deal drop
📰 News & Views
Recent stories that resonated with us.
🔹 Looking to deal source in Europe?
U.S. investors are increasingly stepping in to make big deals in Europe. But deep pockets alone won’t win over European startups.—investors need to consider cultural nuances too. Andrés Dancausa, a Spanish founder turned operator, has spent years helping LPs understand the lay of the land in Europe.
Dancausa offers three tips to make a good impression:
Know the right questions to ask
Know your way around fragmented markets
Know the different costs of compliance
Deal sourcing is a dance wherever you’re located in the world: Investors have to know the surroundings, mirror the expectations of partner startups, and keep pace. 3 Tips For Investors Looking To Deal Source In Europe.
🔹 Immune to slowdown
Web3 and the decentralized web seem to be immune to any talk of a venture slowdown. Aptos, a blockchain startup founded by ex-Meta employees, just raised $200M at a $1B+ valuation. Aptos is creating a Layer 1 system blockchain, meaning it will not sit on Ethereum or another network, but be its own decentralized network. This more scalable blockchain should result in faster transactions and lower fees than today’s mainstream networks allow.
We are the original creators, researchers, designers, and builders of Diem, the blockchain that was first built to serve this purpose. While the world never got to see what we built, our work is far from over.
— Aptos CEO Mo Shaikh in his blog post last month.
🔹 Forget funds; the hot new trend is funds of funds:
Perhaps it was inevitable that as more late-stage funds look to invest earlier, they are turning to putting capital into not just early-stage startups, but also other money managers with an early-stage focus. It’s one way to disburse lots of capital at once, but without the operational hassle of managing it. For more evidence of this trend, Alexis Ohanian quietly announced a new initiative last week: the 776 Titans Fund.
We’re looking for folks who great founders will absolutely want to make room for on their cap tables. Why? The combination of unique distribution and/or their reputation and experience. We’re looking for the things that traditional VCs don’t have. This differentiation is what the best founders are looking for — everything else is just capital.
— Alexis Ohanian
The Shorts
🔹 AngelList Venture is now worth $4.1 billion. That makes Naval Ravikant’s company a unicorn and a creator of unicorns. It may just be getting started. What investors, operators, and founders should know about AngelList.
🔹 Fresh off their acquisition of the intellectual property rights to CryptoPunks and Meebits, Yuga Labs is planning virtual land sales and an APECoin token to kickstart a metaverse gaming project. Check out the leaked images.
🔹 The number of daily active wallets on Luna is up 10x year-on year. They’ve quietly built the biggest active userbase in DeFi with 20k wallets.
🤝🏿 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.
➽ The Hollandaise: Invest in fractional ownership of The Hollandaise, a 3 bed, 2.5 bath home in Nashville, TN. 95% funded: Arrived.
Minimum: $100
Total historical return: 10.8% per annum
➽ StayFi: Helps professional vacation rental hosts get more direct bookings with a one-time hardware sale & recurring revenue subscription. Bootstrapped to $220K+ ARR, as of early 2022. Growing 13% MoM. Open for reservations at Republic.
➽ 🔒 i3 Industrial Fund Two LP: Invest alongside a commercial real estate sponsor in a Industrial Fund with a Core Plus profile and an anticipated equity multiple of 1.45x. RealCrowd.
Minimum Investment: $50,000
Target IRR: 12.5%
➽ VGFIT: A team of certified fitness trainers & mobile app developers with over 10 years of experience. Over 30 million downloads across the AppStore and Google Play. Has shown a consistent increase in revenue for the past four years. Venture raise on Startengine.
Minimum: $250
Offering Type: Equity
🍿 Domain Snacks
⚇ Dan: Elliot Silver explains why he prefers transfers at Dan .com. You might also be interested in Elliot’s first xyz sale. Bought for Less than $300, Sold for…
⚇ NFT back on top: NFT regained the top spot in February for the most searched keyword at Sedo. NFT was number one from September through December 2021. TLD Investors compiled a list of Sedo’s Most Searched Keywords – February 2022.
⚇ New domain marketplace: Web3Domains.Auction: That’s the name of a newly launched marketplace that focuses on Web3 domain names. The site issued a press release on their first sale.
⚇ Finally: Seven long, long years ago, Google started offering users a way to buy a domain without having to deal with a host provider. Now, Google Domains is at last out of beta as a full-fledged product. To mark the occasion of Domains becoming a fully formed entity, Google's offering new and returning users a discount until April 15th.
🧰 Cool Tools
»» Launch checklist: Every founder and their dog heads to Product Hunt to launch their latest product or service, but few plan their launch well. This guy created a Product Hunt Launch Checklist. It’s a collection of 200+ actionable tips divided into 12 checklists to help you prepare effectively for your Product Hunt launch. $39.00—but think about how much time this will save you.
»» A powerful way to remember: Clay gives you insights into the people you meet and lets you keep notes about your contacts. That’s helpful when you have a large network - or a poor memory. End the constant switch between notes apps, DMs, text and files. Clay lets you track what you talked about, social profiles, work history, birthdays and more. It’s a streamlined and thoughtful approach for keeping in touch.
»» Convert more site visitors: Easy User Test is a testing tool that offers a simple way to test your text and design. Their remote testing solution conducts message testing for websites, ads, and email copy to provide data on how your audience perceives your text and design. You can set up your research study in minutes and get results within 12-48 hours. Paid tool.
🤣 I wanna be a cowboy: 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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Interesting that poker is #8 keyword at Sedo. And damn, wish still had my mutant, free land and apecoin, oh well :)