🚀Upstart plans a $100MM portfolio, Flippa sold a crypto company, new seed fund, & domain updates.
Plus: Industry reports, and real estate offers.
Hi there 👋,
Cybersecurity is on everyone’s mind.
If it’s been a while since you updated your passwords (or you don’t use a password manager) then it’s time to reassess your exposure levels.
CNBC cites a report from security firm Lookout of the 20 passwords most commonly found in leaked account information on the dark web. We’re stunned that anyone would use Number 14 on that list.
In this issue:
📈 Market Moves
📰 News & Views
🤝🏿 Deal Summary
🧰 Cool tools
Don’t miss: Upstart for impact investors, crypto seed fund, domain news, and Flippa sold a crypto company.
As always, thanks for being here.
Juliet Lyall
P.S. Please support our sponsors. Today’s offers are worth checking out!
📈 Market Moves
👎 Bitcoin | $43,061.90 | - 1.95%
👎 Ethereum | 2,832.85 | - 3.92%
👎 Shopify | $636.18 | - 3.60%
👎 Coinbase | $183.52 | - 5.65%
👎 Meta | $205.13 | - 1.43%
📰 News & Views
Recent stories that resonated with us.
Investments of $7.75 Million and Plans for a $100 Million Portfolio
Upstart just released its 2021 Impact Report.
It’s an overview of their accomplishments, including close to $8 million invested by Upstart members in funds and startups. Upstart is also launching its own portfolio to invest in creative economy funds and companies, with a goal of raising $100 million.
Upstart Co-Lab, aims to connect investors to creative economy enterprises addressing larger societal problems, creating jobs and stimulating local economies. Their target businesses include ethical fashion, sustainable food, game designers, and real estate projects with affordable workspace for artists.
If these types of investments are of interest to you, you’ll learn more about the Upstart Member Community here.
Best of the Rest
🔹 Flippa sold a cryptocurrency company for $70,000. Hashing Ad Space pays its members crypto tokens to complete tasks like watching ads, filling out surveys, and playing games. At the time of sale, the company’s member database had 464,000 registered emails, 157,800 “active” email autoresponder subscribers, 41,000 affiliates, and repeat ad customers.
🔹 Challenging Everything You Know About Startups: Here’s living proof that being a technical founder is not required to make tens of millions of dollars. Rachel Greenberg discusses a B2B business that has a subpar website, sparse social media, and no fancy marketing, yet has 800+ staff and nearly 9-figure earnings.
🔹 Crypto Seed Fund: San Francisco-based crypto-native investment firm Hack VC unveiled a new $200 million “crypto seed fund” to invest in early-stage startups in crypto, blockchain and Web3. The new fund is backed by Sequoia Capital, Fidelity and a16z’s Marc Andreessen and Chris Dixon. Hack’s new fund has already begun investing, including in Web3 infrastructure provider Mysten Labs and fixed-rate DeFi protocol Element.fi.
🔹 Remember Pacaso?: We featured Pacaso back in March last year after they raised $75 million to give people a way to co-own a luxury home. The company announced last week that it generated nearly $300 million in full year 2021 revenue and that it sold about 400 units in its first year of operation.
Sponsored by NowRx
Get A Stake in the Pharmacy Revolution
NowRx provides same-day prescription delivery straight to your door.
And thanks to their unique tech-powered pharmacies, NowRx operates at a fraction of the cost of traditional retail chains.
The highlights:
Generated $26M+ in annualized revenue in December 2021
Saved customers over $2.8M on prescriptions
Earned five-star reviews at every location
Ahead of their nationwide expansion, NowRx is offering investors a stake in the tech-powered pharmacy revolution.
They’ve already announced 3 new locations with a goal of 10 more before the end of year - alongside plans to expand their popular Telehealth service that grew over 1,200% in 2021.
👉 Learn more about their massive growth and invest in NowRx today.
🤝🏿 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.
➽ Fig Portfolio Shares: Fig is a game funding and publishing platform. Through the sale of Fig Portfolio Shares, Fig intends to co-publish 10 games or game console projects (Portfolio Products). The company will collect a percentage of the gross receipts from their sales and pay out dividends to investors twice a year. Republic.
Minimum investment: $1,000
Type of security: Fig Portfolio Shares (Preferred Stock)
➽ 🔒 Prairie Creek Farm: Shares in a 155-acre corn & soybean farm located in LaSalle County, IL. 5-10 year target hold period given stable cash flows and potential for long-term appreciation. Acretrader.
Minimum: $14,310
Potential Return: 8.19%
➽ 🔒 The Langston: A to-be-built, mixed-use development of 204 luxury apartments, 15,443 SF of retail, and 77 underground parking spaces. The project will be located in Shaw, one of Washington, D.C.’s popular residential areas. CrowdStreet.
Minimum: $25,000
Potential Return: 21.10%
➽ 🔒 Marchwood Apartments: Invest alongside a commercial real estate sponsor in a Multi-Family Property with a Value Add profile and an anticipated equity multiple of 1.9x. Realcrowd.
Minimum: $25,000
Potential Return: 17.00%
👩🏽🌾 Top Yields on Stablecoins
UST - Anchor (Terra) - 19.47% APY
USDT - Bancor (Ethereum) - 26.39% APY
USDT/USDC - Autofarm (Cronos) - 25.89% APY
💲 DeFi Yields
Hundred.Finance (Fantom Chain) *note: We list the fully-boosted yields here MIM: 40.43%, DAI: 20.37%, FRAX: 13.04%, USDC: 16.29 %
Pangolin via YieldYak (Avax Chain) UST-USDC: 19.8 %
Platypus via YieldYak (Avax Chain) USDT: 15.9 %
🍿 Domain Snacks
Here’s a handy query from Dune that showcases the most recent and expensive .eth domain purchases made.
GoDaddy now allows customers to use Klarna to purchase GoDaddy products and services. The update was discovered in this tweet.
NFT Project Extensions: Tyler Mason, Senior Director of Strategy and Advisory at GoDaddy Corporate Domains (GCD) put together a list of domain extensions used by the “Top 100 NFT projects” ranked by volume. Domain Investing.
Raymond Hackney released his February 2022 Keyword Sales report.
NFT made a nice showing thanks to NFTAuction .com selling for $75,000. TLD Investors.
Sponsored by Direct.co
❗How Much?
Do you know an e-commerce business owner who’s looking to exit?
Direct.co will pay you a $100,000 referral fee if you introduce them to a company that they end up acquiring.
This new e-commerce aggregator acquires Shopify stores generating between $5-75 million in revenue.
👉 If you know a company that's ready to sell in the next 12 months, email Robbie at robbie @direct.co. He'd love to hear from you!
🧰 Cool Tools
»» Just Launched: The Crunchbase Unicorn Board is a curated list of the most valuable private companies in the world. Powered by Crunchbase’s comprehensive data, this list is updated as companies reach unicorn status.
»» What if you can’t make it to an event on Monday at 8:00pm?
Newcon is a new streaming platform that allows you to watch keynote presentations, fireside chats or interviews on demand. They’re like the Netflix for presentation and conference content.
The platform offers access to over 100 of the world‘s best thought leaders and conferences in the areas of entrepreneurship, startup, diversity, community, Web3, NFTs, and more. Newcon is free while in Beta.
Reports & Research:
»» Employers, listen up! A look at how U.S. employees feel about remote and hybrid work, how their behaviors have evolved since the pandemic, and how employers are adjusting to new hybrid expectations. The State of Remote Work.
»» Meta What? It might surprise you that more than one in three consumers have never heard of the metaverse. New research from Gartner also shows that only 6% of people surveyed said they understood it well enough to explain it.
»» Love it or hate it, you can’t ignore TikTok. The company produced an insightful retrospective on their 2021 performance, along with a look at what’s next. You can download the reports by region or country.
🏀 Calmly being impossible: FREE ROLL
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