issue # 10
issue # 10
Welcome to the startupy newsletter, a laid back column about very serious ideas. Every week, we curate the hottest links from our universe and share them with you here.
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HOT LINKS IN OUR UNIVERSE
Why Netflix Should Sell Ads by Ben Thompson
Notice, though, the trouble this Internet reality presents to Netflix: if content is abundant and attention is scarce, it’s easier to sell attention than content; Netflix’s business model, though, is the exact opposite.
🕺 Curated in Netflix, New Media Business Models & The Attention Economy
New Deep Narratives: We Need New Stories of What it means to be Human by Phoebe Tickell
If technology is good, then why do so many algorithms seem to leave us feeling depressed and isolated? Can a video call really replace the full-bodied magic of spending time with someone we love? What’s the difference between a childhood spent playing outside in the fresh air and amongst the trees, and another spent on an iPad levelling up FarmVille?
These may sound like simple questions with simple answers depending on your perspective, but the truth is no one fully knows the answers yet. What if computer games enhance cognitive ability? What if running on a treadmill is safer than going for a run in the city? The answers to these questions are multi-faceted and varied — they’re complex.
🕺 Curated in Tech & Society, Humane Tech & Storytelling
We sometimes treat the information industries as if they were like any other enterprise, but they are not, for their structure determines who gets heard. It is in this context that Fred Friendly, onetime CBS News president, made it clear that before any question of free speech comes the question of “who controls the master switch.
🕺 Curated in Future of Media
Strategy = Anything that contributes to potential behavior change
Self expression = Everything else you should not say
Feedback conversations should be about strategy, not self-expression.
🕺 Curated in Delivering Feedback
I think a lot about the fluctuations of belief—the inevitable up and downs of maintaining engagement with something over long periods of time. Most people seem to think that love is unchanging versus merely enduring, that if you’re really passionate about something you wake up excited to do it every day. I don’t believe that’s true. In fact, it sets you up for failure—you start out in a manic rush of excitement, believing that the framework or cause or person you’ve found will be your salvation, and after a while you become disenchanted. If you think disenchantment is a sign of disaster, you’ll probably abandon what you’re doing. In order to stick with anything for a long period of time, you have to believe that disenchantment is a normal, healthy part of experience.
🕺 Curated in Personal Development
The High Return Activity of Raising Others' Aspirations by Tyler Cowen
At critical moments in time, you can raise the aspirations of other people significantly, especially when they are relatively young, simply by suggesting they do something better or more ambitious than what they might have in mind.
🕺 Curated in Ambition & Future of Talent
POPULAR RABBIT HOLES ON STARTUPY
15 connections → 10 content, 1 company, 4 related topics
Top Author → Mental Models, Decision Making & Productivity
Sacra: Highlights on market reports of the most interesting startups
Top Author → Storytelling and Positioning, Humanitarianism, Existentialism & Psychology
Governance → unobvious perspectives on how crypto and the Internet change the systems and structures for decision-making, accountability, and control.
57 connections → 43 content, 8 companies, 6 related topics
Consumer SaaS → Insights on building consumer software subscription businesses
80 connections → 50 content, 20 companies, 10 related topics
Employee Wellbeing and Benefits
47 connections → 8 content, 32 companies, 7 related topics
49 connections → 37 content, 7 companies, 5 related topics
✨ CURATOR SPOTLIGHT
Community builder, angel investor & writer going down the future of funding 🐇 🕳️
Find her on Twitter
Why is the future of funding interesting?
How ideas are funded to evolve from concept to practise and who gets to bring ideas forward is an interest that has seen me through various careers, from working closely with founders as an angel investor to my time grantmaking. Capital is a tool, after all, and there’s clearly room for new approaches. And it’s a fertile moment, from the rise of solo GPs to Stonks and Party Round, the rise of interest in public goods funding in crypto through communities like Gitcoin and champions like Tyler Cowen funding talent philanthropically. Together, this set of diversified approaches should mean a diversified set of people who bring forwards ideas, and that we have more mechanisms beyond pure venture capital or government cash to consider how we address society’s hardest problems. It’s just exciting.
A podcast worth listening to?
I'm not a huge podcast fan but loved Matt Clifford's conversation with Tyler Cowen and Daniel Gross on talent - so rich on how we think about individual and collective skill, and how the winners emerge.
Things worth reading and watching?
This great deep dive into solo GPs, who are increasingly managing larger pots of money than conventional funds, with potentially very different processes and outcomes. And this piece on how Lawtrades raised their series A using new gen tools like Angellist roll-ups, Journey, Stonks and more.
Projects worth following?
I’m a Nadia Eghbal maximalist from her ethnographic study of open source communities to her new research in crypto philanthropy; so I always keep an eye on her website.
In web3, I’m closely following Utopia Labs (even or especially in a decentralised world you need a tight finance and people stack. Disclosure: I'm an angel investor) and Optimism (new public goods funding).
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