issue # 8
issue # 8
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
Tokens in the attention economy by Cobie
In reality, the only scarce resource in crypto is attention. Crypto assets are not really scarce either. Of course, this is a little intellectually dishonest. Bitcoin and Ethereum themselves are scarce due to their hard-cap supply or deflationary tokenomic designs; Crypto Punks are scarce because there is a finite and fixed supply; and yes, there will probably only ever be 5,200 Crypto Dickbutts. But the amount of things you can speculate on in crypto is ever increasing and theoretically interminable.
🕺 Curated in Attention Economy, Web 3.0, Crypto & Crypto Tokens
Here’s what I know: if someone’s much better than you at something, they probably try much harder… Fantasy is easy and effort is punishing. Seeming is always easier than being.
🕺 Curated in Personal Development & Future of Expertise
Narrative Distillation by Kevin Kwok
The more static and predictable the world is, the less narrative matters. Historically most businesses followed clear precedents and fit neatly into paths. If starting a restaurant, the potential range of revenue and costs is known. There are few surprises, so it’s easier to look at the current state of the business and know what it will look like in a few years. There is little volatility. Tech startups radically break this mold. By definition they will be unrecognizable in five years, whether that’s because they are a unicorn or because they are extinct.
🕺 Curated in Storytelling
Tiktok, Emergent Creativity, and The Limits of Social Graphs by Kevin Kwok and Eugene Wei
We'll look back at social graphs and say that it is a mistake to use the social graph to approximate an interest graph. The people you know don't necessarily reflect your interests… The second wave of social is about having people be more conscious about building a graph that best matches the needs of what they want to get from that graph. Initially, importing from your contact/address book made sense. But now we can say that was a mistake. You don't need to follow all people you know on all services.
🕺 Curated in Social Graph Design, Remix Culture, Consumer Social & TikTok
Own the Demand by Florent Crivello
Another reason to focus on demand is that it can pull supply much more effectively than supply can pull demand. It is not the case that “the world will beat a path to your door if you build a better mouse-trap” — but if you gather everybody with a mice problem in one place, I guarantee it will soon turn into a convention for better-mouse-traps inventors.
💃 Curated in Aggregators, Strategy & Startup Advice
POPULAR RABBIT HOLES ON STARTUPY
23 connections → 16 content, 4 companies, 3 related topics
124 connections → 73 content, 46 companies, 5 related topics
Top Author → Future of Expertise, Personal Development, Investing Wisdom, & Happiness
113 connections → 34 content, 74 companies, 5 related topics
138 connections → 58 content, 75 companies, 5 related topics
20 connections → 13 content, 3 companies, 4 related topics
81 connections → 52 content, 22 companies, 7 related topics
81 connections → 52 content, 22 companies, 7 related topics
55 connections → 29 content, 22 companies, 4 related topics
✨ CURATOR SPOTLIGHT
Writer and Investor, going down the storytelling 🐇 🕳️
Find him on: Twitter | Newsletter
Why is storytelling interesting?
As I wrote in a recent piece: "A business without a clear story resembles a car without an engine. No matter how much you kick, scream, or turn its crankshaft over, it won’t go anywhere. It’s no more than a dead vehicle sitting (or a dead company walking, for that matter).
Like near all things in life, I find business simple, but not easy.
It consists of two foundational pillars: spreadsheets and storytelling.
Spreadsheets represent the table stakes; that nitty gritty operational rigor necessary to bring about the business, to make the damn thing work. These myriad minutiae resemble the chassis of a car; they are absolutely essential for meaningful execution.
Storytelling articulates the overarching vision and ethos; it differentiates the Mustang from the Maybach, the Range Rover from the Rally Car, Alexander the Great from Alexander the Mediocre.
Though seemingly superficial, the latter (i.e. storytelling) steers a vehicle powered by the former (i.e. spreadsheets).
Sans spreadsheets, a business will fail to launch. Sans storytelling, it will careen off course.
Together, they can propel a business any which way in service of its desired destination...Good stories make prices go up and help things happen.
They get you the job or the girl.
Great stories create generational wealth and unlock leaping emergent effects.
They get you the promotion or the “yes” in response to the proposal.
Bad stories destroy fortunes, friendships, future opportunities."
Podcasts worth listening to?
One of the most lucid, convincing conversations on the macroscopic sea change that Web3 will usher in.
Balaji's intellectual breadth and depth is staggering. From COVID to China, media to moonshots, this conversation is a tour de force that will alter your perspective and stress test your intellectual firepower.
Things worth reading and watching?
The Social Architecture of Impactful Communities by Nick DeWilde
Community is a competitive advantage. Ever since reading this piece two years ago, it has served as blueprint and framework to cultivate genuine conversation, collaboration, and compassion.
"We are living through an era of epochal change. At few times in history have so many currents of civilizational transformation coalesced and crashed into us at once, and at such speed. To say that we are being unmoored by massive technological, economic, environmental, geopolitical, and socio-cultural shifts would be to insufficiently limit our description of what is occurring."
Projects worth following?
Alexey Guzey's noble effort to "[build] the 21st century institutions of basic science." I am all for the disruption of the academic and research industrial complexes.
Small businesses are the backbone of the American economy. Baton is building the first true two-sided marketplace for the 32M American small businesses and their potential buyers in order to bring transparency and trust to this antiquated $11 trillion market. Disclosure: I am a small investor.
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