"Age of Miracles" - TopPodcast.com

Latest Episodes:

Bull & Bear: Agora, the API Powering Clubhouse Apr 19, 2021

Show notes

This week, I teamed up with Lillian Li, the author of Chinese Characteristics, to write about Agora. I took the bull case, and Lillian took the bear case. We cover:

Agora’s History
$API’s API
China’s Livestreaming Boom
What Agora Looks Like Today
The Bull Case for Agora
The Bear Case Against Agora
Bull or Bear?

Read the full piece at Not Boring.

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Is BlockFi the Future of Finance? Apr 15, 2021

Show notes

The first question anyone has when they hear about BlockFi is: “What’s the catch? 8.6% APY sounds too good to be true. That can’t be legit.”

I went DEEP to understand how they do it, and it’s legit. Essentially, BlockFi arbitrages the fact that traditional finance and crypto don’t like to deal with each other. We'll cover:

What Does a Bank Do?
What BlockFi Does
Stablecoins and 8.6% APY
Grayscale Bitcoin Trust
The Race to the Finance Super App
The Offer

Read the full post at Not Boring.

Sign up for BlockFi.

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Unwitting Collaboration & Web3 Experimentation Apr 12, 2021

Show notes

I'm minting a Not Boring essay, Power to the Person, as an NFT, auctioning it, and splitting the proceeds with the people whose work I referenced.

In today's Not Boring, we discuss:

Chris Dixon's canonical pieces: The next big thing will start out looking like a toy (2010) and What the smartest people do on the weekend is what everyone else will do during the week in ten years (2013)
A new media model that rewards quality over quantity and virality.
Experimenting with Web3

You can read the full post at Not Boring, including a link to the NFT auction.

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A Not Boring Adventure, One Year In Apr 05, 2021

Show notes

Today, I'm sharing the Not Boring story as honestly as possible -- it often looks way easier from the outside -- with lessons I’ve learned on writing, growth, business models, investing, and creator psychology sprinkled in. We’ll cover:

Getting Here: Per My Last Email → Not Boring Club → Not Boring
Growth: Luck, Shares, Ups, Downs and Tommy
The Writing Process and Psychology
Business Model: Optimize for Growth and Opportunity
The Not Boring Syndicate
The Present and Future of Not Boring

You can read the full post, including charts and a link to the subscription vs. ad model at Not Boring.

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This is How They Tell Me Secureframe Saves the World Apr 01, 2021

Show notes

If you're building a software company, you need security compliance certifications like SOC 2 and ISO 27001 to sell into large companies. It sounds boring and tedious, but it's fascinating. The story involves:
- Russian hackers unleashing malware called NotPetya on the world and causing $10 billion in damages.
- How startups are selling into large enterprises and big pools of revenue much earlier.
- How to compete and win in a massive, nascent, non-winner-take-all market with high switching costs.
- Why you keep hearing about SOC 2 on Invest Like the Best and The Twenty Minute VC.
Secureframe, founded by Shrav Mehta and Natasja Nielsen in 2020, just raised $18 million from Kleiner Perkins to make security compliance faster, cheaper, and more effective.

Read the full post at Not Boring

Schedule a Demo with Secureframe

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We Good Now? Mar 29, 2021

Show notes

In this episode, Dror Poleg and I break down WeWork after the recent announcement that it's going public via SPAC at a $9 billion valuation.

We cover:

The Royal We. Adam Neumann was narcissistic and brash… exactly what was needed to shake up office real estate.
WeStory. From 3,000 sq ft in Soho to millions across the world, fueled by an epic hype flywheel.
From WeWork to We. Neumann pushed the company outside of office and into a little bit of everything.
IPOh No! WeWork’s attempted 2019 IPO failed spectacularly thanks to unforced errors, and the company brought in new management, refocused, and trimmed down.
WeSPAC. On Friday,Vivek Ranadivé’s BowX SPAC announced that it’s taking WeWork public at a $9 billion valuation.
Side Note: Masa is a Genius Again. Masa is on a tear. WeWork breaking even would be the icing on his comeback cake.
WeWork by the Numbers. The refocused WeWork is a straightforward business.
The WeWork Bear Case. This time, maybe it’s the market’s fault.
The WeWork Bull Case. WeWork survived, erased its mistakes, and is perfectly positioned to capture value in a more flexible world.
Back to the Future. You know who would have been a perfect CEO for this market?

Read the full piece on Not Boring.

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What's On Deck for On Deck? Mar 25, 2021

Show notes

Today, On Deck is announcing that it’s raising a $20 million Series A led by Keith Rabois at Founders Fund with participation from Learn Capital, Chamath Palihapitiya, Slack Fund, Village Global, Eric Yuan, Fred Ehrsam, Allison Picken’s The New Normal Fund, Charles Hudson at Precursor Ventures, Adam D’Angelo, Jen Rubio, Elad Gill, Julia DeWahl, Henry Ward, Afton Vechery, Jules Walter, Eric Su, Julia Lipton, Scott Belsky, Anthony Pompliano, Bloomberg Beta, Dylan Field, Aarti Ramamurthy, and many, many more members of the On Deck community.

We cover why On Deck has a chance to build a Stanford for the internet:

On Deck Investment Thesis.
Natively Integrated Education.
Platform and Team Constellation.
The On Deck Opportunity.

You can read the full original post and subscribe at notboring.co.

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The Dao of DAOs Mar 22, 2021

Show notes

DAOs - Decentralized Autonomous Organizations - are the next stop down the Web3 rabbit hole after NFTs. We explore:

- The DAO's $6.6b Hack

- What's a DAO?

- Coinbase vs. Uniswap

- $UNI vs $SUSHI

- Progressive Decentralization

- 7 Powers Analysis

- The Future

Read the full post at Not Boring.

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Soundtrack the World Mar 15, 2021

Show notes

Epidemic Sound just raised $450 million at a $1.4 billion valuation to Soundtrack the World.

Spotify's Stream On event showed the company is ready to do battle with the labels.

The time is right: Spotify should acquire Epidemic.

We cover:

Spotify’s Problem with Labels
Spotify Streams On
Enter Epidemic Sound
Spotify x Epidemic

Read the full post at Not Boring.

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UserLeap & Differentiating Insights Mar 11, 2021

Show notes

UserLeap helps product teams continuously discover customer needs and evaluate the user experience via short, highly targeted surveys (microsurveys) displayed contextually within the product. Companies use UserLeap to track NPS, iterate toward Product-Market Fit, improve onboarding, reduce churn, and make the myriad small improvements that make a great product.

The magic of UserLeap is that it quantifies qualitative feedback by collecting rich, written responses, in real-time, and using machine learning to analyze and categorize the responses to pull out themes.

In today's Sponsored Deep Dive, we cover: