Category: Random

This article is based on a Tweet thread from a month ago that received 1M impressions. We’ve tracked ~1500 startups (seen 10x more) and talked to 100s of investors in the last year. Here are some of the exciting trends and startups we’ve noticed or come across. It’s a mix of early & late stuff. […]

Robinhood. WSB/GME. Crypto millionaires. $5M Republic campaigns. Personal wealth management is no longer just for the rich. First thing you notice is that talking about money is no longer gauche. Stock investing is social on Public.com, or Finary if you want to connect to your brokerage. Commonstock is similar, but more focused on following top investors over friends. Qoore is a mobile […]

I read somewhere that the average company uses 100+ SaaS apps. Regardless of the specific number, it’s a lot. Like water molecules traveling through trees, rivers, and animals, pieces of data flow through these SaaS apps, powered by integrations. As users, we’ve gotten use to these integrations, but they take time to build. This is where […]

If you’re like me, you were wondering why everyone’s talking about NFTs all of a sudden. TL;DR – it’s momentum and big sales. For me, it was this Daft Punk NFT that sold for ~$24,800 that clicked. This will forever be the first big Daft Punk NFT, and the owner has proof of this and can use […]

First comes love… 💖 Valentine’s is coming up, so let’s start with some dating startups. I shared Monet last month, the dating app where you draw (so Gen Z). XO is where you play mini-games with dates. Lolly looks like Tik Tok, but only for singles. For video dates, check out The League or Filter Off. They both have video speed dating too. So Synced connects people […]

The changing face of retail 🛍 2020 hit retail hard, and retail is hitting back (with innovation)! Starting with livestream shopping, you have PopShopLive, ShopShop, and NTWRK to name a few. Hero allows e-commerce store owners to video chat with customers on their site. LiveScale and Playback help brands to schedule and host video shopping events. Glamhive is a virtual stylist service that hosts large scale virtual events […]

Honoring the tradition of talking about Christmas too early, I’d like to share some eCommerce tools. In all seriousness, if you’re selling D2C, you should be starting to think about how to take advantage of the first and hopefully last COVID Christmas. Want packaging? Lumi. Need help with ops and fulfillment? Take a look at Airhouse or Outerspace. Then, […]

Every few months, a new tool increases my productivity so much I can’t wait to share it. It was Superhuman a few months ago, increasing my email speed by more than 2x. This month, I started using Silent Inbox: a simple gmail plug-in that holds all of your newsletters and delivers it once a day. Seems email is […]

For the uninitiated, I like to ramble about interesting startups I’ve come across recently. Sometimes there’s a theme, but other times it’s random. Let’s start with the “unbundling of colleges”, since Lambda School recently raised a $74M C round. You’re starting to see this model across a wide range of skillsets. There’s OnDelta* for marketing, Reforge for growth, ProductSchool for product, Skillfull for strategy […]

Likely because of the recent Clubhouse investment, I’m noticing a lot of activity in the voice space. I’m seeing more of Chalk, which is similar to Clubhouse but open to all. Clubhouse feels more like a media play, where they focus on courting influencers to become what I’d call the Twitch for conference calls, where as Chalk feels […]