Welcome to my first newsletter. I left most of my note in December 2021, but never sent out. I know, maybe I should write about the recent news.
web3 story (back in 2021)
Some NFT threads
1ď¸âŁ Thread by @chriscantino What can people do with NFT: - what I heard is future for retail, but the path is still uncertain.
2ď¸âŁ A major gaming company, Ubisoft, announced to use NFT⌠but it was not well received.
3ď¸âŁ Thread by @amytongwu (I know, I read a lot of tweets in late 2021) about web3 gaming. It can work, but i donât know when the speculation can be over. That reminds me of the $800+ Dota 2 skin I own, and it was not on ethereum.
4ď¸âŁ@cdixon from @a16z: https://cdixon.org/2021/02/27/NFTs-and-a-thousand-true-fans. (this is already 1-year-old!)
Kevin Kelly: To be a successful creator you donât need millions. You donât need millions of dollars or millions of customers, millions of clients or millions of fans. To make a living as a craftsperson, photographer, musician, designer, author, animator, app maker, entrepreneur, or inventor you need only thousands of true fans.
A true fan is defined as a fan that will buy anything you produce. These diehard fans will drive 200 miles to see you sing; they will buy the hardback and paperback and audible versions of your book; they will purchase your next figurine sight unseen; they will pay for the âbest-ofâ DVD version of your free YouTube channel; they will come to your chefâs table once a month.
5ď¸âŁ One of the reason I stopped worrying about FOMO on web3 is that there still isnât 100x solution for existing problems; I will focus on problems and finding solutions, instead of having some fancy solution looking for problem (be it AI/ML, VR/AR, web3)
Diversify and identity in NFT profile picture (pfp)
I minted a few tokens from @crypto_coven; it is not a projects that goes to the $100K price point, but I did have meaningful conversation.
Here is a quote from the community about collectorâs personal identify versus what is shown on the NFT art, used as profile picture:
None of the options here seem good tbh:
NFT projects could create collections which represent the current demographics of NFT collectors đ
White people and men could use avatars that don't look like them đ
Supply > demand for avatars of color and the price goes down đ So to solve the problem, we have to diversify the collector base itself, I think
What other random things Iâve been reading
Andrew Chen - Talks at Google
My takeaway: grow on top of other platform, like airbnb parsed from Craigslist. Generalist platform may thrive but may fail in specific verticals (e.g. short-term rentals)
PG
I discover that Paul Graham âPGâ is a great mentor for young professional and entrepreneurs in tech. I skimmed PGâs book in the trips to Vegas, but I havenât written a summary yet. interestedted, you can read more at: Do Things that Don't Scale.
fine memes
I know, they are dated..
3 stages of a company:
Stage 1 You are in the process of validating your idea and building an initial product. You are talking to potential users about your idea.
Stage 2 You have built an MVP and are talking to early customers. You may have some users. Getting feedback from customers. Iterating.
Stage 3 You have a product with many active users. You are working on growing revenue/users/sales.
Future letters may includeâŚ
my superficial domain research on âexpert economyâ, where companies making $15,950 for a bootcamp or $4,990 for a fellowship (online courses + âcommunityâ); and people liked them so much.
learning from many sources- a âfreeâ coursera course I am taking, books, and âyoutube universityâ I audited.
Thatâs it for this letter. Hope you like something on the letter. What do you think? Feel free to reply to this email or tweet me at @evanxlao.