It's a mad world out there. Cute digital pets are introducing people to crypto, lawyers are turning a blind eye to ethics, musicians are still struggling to make money and parasocial relationships are becoming increasingly hyper-normalized.
We are living in a complex and competitive age.
A simple model for complex problems
From The Curiosity Chronicle, by Sahil Bloom
In order to outperform and succeed in this competitive arena, you’ll need moments to both think and work. Sahil Bloom says it’s all about inversion.
Inversion is about solving problems backwards, about looking at things through a different lens and embracing new perspectives. Similar to making plans to avoid bad outcomes.
Investing 101 is inversion in action. Rule one: never lose money, rule two: never forget rule one. It concerns averting stupidity over pursuing brilliance. When using inversion thinking “try solving for how to achieve underperformance.” You can often find a much smaller list of actions to help you create a plan for overperformance, instead.
For the majority of startups it's “grow or die.” Yet when it comes to the perfect strategy, within a highly competitive market, problems start to arise. Too many variables and options can leave many teams crippled in the decision-making process. Try asking these inversion questions:
If this were to fail, why did it fail?
How might we have avoided this failure?
What are the consequences of this failure?
Doing this kind of pre-mortem analysis can help drown out the noise and push you to make quick and productive decisions. It can translate also to leadership or relationships or any other problem-solving moment you may encounter.
"The next big thing will start out looking like a toy”
From Not Boring, by Packy McCormick
Imagine a magical land where you can buy some pretty adorable ball-shaped pets as NFTs, who you can breed, battle and trade with, then add in a blockchain and suddenly you have something more of an economic force. Meet Axie Infinity 👋
Axie Infinity is introducing something that’s a bit scary (crypto) and adding a fun and fluffy backdrop to make it feel more familiar and safe. It’s a game built on blockchain where you essentially play to earn and the numbers certainly prove that something special is going on. Revenue jumped from $670k in April, to $12.2 million in June and then to an incredible $79 million just half way through July.
When users buy and sell their Axie NFTs or breed new Axies, the company charges a small fee. Delphi speculates that revenue will reach $1.1 billion by the end of the year, coming mostly from the fees in its NFT marketplace and the Axies breeding demand from its huge new roster of monthly players.
Axie Infinity has gotten people to quit their jobs and make more in gameplay. Crypto is creating new economic prospects for many different people around the world and it’s leveling the playing field as non-crypto types are becoming crypto-types.
Behind all the colorful fighting pets lies a grand plan: “to reshape economic policy and local governance by showing what’s possible when people work in the Metaverse.” Axie is like “a nation with a real economy.”
Lawyers breaking the law
From BIG, by Matt Stoller
Let’s talk about these antitrust attorneys making big bucks by helping firms engage in illegal mergers.
Antitrust lawyers have been handling quite a few of these requests. Some of the deals are openly illegal but firms are clearly hoping the law enforcers may just let a few slip through the cracks or run out of resources before litigating every one.
So why are antitrust attorneys not upholding the law? Isn’t that like… their job, to offer advice on the best way to legally achieve business goals? Maybe it has something to do with the fact that top partners at a large firm often bill $1,000 to $2,000 an hour.
Antitrust lawyers help large firms perform mergers and the money they get paid does not stem so much from the advice they give but from a willingness to help with questionable activities. It seems legal ethics have gone out the window as lawyers are actually aiding their clients in breaking the law by teaching them how to avoid any mention of their true intent: to monopolize.
Legal services is a competitive market, with each firm wanting to dish out the best advice not on following the law but on more effective ways to break it. It’s “an auction of injustice” and the FTC is looking to fight back. There seems to also be a trend emerging on the midterm campaign trail where anti-monopoly politicians are actively speaking out against corporate power.
Supporting musicians just got a whole lot better
From Josh Constine’s PressClub, by Josh Constine
Musicians don’t always have it easy. Too many are battling exploitative record deals, expectations to record digital content for free and delayed ad and brand revenue all while trying to create outstanding art for a living.
It’s not easy creating under this kind of pressure. Luckily there are some forward-thinking souls who are looking to solve these problems and allow musicians more creative and financial freedom.
Flymachine
Concerts should not feel like zoom calls. Live music is special when it becomes a collective experience. Think friends, epic sound systems, stage lights but all from the comfort of your own home, that’s what Flymachine is pursuing. The world’s best music venues get equipped with impressive cameras, visuals and streaming technology while you and your friends get a front row seat within your own private online room. The best part: you get to properly support the artists you love in a way that benefits them.
Karat
Karat built a credit card for creators. It essentially “looks at a creator’s following and engagement rate to give them a credit score.” With their creator card they can pay their production staff and associated costs and later pay it off with ad or brand revenue. To have a credit card that solely looks out for the creator and understands their needs is a real breath of fresh air. No need to convince stuffy banks anymore about how you make money by streaming your art.
Fan, stalker or friend?
From Cybernaut, by Fadeke Adegubyi
Divulging every corner of your inner life seems to now be an unspoken and expected requirement for creators as they become the ‘best friend’ to every one of their followers.
These “parasocial relationships”, first dubbed by Richard Wohl in 1956 when referring to radio, TV or movie characters, lead to unreciprocated affection and many of us start to believe that we really know the person on the other side on a really deep level.
Dangers
Algorithms lead creators to seek more visibility which then leads to unrealistic expectations from fans. Creators can’t feel the same things towards their audience that their audience does about them. This divide increases as creator audiences grow and members of their audience begin to talk about the creator, together.
Creator burnout is on the rise. The constant need to share and post and film is overwhelming. For some viewers a creator's content can start to seem like a regular TV show they tune in to watch so, when creators take a break, followers can be lost.
The lines between real social relationships and parasocial ones are becoming more and more blurred. It is the younger generation, the most active on social media, that are the most likely to report feeling lonely.
Extra Reading:
That’s a SAAS(Y) Snowflake: How to approach Net Revenue Retention (Napkin Math)
The best, complete overview of the delta variant. (Uncharted Territories)
One person, million dollar businesses (Trends.vc)
How Neopets showed us the way to the metaverse (Digital Native)
On social media, be available — not addicted (Personal Brand Brief)
How TikTok got their first 1,000 users (First 1000)