Random thoughts 💭

Every now and then, I'll send out an email of random thoughts about random tings.

This is the first issue of my revamped newsletter. It's been a while since I sent one of these.

Tings is a placeholder name for the newsletter. Open to any suggestions. Maybe Tings will stick.

Who am I? I started Otis, Skillshare, and Turing Capital. I like a variety of things. I don't like being pigeonholed into one thing.

Some random thoughts on a lovely Sunday morning.

1. So, the ConstitutionDAO tried to buy the Constitution. The problem was that the max bid was public and Citadel CEO Ken Griffen (billionaire) scooped up the lot at $43.2M by outbidding them. To put this in context, Kenny is worth $21B. If you are a $100K-aire, it's similar to "splurging" on a $200 art print. Ultimate flex.

2. We announced Otis House which will be a marketplace, auction platform, and vault for physical items, built on top of Ethereum and Zora. The physical items will be stored, vaulted, and insured by Otis, and we'll mint NFTs that represent ownership of those items.

3. Looking to vault the GoT Iron Throne, an original Bob Ross painting (from any episode), and the Constitution of the United States, if you know of anyone that knows anyone that has one.

4. Skillshare launched Chroma Courses. Our version of cohort-based courses. I'm excited by this as it puts us one step closer to our vision of building an education ecosystem (video classes, cohort-based courses, teacher marketplace, etc) for the creative community.

5. Rob Dyrdek shared his system for organizing his schedule, which includes a calendar scraper tool and analytics. I wish I had both the organization and discipline to do this.

6. Ramp is such a good product. Replaced our credit card and now replaced bill pay and employee reimbursements.

7. Speaking of operations... could a company have two teams? The core team handles complexity combined with a PT team that handles any SOPs and repetitive tasks. The benefit would be moving wayyyyy faster (fewer people to coordinate) + lower costs as you don't have to hire as many people.

8. Cron just launched this week. It's like Superhuman but for calendars. I've been using it for a few weeks. *chef's kiss*

9. Are we getting close to the holy grail of clean energy? Some believe that we are a few years away from Nuclear Fusion being a reality. Companies like Helion Energy are on pace to produce a small amount of net electricity by 2024, which would make it the first fusion reactor to do so. 🤯

10. I went down the DeFi 2.0 rabbit hole of protocols experimenting with liquidity mining by owning their own liquidity. There's OHM and SPELL, TIME and MIM (Magic Internet Money), Alchemix (self-paying loans) and TOKEMAK, and forks of forks. I checked TIME this morning and it's currently offering 94,081.1% APY...

11. Half of the LPs on Uniswap v3 lose money because of Impermanent Loss. Rekt.

12. BAYC floor keeps going higher and higher. Broke every mental model I have about NFTs. Jimmy Fallon just flexed one on his Twitter account. So did Steph Curry. Is it me or is the 10,000 [insert cute animal] [insert rare attributes] PFP kind of played out now?

13. I like DAOs. In fact, I helped start Commonwealth, which helps with governance for token communities. I believe the holy grail is solving coordination. If you can coordinate the efforts of millions of people to work together... this new decentralized "company" will be bigger than any FAANG company.

14. Because of inflation, your money is now losing 1% of its value every 30 days. I optimize for sleeping at night so I hold a lot more cash than the average person. So I am the wrong person to ask about this but...

15. Chamath has started to sell down some of his positions. His reasoning? Everything is at all-time highs. We're printing more money than ever with talk of more stimulus on the way. And Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk have sold over $10B+ this year.

16. Seed rounds are now reaching $100mm post-money valuations. This can't end well, right?

17. The post-money valuation on Skillshare's seed round was $3mm in 2011. We'll hopefully be one of the companies that go public. Rooting for all of our competitors in the public markets right now 🤣

18. I angel invested in Gallery, Coherence, August Frank, and Microacquire. I am not super technical but every engineer I talk to is excited about what Coherence is building.

19. I upgraded my coffee set up. Went with the Mocha Master and Breville Barista Express. It's the small things in life.

20. I spent over $200 on Nike socks. Again, it's the small things in life.

21. Everyone picked up a COVID hobby. Mine? Playing golf. Hear me out. I've fully embraced Golfcore. I check @hypegolf more than @hypebeast. Jordan 1s. Check. All black golf clubs? Check. Drake x Nike golf collab. Check.

22. I've thought about opening up a "Soho House" but on a golf course. Like a legit country club but tailored for our generation. The golf shop would have Nike's. You can rent drones to film your golf shots. It would feel welcoming. But alas... what do I know about running physical spaces?

23. And damn... the Koreans have the best-looking golf swings out there.

24. I like toys as much as the next person. And this Land Rover Defender x 007 is so nice to look at. Same with the Porsche Taycan.

25. We added a new painting by King Nobuyoshi Godwin to our growing emerging art collection. He's a local artist who uses numbers to express his feelings.

26. I read the new Rick Ross book in one sitting. Has close to 500 ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ reviews on Amazon. Inspirational reading for all the hustlers out there.

27. Stretching and mobility is my new health shit. I have been doing just as much mobility work as my strength training and cardio. There's even a company called Stretchlab that will stretch you out 1-on-1. Will try it out and report back.

28. Bryan Johnson's chronological age is 44 but his biological age is 36. It is possible to reverse aging.

29. Here's a free (small) startup idea: one-click email groups. I wish there was an easy way to put together an email list for my poker group. I don't need something robust like Mailchimp. And Google Groups is a pain to use. Something in the middle would be nice.

30. Lastly, one thought I've been thinking through lately. Can you have it all? Prioritizing yourself (health, mental, physical, spiritual), your relationships (family, friends), and your work (career, projects)? Is it possible to balance all three? I think the answer is yes.

That's it.

This was fun to write.

Hope you enjoyed the first issue.

- Michael