Welcome to the Startupy newsletter, a laid back column about very serious ideas. Every week, we curate the hottest links from our universe and share them with you here. As a reminder, Startupy is a community-curated knowledge network. Our mission is to organize, index, and interconnect the most meaningful tech, culture, and business insights - we're currently in beta. If you're feeling the vibe, consider becoming a member. At $20/month or $180/year - you get unrestricted access to our collective intelligence engine and community. Forwarded this email? Subscribe now to collect and connect the dots across trending topics and delightful rabbit holes, delivered weekly to your inbox. |
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🪐 HOT LINKS IN OUR UNIVERSE |
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To give you a sense of what’s possible, I want to get back to the idea of NFTs as tokens on the internet for representing social achievements and social contracts. NFTs are a more important achievement than you might think, because we’ve managed to package this atomic unit of culture and community - fitting in, and standing out - and capture it, almost like in a file format, that both people and computers can interpret and understand. |
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‘Emotional generosity’ is the ability to see beyond behaviours we don’t understand by proactively looking for compassionate ways to explain them. Sometimes, this is easy; if a toddler starts crying or throwing a tantrum, we might wonder if they’re hungry, or tired, or hurt. Sadly, it’s not so simple for adults — and especially for our co-workers. And yet a more generous interpretation of their difficult behaviour often ends up being the right one. |
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Content discovery is, of course, the most valuable asset in any media distribution ecosystem and perhaps most overlooked in discussions of Web3's disruptive potential in media. Facebook, Google and TikTok remain the entry point for most consumers with intense network effects, and the changes above notwithstanding, innovation in blockchain doesn't undermine their economic power. |
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But in the 21st Century, the biggest challenge is not how to get things done more efficiently; instead, the challenge is figuring out what to do… Corporate executives often say “employees are our greatest asset” or “we’re investing in talent.” This has always been true figuratively: people are important, and training them is worthwhile. But as talent becomes more important, people will literally become assets that organizations can invest in. In the process, these organizations will adopt new structures that look less like corporations and more like venture capital funds. |
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🔥 POPULAR RABBIT HOLES ON STARTUPY |
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170 connections → 128 content, 23 companies, 19 related topics |
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29 connections → 3 content, 15 companies, 11 related topics |
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19 connections → 9 content, 4 companies, 6 related topics |
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236 connections → 43 content, 181 companies, 12 related topics |
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166 connections → 103 content, 51 companies, 12 related topics |
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👆 Use the Startupy randomizer to get inspired ☝️ |
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532 contributions this week 1,380 connections this week 919 highlights this week |
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Why is social commerce interesting? Historically, societies have organized around centers of commerce: bazaars, markets and malls aggregated various suppliers in a single point of distribution where consumers could find goods and wares from across the world: ranging from daily produce essentials like meats and grains to luxurious products like silks, spices and jewelry. The obvious takeaway is that the medium of social interaction transformed from being a physical to a digital place; but a more nuanced analysis reveals that the medium, for the first time, is no longer a locus of commerce. Social media networks create a completely new medium — an entire digital territory — for modern social interaction that use objects like videos, photos and text, as well as novel distribution mechanism like algorithmic feeds and ephemeral stories to create a digital surface area that is both infinite and catered specifically for the user. So, this is a relatively long way to say that the medium of our social interaction changed from being commerce based to something entirely different. Consequently, the development of the internet economies in the West spliced this inherent relationship of commerce and socialization and resulted in a bifurcation of eCommerce and social networks into two different verticals. Thus, for true eCommerce unlock, a new commercial arena must be built that intrinsically layers in, and enables, social interaction. This will be both a demand and supply equation, with new business models and technologies set to innovate the two. |
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A podcast worth listening to? In mobile gaming, every incentive is optimized. Gabriel Leydon is the co-founder and former CEO of Machine Zone, one of the biggest and most important mobile gaming companies. He understands how to create incentives to get people to spend more, get their friends to join, and stay playing the game. His Invest Like The Best podcast provides insights into this communities can learn to design better incentives of their own. |
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Things worth reading and watching? My breakdown on how new web3 primitives can enable a digital version of multiplayer retail, and why it's important. A great overview on how brands can transform from centralized organisms to distributed systems. An in depth examination of Pinduoduo's core primitives and monetization strategy. |
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Projects worth following? A new project founded by Ty Haney that rewards users with collectibles that unlock exclusive products and private events in exchange for participating in customer feedback loops that help determine brand decisions like packaging. A social commerce app built on the insight that shopping can be codified based on reviews and ratings. Novel allows brands to bake loyalty, exclusivity and recurring revenue programs into NFTs that they can sell directly on their storefront. |
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It's trippy, come see for yourself |
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