Crypto Predictions for 2022, Inspiration for a 30-day Sugar Cleanse, and February's Book Club
Stretch Four Insights Volume 14
Happy Saturday and thank you all for checking out my latest edition to the Stretch Four Insights Newsletter.
This week I will keep it brief and highlight a few podcasts, articles, and books I am reading in February.
Disclaimer, no mobs or assassinations will be covered in this week’s edition (a request from my mom), but if you want to dive into last week’s volume where I spoke about Silicon Valley’s mob be my guest.
If you are new here, be sure to check out my long-form pieces. One where I cover Web3 and another where I cover a new startup called Column Tax. More of these are to come this month.
With that said, let's get into it. And if you want to hear more or spread the word, subscribe and tell your friends!
Let’s dive in.
Podcasts
The Generalist: What to Watch in Crypto in 2022 on Apple Podcasts
Mario shares an exhaustive list of things to watch in crypto in 2022. He does a good job of getting feedback from direct sources including crypto enthusiasts, crypto builders, venture capitalists, and other writers. My favorite highlight is the financialization of NFTs. I hold a few NFTs and while there are offers on the table, I wish there were easier ways to track, manage, and assess my assets. As I grow my collection of NFTs I am looking forward to new ways to earn interest, stake the NFTs, and submit counteroffers automatically. I covered NFTFi in volume four of this newsletter and they were mentioned on Mario’s list so that is reassuring. I do plan to make some additional NFT purchases in the next few months.
Shawn got me thinking about a 30-day added sugar cleanse with this episode. He provides some interesting history related to sugar cane. One was that sugar cane was one of the largest economies formed during the transatlantic slave trade. After listening to this podcast, it is hard to think of any good reason to add sugar to anything because it is already so ingrained in the American diet. The big takeaway for me is that I want to experiment with tracking my sugar intake and abstaining from food with added sugar for 30 days to see how my body feels.
Articles
Braintrust: Fighting Capitalism with Capitalism
As things pick up at ModernTax (we launched a new website, are having our core product architecture reworked, and launching new features each week), I have utilized Braintrust’s hiring platform to hire talent for short-term projects we need to be done. So far so good. I’ve hired two solid freelancers and may expand beyond that if the first few projects go according to plan. Packy, an investor in Braintrust, presents a compelling case as to why Braintrust can be huge. I still feel there are a lot of web3 opportunities in age-old industries like recruiting, and this is a practical one that everyone understands. Braintrust is essentially Fivver or Upwork but the freelancers are receiving tokens and own the platform versus the latter marketplaces which are publicly traded companies. Upwork and Fivver are incentivized to charge higher transactions fees over time. Braintrust keeps its fees low and is incentivized to create more value for its freelancers and its goal is to keep the freelancers on the platform.
I moved out to San Francisco right around the time the first mainstream NFT project, CryptoKitties, was getting off the ground. At that time, Devin Finzer was selling ClaimDog to Credit Karma. Now, as the co-founder and CEO of Opensea, his net worth grows every month his company raises a new round of funding at a new unheard-of valuation for the Web3 upstarts. OpenSea, is a straightforward business - they capture a 2.5% commission on all sales. The biggest question is can they expand beyond NFTs and become the system of record for all digital assets? If so, they have the potential to be bigger than Coinbase. But if NFTs are their only act there may be more disruptors who steal market share and ironically Coinbase could be the biggest competitor to OpenSea in the short term with over 2 million people on their waitlist for their yet-to-be-launched NFT marketplace.
February Book Club
I am an avid reader but my momentum has decreased over the past few years (I will chalk it up to COVID). This year, I want to make up for the lost time. You can follow what I am reading on GoodReads, and if any of you know of a better app or resource than GoodReads to track books please let me know.
Frank Slootman is, by pure numbers, the best CEO in Silicon Valley. He currently serves as the CEO of Snowflake and previously took two companies, Data Domain and ServiceNow, public as the CEO. I read his first book Tape Sucks last year and use it as a quarterly brief on evaluating how I am doing as a CEO. I am excited to read this new one and rethink a lot of the assumptions I made as a first-time CEO. I am excited to tackle this read this month and I will have notes to follow.
How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America
Being that it’s black history month, I am taking a stab at this 2021 bestseller. I grew up in South Carolina, and as I reflect on it as an adult I realize a lot of the streets and names of schools are all in honor of slave owners. Here in the Bay Area one of the most dominant and successful institutions in the world is Stanford, which is named after Leeland Stanford who instituted racist policies in his era as well. Racism has been an institution across all of America from South Carolina to California and I am looking forward to Clint Smith’s research-driven approach to unlocking this information.
Home Game: An Accidental Guide to Fatherhood
This is a light-hearted book on fatherhood that has been recommended by a few notable people that I trust. I am not the biggest Michael Lewis fan, but so far this book has been a breath of fresh air in my preparation for a few months. This book is a man’s secret to fatherhood and all the real-time implications of it, I like that it is practical, funny, and not so serious.
League Pass Team of the Week
Golden State Warriors | The Official Site of the Golden State Warriors
The Dubs are back! After two years of subpar basketball with one ending in the lottery and the other ending in a play-in tournament loss to not qualify for the real playoffs they are number two in the western conference and have recently run off eight straight wins. I watch nearly every Warriors game which is what happens when you marry into Dub nation and there is not a better team to watch night-to-night. The Warriors are starting to look like the team from 2015. Klay Thompson is healthy and finding his groove, and Steph is shooting much better after a slump throughout January. In addition to the usual Warriors stars, the emergence of Jordan Poole this year has been amazing. He is going to have a nice payday in the coming season and the Warriors have some difficult decisions to make. He is like a luxury version of Jordan Clarksons of the Utah Jazz. He can score in bunches, he can run the offense, and gives effort on defense. This week he lead an amazing comeback on the road in San Antonio without Steph, Klay, or Wiggins.
What’s Next
ModernTax
The grind continues at ModernTax and we are seeing strong traction in digital mortgage and insurance. This means, we are doing lots of customer discovery, as we want to only ship features that matter to the end-users of our products. In mortgage that is 1) underwriters - who are required to request and collect various data related to their borrower's income, assets, and financials 2) borrowers - who are required to provide the requested information both by self-reporting and signing off on forms to have the information requested from third parties like the IRS. In insurance, it is a bit different, we still have end users that are underwriters but there are more people that have roles to evaluate the way they collect applicants’ and claimants’ information. I am talking with multiple stakeholders weekly so we can architect and built our product to the exact specifications our end users need. This all increases our opportunity to make money and make lots of it this year ; }.
Stretch Four
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Back to the trenches.
Best,
Matt
Good read. It's nice that you provide some of your sources for information. I wasn't aware of GoodReads so I am going to check that out since I would probably get good use from it.