Twitter Dunks on Web3, The Rise of Chipper Cash & African Tech Founders, The New Media Gets Another Win, Dan Blizerian, and Greg Norman launches PGA killer
Stretch Four Insights Volume 27
Happy Saturday,
I am excited to write this week because it has been a big news week and I am feeling energized. The NBA finals are in full swing and it has been everything I thought and maybe a little bit more, the ratings for the NBA playoffs are the highest they have been in nearly ten years. The Celtics defended their home court in Game 3 and in Game 4 well “30” aka Steph Curry had one of those games only he and a few other guys in the history of the NBA can have. His performance led the Warriors to tie the series up as it comes back to SF for Game 5 on Monday.
Also, I am moving into podcasting with the launch of the Stretch Four Podcast, initially, it will be a recap of the general newsletter topics with an occasional special guest. I am recording my first episode this week.
No need to subscribe as it will go out on this feed.
The Long Four will focus on health and fitness throughout the summer so expect some new long posts on how to hack your health and what companies are building apps to help make it easier. If you are new the Long Four is a longer essay format where I deep dive into a particular topic, company, or theme in the startup technology sector. The first one was Last Long Four Edition: NeoTax.
I was featured on my friend Darius Grant’s The Build Tech Stack Equity Podcast I talked about my founder's journey and building ModernTax. Check out the podcast here.
Now the newsletter.
General Tech & Startup news
Forbes did a big feature on Chipper Cash and its founders which was released in tandem with the Fintech 50 2022: Newcomer. Ham Serunjogi and Maijid Moujaled founded Chipper in 2018. The entrepreneurs are from Uganda and Ghana respectively — I have yet to write a piece on the emergence of African founders but it needs to be written, in my five years in the Bay area I have seen so many African entrepreneurs break in and raise absorbent amounts of venture capital. The keen difference and approach that native African founders have has me wondering a lot about how founders from the diaspora excel. There seems to be a distinct unique advantage. One intriguing factor is I do not know of any African founders that associate themselves with a lot of the initiatives and theatrics you see around founder diversity and if they do it is always strategic. This approach has not stopped any of them from raising and my point is it has helped them excel. Chipper Cash is a breakout and maybe the largest in the shortest amount of time. An interesting part of their story is that Sheel Mohnot, a fintech investor and influencer fronted them $40,000 of a $150,000 investment out of 500 Startups so they could make rent. Now Ham sits courtside comfortably at Warriors games and Chipper Cash was last valued at $2.2 billion dollars. Highly likely that they took a big secondary at the last round which was timely considering the cooling startup investing market.
Newsletter god Packy Mccormick got owned on a podcast discussing Web3 with host Logan and Zack Weinberg called Cartoon Avatars. It was an outright onslaught and in Packy’s defense, he wasn’t prepared and was dealing with issues with his young son. Packy brings ultimate optimism to the crypto/web3 content community but even now he has hard times as the market continues to be a flat or outright tank.
To coincide with Packy’s beef another A16z’s Crypto squad team member Shriram got some flack for a comment he made to a reply I had about all the negative press related to Web3. My comparison was that the pro versus anti-crypto and Web3 communities are a lot like the mainstream sports media vs. the new media (i.e. the players themselves). The anti-Web3 folks find the most damning parts of Web3 and dunk on the stories. I used Kevin Durant’s recent Twitter snark towards Stephen A Smith, Shannon Sharpe, and Skip Bayless as an example. Whether it’s the hate for A16z or just a general growing mob of anti-Web3 folks, people did not like the comparison.
Tax Tech and Accounting News
Sports Business News
Youtube and Podcasts Recommendations for the Week
How to build your way out of a downturn by Garry Tan
What’s Next
I plan to drop the podcast on Mondays or Tuesdays. It will focus on having a deeper conversation on what is happening across general tech, tax, fintech, and the business of the NBA.
The Long Four series on health and fitness will go deep on all the top apps that can help you manage things like sleep, fitness, and diet. This is something that is highly overlooked as a strategic advantage in building companies. The high-stress lifestyle of founders is fairly taboo much less how so many of the best business performers have a near professional athlete-style regimen of diet, sleep, and other life hacks they use to perform.
Email feedback to me at matt@stretchfour.co.
Back to the trenches,
Matt