they harm your finances, reasons to pass on website deals, how startups die, beating inflation & meet Alice.
Hi there, 👋 You surprised us! A couple of days ago, only about 21% of you had opened Monday's newsletter. (Maybe because it was a US holiday?) Today, that number is 42.2%. We appreciate each one of you who consistently opens our newsletter every time. Thanks! (reading it is good too) Now, you've got a weekend coming up in which to enjoy all the curious, entertaining and thought-provoking info we found for you. Below you'll see:
Immature investing beliefs that harm you financially
The value in launching now
Reasons to pass on a website deal
Talk to Alice - the world's first iNFT (intelligent NFT)
Cool tools and resources to make life easier
This is Alice:
See the snippets sections for details on talking to Alice. As always, thanks for being here. P.S.$89 Classified ad placements are now open for community members only. See the post inside our community under the newsletter space. (Non-member spots coming soon)
Immature Beliefs About Investing
Tim Denning recently discussed the problem with creating money out of thin air. His latest story dives into the immature beliefs many newbie investors have, and how these can harm you financially. It's easy to get caught up in the hype about particular investments, and listen to opinions that amount to nothing more than noise. The onus is on each of us to do our own research and not take enormous risks unnecessarily (and then brag about our gains). As Denning says: Twitter doesn’t do investment due diligence for you. While the article covers the obvious advice such as diversifying your investments and doing your homework, it also notes that volatility in asset prices isn’t necessarily dangerous, and why trading charts tell you nothing. Recommended reading.
How Startups Die
Don't worry. We're not going to shower you in doom thinking.. Despite the title, this story is about why launching fast works. It's how we test whether our ideas are useful for people - even when they're not perfect. It's a fact of startup life that most of our ideas suck. You may have a product that no one wants or needs. And, if people do need it, they're too lazy to switch from your nearest competitor.
Here are the stats:
The #1 reason startups fail is lack of market demand. The founder of LaunchClub says that details don’t matter for your initial launch. Build an MVP — a minimum viable product. If your idea has potential then despite a shitty UX and a high price some users will still buy your service. Right now, you need to launch and find out if your product has this pull. See a few more tips on determining whether you have that all important product/market fit.
Beating Inflation
There's a flurry of online chat about inflation right now. That's because rising inflation is often not good for investors. Investing professionals certainly use different strategies in times of higher inflation, and they generally move into commodities like energy, metals and agricultural goods. Even collectibles such as art, wine and stamps can perform well in inflationary environments. Once again, owning a diversified basket is more reliable than betting on any single asset. Simon Moore argues that there's a catch. The risk is primarily that an inflationary period is not sustained over the longer term so the value of these commodities declines. Moore's article looks at other possible strategies for investing in times of inflation and what the recent run in prices means.
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Domain Snacks
👉 An unbelievable sale: Alexandre Dreyfus tweeted out that his company acquired FanTokens.com and the corresponding Twitter account for $3 million.
Surely, there has to be more to this story? We'll let you know when we find out. 👉 Keyword Trends: TLD Investors bring you the latest breakdown of domain keyword trends for May 2021. It may not surprise you that Coin related keyword sales were strong. SpaceCoin.com topped the list at $35,000.
Extra Handy Resources
Now and again, we come across projects that are small in scale, but incredibly useful. These are created by talented people who use their time and energy to produce valuable resources for us - and give them away. Here are 2 wonderful examples: ❇️ If you think your website needs a makeover or you're about to build one, then this book by Alexsei at Imperavi is the place to start. It provides a complete guide to the fundamentals of creating a good web interface. You'll discover all the best practices for layout, typography, forms, colors and more. Even if you are not a designer, the principles are easy to understand. At the very least, you'll have a better idea of what a well designed site looks like when you next pay someone to build one. ❇️ How many times have you scrolled through Reddit looking for a particular subreddit for your niche? We all know what a wealth of information Reddit provides for content writers, market researchers and even for startup ideas, but it's an absolute pain to search. FindAReddit makes searching a breeze. 'Sid' has compiled a list of 10,000+ subreddits. What's better is that he has separated these into more than 500 categories. Simply brilliant - and it's free here.
It's a No
Here's a look at website investing from a different perspective. Onfolio put together an overview of 8 businesses that they didn't buy. The focus is on businesses that initially seemed like a good bet, but ultimately carried too much risk for their liking. The collection includes a highly profitable content site, a furniture e-commerce business and a finance website. Dom and Yury break down each of the sites and offer their reasons for passing on these deals. This gives you an insight into how they operate and may help you to avoid some of the pitfalls in your own investing efforts. The complete article winds up by showing you the top reasons they pass on any business, and stresses that you don’t need to take risks in order to make money.
Guess Again
If you think you know the world's most popular websites, think again. This ridiculously detailed map gives you a picture of the internet based purely on web traffic (measured by the service Alexa). Apple isn’t measurably much larger than Adobe, and Amazon is smaller than Reddit. The creator says: "Many of the world’s largest companies are not shown on the map, as they have a minimal web presence and their websites have way too little traffic to put them even in the top 5,000." It may interest you to know that about a third of the world’s 50 most visited websites are based in China. Sites like Tmall, Baidu, or Sohu surpass both Amazon and Facebook in terms of traffic!
Disposable Pages
In the startup article above, we spoke about quickly validating and launching a new product. BurnerPage gives you unlimited responsive pages to help you do just that. The current beta group is focused on internet entrepreneurs who want to validate their product ideas for different audiences. While there is plenty of competition in this space, we haven't seen a package with everything you need to build, host and measure your pages. The site offers you a free plan with a small selection of design templates. Of course, it's all no code, and you get access to a graphics library and some limited survey customization. As we're writing this, they have special launch pricing available. This gives you extra goodies like a custom domain, unlimited custom URLs and detailed page and survey metrics. Frankly, we're only telling you about this because the copy on their example pages is the best we've seen in a dog's age. Their copywriter is a star.
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✅ Snippets to Send You on Your Way
🔷 Empire Flippers Announcement: Empire Flippers has changed its commission structure for sellers. They detail how it all breaks down in this post. Commission will work on a tiered scale according to the sale price of the business. They've also added a commission calculator so you can easily check what you'd pay when you sell. 🔷 Uncle Nearest creates $50M fund: Whiskey brand Uncle Nearest announced its $50 million Uncle Nearest Venture Fund created specifically to invest in rapidly growing, minority-founded and owned spirit brands. The company’s fund has already invested in two companies, with each receiving $2 million. It makes us wonder what other small and profitable niches could raise a decent investment fund. Any ideas? 🔷 Her name is Alice:The world's first "intelligent NFT" (or iNFT) will be auctioned off this month as part of a collection of digital artworks at Sotheby's. Alice is a non-fungible token (NFT), in the form of a machine-learning bot that uses a generative language model based on the OpenAI GPT-3 engine. (That's all we need. An NFT that talks back). 🔷 Retiring early? While this article is primarily aimed at people who are 'in the office', it offers practical suggestions for actions that you can take if you'd like to retire early. These are the basics for setting yourself up for a financially secure future and to check whether your portfolio can sustain you through those years without income. 🔷 Cryptonormous fund: Andreessen Horowitz (also known as a16z) will attempt to raise $2B to invest in cryptocurrencies and crypto start-ups. If they are successful, this fund would be four times larger than any other crypto fund on the market. It's amazing that there is enough LP demand to fund a crypto vehicle to the tune of $2 billion. The question is, are there enough crypto ideas out there worth sticking $2 billion into? (Can't believe someone has registered the domain 'cryptonormous'. For a nanosecond, we thought we were clever)
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