Hi there, 👋
​
​What did you do for fun this weekend?
​​
We decided to forego the pleasure of relaxing beside this beautiful lake:

​
But, we made up for it by indulging our love of Italian food and enjoying the company of good friends.
​
Here's a taste of our Monday line-up:

• Bootstrapped, cash generating, and growing like crazy
• Sweden: How it became Europe's Silicon Valley
• A fundraising handbook
• 7 figure domains & a surprise bargain
• Rank the rarity of NFT collectibles

Head to the snippets section to see the 100 hottest startups in Europe, a16z's newest bet, and the traders teaming up to take action against Binance.
​
As always, thanks for being here,
Juliet Lyall
​
​P.S. Got a suggestion for this newsletter? We want to hear from you.
​Hit reply and tell us about it!​
​
​

Rich Soil for Startups

​
Reuters interviewed several tech CEOs and venture capitalists to figure out how Sweden became the Silicon Valley of Europe.
​
Klarna's billionaire founder, Sebastian Siemiatkowski, credits Sweden's "home computer drive" and wide internet connectivity for the rapid growth of innovative startups.
​
​Sweden has the third highest startup rate in the world, behind Turkey and Spain, with 20 startups per 1000 employees.
​​
It also has the highest three year survival rate for startups anywhere, at 74%.
​
Is social regulation the secret to their success?
​See what the top CEOs think.​
​
​

How Rare Is It?

​
​Rarity.tools is primarily used by collectors looking to analyze trait rarities in NFT collectibles.
​
​People want to know how rare their NFT is or whether the one they are looking at buying is rare.
​​
Rarity .tools aims to provide an easy to understand ranking of the rarity of individual collectible NFTs so you can compare their relative value.
​
Because each collectible NFT community values their NFTs differently,
rarity .tools customizes the ranking for each project by adding additional ‘derived traits’.
​
The site also has a nifty “Upcoming NFT Sales” section to update you on impending mint events.
​
​

Sponsored by Convertica​
​

💰 Increase your website conversion rates

​
​Sell your website for more or increase the ROI % for your portfolio.
​​
Over 700 happy customers have used our full done-for-you conversion rate optimization service. We are rated 4.8 out of 5 on Trustpilot.
​
All strategy, testing, reporting and implementation is included.
​
Working with Convertica is an absolute no-brainer for owners of digital assets in 2021.
​

👉 Get your free conversion audit (we give you the quick wins)​
​​
​

Fundraising Handbook

​
Institutional Venture Partners (IVP) knows a thing or two about funding SaaS startups.
​
We recently discovered that they've written a SaaS Fundraising Handbook.
​
The handbook is a primer for subscription software founders on the metrics they need to understand when raising capital from investors.
​
It also provides insights for founders on how investors decide to provide capital.
​
You get a closer look at some of the top metrics the IVP partners consider when deciding SaaS startups to invest in.
​
​The spreadsheets and analysis in IVP’s 20-page handbook can assist as startups fundraise, but can also help founders calibrate business success.
​​
​Plenty of value here - even if your business is not a SaaS model. (Instant download).
​
​

A New Breed of Company

​
​The way we build startups is changing.
​​
With that change comes the rise of a new breed of company: bootstrapped, cash generative, and growing like crazy.
​​
This story is for all of you who reject the VC model to build successful companies - with no outside capital and tiny teams.
​
Although the author focuses on SaaS startups, the discussion around alternative routes to invest in and build a business sheds light on how the PE model is being enacted in miniature.
​
The post also touches on the non-dilutive funding mechanisms used to plug early stage growth.
​
Top quote:
​
​What I find fascinating is that a SaaS founder-investor can now do a number of unprecedented things: one, they can buy a job - purchase and run a $4-7k MRR SaaS business as (in place of) having a job. Profitable SaaS, and a shortcut to founding a business.

​See more.​
​
​

Domain Snacks
​

👉 7 Figure Domain

​
​Near.com has been sold by Anything.com, in a deal brokered by Larry Fischer.
​The domain name was sold for $1,150,000.
​​
This is the second million-plus deal closed by Anything.com in the last week. It follows the $2.5 million sale of Marketing.com, reported by DNJournal.
​
Anything .com has sold several valuable domain names over the last year, including Blade .com ($503,000) and Snappy .com ($415,000).
​

👉 When Domain Auctions Go Wrong

​
The Fiscal .com auction disappeared from GoDaddy Auctions at some point between Sunday 15th and Monday 16th, August.
​
This was surprising because the domain name was registered at GoDaddy and there were less than 24 hours remaining in the auction.
​
​Elliot Silver explains.
​

👉 Looks Like a Bargain

​
​eBanking.com was left to expire and dropped, caught by DropCatch and closed at $56,939.
​
The domain name was owned by BGL BNP Paribas out of Luxembourg.
Will it be the next 7 figure sale?
​

👉 500k per Letter

​
A thread on Hacker News about Pop.com was trending last week.
​
The Founder of Pop .com, Jahanzeb Sherwani, shared that the company paid “roughly” $1.5 million to acquire the Pop.com domain name.
​
He also shared some additional thoughts about what the domain name means to the company and how it was acquired.
​
​The short version.​
​
​

Cut Support Times

​
Cohere helps you skip the frustrating back-and-forth involved with resolving your customers' issues.
​
​Instead of asking for bug descriptions and screenshots, you can instantly view a customer's live screen.
​
The time-saving benefits are clear.
​​
Cohere lets you take over a user's screen and visually guide the way. Jumping on a voice or video call is done with just one click - no meeting links or downloads required.
​
The integration for Cohere takes less than 5 minutes, and only requires you to insert a few lines of code into your site.
​
Take a look at Cohere.​
Free options or from $69/seat per month.
​
​

Random Tweets

​
A collector paid 750 ETH to acquire rare “HyperRainbow” Chromie Squiggle #3784.
​

​
(There is still hope for all of us who doodle - or draw cats)
​

​

Sponsored by Smash Digital​
​

🦄 SEOs with Skin in the Game

​
​Smash Digital - a growth agency, filled to the brim with unicorn images and SEO memes. A team of SEOs with actual skin in the game, ranking their own portfolio of profitable businesses, and offering the exact same services to clients.
An agency with so much link juice you’ll need a mop and bucket to clean it all up.
​
​Check. Them. Out.
​
​

✅ Snippets to Send You on Your Way

​
🔷 Cartoon rocks sell for $300K: EtherRock, is an early NFT project consisting of 100 discrete images of the same cartoon rock, each tinted a slightly different color. The price of its NFTs soared after crypto-savvy media personality Gary Vaynerchuk tweeted about them a couple of weeks ago. EtherRock owners figure they’ll get the last laugh.​
​
🔷 The Grubhub of cannabis delivery: Eaze is buying Green Dragon, which is actually pretty big news in the cannabis delivery market. If you live in a part of the U.S., or the world, where you cannot get weed delivered to your house, weep. Civilization will reach you soon enough. Perhaps via an Eaze courier.
​
🔷 a16z's newest bet: TechCrunch spoke to Arianna Simpson from a16z about the intersection of crypto and gaming and which platforms a16z tracks most closely to identify up-and-coming crypto startups.
​
🔷 Innovation, energy and investment in Europe: These are the 100 hottest startups in Europe in 2021.
​
🔷 As crypto matures: According to a tweet from Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong, the brokerage firm is planning to purchase more than $500 million worth of cryptocurrency on its balance sheet. It's also going to be investing 10% of all future profits in crypto. The purchase would include Ethereum as well as other assets tied to the decentralized financial world.
​​
​🔷 The binance debacle: Crypto traders want payback after losing millions to Binance glitches. Traders are teaming up to take legal action against the crypto exchange, but they face an uphill battle. (Claimants can join the case for free).
​

🚚 Banksy's 'spraycation':

​
​

Interested in sponsoring our newsletter?

Thanks for your interest in sponsoring the investing.io newsletter. The newsletter goes out twice a week on Mondays and Thursdays.
You'll find the details here.​
​
​

🙋 How did we do?

With your feedback, we can improve this newsletter. Please click on a link to vote:

• ​👍 Bravo - interesting and valuable. Thanks!​
• ​😐 Hmm - only okay​
• ​👎 Yawn - I fell asleep.​
  ​
  ​

There wasn’t a dedicated space for entrepreneurial investors like us… so we created one. Join over 200 members interested in digital asset & start-up discussions, plus deal-flow. All in our paid community. 🎉

​