Hi there, 👋
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Today, we're bringing you enough news to get you through the Labor Day weekend in the US.
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And since this coming Monday celebrates the contributions and achievements of workers, the team at investing.io is taking the day off.
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(Oops - did anyone tell Travis?)
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That means you'll see us again next Thursday.

Here's a taste of what we've got for you below:

• Why your startup needs a go-to-market strategy
• Event contracts: A new asset class
• Funding for brand buyers
• Empire Flippers' historic quarter
• CryptoPunks go to Hollywood
• One word domain bargain

Enjoy your weekend.
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As always, thanks for being here,
Juliet Lyall
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​P.S. Here's what you clicked. The most popular article in August was Matt Diggity's Affiliate Niche study. This was closely followed by Empire Flippers' story on the Content Site Gold Rush.
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Where the Money Is

1. Quiet Heroes

Heroes now has $200M more to roll-up Amazon brands.
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The U.K.-based startup has been relatively quiet compared to companies like Thrasio and Perch, but this significant new funding is likely to change that.
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The non-dilutive debt funding will allow them to expand and further diversify their brand portfolio.
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​Heroes reports that they’ve assembled a team of 70 specialists, and that an acquisition can happen in as little as three weeks.
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2. A Different Target
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Hot on the heels of Heroes announcing their $200 million raise, another startup out of London aims to do the same.
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​Olsam, a roll-up play that is buying both consumer and B2B merchants selling on Amazon, has closed $165 million in a combination of equity and debt.
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​Olsam is also taking a slightly different approach when it comes to target companies.
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​Aside from focusing on the usual consumer play, they are building out a strategy to sell those products on Amazon’s B2B portal.
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Founded by Ollie Horbye and Sam Horbye (an ex-Amazon marketplace team), Olsam is the only operator in the space where the leadership team have started, scaled, and sold multiple Amazon FBA brands.
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​Full story.​
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3. An Historic Second Quarter

While we're on the topic of buying and selling FBA and other website assets, you may be interested in Empire Flippers' Quarter Two overview.
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Currently, they have 30 seven-figure listings for sale on their marketplace.
Of these, we counted 15 Amazon FBA sites.
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Of note is that aggregators are aggressively raising capital and competing with each other in this space.
But, many aggregators are also buying up SaaS, service, and content businesses.
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You'll get all the details on their historic quarter here.​
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Crypto & NFT Updates
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1️⃣ CryptoPunks Go to Hollywood

A traditional talent agency best known for representing A-list celebrities is getting into the NFT game.
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Larva Labs, the creator of CryptoPunks, just signed with United Talent Agency (UTA).
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Watch out for CryptoPunks popping up across film, TV, video games, and other licensing areas.
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​Hard to believe they were originally given away for free (sob).
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2️⃣ Ape Rewards
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Did you notice that Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) rolled out their Mutant Ape Yacht Club collection last weekend?
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The Mutant Ape Yacht Club is a collection of up to 20,000 Mutant Apes.
They are created by exposing an existing Bored Ape to one of three tiers of 'mutant serum' vials: M1, M2, and Mega Mutant (M3).
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The other option is to mint a Mutant Ape in the public sale.
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From the website:
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"The MAYC is a way to reward our ape holders with an entirely new NFT—a “mutant” version of their ape—while also allowing newcomers into the BAYC ecosystem at a lower tier of membership."
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If you're a fan, watch out for the BAYC collectibles being auctioned on Christies and Sothebys.
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Christies will be the first to auction profile pic NFTs in an online-only sale from September 17th to 28th.
The Sothebys sale starts today - 2nd September - with bidding open at 10:00 EDT in New York.
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3️⃣ Crypto in Cuba

Cuba’s government said it will recognize and regulate cryptocurrencies for payments on the island.
​As it has become harder to use dollars, the popularity of crypto has grown among tech savvy groups in Cuba.
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The (supposedly anonymous) transactions are often popular with people attempting to evade government regulations.
We guess this includes U.S. restrictions on sending money to places like Cuba.
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4️⃣ Dorsey Plans

Jack Dorsey is planning to build an open platform to create a decentralized exchange for Bitcoin through TBD.
TBD is a unit of Square, the payments firm Dorsey founded.
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Dorsey retweeted an original tweet by TBD project leader Mike Brock, who offered some direction on where the unit is headed.
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5️⃣ Solana Up

Solana is a decentralized blockchain platform.
It facilitates the transactions of the SOL coin as well as digital assets like non-fungible tokens (NFTs).
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And, Solana is up 2,348% in the past year.
For more on Solana and why it's on fire right now, this quick overview will fill in the gaps.
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6️⃣ NFTs in 3 Minutes

OneOf is a marketplace connecting music artists and their fans.
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The platform is backed by music legend Quincy Jones and has just launched after more than two years in development.
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​OneOf wants to be the NFT marketplace for people who don’t understand NFTs.
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And, they want to make buying NFTs as easy as buying regular merch.
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Joshua James, co founder and COO stated:
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"We had an ethos going into it, which is that we wanted 16-year-olds to be able to sign up and purchase an NFT in less than three minutes."
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Prepare to Launch

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Once you've taken the basic steps to form your startup, you'll hit crunch time.
That's when you're ready to launch your product or service to the world.
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Every company is different.
Every market is different.
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But every successful product launch has one thing in common:
​An effective go-to-market (GTM) strategy.
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If you're wondering how this differs from your marketing plan or why you need a separate GTM strategy, then Ahrefs' latest blog post covers that - and more.
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Simply, a GTM strategy is your plan to bring a new product or service to the market.
It identifies what you will offer, to what market, at what price, how you will offer it, and what is required operationally to launch the product/service.
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Ahrefs take a deep dive into:

• The importance of having a GTM strategy
• How to build a go-to-market strategy

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​This is essential reading for anyone wanting to secure a successful launch.
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Sponsored by Smash Digital
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🦄 SEOs with Skin in the Game

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​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.
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An agency with so much link juice you’ll need a mop and bucket to clean it all up.
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​Check. Them. Out.
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Domain Snacks
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👉 One word .coms are in hot demand.

Astonish .com sold a couple of days ago for $41,501.
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The domain name was owned for years by a company providing digital marketing solutions. It was left to expire at Network Solutions.
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We're astonished surprised that it didn't fetch a higher price.
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​Any comments from the domain investors here? Hit reply and tell us what you think.
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​👉 OpenSchool .com sold for $50,000 after being acquired 4 years ago for $6,450. The domain name was owned for years by a registrant out of South Korea. It was then dropped and was caught by DropCatch.
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👉 Over the past week, Arif Mirza has been hosting a special series of panels and discussions dubbed “Domainer Week.”
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Most of these sessions are over, but the embedded links in this sheet will take you straight to the videos.
Participants included Paul Nicks (GoDaddy), Margot Bushnaq (Brand Bucket), and Darpan Munjal (SquadHelp), along with Andrew Miller, Adam Strong, and Kate Buckley.
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House Stock Watcher

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Those of you in the US might be interested in what your public representatives are trading.
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The House Stock Watcher site provides handy summaries of the transactions made by your reps. Using the filters lets you sort the trades by representative, state and ticker.
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Alternatively, you can check their latest tweets for updates.
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Podcast

We enjoy featuring our community members.
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In this episode of the Niche Pursuits Podcast, Jared Bauman talks to Mohit Tater of BlackBook Investments.
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Among the topics they discuss are:

• The benefits of funds for both operators and investors
• Growing and selling websites
• Tips and tricks for niche sites and online business owners

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​Listen or watch.​
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✅ Snippets to Send You on Your Way

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🔷 Turning opinions into money: Kalshi’s CFTC-regulated exchange offers a new asset class: event contracts. Kalshi is asking people to bet “yes” or “no” on questions about future events that are structured as all-or-nothing options. Their contracts pay a fixed amount when an outcome either occurred or did not.
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🔷 It's a fake: As a lesson in how you can't be too careful when investing, a British collector was tricked into buying a fake NFT advertised through Banksy's official website. The good news is that the hacker returned the funds.
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🔷 Zoom investments: Remember the $100 million development fund that Zoom announced back in April? The fund's purpose was to invest in promising startups building tools on top of their platform. On Tuesday, the company announced it has made its first round of investments. See the categories and companies that received funding.
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🔷 More financial services: PayPal is exploring a possible stock-trading platform, after rolling out the ability to trade cryptocurrencies last year. In order to offer stock trading to customers, it's possible PayPal will partner with (or buy) an existing broker-dealer.
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🔷 Niche marketplace raises: MarketPryce, a sports marketplace startup, has raised $3 million in seed funding to continue connecting brands and athletes. Since their launch, MarketPryce has already seen an influx of new users, with hundreds of student-athletes joining the platform.
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🔷 Another headache: Possibly anticipating new regulations, America's Securities and Exchange Commission is investigating "gamification and behavioral prompts used by online brokerages that encourage trading." SEC Chair Gary Gensler said new financial tech can mislead investors with rosy projections of profit without appropriate risk disclosures.
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🔷 Digital merger: Contentsquare today announced that it has acquired rival Hotjar, bringing together two major players in the digital user experience and analytics space. By joining forces, the two companies are setting out to “serve the global market end-to-end,” targeting businesses of all sizes and supporting the digital transformation efforts of merchants.

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🚙 Accidental parking:

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