Hi there, 👋

Last Thursday's letter contained a link to an article on 18 Flippa alternatives.
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One of our eagle-eyed readers commented on the errors made by the author of that post.​
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Here's one example:
​"Flippa doesn’t vet any of the businesses that are listed on the platform."
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​This statement is untrue.
​Flippa vets every revenue-generating business. And, they continue to make significant improvements to their platform to offer users a trustworthy and safe marketplace.
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Want to know more? See Flippa's commitment to buyers and sellers.
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In this issue:

• Boomer business trends
• Investing through a crisis
• A perfect market: An interview with Sam Bankman-Fried of FTX
• Google Antitrust: Who's screwed?
• The story behind Wayfair. com

See the snippets for: Cryptoys, 6 reasons to bootstrap your startup, and the new fear and greed.
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As always, thanks for being here.
Juliet Lyall
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​P.S. Do you ever scroll to the end of the snippets? You're missing out on the fun stuff if you don't check our Free Roll.​
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​P.P.S. Remember; this letter is for information purposes only. We are not financial advisors and this is not investment advice. Do your own research. One of us is just a Boomer with an internet connection.
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A Perfect Market

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Sam Bankman-Fried’s cryptocurrency exchange, FTX.com, enables traders to buy and sell digital assets such as Bitcoin and Ethereum.
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The irony?
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​Bankman-Fried is no crypto evangelist. He’s barely even a believer.​
He’s a mercenary, dedicated to making as much money as possible (he doesn’t really care how) solely so he can give it away.
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Recently, FTX saw its valuation climb to $25 billion following the successful closing of Series B-1 funding worth $420 million. This latest financing will allow FTX to expand into new jurisdictions and improve upon its current offerings.
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Patrick O'Shaughnessy from Colossus recently interviewed Bankman-Fried for this podcast episode - Creating a Perfect Market.
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The show covers the building blocks of a perfect market, the key areas of inefficiency in today’s exchanges, and Sam’s north stars of product design and effective altruism.
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​Listen here.
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The Outsized Impact of Experience

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You can read about market crashes, recessions, and depressions, but you cannot fully grasp them unless you have invested through one.

Unsurprisingly, those who live through moments like these often emerge more risk averse, while those who do not tend to be unphased or, in some cases, even more emboldened.
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Ted Lamade looks at the opportunities that arise in adverse situations and what this means for startups and investors today.
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​A Tale of Two Sundays: The Outsized Impact of Experience.​
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You Weren’t Meant To See That

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​Blurry lets you hide sensitive information while screen sharing or video recording.

This tool will save you hours of post-video editing - and the hassles that go with it.
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You simply hover on any web elements you want to blur and then click. That's it!
You can hide images, blur parts of any text, and draw fuzzy rectangles anywhere on the page.
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Right now, Blurry's basic plan is 50% off. That's a one time payment of $18.00.
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A Message from Empire Flippers Capital​
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💥 Online Business is Booming!

Empire Flippers Capital (EFC) has put into motion something quite extraordinary.
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Their latest fund allows accredited investors worldwide to passively invest in online businesses.
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EFC has raised almost $7M from entrepreneurs looking to co-invest in profitable brands alongside experienced e-commerce operators.
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​You'll see the deals on offer here.​
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EFC projects 20%+ average annual returns.

👉Book a call with the EFC Team.
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Domain Snacks
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👉 Navigator. com Has Been Acquired by Google​
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​DNJournal notes that the Navigator. com domain name sold for $350,000 in 2018.
We're certain that the purchase price of this domain name will remain private. It remains to be seen what Google will do with Navigator. com.
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👉 Domaining Is Not Very Exciting

Raymond Hackney ran a couple of polls to figure out why people come to Namepros, and their level of success/participation as a domain investor.
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​The results were mixed: Only 35% of voters are either full time or part time with a sizable income.
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👉 The Story Behind Wayfair. Com

Wayfair is one of Amazon’s largest competitors - and a major brand name today.
The company started out by purchasing and utilizing solid keyword .com domain names and building out websites on them.
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Later, they moved away from individual keyword domain name brands and formed a larger umbrella brand. It was a prescient decision.
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​This article from Domain Investing includes a Twitter thread that is worth a read.
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Boomer Trends

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We discussed the slew of new market opportunities in the senior market in a prior newsletter.
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Now, Marty Zwilling has uncovered some indicative business ownership facts from recent trend data that shed new light on the demographics of business founders.

Contrary to what you might guess, the highest rate of small business and entrepreneurial growth over the last few years is not Gen-Y upstarts, but Boomers over the age of 50.

Baby Boomers have grown yearly to 41 percent of small business owners, second only to Gen-X, at 44 percent.
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What all of this means is that Boomers will have more impact and power in the marketplace for a lot longer than most people expected.
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Keep in mind that many Boomers have the purchasing power and become enthusiastic early adopters who help lead the way. They are becoming the new early adopters.
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​Take a look at the important trends Zwilling found.
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​Related: Boomers in Business: 2020 Trends​
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Stop Stealing My Stuff

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Don't you hate it when people steal your creations?

It's a major source of frustration when you discover that the photos, designs and charts you labored over are appearing on random websites and social media platforms.
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Minus any credit to you.
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​Watermark.ink is a handy web application to watermark your photos.
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We played around with it for 5 minutes, but the app is capable of far more than our humble effort (above) indicates.
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Watermark offers you a variety of fonts, every color, and numerous filters to enhance your photos. You can also resize and crop your images within the application.
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It's free, but an annual plan gives you premium quality and unlimited use for $14.99.
(Yes, the photo is ours. Yes, you can use it - with attribution)
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Random Tweet
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Who's screwed?
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Brought to You by Smash Digital​
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🦄 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.
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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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✅ Snippets to Send You on Your Way

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🔷 Sequoia's radical change: With capital now a commodity and nearly every VC focused on offering services, standing out is hard in the venture game. As are the harsh realities of startups staying private longer and restrictions on how venture capitalists can invest. Sequoia thinks that it has the solution.
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🔷 The new fear and greed: Joshua Brown modifies fear and greed to account for what he's seeing on a daily basis in the markets. "I think we’re witnessing a variation on Greed that I would label Envy. I spent 15 minutes on Financial Twitter yesterday for the first time since the spring of 2020. It’s everywhere. Almost every interaction I saw on my timeline was tinged with it. Just skirmishes and drive-by eggings and curb stompings."
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🔷 The Cryptoyverse: Cryptoys is building an NFT-native digital toy company from the ground up. Cryptoys' About page states that their digital entertainment platform "connects you with people around the world and reimagines what's possible when it comes to toys, collectibles, and gaming." They just raised $7.5 million in seed funding led by Andreessen Horowitz.
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🔷 6 advantages of bootstrapping: The VC path is a lottery. Before you take equity investment, consider bootstrapping. Without the steroids of capital injections, a bootstrapped business will grow slower. It needs to be scrappy and live within its means. But if you have a good product, even for a small niche market, the bootstrap business can make the founders millions. See the 6 reasons to bootstrap your startup.
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🔷 Thrasio rolls on: After delaying their SPAC, Thrasio has closed an all-equity Series D of over $1 billion. They'll use this huge cash infusion to continue buying up more companies as well as to expand internationally. It said that it’s currently on a rate of buying 1.5 businesses per week and now has some 200 brands in its portfolio.The company, founded in 2018, has now raised $3.4 billion, including a $650 million debt round earlier this year.
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The internet is 💩

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