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Together With:

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Hi there, 👋

The big news on Friday was that Constitution DAO raised $47MM in Ethereum to bid on a copy of the U.S. Constitution at Sotheby’s.
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The investors were disappointed when they failed to buy it, but we guess they learned a lesson about gas fees.
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​In this issue:

• Spinning up startups
• Party Round raises its own round
• OpenStore raises $75MM to acquire Shopify sellers
• PartyBid now supports OpenSea
• A $3MM domain - for a real estate startup

From the snippets: New art equity platform, e-commerce startup tips, and Miramax sues for NFT rights.
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As always, thanks for being here.
Juliet Lyall
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​P.S. Just a reminder that this newsletter is for information purposes only. It is not financial or investment advice. Do your own research. We are not responsible for your decisions. Mind the gap.
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Spinning up Startups

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​Jack Abraham is a serial entrepreneur and investor who sold his first company, Milo, to eBay when he was 24.
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He's now the CEO of Atomic - a venture firm with a difference.
​The difference is that Atomic only writes checks to startups it spins up itself.
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And they spin up plenty. The company has launched 14 startups in 12 months, all with modest amounts of cash.
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What surprises us is that more entrepreneurs and investors haven't followed their lead. It makes sense to collaborate with experienced and talented people in your network to co-found great businesses.
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There are several benefits in doing this. You save money by building companies in house because you avoid paying a premium for a small stake in someone else’s startup.
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You're also in a position to hire a team of experts, but only charge the companies a cost price for their services. This helps offset some of the costs of building a startup when the company might have spent that money elsewhere.

How does Atomic work?

Atomic invests in two ways using their "studio fund model." They either start with the person or the people, or they start with the idea.

For every company they create, their LPs get to invest at predefined ownership levels. By the time these companies come out and raise from venture capitalists, the ownership levels are much higher than most investors traditionally have.
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At the end of his interview with TechCrunch, Abraham discusses his involvement with OpenStore.
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In March of this year, he co-founded OpenStore with his long-time associate, Keith Rabois. OpenStore provides liquidity for merchants that are creating e-commerce stores outside of Amazon, i.e., Shopify.
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You'll get further insight into Atomic's playbook, and comments about OpenStore on TechCrunch.
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​Related: OpenStore Raises $75 Million To Acquire More Shopify Sellers, Reaches $750 Million Valuation In Eight Months.
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Better Bookmarking

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Are you still struggling to keep track of your Tweets, read-later list, reference pages, and miscellaneous links?
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​Guardo lets you collect, organize, and bookmark anything you find online.

The list of features is looong, but here some highlights:

• Runs everywhere
• Add custom notes: Notes to describe bookmarks and tags
• Organize with tags: Organize your bookmarks with custom tags
• Full-text search: Content of every web-page is fully searchable
• Nested collections
• Import and export

The interface is stunning too.

After signing up, you can import all your bookmarks from the tool you're currently using.
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Guardo is in Beta right now so they're offering a Premium subscription at zero cost.​
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Domain Snacks

👉 $3MM Domain
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​GeekWire reported on the $100 million funding round of a real estate startup called Place. The company is now valued at $1 Billion, and it wisely uses Place.com for its website.
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Of interest to domain investors is that the article shared that the domain was acquired for $3 million. Jeff Eckhaus spotted the sale price and shared it on Twitter:

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👉 The Best Crypto Name?
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It appears that Crypto.com is looking to turn itself into a well-known, mainstream cryptocurrency brand. In a $700 million deal last week, Crypto.com purchased the naming rights for the Los Angeles arena known as the Staples Center.
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​Related: Is Crypto.com the Best Cryptocurrency Domain Name?​
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👉 Minting a Record
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​Mint.io broke Park.io's sales records last Thursday.
It sold for $230,000.
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Together With MicroAcquire
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How To Acquire a SaaS Business

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What's it like to MicroAcquire a business?

One buyer shares his experience on the recently launched MicroAcquire podcast, SaaS Acquisition Stories.​
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CEO, Andrew Gazdecki, interviews both founders and buyers of successfully completed acquisitions through MicroAcquire.
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You'll get first-hand insights into the process, and hear directly from people with a real understanding of how things work on the inside.
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You'll also pick up tips on how to:

• Vet sellers/buyers
• Justify valuations
• Negotiate terms
• Handle due diligence
• Share assets, and more

In this episode, Andrew talks to Colin Keeley who successfully acquired his first business on MicroAcquire earlier this year.
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In just 13 minutes, Colin breaks down the timeline from his first conversation to a fully completed sale - at the 41 day mark.
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Listen and learn from Colin’s experience:

👉 SaaS Acquisition Stories w/ Colin Keeley ​
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Strength in Numbers

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* Party On

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PartyDAO just released a new version of PartyBid - the dapp that makes it easy for groups to collectively bid on choice NFTs.
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When PartyBid launched, the dapp’s initial version supported group bidding only on Foundation or Zora NFT auctions.
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​But, not every NFT sale happens via auction.​
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The good news is that PartyBid now supports all “Buy Now” listings on OpenSea.
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OpenSea is home to millions of NFTs, so this integration considerably expands the reach of PartyBid users. In addition, the “Buy Now” option opens up new forms of cooperative collecting options.
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PartyDAO explains all their new features in this post.
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* Party Round Raised Its Own Party Round

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The idea behind Party Round is that raising money is a pain in the butt and that founders need better tooling.
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The service wants to make fundraising simpler and also allow founders to accept smaller checks - so that they can put together their own party rounds.
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Funding events with many smaller participants used to be mocked as a bad idea for founders.
So much for that old logic. Party Round just added $7 million to its accounts using its own service.​
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* A DAO Evolved

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Upstream, the professional networking platform, announced their newest product: Upstream Collectives.
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​An Upstream Collective is a virtual community with a shared Ethereum wallet. Each member contributes money to the Collective and votes on how to use the funds.
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Upstream states: "The communities of the future are transparent, equitable, and run by their community members."
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This is their version of a DAO - without the fragmentation and barriers to entry.
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​"With Upstream Collectives, we took all the features needed to run a DAO and brought it into one place. An Upstream Collective is a DAO, evolved."
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​See how it works.​
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Smarter Photo Sharing

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​Waldo is a photo-sharing platform that just happens to share its name with the character from the popular book series, "Where's Waldo."
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The company has historically targeted businesses, schools, sports leagues and other organizations.
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Now, they're offering an ad-free, private photo-sharing service direct to consumers.
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​Can't you do that elsewhere, we hear you say?​
The short answer is "yes", but Waldo believes their standalone app has several advantages.
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Waldo is promoting its facial recognition-powered smart notifications, closed-loop commenting, private reactions, and custom print options as key differences.
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The new consumer plans are offered as either a Plus or Premium subscription at $4.99/month or $9.99/month, respectively.
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If you share a heap of photos or just want an easier way to sift and sort through event images, then Waldo is worth checking out.
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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.
An agency with so much link juice you’ll need a mop and bucket to clean it all up.​

​Check. Them. Out.
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✅ Snippets to Send You on Your Way

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🔷 The crowded aggregator ring: London-based Gravitiq is the latest e-commerce roll-up company to attract a large amount of initial funding. It is buying and scaling Amazon marketplace brands in the consumer e-commerce healthcare sector. The company announced $55 million of seed investment.​
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🔷 Fight over rights: Miramax filed a lawsuit last week accusing Quentin Tarantino of copyright infringement by selling NFTs based on the screenplay for "Pulp Fiction."​
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🔷 New art equity platform: Fractional alternative asset investing continues to expand, with Yieldstreet announcing a fine art fund, The Art Equity Platform allows retail investors to invest in art - offering an alternative to Masterworks.
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🔷 E-commerce tips: An expert tells you the 9 Things You Need to Know When Starting an E-commerce Business.
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🔷 Communities of the future: Thoughts on community evolution from Web2 to Web3. The growth and future of DAOs as communities and business models.
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🎨 When posters were stylish:

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