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Together With:

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Hi there, 👋

Be careful what you say.
​
Under the guise of a "safety feature," Uber will allow riders or drivers to record audio during rides.
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The audio recording feature will begin rolling out in the U.S. this week as a pilot in Kansas City, Louisville, and Raleigh-Durham.
Perhaps Uber is trying to cover their rear end after they came under fire for withholding data on assaults in their cabs?
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Whatever the reason, think twice about what you discuss next time you're in the back of a taxi. (Good luck getting that update accepted in the E.U.)
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​In this issue:

• 'Islands' launches with $3.5MM
• A robot rakes in over €1 million
• Squares, Blocks & Spirals
• And a fun way to mess with your profile pic

From the snippets: Seedrs get snapped up, fund for Indian founders, and Empire Flippers share their Q3 report.
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As always, thanks for being here.
Juliet Lyall
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​

Communities Will Eat the World

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The future will be community owned.

At least that's what 25-year-old entrepreneur Tiffany Zhong is betting on.
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Zhong has just raised $3.5 million for her startup, 'Islands', in a round led by Alexis Ohanian’s VC firm Seven Seven Six. While Islands was founded in 2020 by Zhong and 28-year-old Nikhil Srinivasan, the funding round marks its official debut.
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Their announcement stated:
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"Web3 puts the memes of production into the hands of creators, letting individuals take ownership of their content, curation, and commerce. Democratizing access means that EVERYONE, not just a select few, will have the same opportunity to build."
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​What are they building?
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Islands wants to mainstream NFTs for creators and collectors alike.
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Their website will onboard newcomers into the world of NFTs, while helping to improve digital wallet displays and facilitating trading.
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The platform will allow you to display your digital wallets, to trade assets in their store front, and to communicate asynchronously in token-gated communities.
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​How does it work?
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Interested members request a username, enter an email to get notified when they’re ready to join, and a digital wallet address to connect on sign up.
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Once onboard, users will be able to trade NFTs directly within the islands, create new projects called “islands” within their Discord servers, or even mint new NFT projects.
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“We wanted to simplify that process and take away a lot of crypto things,” Zhong says.
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There are numerous platforms out there for sharing and discussing projects so we'll monitor Islands' progress with interest.
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​See the Islands website.​
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​

Block Head

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​Following the news that Square is changing its name to Block, people started making fun of noticing the company’s new leadership and board of directors pages.
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One Twitter user pushed the meme further by developing a tool that lets you create your own blockhead image.

Enter Blockify Yourself.​
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Simply select a disturbingly close-up image of your face and the site will turn it into a cube.
If you want to transform yourself into a bona fide monstrosity, try playing around with the background and the colors used to tint each side.
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Show us what you come up with...please.
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​Blockify Yourself.​
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Domain Snacks

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👉 Squares, Blocks and Spirals
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As mentioned above, Square has now changed its name to Block.
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You may not have noticed that Block uses the Block.xyz domain name for its website.
Square Crypto, its subsidiary focused on funding Bitcoin development, is now called Spiral, and it also uses a .xyz domain name.
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.XYZ continues to gain momentum, both in the corporate world and in the aftermarket. For proof of that, see the NameBio results from the last couple of years.
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👉 Meta Stays Strong

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Raymond Hackney recently published his latest monthly roundup of keyword domain sales.
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November picked up where October left off for Meta, and Cloud had a strong month. See all the popular keyword domain name sales from last month.
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​Related: New gTLD domain sales up over 57% vs October 2021.
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Together With MicroAcquire

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🔥 Hot Sheets 🔥

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MicroAcquire is the top destination for bootstrapped startups and online businesses to list and sell.
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There are new listings vetted and posted on MicroAcquire every day.
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Here’s a preview of three of the latest hot listings:
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🔥 Marketplace with $30,000 in TTM revenue / $5,500 in TTM profit that has developed a swipe-to-match mobile application to match tutors and students with subject, class, and even teacher commonalities.
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🔥 MicroSaaS with $6,726 in TTM revenue / TTM profit that features 20+ customizable pop-ups and interactive forms for users' websites. This platform collect leads and displays a call to action with custom triggered and mobile-friendly email collection, cookie notification, and video forms.
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🔥 Profitable B2B SaaS with $131,000 in ARR based & $115,000 in profit that adds an additional feature to Zendesk and Freshdesk. We have 2 top-ranked apps in the Zendesk & Freshdesk marketplace.
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Upgrade to a Premium subscription to see the business details for the three listings above.
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​👉 See All Listings​
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​

Money-making Robot

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​Botto is a robot that creates and sells art as NFTs.

This AI system describes itself on Twitter as "a decentralized, autonomous artist governed by the people."
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And Botto has already raked in more than €1 million from its first auction of four NFT artworks.
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Every week, Botto posts numerous images on its Twitter profile and asks users to vote for their favorites. The winning image is then auctioned off on SuperRare.
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The German artist behind this project explains the process:
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"Botto creates a sentence, feeds that into a neuro network and gets an image back. And that neuro network has seen more art, more images, than any single human being around."
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The robot also learns from the feedback it receives. It looks for patterns in what the community likes, and adapts its art based on its findings.
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Botto's creators take all sale proceeds and redistribute them as Botto Tokens in the community. That's the power of Web 3.0 right there.
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You can check out Botto's recent auctions on SuperRare.
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We can't wait for Botto to write a book.
In the meantime, we'll make do with the manifesto. (PDF)
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The No-Code List

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Looking to build your MVP?
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No-code development tools are simple to use and effective for building MVPs for startups and makers.
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The advantage is that you can build an MVP to test the viability of your idea faster, get feedback from customers, and iterate without a huge upfront cost.
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Instead of wading through 100s of different sites, we've found a platform that shows you 300+ no-code tools for marketing, design, automations, APIs, and more.
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See them all on We Love No Code.
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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.
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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.​

​Check. Them. Out.
​

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✅ Snippets to Send You on Your Way

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🔷 More women wanted: Okcoin said it will dedicate $1 million to bring more women into the cryptocurrency market with the goal of reaching 50% female cryptocurrency customers by 2025. While many women have advanced in the industry and become widely respected leaders, it’s still heavily male dominated.
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🔷 Seedrs snapped up: Long-time crowdfunding champion Seedrs announced that it has entered a definitive agreement to be acquired by U.S. based private investment firm Republic for approximately $100 million (£75 million). Through the acquisition, the two companies aim to create the first global private investment platform.
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🔷 Things are different now: What makes a stock valuable? What about Gamestop, the US dollar, Bitcoin, and NFTs? Matt Levine discusses the attractive characteristics of these 'investments' and why people view them as valuable.
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🔷 Indian fund: Global venture capital firm Bessemer Venture Partners closed a $220MM fund dedicated to backing Indian founders. Bessemer plans to deploy the new capital across consumer internet and cloud software, digital health, social commerce, and global SaaS. (Did you notice how the reporter incorrectly used the 'M' abbreviation in this story?)
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🔷 The stats are in: Empire Flippers released their massive Q3 report. While the platform experienced some dips in Q3, it was their biggest quarter to date overall. You'll see their revenue breakdown, traffic and analytics, and results of their marketing efforts. Curious? The numbers are here.
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🤖 Creepy or cool?

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