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Together With:

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Hi there, 👋

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You've all heard of Ryan Reynolds.
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The part-time actor and owner of businesses like Mint and Aviation Gin is well known for appearing in hilarious ad campaigns, but did you know that he's just joined LinkedIn?
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A quick check of Reynolds' account highlights some of his earlier jobs, including working as a forklift driver at Safeway. You'll find more curious details in his honest and humorous profile.
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​In this issue:
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• Nobody: "Crowd-infused" startups
• Pros and cons: Expired, premium and aged domains
• Aggregators: Not done yet

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​From the snippets: The State of European Tech 2021, unexpected uses for NFTs, and Coinbase's DeFi product.
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As always, thanks for being here.
Juliet Lyall
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​P.S. Watch out for a special edition newsletter this Thursday. Our good friend - and yours - Richard Patey, is making a guest appearance, and he's sure to have a few surprises for you.
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Be a Nobody

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Despite the aggravated media stories about the rise of entrepreneur culture, the rate of growth for new start-ups is low compared to a decade ago.
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Since the peak of start-up creation in 2015, the numbers have halved.
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​Nobody Studios wants to address a critical gap in the startup world by de-risking investments in new companies.
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They refer to themselves as "a crowd-infused, high-velocity company creation machine."

What does this mean?

As a venture studio, they create, develop, and optimize new companies in-house. They fund startups, build their teams, and provide all the resources to grow to the point where they’re ready for scaling.
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But, they're doing things very differently.
That's why the term "Crowd Infused" is important.
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Nobody Studios' big, hairy audacious goal is to build 100 companies in the next five years by leveraging the crowd throughout their company creation processes.
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Mark McNally, Founder and Chief Nobody, says:
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"…the core of our ethos is building a massive crowd of Nobodies to support the journey at every stage and share in the upside."
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McNally added:
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​"We don’t want to be just another venture operation that’s only for the wealthy and influential. We want everyone to have the opportunity to join us on this journey, and have buy-in, so they’ll want to help us succeed. It’s a win-win on a massive scale."
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As far as we know, they are the first venture studio to use crowdfunding (alongside conventional angel investments).
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Nobody Studios is gearing up to launch their first equity crowdfund soon.
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Audible Text

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​If your site isn't accessible to people with visual and hearing impairments or physical disabilities, then you're limiting your number of potential customers.
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​That's why we love this method to integrate sound inside your text.
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The team from KnightLabs developed Soundcite to let you add inline audio to your story. The audio is not isolated; it plays right under the text.
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When people click the play button on the written words, they’ll hear the audio you’ve uploaded.
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Your text will look something like this:

You can add music, interview clips, or natural sounds.
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Soundcite offers simple instructions to bring your text to life - and another way to improve accessibility on your website.
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(h/t to Jeremy Caplan)
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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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🚀 Profitable eCommerce with $180,000 in TTM revenue / $35,000 in TTM profit selling 360-degrees photo booths. Most of the customers are businesses and/or consumers looking to start a photo booth business.
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🚀 Profitable WordPress plugin with $10,768 in TTM revenue / $9,964 in TTM profit that enables site owners to add a discussion board to their website. A free version of this plugin has 2,000+ active users listed in the WordPress.org repository.
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🚀Profitable eCommerce with $170,000 in TTM revenue / $35,000 in TTM profit selling customized tools used mainly for sports card collectors to take their business to the next level with a strong brand.
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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Domain Snacks

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👉 There were at least 4 six-figure domain sales at NameJet last week.
​Trainer.com led the way, selling for $290,000.
Elliot Silver also picked up on the sale of Operate.com for $190k.
All of these domain names were sold at the recent Thought Convergence auction.
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👉 Sedo published their most searched keywords for November. It's no surprise that NFT, Meta and Crypto made the top 5. If you own any decent Poker or CBD names, you'll be interested to know that they also made the list.
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👉 Expired domains, premium domains, aged domains – there’s a market for each one of these.
In this post, Doug Cunnington gives a detailed explanation of what this is all about, the differences between these domain options, and why any of it is important for SEO.
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Track Your Competition

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What if you could see live pricing data on your competitors?
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If you own an E-commerce business, your mission is to entice buyers to buy from you instead of Company B.
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​Anakin's pricing tool is designed to help you increase your revenue using pricing, products and trends data from other companies.
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Rather than trying to guess where to pitch your price, Anakin automates the management and pricing of millions of SKUs from competitors to provide you with insights in real time.
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Their website claims that you can:
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​Get the latest prices, shipping prices, availability, sellers, promo, product attributes or any other product characteristics.
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No pricing is offered, but you can book a demo from the site.
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Not Done Yet

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Just when you thought the aggregator space had gone quiet...
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​Look at what's happened in the past week!

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◾ E-commerce roll-up play Opontia launched in June, raising $20 million in debt and equity to acquire older and small e-commerce brands. The company has found an opening in targeting brands in East and Central Europe, with a focus on Poland, Turkey, and the Middle East. Optontia confirmed they have just closed a subsequent funding round of $42 million, nine months after they were founded.
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◾ Nebula Brands is leading the 'charge of the aggregators' in China. The company just closed a Series B funding round of more than $50 million to help them compete with companies such as Berlin Brands Group, Razor Group and Thrasio.
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◾ SellerX, Europe's leading aggregator of e-commerce businesses, announced it has raised an additional approximately $500 million in debt and equity financing. The company also announced their acquisition of KW-Commerce, one of the largest private label sellers on Amazon worldwide with more than $100 million in revenues.
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◾ A new company is entering the crowded e-commerce aggregator space to acquire and scale high-performing Latin American brands selling on MercadoLibre, Shopify or Amazon. Quinio, a Mexico-based company, announced today it secured $20 million in a debt-and-equity round that will be used to add more than 30 brands to its portfolio.
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​Related: Merama, which acquires or launches Latin American digital brands, hit a $1.2 billion valuation - just 12 months after incorporation.
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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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🔷 Not for the U.S: Coinbase is offering a DeFi yield product to non-US investors. This is not one of the shady DeFi products offering astronomical annual yields that will blow up at some point. We hope this offers benefits to small savers in poorer countries where there is less choice.
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🔷 Web creator raises: Tim Berners-Lee’s startup, Inrupt, has raised about $30 million. Inrupt is attempting to “reshape the internet” by building a platform that gives users control of their data.
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🔷 Southern Europe lags: Just 5% of VC funding went to Central and Eastern Europe in 2021, despite the region having the highest population share. The State of European Tech 2021 is the deepest, data-led investigation into the European tech ecosystem. You'll discover the fastest growing sector, issues with a lack of diversity, and data on the American invasion.

🔷 Unexpected uses for NFTs: Today NFTs are associated with expensive digital art and collectibles. But crytpo experts say they’ll be used for more mundane and useful things in the future.

🔷 OpenSea turns the tide: Brian Roberts, the new CFO of OpenSea, blamed “inaccurate reporting on Opensea’s plans” regarding going public. His comment to Bloomberg caused an uproar among OpenSea’s crypto native NFT community, many of whom see a public listing of the platform as a sellout to large institutional investors. Roberts attempted to set the record straight in this tweet.
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🛑 How NFTs work:

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