NFT Craze Mints Its First Billionaires | Taking on The $600 Billion Medicaid Market

Plus: Elon Musk’s Fortune Shrinks $30 Billion As Tesla Stock Tumbles

The NFT craze has minted its first billionaires. The founders of buzzy blockchain startup OpenSea have joined the three-comma club following a fresh funding round announced Tuesday that values the company at $13.3 billion—up from $1.5 billion just six months ago. With estimated 18.5% stakes in OpenSea, cofounders Devin Finzer and Forbes Under 30 listmaker Alex Atallah are each worth about $2.2 billion, Forbes estimates. 

Founded four years ago, the New York City-based startup was an early player in the NFT market that took off in early 2021. Shorthand for “nonfungible tokens,” NFTs are computer files used to track ownership of unique digital assets like art, music and even virtual sports cards on a ledger known as a blockchain. OpenSea bills itself as a peer-to-peer platform on which users can create, buy and sell all sorts of NFTs—in exchange for a 2.5% cut of each sale.

This Week's Money Moves

Waymark has raised $45 million to build a community health worker brigade for Medicaid. Cofounders Rajaie Batniji and Sanjay Basu are banking that a combination of software and community-based care can help revolutionize the $600 billion Medicaid market and improve patients’ health.

Founded by 26-year-old billionaire Austin Russell, Lidar maker Luminar has said its laser sensors will be standard equipment in Volvo’s new line of electrified vehicles that will also be capable of autonomous driving while on the highway.

With funding for data startups in a frenzy, data annotation company Labelbox found itself fielding offers to take on ever bigger sums from private market investors at the end of 2021. One venture capitalist offered to lead the investment on a $200 million check. In the end, it partnered with a famed writer of big checks, SoftBank, but opted to take only about half the capital (a cool $110 million at a near $1 billion valuation).

The Inside Scoop: Exclusive Under 30 News

How Daniella Pierson’s Female-Focused Media Company The Newsette Made $40 Million In 2021

Bored and stuck in her Jacksonville, Florida family home during a 2015 break from Boston University, Daniella Pierson started Newsette, a female-focused newsletter for her friends. In it, she wrote about top news items, self-care and beauty tips. Today, the newsletter has 500,000-plus subscribers. But the company was primarily able to generate $40 million in revenue last year by investing in custom sponsored content and launching an associated agency Newland. Pierson says that enabled her company to take home eight-figures of profit.

Newsette has traditionally made money by writing ads for companies like Sephora, Bumble and Daily Harvest, and embedding the sponsored content into the newsletter. Newland will continue to grow that strategy. Though Pierson only launched the ad agency last year, it has already worked with a number of top clients, including Amazon’s International Women’s Day campaign that highlighted small female founders selling wares through the behemoth. Pierson believes Newland has risen through the ranks of the crowded agency space because of its journalism-based background and TikTok acumen.

“Every agency you’ve heard of, they have run the same way for the last 40 years. It’s the same for most media companies–they hire 100 writers and have this game plan that people feel like they need to follow,” says Pierson, who leads a 24-person team. “Because we didn’t have the resources to follow that game plan, we have to be a little scrappy and a little creative. That’s where we’ve been able to thrive in terms of profitability.”

Outside of the Newsette and Newland, Pierson has also cofounded Wondermind, a mental health media company with Selena Gomez and her mother Mandy Teefey. Additionally, the 26-year-old LatinX founder is becoming a partner in Serena Williams’ Serena Ventures. 

She’s not shy about her success. “Women are conditioned to not talk about wealth,” says Pierson. “I didn’t know it was possible for a woman at 26-years-old to make what I’m making; I thought you’d have to win the lottery or become the biggest actress in the world. I had no idea you do this in business.”

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