Startupy Issue #2: a laid back newsletter about very serious ideas

Welcome to the Startupy newsletter, a laid back column about very serious ideas. Every week, we curate the hottest links from our universe and share them with you here. As a reminder, Startupy is a community-curated and owned search engine. Our curators organize, index, and interconnect the most meaningful tech, culture, and business insights - we're currently in private beta. If you're feeling the vibe, consider joining the membership to get unrestricted access to our collective intelligence engine.
 
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🥸 MOOD

🪐 HOT LINKS IN OUR UNIVERSE

Crony Beliefs by Kevin Simler

From the inside, via introspection, each of us feels that our beliefs are pretty damn sensible. Sure we might harbor a bit of doubt here and there. But for the most part, we imagine we have a firm grip on reality; we don't lie awake at night fearing that we're massively deluded. But when we consider the beliefs of other people? It's an epistemic shit show out there.

🕺 Curated in Human Behavior , Personal Development & Reputation and Status

101 Design Rules by Brian Collins

Skip the whole “Minimal Viable Product” thing. It leads to incrementalism. Try “Maximum Fucking Love.” It leads to something that someone else might actually care about.

🕺 Curated in Web Design , Inspiration & Product Design

The silence is deafening by Devon Zuegel

In digital conversations, giving feedback requires more conscious effort. Silence is the default. Participants only get feedback from people who join the fray. They receive no signal about how the silent onlookers perceive their dialogue… As a result, the feedback you do receive in digital conversations is more polarized, because the only people who will engage are those who are willing to take that extra step and bear that cost of wading into a messy conversation.

🕺 Curated in Future of Social Networks & Social Graph Design

How People Think by Morgan Housel

Most things are harder than they look and not as fun as they seem because the information we’re exposed to tends to be a highlight reel of what people want you to know about themselves to increase their own chances of success. It’s easiest to convince people that you’re special if they don’t know you well enough to see all the ways you’re not.

🕺 Curated in Personal Development, Happiness, Communication & Belonging

In Praise of Ponzis by Dror Poleg

"Nonsense," you might say. "At the end of the day, you need to sell something; narratives are not enough." But aren't they? Another difference between the old world and ours is that we no longer sell things. In the past, the content was used to sell stuff: Executives from manufacturing companies got their TV channel buddies to produce Soap Operas in order to sell more soap. But today, content is not used to sell anything beyond itself. Everything is content, including your actions and behaviors. Why give them away for free?

💃 Curated in Web 3.0, Storytelling, Intangible Assets & Future of Marketing and Advertising

👀 STARTUPS AND PROJECTS THAT HAVE OUR ATTENTION

Withco

Withco turns America’s best small business entrepreneurs into owner-operators by making property ownership simple and affordable.

🕺 Curated in Infrastructure for Small Businesses & Future of Funding and Venture Capital

Magna

A token cap table management platform, manage your capitalization tables and distribute on-chain vesting tokens to investors, advisors, and team members.

🕺 Curated in Collective Ownership, Coops, and User Owned Platforms & Crypto Tokens

Stepn

A web3 project that rewards users for walking, jogging, or running in their daily lives. Users can buy, earn, and mint sneakers that earn tokens, which can be used to further upgrade their sneaker collection.

🕺 Curated in Future of Fitness, Web 3.0 & Embedded Gaming

Utopia Labs

A collaborative payroll and expense management tool for DAOs.

🕺 Curated in Tooling for DAOs, DAO Compensation, HR Tech, Compensation & Governance

👆  Use the Startupy randomizer to get inspired ☝️

🌱 COMMUNITY HEALTH

Welcoming Gaye Soykok, Camilo Serna Zamora, Henry Chow, Aditya Gurjar, Yufa Li & Annie Galt to our curator community this week and high-fiving Emily Nabnian for her top-notch contributions.

427 contributions this week

1,470 connections this week

507 highlights this week

✨ CURATOR SPOTLIGHT

Why is the ownership economy interesting?

The idea of owning what you create - where rewards are distributed between participants as opposed to concentrated at the top echelon - isn’t new but it’s been difficult to achieve.

The platforms to make the governance aspect practical and transparent are now being built. But with new tools and technology yet to reach its full potential, I’m hopeful that more people will have the opportunity to advocate for themselves and their craft. Reduced dependence on trusted parties and tokenization of assets can enable new types of organizations, minimize the friction of transactions, and reduce the power of intermediaries.

Things worth reading and watching?

When We Live Alone

A documentary exploring the ways in which we live alone together in the present-day. This short piqued my interest in the rising independence and individualism that we’re taking on, and also made me think how our sense of self is being shaped with drastic changes happening around us.

Worldbuilding with FWB

This interview presents a high-level overview of what FWB is and what the collective is working towards. It’s become synonymous to a “decentralized SoHo House” where creatives of different practices gather with the eventual goal of releasing projects including magazines, music festivals and apparel lines. But the high barrier to entry, that is the cost and status required to qualify, have caused some to raise eyebrows. All in all, FWB is an interesting cohort to keep a lookout on with more developments to come.

Offline Matters: Digital Lockdown with Geert Lovink by Jess Henderson

An interview conducted by Jess Henderson with Dutch media theorist, Internet critic and author Geert Lovink on offline spaces. Running counter to the theme of web3 and online communities, I wanted to include this interview to inspire thought and conversation on how internet dominance may actually cause us to relieve ourselves from being online and focus more on the offline world.

Projects worth following?

Water & Music

A research DAO building a guide to the music business. I recommend starting at $STREAM REPORT Season 1, where a group of community members present a breadth of information on the intersection of music and web3.

Obscura

Obscura bridges the traditional art world and web3. Each season, Obscura announces a theme to photograph for the community. The community awards photographers and provides them with mentorship and curatorial partnership to develop a project. In line with the creator economy, Obscura seeks to narrow the distance between artist and patrons.

Context

A newsfeed that allows you to follow what’s going on in the web3 world. Users can follow wallets they care about and see what everyone is buying and selling.

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Startupy Issue #2: a laid back newsletter about very serious ideas

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Startupy Issue #2: a laid back newsletter about very serious ideas

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