Apr 18, 2022
On this episode of the Somewhat Frank Podcast, Frank Gruber (@FrankGruber), John Guidos (@JohnGuidos) chat about …
1.) Mushrooms Communicate - Apparently, they use up to 50 words to communicate among themselves. Makes me wonder the same about trees. (https://twitter.com/frankgruber/status/1513690113968070664?s=21&t=gtQR6J3MYyOudT0Hr0eqy)
2.) Microplastics are found in human blood for the first time - Well, this is disrupting. What can we do about it? (https://twitter.com/frankgruber/status/1507007332600848384?s=21&t=i5jozVp7_dN0ldD5ipC6Ug)
3.) Elon Buying Twitter? Elon Musk made big moves a week ago buying a majority share of Twitter and then proposing to buy the whole company for $43B. Since then there has been a movement by the other largest investor Vanguard Group to buy just a little more of the company to take back over as the largest owner of Twitter. Of course, Twitter exploded with conversations about the situation and I polled on what should be done. Looks like most people voted for Elon to take over Twitter. I see it a lot like how media companies like newspapers were run by the wealthy in the past and you have seen that pattern return with Jeff Bezos owning the Washington Post for example. It also reminds me of the wealthy owning sports franchises. But all that aside, will Elon be good for Twitter or would his full ownership have negative impacts? (https://twitter.com/frankgruber/status/1514953746274566150?s=21&t=gtQR6J3MYyOudT0Hr0eqyg)
4.) NFT Discussion & A NFT Predictions - The NFT sales peaked in September 2021 but there are lots of new projects picking up steam and there are new ways people are using NFTs to fund projects.
The big ones that you hear a lot about are Bored Ape Yacht Club, Doodles, and Crypto Punks, but projects like Moonbirds and VeeFriends are picking up steam as they’ve been rolling out.
For example, there is a company dropping NFTs to mine meteors. (https://twitter.com/frankgruber/status/1508556287071633412?s=21&t=2GvKmsVQZ19r96wcBViDhg)
I just heard of a couple of political candidates dropping NFTs to support their efforts which led me to a prediction that every major political campaign will have an NFT. (https://twitter.com/frankgruber/status/1514969414474608648?s=21&t=gtQR6J3MYyOudT0Hr0eqyg)
Is there a web3 or NFT project you are working on? I’d love to hear about it.
5.) Work & Culture trend: The Two-Shift Workday - We have adopted the two-shift juggle in 2020 as soon as the pandemic hit. It went on pretty regularly until school was back in session and things got back to normal but it’s not going away. We all are connected to our phones 24x7 so if we don’t make a conscious effort to unplug then you may see ourselves falling into this routine and it can’t be healthy long term. (https://twitter.com/frankgruber/status/1511093005012320269?s=21&t=gtQR6J3MYyOudT0Hr0eq)
6.) Rise of the Rest has a tour, fund & now a book - Steve Case announced a new book, titled Rise of the Rest after the tour and fund that he kicked off in 2015 through three or four dozen cities since. I have been a partner and bus rider on a bunch of the stops on the tour and either interviewed Steve or hosted the startup pitch competition on those various stops along the way so it’s in much anticipation I await the launch of the book. You can preorder it here. (https://twitter.com/frankgruber/status/1512145798129143811?s=21&t=i5jozVp7_dN0ldD5ipC6Ug)
Also, you might want to check out my interview with Anna Mason of the Rise of the Rest Fund that we dropped recently over on the Startup of the Year Podcast. (https://podcast.startupofyear.com/0081-anna-mason-from-the-rise-of-the-rest-fund-is-passionate-about-investing-between-the-coasts)
7.) New Safe tool for startups by AngelList - For all the startup founders raising funding from VCs or angels, you will need a SAFE term sheet and this new free tool can help you generate it. Y Combinator introduced the safe (simple agreement for future equity) in late 2013, and since then, it has been used by lots of startups as the main instrument for early-stage fundraising. (https://twitter.com/frankgruber/status/1514927687541927937?s=21&t=gtQR6J3MYyOudT0Hr0eqyg)
Bonus:
Finally, my latest guilty pleasure was binge-watching 1883 on Paramount+. I have to say, I am so thankful that we have modern medicine these days. It was only 139 years ago but life back then was pretty hard compared to today. And the Oregon Trail was brutal. It’s a great series, and I loved it. The actors all did an amazing job making me care for them. That said, it’s also super sad and violent so it’s not for the faint of heart. It took me two days to shake the series finale and I would bet I am not alone. (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt13991232/)
As always, thank you for listening and feel free to reach out and let us know what you think at: somewhatfrank@est.us
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