Likes & Launch

If you’re as enraged and devastated as I am these days about the school shooting in Ulvale, Texas, it can be challenging to know where to channel that energy. I’ve leaned on my friends and family for comfort, discussion, and advice on how to help. Here are three actions they recommended that make a difference:

(1) Contact your elected officials. Everytown makes it super easy to find and contact your representatives to take action in Washington on background checks, and closing loop holes that allow for individuals to buy guns without state requirements. You can find the form here. 

(2) Vote. Your leaders can make a difference at the state and federal level. 

(3) If you are inclined, donate to organizations working to change policy, legislation, and work to create safer gun laws.

This is not about pro-guns or not. It’s creating more safety standards and checks on who can purchase a firearm and to abolish the sale of automatic weapons like the AR-15, which are designed to be mass murder weapons. I would like to live in a world with fewer guns, but that’s a long road for the US. In the meantime, I’ll fight for a country that bans automatic murder weapons and, at the bare minimum, makes it just as hard to purchase a gun as it is to get a driver’s license. 

It’s always had a vision of spending the summer in Europe, inviting friends in a big shared house, enjoying free mornings, and working at night. After a long delay with COVID, we finally made it come true in Italy this year.

Prompted by a friend’s wedding in Positano early May, we made plans for two months in Italy. We added Palermo, Bologna, Pescara, and Rome to our itinerary. We even convinced some friends and family to come stay in AirBnBs with us, either coworking too or as part of their holiday. Three weeks in, I can firmly say it’s even better than we expected.

We’re still in heaven with all of the pasta, history and gelato, but the best part of all is the time with our daughter. Both my husband and I are working remotely, and have opted to keep East Coast hours during our trip. It’s given us more daylight with our 1 year old.

Our days are filled with museums, playground visits, slow walks to local cafes, and lots of baby giggles. We have our special mornings and lunch before kicking off work around 2pm. Dinner is a meal made at home around lunch hour, and work wraps up around 10pm. It’s definitely a shift, but it feels like getting a double day - fun and play, followed by work and focus.

It’s made possible by having our nanny traveling with us, working our same 8 hours vs. her 9-5 in EST, giving her more time to explore too. We’ve even carved out a weekly date night, opting for an earlier work day to take advantage of late dinners in Italy.

It’s a fantastic shift. Our schedule at home usually gives us 1-2 hours before work to spend with our daughter, and then 3 more after work, which usually includes a small adventure, dinner, bath time, and bedtime. That time always goes so fast.

Pitching the right investors is more important than having a perfect pitch. 

You could have an okay pitch, but succeed with the right investors. You could have a great business, but fail with the wrong investors. So how do you find the right ones? 

Do your research upfront around these qualities: 

Investor stage (How much traction your company has to have for them to consider investing.) 

Ask the VC: What stage do you typically invest? What type of traction is important for your team to make a decision?

Check size (If you’re raising $1M and they only write $2M checks, it won’t be a fit yet.)

Ask the VC: What’s your typical check size? Do you have an ownership target that you require in a round? 

Industry (If they invest a lot but not in your industry, it may never be a match. If they have too many deals in one category, it may also be an automatic no.)

Ask the VC: Are you actively investing in this type of industry? Do you have a mandate to focus on this type of business? 

Deals a year (Do they have capacity to do your deal this year or have they met their commitments for the year?) 

Ask the VC: How many deals do you plan to do this year? What’s the typical timeline for your process to consider a new deal? 

Thesis mandates (Do they have a mandate around the geographies they can invest in? Or a type of founder background?) 

Ask the VC: What’s your investment thesis, do you see our company as a fit for that mandate? 

After you’ve researched a potential investor, it’s still important to ask them questions. You will save a lot of time if you understand the investor’s approach upfront. Otherwise, you may be wasting both of your time if you don’t have answers to the above questions. 

Sifting through investors to find the right ones can be a lot of work, but these tools now make it easier than ever: 

1. Signal

2. Crowdsource Spreadsheet

3. VCWiz

Start small. I know you think your big, world changing product or service should be available to everyone day 1, but that’s not a smart move. 

 “If you aim for mass (another word for average), you’ll probably create something average. Which gets you not very far.”- Seth Godin on Minimum Viable Audiences 

Starting small doesn’t necessarily mean starting at the bottom. Take lessons from HeyDay, a personalized skincare company, and Uber to enter a market at a premium price point, and then work your way down. 

Maybe you haven’t heard of HeyDay yet, but you soon will. Their mission is personalized skincare for all. Now, they aren’t starting with serving everyone, especially when you see that a facial will run you $50+ (yeah, most people have likely never had a facial before) - but don’t let the premium services stop you from checking out. This company is learning from their premium customers so they can someday serve skincare for all. 

When you stop by one of their physical retail stores for a facial they beauticians work to collect data on your skin, preferences, and desired outcomes. It’s a high touch experience for the customer and a real-time feedback mechanism for HeyDay. Instead of building all of the tech first, they start with a 1-1 interaction with every customer. Even better, customers are excited to pay for the services that makes HeyDay smarter. 

HeyDay is not the cheapest, at $100+ per facial, or the fanciest, rooms are separated by curtains not doors, but they continue to win customers by giving them what they want. Better, personalized recommendations that will give them great skin.

Uber used this model too. Instead of providing cheap taxi rides at every price point, they started with premium black car service only. Customers who could afford it tested it, gave feedback, and helped the product scale it’s operations with each ride. Only after years of running premium did they begin to expand down to serve more of a mass market. They proved customer demand by having premium customers pay. It proved customers wanted the service and were happy to pay for a higher quality. 

Both companies started the flywheel with premium. Other industries could do the same. Especially categories where it’s hard to compete by giving things away for free up front. Here are some ideas that come to mind: 

Charge more to create a high touch travel planner, then use that data to build a scaled automated service for the masses. 

Offer premium housekeeping services that are 3x what are on the market, but ensure that the service in impeccable. Learn how to replicate the process at different price points. 

Provide better childcare flexibility, charged at a premium in order to perfect the process, then tiered down the road. 

There are lots of crowded industries that could still improve with new technology and service offerings. If entrepreneurs want to enter, don’t start free and go up. Find more margin to build operations first. Earn, learn, and then expand.

Have other ideas of companies using this model? Or industries that should? Subscribe to my tinyletter to continue the conversation. 

Art by Ruby Jones, check out here work on Instagram. 

50 dead.

50 empty beds.  50 families mourning. 50 best friendships ceased.  50 fewer chairs at ever holiday. 50 birthdays no longer celebrated. 50 dreams lost. 50 futures gone. It’s impossible to sum all that’s lost. We’ve lost more than what we’ll ever get back. 

What I learned in “The Gift of Fear” is that when we focus too much on the subjects, and not enough on the victims, we reward the criminal. We make celebrity out of them. Instead, focus on the names and faces of those we lost. Cherish and mourn the loss of beautiful lives and all that’s gone with it. 

Today, focus on life. On love. On honoring those lost. Visit Khaled Beydoun’s instagram to hear the stories of the people we lost in their own place of worship. 

Let’s keep working towards a better tomorrow.

In the past week I’ve read too many terrible stories about marketplaces aiding bad actors to find new victims. From the tragic to the criminal, each story showcases how the company sidesteps responsibility to boot the known bad actors, putting the customer at risk. It doesn’t have to be this way. It’s time for these companies to step up, or make room for new competitors.

Last week, a WSJ investigation into Care.com discovered that several deaths and abuse resulted from caregivers hired through platform. It took this investigation to spur some action. Care is adding more management, like removing fake daycare center listings and vetting caregivers before allowing them to list. For some families, it's too little, too late. Unfortunately, they are not the only company turning a blind eye to bad actors using their marketplace to find new victims.

Dating platforms are also sidestepping responsibility. Norwegian VG reported on how the Tinder Swindler used the popular dating platform to scam several women out of hundreds of thousands of dollars. Despite embarrassment, the victim publishing her story was one of the only way to get the word out. 

There are unpublished stories too. The kind that make their way as warnings among women’s groups and friends. The most recent warns about a NYC man who has repeatedly drugged women and violated them on the first date. He’s been reported on three major dating apps, but they don’t see it as their problem even though there is a police investigation for the 17 assaults. He remains active on all three dating app, continuing to prey on the sea of singles without any repercussions. 

Not only scary, just infuriating, especially to the women who feel powerless about stopping it from happening to others. ENOUGH! People are getting hurt. Platforms are profiting from known bad actors. It doesn’t have to be like this. 

It’s not just a matter of doing the right thing, it’s also about business sense. Companies risk lawsuits, damage to their well-curated brands, and are opening the door to competitors. 

Being the biggest player doesn’t protect you if you put customers at risk. AirBnB realized this and took action. After terrible stories about the risks of using AirBnB, the platform stepped up by providing insurance and better enforcement of their policies. They’ve earned trust from their customers and provided a great case study of how to step up as an open marketplace. 

Years later, it’s now cheaper than ever for other platforms to follow suit. So why aren’t other companies providing better protection? Is it a philosophical choice about accountability? Is it fear that changing things now will call attention to their shadowy past? Or is the problem external? 

All of these companies are competing for investor dollars. VCs love customer growth. And as we’ve seen, if you allow anyone to use your platform for free it gives you a faster path to huge growth. Hockey stick customer growth charts are great for funding decks, but they don’t tell the whole story. If customers churn due to damaged trust, that’s bad news for business viability. Open marketplaces can still add protection, so one benefit should not be overlooked in favor of the other. 

Any platform in the businesses of matching two people together in real life, should rethink how to better protect their customers in their open marketplaces. Customers deserve better: removal of known bad actors, transparency, and better protection. 

We have the blueprints from decades of online marketplace knowledge to make these industries better. It’s not just about responsibility, it’s about business viability. Companies that tackle the massive opportunity to protect customers will win long term. I hope we see more of them soon. 

Have ideas about safer marketplaces? Subscribe to my tinyletter to continue the conversation. 

Thanks to Li Jin’s tweetstorm on marketplaces that inspired this post. 

Homogenous teams aren’t as successful as diverse teams, as show by research study after research study. CEOs have heard this over and over, but making the shift from recruiting homogenous teams to diverse teams requires change. Thankfully, there are more resources available than ever on how to improve your recruiting process. If you are hiring for your team, here are two small changes that will have a big impact on you making great hires.

First, start with your internal hiring criteria. Many managers are not equipped with the right training to vet a candidate on the job to be done. Instead, they rely on pattern matching the candidate’s background as the strongest signal. This results in teams who all went to the same school, had similar academic achievements or are alumni of the same company. Keep that up, and you’ll build a monoculture. 

The fix? Better define the jobs to be done, and the skills that will best serve those roles. After the job needs are clear, use those criteria to create interview questions that will clearly evaluate the candidate on those skills. Get feedback across the team on the types of answers you would score high, medium, or low against your criteria. Make a plan first to make interviewing and evaluation easier, and less biased.

After you build your evaluation plan, build your sourcing plan. Casting a wide net, especially as a small company can be daunting. Listing on a curated marketplace, like StackOverflow for engineering, will provide the most relevant applicants outside of your network but still provides a lot of volume. The solution? AI powered marketplaces that narrows the field of their diverse talent network to the candidates who will be the best fit for your open role. 

See matches, not just a sea of resumes. Lattice portfolio company Planted does exactly this for professional non-technical roles. Share your hiring criteria then receive a curated list of the best candidates for your job. Even better, the algorithm gets customized for your business every time you use it. Vet the highest potential candidates for your job, faster.

Small changes to your recruiting process add up. Utilizing better training and leveraging AI-powered tools can create a faster hiring process, and create a more successful team. For better, more diverse teams everything starts with how you hire.

Like this post? Want to chat about hiring, fundraising, blockchain, or startups? Subscribe to my tinyletter to continue the conversation. 

Haven’t heard about how diversity could impact your company’s bottom line? Here are two great stat’s from the 2015 McKinsey study: 

Companies in the top quartile for racial and ethnic diversity are 35 percent more likely to have financial returns above their respective national industry medians.

Companies in the top quartile for gender diversity are 15 percent more likely to have financial returns above their respective national industry medians.

There are more startups and more seed investors, but both of those mean that the bar for new founders is higher than ever. So how should a founder think about putting their best foot forward? Build an MVP.

That’s easy if your a technical founder, but what if you’re like a non-technical founder that I heard from today:

“My pain point right now is a lot of people like the idea, but they want to talk post-launch/traction. But I just need to raise a little bit to create the product first.” - pre-seed founder

The classic chicken and egg problem around fundraising vs. building a product first. You need money to build, but you can’t raise money without building. 

Here are a few ways I’ve seen entrepreneurs hack their first MVP without any technical experience: 

1. Use Squarespace to build a website that mimics the functionality you want. You can have users register, see inventory, see service offerings and even express interest by adding their email address to learn more. No, it’s not a checkout flow or a working SaaS product, but it’s a way to show what you will build and starting to get users. Cost: $150 for an annual plan

2. Build a customer list. Set up a landing page that collects emails. Explain what your product does on one landing page and then start sharing the concept in the channels you plan to acquire customers (twitter, instagram, fb groups, friends, neighbors, etc.). Use Mailchimp for email and Tumblr for your webpage. Cost: $10 for a domain, otherwise free. 

3. Call potential clients. Do you expect businesses to buy your product in the next few months after it’s built? Why not call them now to see if they would be prospects. Don’t make up false information that the product is live, but approach them for feedback on why they’d want to use your product, how, and what they’d be willing to pay. Not only are you building a great client list, you’re also generating leads that you can show to investors, including feedback. That’s a great MVP. Cost: $0

All of these MVP’s take time, but they don’t require coding skills or a lot of money. If you are serious about your business, get serious about getting started even before the product is built. 

...

Ready to hit the gas? Raising capital or closing a new client? It’s all about storytelling. Explain the characters, the problem, the struggle, the solution, the resolution to the pain, and the challenges that still stand in the way. 

I don’t enjoy writing pitch decks but I’ve send 1,000s as an investor so I know a good vs great one pretty quickly. Even bad ideas can be told as good stories. So if you want to pitch your company or product to a new customer or investor, here’s the cheatsheet I like to see to tell a good pitch story:

Introducing your big idea (1-2 slides)

Why you? (1 slide)

The current problem (2-4 slides)

Customer/consumer pains?

How are they solving their problems today?

Your solution. Why now? (3-5 slides)

How will they solve the problem with your product?

How is it different than the current market?

 Why is solution possible today?

 Why is it right for today, tomorrow?

 (how big is the market, how big can it be, value you're creating, be realistic!)

Traction & Validation (2-4 slides)

 Is the product resonating?

 Is it trending in the right direction?

 Engagement, Engagement, Engagement

 Engagement data > user acquisition

 What are your KPIs? Goals?

 *ReadyForZero showed user activity as measure of product efficacy: users pay off debt 2x faster than non-users.

What's the future? (1-2 slides)

What are the next 12-24 months of: product, performance, people, finances. Models don’t have to be perfect, but you should show that you’ve thought about what it’s going to take.

The ask (1 slide)

Can't crescendo without this. What is the size of investment? How long does it get you? How will you spend it? What are goals before raising next round? How else can investors help? What can a customer do to hire you? 

Other quick tips: 

Make sure product description is balanced with traction & data if you have it. History is important since it helped you get to the new ideas you have today. 

Be equally compelling with or without voiceover. Many decks are emailed before you get a chance to speak.

Your product vision and company purpose are the starting point for the pitch. Elevator pitches are one sentence. We are X for big opportunity. These make great intro slides. 

Get feedback

If the company, product or service is your idea, you will always have more knowledge about it than anyone else. Don’t try to put all of the information into your deck. Pitches are meant to drive interest, not close the deal. That’s your job. 

Imagine, and let’s get to work. 

Last year in Berlin I got to share the stage with builders creating everything from data products, digital wallets, porn transactions, and better identity systems. The world of blockchain is never dull, as you can see from this great highlight reel the ETH Berlin team put together. 

If you haven’t been to an ETH Global event yet, this should provide a quick snapshot of what you’re missing on these blockchain-packed weekends! Find the next global event here. 

Congratulations, you’ve now unlocked the “Life Changing Habits of Tidying Up” according to Marie Kondo. You’ve folded sweaters nicely and created a huge pile of things that when held, do not spark joy. Your life is more zen and your items are thanked everyday, but you’re still trying to figure out what to wear. Owning a variety of clothes is the NYC way, but so is tiny closet space. 

Fear not, I too have read the book and found great ways to extend a smaller wardrobe and sell the items that will be left behind. Here are the services that can help you do the same: 

Rent instead of own: 

Rent the Runway - Rent the Runway unlimited is like a magic closet of 1,000s of designer pieces. For less than the cost of a designer dress, you get access to 4 items at a time for a whole month. If you live in NYC, you can even pick things out in person so you don’t have to wait for the UPS truck. I love the service, especially in the summer when there are so many great dresses. I switch the service on and off for periods of time, depending on my mood for trying out new styles, or saving money to invest in pieces to own. [Get $30 off your first order]

Le Tote - I tried the service years ago but didn’t find the quality as high as Rent the Runway, even though it’s at a similar price point. I dress more casual in the workplace so a lot of the business casual items were not part of my totes. Women looking for maternity wear may be in luck, as friends rave about the service as a way to extend a wardrobe during pregnancy and maternity without buying all new clothes. 

Give clothes a second life: 

Poshmark - My sister inspired me to check out Poshmark as a way to sell good condition clothes to a huge community of fellow fashion seekers. It doesn’t hurt that she made hundreds of dollars just getting rid of things she didn’t wear anymore. I’ve now used the site to sell my own clothes and find the extra work of snapping good photos can really pay off. I’ve been using the proceeds of sales to invest in higher quality staple pieces. Great for shopping or selling. [Use my link for $5 credit after your first purchase.] 

ThredUp - ThredUp is the lower effort, lower reward Poshmark. You can sell your clothes simply by putting them in a bag and sending them off. The ThredUp team will review your items and offer you around 20% of the profits, which means a blouse sold for $56, netted me $11 in consignment dollars. Not bad! But most items they’ve accepted sold for $10-20, resulting in $1-2 per piece. Not a place to make the big bucks, but an easy way to get items out of your closet and into a good home. [Use this link for $10 credit after your first order.]

Shop second hand items, price goes to charity:  

Goodwill & Salvation Army - These shops are not all created equal. Many have a slight smell or a whole wall of shirts in ever color of the rainbow, but somehow none in your size. It’s a treasure hunt for shoppers which is my favorite part. From old items to perfect designer labels, most things get priced by the type of item, not it’s value. If you’re open to digging, and don’t mind if they sometimes don’t have dressing rooms, then this is a great place to find one of a kind items that you’ll keep for years to come. Or if you aren’t into the hunt, you can always drop off your donations to support two great nonprofit causes. 

Housing Works Thrift Shop - If you’re in NYC, the housing works thrift shops are a must for higher end clothing and used furniture. The stores are highly curated and have an active set of buyers which means inventory changes daily. All of the proceeds benefit AIDs research and individuals living with AIDS. 

Live lighter, go greener, and look fabulous 

Pick one or all of the choices above, and you’re already smashing your 2019 goals: Clearing your closets Give back to charities Going green by reducing fabric waste Happy 2019 to you! 

I’ve written it before, and I’ll write it again. Venture Capital is a great source of start up capital, but it’s only the right fit for a small percentage of companies. MOST businesses do not raise any outside capital. Businesses that provide growth based on their revenues all get lumped together into the “lifestyle business category”. Running a lemonade stand to running billion dollar MailChimp, you’ll be lumped into the same lifestyle business bucket, a very unsexy bucket indeed. 

Venture capital backed or VC-backed gets all the fame. You convinced someone to give you growth capital - man you must be building something great! Even though most VC-backed businesses fail, it’s still the category that attracts the bold and the brightest. High risk, high reward, right? Or is it more like, others take the risk and you don’t have any debt if you fail. Not a bad deal. 

The only problem… Venture capital is not for everyone! Literally, it’s not because access to venture capital is still not as meritocratic as it could be. Women and minorities raise less venture capital though they start more businesses. 

What’s an entrepreneur to do? Stop calling yourself a lifestyle business, and don’t let VCs do it either. A revenue-backed business is a sexy business! You can grow, and sustain, and reach millions or billions in revenue! That’s what all VC-backed companies aspire to too. Kick the old words out and take pride in doing the hard work of dollars in from customers. 

Revenue-backed businesses rejoice, but what about those better suited for VC? The billion dollar moon shots that need tons of start up capital to get things going. Or maybe just enough to build momentum to see if thing work? Well you’re in luck, VC is still an option, as well as a few new ways worth mentioning: 

1. ClearBanc For fast-growing businesses reliably earning sales from their marketing spend, they can obtain $5,000 to $10 million in funding in exchange for a steady revenue share of their earnings until they pay it back plus a 6 percent fee. 

2. Indie.VC : The anti-venture capital, venture capital firm. They support entrepreneurs with growth capital in exchange for equity, but instead of encouraging you to raise more capital, they want you to buy out the equity back with profits. 

Happy New Year! 2019, we made it!

I’m writing to you from the empty Bogota hotel restaurant still covered with balloons and yellow underwear decor from last night’s celebrations. Dancing, rooftop fireworks, and sounds of 80s music paired with Latin favorites brought in 2019 with some flair. I hope you had a good one too, celebrations big or small.

Now that the confetti has settled and the first coffee of the year is kicking in, time for reflection and goal setting for the year ahead. It’s too early to be too precise but getting the big ideas on paper is where I always start. To get the mind going, I’ve found the Goal Setting Refined method to be a big help in getting ideas out there. If you’re in the market for a quick exercise to do the same, check it out here.

You can start with the video here: https://blog.mindvalley.com/goal-setting-redefined/ . If you want to hop into the three question framework, jump in here:

THREE QUESTIONS FOR GOAL SETTING

The most successful people think in terms of “what could be?” not “what it is?”. Be very impractical in your goal setting. Don’t start with what you have now. Pretend that magic can happen and you can have everything you need to achieve your goal. The only request is that you reach your goal. Don’t be realistic in imagining these goals.

A good goal should scare you a little and excite you a lot. If it doesn’t scare you, you aren’t dreaming big enough. If it doesn’t excite you, you haven’t picked a good end goal.

Create three columns to answer the following three questions. Ask for everything - don’t limit your list.

What experiences do I want in my life?

We are souls having a physical experience. You do not have a soul, you are a soul, what you have is a body - CS Lewis.

To be mesmerized and see the beauty of the world. To have children. To have the human experience. Experience of dining, living, art, anything that is living experience.

Experiences questions

- What experiences/objects do you want to have in this lifetime?

- Dining vacationing in the best places, flying first class everywhere, who will you be? Seeing the best art. Having kids. Dining and vacationing. Married to an amazing person. If I had all of these experiences, who would I be? That is the clue to the next column define all the ways you want to grow.

- What type of love experiences do you want to have? What type of friends do you want to have? What would your social circles look like? What type of money experiences look like? What type of network would you have? Where do you want to work from? Do you want to parent? Be happy?

How do I want to grow?

There are two great spiritual needs, if you do not fulfill these needs, your spirit will be deprived. Growth and contribution. - Tony Robbins.

We are here to grow and learn. To be reminded of our potential, to challenge our brain, to pick up new skills.

Growth questions

- How do you want to grow? (make more money, learn a new language, parent)

- Learning can be an end goal.

How do I want to contribute to the world?

We are all connected. The entire planet early is one organism and we’re all connected to everything in it. When you think about that as a model, the petty things don’t make sense anymore. - Gaia Hypothesis

Contribution becomes paramount, way to have meaning is contribute to other human beings. When you contribute, happiness goes up.

Contribution questions

- If I was so blessed that I had all of these things, how can I give back to the world? What do you want to contribute to the world?

Review your lists

All three of these things connect, they answer: what you want, who you need to be to achieve those, and what you want to give back when I have those things. This is a blueprint for your soul. It’s unique to you.

The next step is to build actionable steps to head towards the goals you want to achieve.

My new workout regime encourages “never miss a Monday”. It was creeping up to 9:30 and I still didn’t make it to the gym. This was it, now or accept my defeat. It was a push, especially on a dark and rainy night but I made it just in time to complete the workout before closing.

I climbed the stairs up to my apartment around 10:50pm. Sweaty and ready to wind down the rainy day, I was craving a hot shower and some ginger tea. The kettle takes around 7 minutes to boil so I put it on so I’d have just enough time to rinse off. I go to turn on the shower and nothing happens. I spin the handle off then on again. Same thing. No water, not even a drop.

A hot shower was clearly out of the question. The tea was using water from the morning. But everything else - washing my face, drinking a glass of water, flushing the loo, and washing the dishes were all competing for the last half gallon of water I had in my fridge.

I started making mental trade offs, well I can mix the remaining hot teapot water and cold water to clean off. I can put the sudsy water near the loo to refill the tank. I can pour some to drink and some to wash my face. Small decisions that made me really appreciate how important clean water is in so many of the things I do. Gallons per shower, toilet flush or preparing a meal in the kitchen. How do people without access to clean water use the little amounts they have to get through each day? When you don’t have a lot, it’s such a precious resource.

I’m lucky though. I could pick up gallons of fresh water at the 24 hour store next door. I could shower at a friends or just wait a few hours for the clean water to pour from the faucets with a small switch. I’ve never had to worry about access to clean water in my lifetime, but millions of people do.

I recently finished the book Thirst by Scott Harrison. It’s the story of a charity:water an organization that builds well to provide clean drinking water to those most in need. To date the organization has raised over $300M dollars to bring clean water to 8M people around the globe. The best part, every dollar donated to Charity:Water goes to development in the field. All of the organizaton’s overhead costs are sponsored separately. So money in goes directly to those in need.

The Thirst book tells the story of how Scott went from club promoter to starting and growing one of the most impactful water charities. I loved reading about Scott’s journey because I had the chance to meet him in his promoter days and get to hear about his journey from the early days to today. I recommend you read this book. It’s also a great gift idea to aspiring entrepreneurs and philanthropists. All net proceeds go to charity:water projects so an even better reason to gift one this year.

On this #GivingTuesday, I’m donating to fund water projects with charity:water. I encourage you to check out there mission and the Thirst book.

Here's what experienced entrepreneurs have over first timers. A plan. If your only special sauce is the plan in your brain that you can't articulate to your team or investors, you're in for a bumpy ride. No matter how much time you spend on hiring or honing a product, it will be a waste if you don't have a clear vision, an actionable plan, and a commitment to communication. You will repeat that vision over and over and over and over until you feel like a preacher. Before anything else, get out and make a plan, test it against reality and then get to work. Find customers, know who they are before you even build the product. They will help drive it. Recruit the best people around you to build the vision.

Innovative ideas need diverse funding mechanisms. Looking beyond the ICO, there are lots of Web 3.0 funding options that expand opportunities and will encourage business diversity.

As an early stage investor, I’ve met too many entrepreneurs who struggle to launch because they have a good idea but see vc funding as the only mechanism to help them build. This mindset is limiting — it restricts the scope of projects to only those with $B+ scale potential.

Too many startups today are chasing difficult but obvious ideas like “the new Yelp”, “better marketing automation”, and “ai for X industry” so they can raise venture capital. Developers look for potential to scale instead of real opportunities with revenue potential. Bootstrapping is always an option but even it could use some new approaches.

In 2017, we saw the rise of the ICO which shook up the idea of early project fundraising. It is imperfect and an attractive funding mechanism for scammers, but it’s rise in popularity helped create a new conversation about project funding in Web 3.0. ICOs seem here to stay, but like venture capital, it isn’t the right funding path for the majority of projects.

Developers and startups have realized there is still a gap in funding early work. Fortunately, there are a number of mechanisms being tested to help builders find capital to build what’s next.

Fund your project without fundraising or an ICO

1) Bounties — Open source contributions are in demand and want to compensation developers for their work. Platforms like Gitcoin, a marketplace to match open ethereum bounties with developers, make bounties easier to find. Join their network to see paid contributions from projects like Decentraland, Ethereum Network, LivePeer and Gitcoin itself. They’ve hosted 235k of bounties on the site so far. Bounties range from $10 to $10,000+.

2) Grants — Apply for a grant to fund your project if it relates to the goals of a protocol foundation. The Ethereum Community Foundation has put together an extensive list of grant opportunities across different networks like Aragon, Blockstack, and IPFS. Full list here.

3) Decentralized network services — Build software to services in a new network. For example, Steem.it is a content network like Reddit, powered by the decentralized network Steem. Developers have created upvoting bots that publishers pay to promote their posts in the network. Steemit has paid out $40M in rewards itself, which does not include the bot payouts that work as a parallel market.

4) Generalized mining — New protocols are emerging that provide economic incentives for supplying compute to validate their networks. Generalized mining focuses on building software for competitive advantage, and does not rely solely on specific hardware. Proof of stake networks like Livepeer and Tezos have validator networks that reward participants for being nodes in the network or staking in the network.

5) Venture tokens — Well funded layer 1 protocols are getting into the venture business by providing venture capital in the form of tokens if you are supporting the growth of their ecosystem. The diligence process may be similar to traditional VC, but the expectations on ROI is more about “growing the ecosystem” then just return on capital invested. The EOS Block.one fund has 1B dedicated to this category, but will be deployed by a number of different firms, including $325M managed by Galaxy in New York City.

We need new innovative funding mechanisms just as much as we need new business ideas. Whether you are building in the blockchain ecosystem or just looking to fund your project with the proceeds, these sources can generate runway for your ideas. Best part, you get to keep ownership.

I am excited about creating more opportunities for entrepreneurs. If you’ve seen other new Web 3.0 funding mechanisms, please share in the comments blow. If you want to learn about more resources like those mentioned above, drop a line in the comments or reach out @br_ttany.

. . .

It’s fun to discuss the promise of AI technology and all that it will be able to do for future generations. It’s also fun to find ways to use AI for play. I was especially reminded of that by Siraj Raval’s stick figure dancing to Drake. 

What’s even better, this is just a small snippet of the things that Siraj creates to teach artificial intelligence to people interested in using the technology to build new things. You can check out his extensive YouTube channel which includes music videos, a 4 minute class on neural nets, and YOLO object detection. 

According to your his website, he’s also been called: 

Bill Nye of Computer Science Kanye of Code Beyonce of Neural Networks Osain Bolt of Learning Chuck Norris of Python Jesus Christ of Machine Learning

Not your traditional whiteboard lecture video, it’s high energy and high content. Not for everyone, but definitely a great way to get different types of learners to become builders.  

If we want to build the future with great technology, we need more people to understand it. Creating fun and engaging content spreads ideas rapidly through the internet, so why should education stay traditional and boring?