gm friends,
while u were in founder mode, i was thoroughly off the grid. and not that you asked but i learned a lot of practical new skills last week such as: swallowing dust, cracking a whip that travels faster than the speed of sound, beating a clown in a thumbwar championship, betting a taxidermy rabbit in a game of blackjack, and deeply disturbing my body's circadian rhythm so as to never miss a sunrise. now that the dust has settled and ive caught up ...
i present to you a week in consumer crypto
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TON is facing uncertainty after Telegram CEO Pavel Durovās arrest. OpenSea received a Wells Notice from the SEC. Elon Musk is off the hook for DOGE manipulation allegations. Magic Eden launched a new NFT product that aggregates all mints happening across eth mainnet, base, and polygon and puts them into a pump fun like interface. Sky Aave Force is a new joint initiative between Sky (formerly MakerDAO) and Aave, aiming to further accelerate DeFi adoption. Octant is launching a 4-week accelerator program for builders who are serious about growth. JokeRace released a self-funding contests feature. $Enjoy S3 claim is open through september 09! Get involved with SheFi Summit Singapore!
Puffpaw secured six million united states freedom dollars to build a "vape to quit smoking & earn" model on Berachain. The Eigen Foundation announced the EIGEN Season 2 Stakedrop. Slow Rodeo is building a network of Full Stack Brands (apparel + social network + token), and are releasing their debut capsule collection from Court Date, their first tennis-focused brand, at their LES popup this weekend. The gals (including yours truly) are minting āfrom chat to chainā on Zora, an experiment in preserving organic artifacts onchain.
Product Spotlight: Bags
Bags is a new app (coming soon) with a power team including Finn, co-founder of DeGods, and Hunter Isaacson, who has built viral social apps totaling 300+ million downloads. Hunter joined us on the show last week to talk about Bags, a financial messenger where you can chat with friends, see what theyāre buying, and trade together, all-in-one place.
Fast forward to now and Iāve built a dozen apps, totaling 300+ million downloads, and generated over $50 million in revenue across 175 countries.
Phase 1
Phase 2
Bags is built on the insight that retail trading is becoming a fundamentally social experience, and memecoins and other cultural crypto assets are only accelerating this changing consumer behavior. Yet, the current landscape is incredibly fragmented, with multiple steps and tools to help traders put all the pieces together: think telegram, X, dexscreener, etherdrops, rugcheck, and so many others. By natively integrating asset discovery, verification, and trading into a social messenger product, they hope to better serve all the latent demand of consumers who want to dabble in crypto but don't know where to begin.
Check the episode recording for a great chat digging into his background, core insights from building multiple viral products, their wildly successful OG membership sale, and what the future of Bags looks like. TPan also wrote a great piece breaking down the app and its core feature set. You can sign up for bags here.
Notes on 'Founder Mode'
You've probably already Paul Grahamās new essay: Founder Mode. ICYMI: There are two ways to run a company as it scales: in āfounder modeā or in āmanagement mode.ā Founder mode focuses on staying hands-on, maintaining control, and running the company your way, even as it scales. In contrast, management mode emphasizes delegating by hiring skilled people and trusting them to handle tasks independently. Graham argues that when founders are pressured into adopting management mode as their companies scale, it often goes downhill from there.
Anu expanded upon this which I found interesting, explaining how most early-stage founders operate in āfounder mode,ā keeping tight control due to small teams and low stakes, but struggle when scaling as they lack management experience. This mode can exacerbate issues like inefficiency and bloat when founders fail to adapt or delegate. Founder mode can also lead to toxic micromanagement, stifling employee autonomy and damaging company culture if unchecked, typically resulting in chaos. And companies usually donāt fail because founders switch leadership modes, but rather because the mode switch is set up to fail, ill-timed, and rigid. The best CEOs (founder or not) know how to switch between founder mode and management mode ā and when they need either one. And lastly, a founderās unique leadership style will put them in their zone of genius and make them happy (mostly). Anyway, read the rest of Anu's thoughts here.
Three Body Problem
thinking about a platform that has multi-year markets for up and coming artists (based on monthly spotifyā¦
Josh and Jmo got into an interesting thread about the potential conflict between superfans and traders coexisting in apps where tokens allow speculation on an artistās success. This mirrors a broader challenge, described by Mitch Lasky, where introducing speculators as a third group in gaming creates a "Three Body Problem," making interactions between developers, users, and speculators more complex and unstable. It's possible to design games and experiences that solve this problem in a mutually reinforcing way where these three parties donāt feel antagonistic, but itās a good reminder about the importance of designing experiences that cater to all participant types, particularly in new token models.
Catch up with more consumer crypto updates by watching last week's episode:
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this pod was incredibly dense with tactics but I donāt feel like anyone shared a great bookmarkableā¦
Besides TON, what else do you think they had?
I think it's very plausible some of the collections sold on OpenSea's platform could be seen as securities in the Howey Test sense i.e. financial instruments that came with fancy promises
I think the framing ofā¦
I think DEXes are great, and I use them every week.
I think decentralized stablecoinsā¦
