jay
@jay_drainjr
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investing @a16zcrypto | head of research @benandjerrys | winning is everything
Joined June 2011
HOW TO KILL NIKE. The same centralized control that enables brands to maximize profits also suffocates creativity and limits their ability to create new products that resonate with consumers today. The next frontier of fashion and apparel is fully open source brands.
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Liz and I are finally settled in London (!) and the @a16zcrypto office has LOTS of room for visitors 👀. if you’re a crypto founder, operator, or engineer based in London, come co-work with us in our Soho office on Wednesday afternoons. you’ll have coffee, food, and quite
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I probably read this 12x and then sent it to my most ambitious friends still in IB, consulting, etc. Wish someone would’ve shared with me 2 years ago when I was at GS. Thank you & gm @cdixon .
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I have a good friend that’s 23 and deciding between IB at Goldman and a Chief of Staff role at a Series A startup that’s CRUSHING it. told her I would cut her off if she goes to IB 😂😂.
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US-based YC co's are out here commanding $30M+ vals for 2/3 of a deck and an 8-person waitlist while some of these Africa-based startups are raising at $20M post with like $40k MRR lol.
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2021: “Pre-launch consumer social startup raises $13M Seed at $125M valuation. The round was led by a16z, with participation from Shakira, Bill Clinton, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, LeBron James, and Michael Scott from the Office”
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The Great Athletic Softening . The collective obsession with community-building, self-care, social validation, and a growing quest to make everyone happy all the time is ruining sports. Over the last few years adults have increasingly turned sports and athletics into a
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so hyped to formally open @a16z's first international office in London! 🇬🇧. @a16zcrypto is all in on helping build London's crypto and tech ecosystem into one of the best in the world. thanks to everyone involved for a warm welcome last night. now let's get to work!! 💪🏾💪🏾.
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You’re in her DM’s, I’m helping her rehearse her pitch for YC Demo Day. We are not the same 😤😤.
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A framework for thinking about Creators vs. Influencers. Creators produce original content based on their proprietary skills/talents. Influencers promote or replicate others’ content towards their large audiences
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For folks looking to get started down the web3 rabbit hole, I curated a guide of answers to the most frequent and fundamental crypto questions and turned them into a web3 starter pack 🏄🏾♂️.
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if you’re wondering whether @a16zcrypto CSX is for you, the program is essentially is 90% shipping and 10% eating some of the best food in the world with other based founders
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Blackbird is one of those special ideas that feels so obvious when you hear it but can only be properly designed and executed by someone with the restaurant industry chops of @benleventhal. We couldn't be more excited to lead @blackbird_xyz's Series A 🍴🍴
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Web3 needs a Google maps and “GPS”:. - connect your wallet.- enter your desired transaction type & size.- app shows you the different “routes” you can take (you decide whether to optimize for cost or speed).- app navigates you through each step until transaction is complete ✅.
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.@a16zcrypto happy hour in London tonight with some of the best and brightest crypto founders, researchers, operators and investors in the UK 🇬🇧🇬🇧
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June 1st: Can’t imagine a better time to drop this than now. Consumer social is eating the world 🌎.
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co-working wednesday at our london office last week with folks from @aztecnetwork @Celo @zerion @labs_compass @DesciLondon @Superfluid_HQ and more. good sushi, great discussion, and of course @liz_harkavy passionately explaining something to everyone (per usual)
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if you’re building in tech outside of crypto, you’re also welcome to come work with us…just be prepared to get crypto-pilled by the time you leave :).
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Consumer vs Enterprise: . Clubhouse raises at $1bn val and the world can’t stop talking about it. Databricks raises at a $28bn val and 90% of us don’t know what lakehouse architecture is.
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i’m not gonna @ anyone but just know that i always keep receipts and the apology should be just as loud as the disrespect 🙂
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New York is absolutely ON ONE right now…one like and I won’t move to SF in September lol.
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Next up: VC’s airdropping term sheets into founders’ wallets.
If I were a consumer crypto company today I’d just be airdropping ads to my audience’s wallets in the form of cool-looking NFTs. I have no idea if this would actually work. But if anyone tries it, let me know how it goes 🙃.
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.@a16zcrypto x @HomeDAO_live 🔥🔥. @liz_harkavy and I hosted a dinner in London on Friday with builders in ZK, DeSci, AI x crypto, DeFi, acct abstraction, web3 games, and quantum computing. the crypto talent coming out of Oxford is stronggggg 🇬🇧
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> 60% of the people in the West Village under 30 are NPCs, respectfully. folks have the nerve to ask me why i didn't move back LOL.
The West Village has transformed into a fabulous theme park for young women of some privilege to live out their 'Sex and the City' fantasies, posting and spending their mid-20s away. Read @BrockColyar's cover story on the West Village Girl:
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it’s impossible to think about how disconnected digital and social identity are in web2 and not get excited about the wallet’s potential for composable identity and self expression in web3
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So nyc is clearly the hottest ecosystem for web3…LA is arguably second 👀. Who are the web3 folks in SF? Let’s hanggggg.
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Girls get their hearts broken by dudes who wear Allbirds on the weekends and I will never understand.
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Announcing HACK UK 2024!! 🇬🇧🇬🇧. @liz_harkavy @AAlbaneseNY @a16z and I are thrilled to announce HACK UK, our first UK hackathon in London!. On October 5-6, we’re inviting some of the most talented builders in the UK to compete and collaborate on AI, crypto, healthcare+bio, and
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This past weekend @a16z hosted HACK UK with @MistralAI and @CerebralValley in London! . We packed Code Node with 250 of the UK’s top developers building cutting-edge projects in AI, crypto, healthcare, and UK infrastructure. The energy was electric, and the projects blew past
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“Life update” 🙄🙄. I moved to SF last week… .already missing New York but excited to link up with the west coast homies and I’d especially love to meet any founders, operators, investors that are building in/interested in crypto, social, fintech, and marketplaces. that’s all 🏄🏾♂️.
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big day today as we wrapped up CSX London with Demo Day!. leading CSX with @jasonrosenthal @liz_harkavy @meigga @NoahCitron this year has been one of the highlights of my 2 years at @a16zcrypto . our operating and investing teams have spent the last 3 months with 25 incredible
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It’s Friday, 77 degrees in New York, I already worked out, my skin is glowing and the curls in my hair are popping. somebody send me a grapefruit white claw ASAP.
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Instagram’s close friends stories is lowkey one of the smartest features built in consumer social over the past few years.
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running my first marathon this april in london! 🇬🇧. hyped to run the london marathon with friends & colleagues @packyM @sharidoherty @MelissaKaspers. but even more excited to be running in support of the @MicroLoan Foundation which provides microloans & entrepreuneurial
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Not me flying to New York on Friday just to meet and hang out with a bunch of degens trying to rebuild the internet 😎.
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apple, google, facebook, and amazon engineered one of the greatest wealth creation machines in history by transforming our digital breadcrumbs into trillion dollar kingdoms. we received "free" products and watched ads while they mined our data and replicated, rug pulled, or shut.
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If you're crowdfunding/building a web3 course, learning DAO, or social DAO please provide scholarships or offer non-financial ways for folks to earn membership 🙏🏾🙏🏾. let's make web3 as accessible as possible. wagmi.
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We NEED a vertical social network built around fashion. I don’t want to be the person that builds it but I really might have to if no one else does lol.
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Have been working on a DAO that I want to launch in the next few weeks…. The hardest part about it: there’s no real playbook for a successful DAO yet 😬. The most exciting part: there’s no real playbook for a successful DAO yet 😎. DM me if you want to peep the white paper 👀.
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The lack of crypto-native product analytics, CRMs, ad networks, + tools across attribution & marketing automation is arguably the largest challenge facing any crypto startup with a real user base right now. Great to see the ‘web3 growth stack’ category receiving its due attention.
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Going to be hilarious when people find out they don’t actually like the IRL version of their internet friends.
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things are about to get quite cheeky across the pond, hope you lads are bloody excited 🇬🇧🇬🇧.
Big news to share: @a16z is expanding to the UK 🇬🇧. We plan to open our first international office in London later this year, and will host the next Crypto Startup School there in 2024. Why the UK? 👇.
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you and your co-founders in London at CSS 2024 😤😤 apply now!!!
Today, we’re excited to announce that applications for Crypto Startup School Spring 2024 are now open until October 20, 2023. You can apply here:
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finally published something from the depths of my drafts. on restaurants, social capital, and crypto 🍴
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excited to be judging the ETH London Hackathon organized by @encodeclub and @ethldn! 🇬🇧🇬🇧. join some of the best crypto builders in the heart of London next weekend from Oct 27th to Oct 29th!
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adding 2-3 more spots to my small, semi-elite elite nyc run club (currently 8 people). DM if you run fast and would like to join
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on-chain games, DeSci, ZK proving marketplaces, crypto x gen AI, simulation engines, RWA protocols, Farcaster infra, DePIN, digital fashion and so much more in this ELITE cohort of CSX. we are so back 🔥🔥🔥.
It’s been five months since we opened applications for Crypto Startup Accelerator (CSX) Spring 2024 in London, and after reviewing and interviewing a huge pool of worthwhile candidates, we’re thrilled to announce that we’ve selected our final cohort of 24 early-stage companies.
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Series B announcements really looking like Coachella lineup posters these days 😂😂. cc: @tylerangert.
Beyond thrilled to announce that we raised $80m in Series B financing from amazing investors & angels. Our mission is to bring the next billion software creators online. Here is how we will do it:
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Honored to be featured! Especially alongside some of my crazy smart homies. Please do not share this with my mom!.
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healthcare is really good at producing entities that extract of billions of dollars every year as middlemen. blockchains are really good at removing them. welcome to the family @Amino_Chain @casparbarnes123 @maxfullstack!!.
In 1951, Henrietta Lacks' cells were taken without her knowledge or consent. Her cells, known now as “HeLa” cells, went on to become one of the most important tools in modern medicine, leading to breakthroughs in healthcare from the polio vaccine to cancer treatments. For 72
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Shoutout @margauxmaccoll and BI for letting me highlight some of my favorite apps right now 🙏🏾🙏🏾. @Flox_App @readysetrodeo @joinupstream @useRealtime @DispoHQ @copilotmoney .
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Hyped to share my first blog post for @mavenvc on the new age of consumer investing platforms! In the era of retail investing 3.0, there's no limit to what we can invest in and EVERYONE is an investor 🤑🤑.
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Excited to announce that I’m now officially a @tcg_crypto stan. @jarroddicker @jonmoore202 and @gaby_goldberg are cooking up a whole lotta fire in web3. Watch closely 👀👀.
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There are 3.3 MILLION people in Wall Street bets. If you think that there aren’t at least 1000 people in that subreddit that can produce the same quality of research as hedge fund analysts, you are crazy. r/wallstreetbets is NOT just a meme.
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Wow @ycombinator is playing Jorja Smith and Snoh Aalegra as the Demo Day lobby music. Tech is moving in the RIGHT direction.
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Suuuuper hyped to be a Founding Fellow in the first cohort of @beondeck Catalyst ‼️.
We have an amazing group of Founding Fellows joining us for our 1st cohort - @gaby_goldberg @deepneuron @paigefinnn @jehronp @emmalsalinas @rohunvora @jtannady @RajatBhageria @aroraharshita33 @sudotong @aifjs @igorlenterman @jessicafeiyali @phoebexyao @elianaberger13 & more.
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you'd be hard pressed to find someone that ships like @kristofgazso 🚢🚢. we're hyped to partner with him and Pimlico as they build the leading infra powering account abstraction.
We're excited to announce that Pimlico has raised a $4.2 million seed round led by @a16zcrypto to power Ethereum's transition to smart accounts. Read more in our announcement below:.
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Last lil bite of content for 2021. Gonna get a lot of shit done in 2022 and it's gonna be fun af. See yall next year.
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Super super hyped to start working with @cdixon @AriannaSimpson @sriramk @janehk @carrawu @liz_harkavy @eddylazzarin and the entire crypto super team to invest in the best founders in web3.
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I would encourage all of my Black friends to take a break from consuming and posting the news cycle for a bit. Sharing the content for others’ awareness is important but it should NOT come at the expense of your own mental, emotional, and spiritual well-being.
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wrote some quick thoughts on @tobilou's new album (that he's removing from the internet TOMORROW) and the future of our modern music industry 🎸🎸 . (no, this post is not about music NFTs lol).
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If there any LA web3 homies that aren’t at this week, I’ll be posted up at Elephante all Friday afternoon eating the whipped eggplant and flatbread. Hit me up if you’re around 😎.
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The next big vertical social network will be oriented around FOOD 👀👀.
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.@liz_harkavy and I will be in Paris this week to meet with the best builders in the EU! 🇫🇷🥐. if you're building in crypto, AI, or frontier tech, we'd love to meet you! co-work with us on Friday at Unicorners Café. there will be snacks, caffeine, and excellent company. RSVP
Liz and I are finally settled in London (!) and the @a16zcrypto office has LOTS of room for visitors 👀. if you’re a crypto founder, operator, or engineer based in London, come co-work with us in our Soho office on Wednesday afternoons. you’ll have coffee, food, and quite
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they will write history books about the supremacy of these CSX founders and their companies. this is how the open internet wins. study napoleon. study joan of arc. study alexander the great. study henry vii. remilio.
Today we’re announcing the full cohort for CSX Spring 2024 in London. Our Crypto Startup Accelerator (CSX) Spring 2024 program kicks off this week, with the founders of 25 promising early-stage startups gathered in London. Over 10 weeks, they’ll learn from each other and receive
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learning to firmly, and respectfully, say “no” is a severely underrated skill as an adult.
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MODEL-WIP is one of my favorite experiments in crypto x AI. we are commissioning an artist to produce some dope art, training an image generation model on that art, and then making the community-owned model freely usable for anyone to create and monetize art via @titlesxyz . join.
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Really wish there was a way to “invest” in music artists you discover and support way before they blow up and get popular. I would damn near be a millionaire for bumping Jorja Smith and Snoh Aalegra back in 2016.
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West Coast friends: one of my dying wishes is that you all stop pretending that In-N-Out burgers taste good.
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Guy Fieri, mayor of Flavortown, just angel invested into the seed round of a startup called "NoCap" . This is 2021 and I kinda love it.
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Prepping the mac & cheese and stuffing for tomorrow while watching Girlfriends on Netflix so I guess I’m a 50 year old Black auntie now.
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Would expect nothing less than the coolest funding announcement of 2022 from the incredibly talented @pplpleasr1 and @maciej_kuciara. So hyped to back this team as they lead the charge in interactive storytelling. Chapter 3 coming in January! 👀👀.
Sound on! 🔊🚨. Today we’re announcing that @a16zcrypto is leading a seed round for @shibuyaxyz, a web3 video platform founded by @pplpleasr1 & @maciej_kuciara.
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Some personal news: . Excited to share that I finally got invited to a beta early enough to get my first name as my user handle! Sorry not sorry to all the other Jay’s out there. losers.
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I don’t have a blog post on NFT’s to share but I think we’re pretty clearly in a new era of retail investing. Retail Investing 3.0 😤😤
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This is the first investment in a DAO I've seen from a brand-name, non-crypto specific VC fund. huge props to the USV team and expect other early stage funds to follow suit in the coming months.
Yesterday USV sent 500 ETH to the Bright Moments DAO and got back one million BRT tokens. Here is why we did that:
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I can’t believe I’m saying this but. I made a Substack lol. The Blueprint is my blog/public journal where I’ll be musing on consumer tech, fashion, basketball, and music - all the things I love. Check it out if any of those things sound cool to you 🙆🏾♂️.
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The fact so many of us are surprised the race is this close goes to show how many of us are living in echo chambers and not really understanding the other side.
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Crypto has made a few of my homies 7 figure profits in their mid-20s so tbh I have zero interest in what Warren Buffet or Charlie Munger have to say about investing these days lol.
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Always been a man of my word
If there any LA web3 homies that aren’t at this week, I’ll be posted up at Elephante all Friday afternoon eating the whipped eggplant and flatbread. Hit me up if you’re around 😎.
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Took a lil helicopter ride this weekend. friendly reminder that New York City is the best city on Earth
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If ETH keeps this up I might finally be able to stop sorting clothes by price from low to high on Mr Porter 😂.
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some of the most successful networks identify their most valuable and high throughput users and give them incentives to contribute to the network even MORE. @blackbird_xyz's Blackbird Club is the loyalty program that restaurants need and diners deserve. check it out below!.
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I threw together some thoughts on how the r/wallstreetbets frenzy is emblematic of society’s trend toward “bottom-up” Cultural value & significance. shoutout to @alexisohanian for the IG rant that helped me contextualize this shift thru the Mona Lisa 💆🏾♂️.
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easy to let headlines & prices dominate the narrative but 2022 was really a banner year for crypto — major advancements & innovation across infra, social, interfaces, privacy, identity, NFTs, media, DeFi, and even mainstream adoption. just a handful of major themes that stick out
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Just did an audit on my goals for Q1 this year and damn I didn’t accomplish a SINGLE one lmao.
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The fact that I’m missing NYFW and discovering how poorly people dress in SF at the same time is bringing me an unbearable amount of pain.
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many of my favorite crypto founders I met while living the UK are members of @HomeDAO_live and they're perhaps the most ambitious, hardworking, hungry, and optimistic builders in all of the UK. with @pumpdotfun @exolabs @Gatling_X @rhinestonewtf @Footium just to name a few,.
HomeDAO Cohort 1 produced $6bn worth of companies. Apply to be part of HomeDAO Cohort 2 now. Deadline - 15th of July.
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the crazy thing about web2 is that consumers will be shocked when companies screw them over even after the company explicitly tells you they might screw you over in their T&C… . can’t wait to get rugged by the new @KITH loyalty program launching today!
Introducing Kith Loyalty™ - a program created to honor our loyal supporters through early and exclusive access to products, events, and more. A completely new and tailored experience, available only on the Kith App. Download the Kith App now. Stay tuned for more info.
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Club Penguin was lowkey one of the OG metaverses. if it launched in 2019 it would have a $5bn valuation right now. truly ahead of its time smh.
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