Together With:

Hi there, 

In case you hadn’t noticed, it’s been a crazy week for crypto and NFTs.

As Matt Levine said:

“You thought you were being clever, but there are always people who are cleverer than you are, and crypto markets are very good at distinguishing the clever people from the cleverer ones and letting the cleverer ones take the clever ones’ money. Or apes.”

A bug in OpenSea let hackers buy rare NFTs for well below market value. One of the NFTs, Bored Ape Yacht Club #9991, was purchased using the exploit technique for 0.77 ETH ($1,760) and quickly resold for 84.2 ETH ($192,400).

Meanwhile, two days after Ozzy Osbourne’s NFT collection was minted, supporters were targeted by a phishing scam that drained cryptocurrency from their wallets. An outdated URL tricked CryptoBatz followers into visiting a fake Discord.

And now, the International Monetary Fund is pushing El Salvador to ditch bitcoin as legal tender, stressing that there are large risks associated with the use of bitcoin on financial stability, financial integrity, and consumer protection.

In this issue:

• The big surprises about Angel Investing
• Digital asset auction at ROTD
• Tribevest: A collaborative group investment platform
• A crypto collective backing web3 startups

Check the snippets for a fascinating tale about how Dan Reich used a hacker to recover $2 million dollars from his hardware wallet.

Read on for more.

As always, thanks for being here.
Juliet Lyall

The Big Surprises of Angel Investing

Lenny Rachitsky is an active angel investor.

In the past five years, he’s invested in over 140 companies, twelve of which have grown into unicorns.

Angel investing can be quite lucrative if you choose the right opportunities, and Lenny seems to have a reasonable hit rate here.

Typically, angels invest at very early stages. They tend to make their initial investments in the “capital gap.” That is the time between the initial money provided by the founders, friends and family on the one side, and larger institutional VCs on the other.

Additionally, since the JOBS Act, angel investing has expanded and individuals, regardless of their annual income, can participate in equity crowdfunding.

In his latest newsletter, Lenny reviewed his past investments, and laid out his seven biggest surprises about angel investing.

Here are 3 of Lenny’s observations:

1. I’m usually wrong about which investments will do best:

“…early-stage investors do best if they invest in every credible deal vs. trying (and usually failing) to pick the few winners. This is also why the general advice is to invest the same check size into every deal…”

2. Most deal flow comes from other investors – not founders, friends, or colleagues:

“You can’t be a great investor if you don’t see any deals. Being a friendly collaborator with other investors is one of the best ways to see more investment opportunities. You essentially multiply the surface area of what you see. And if you share the companies you are most excited about with others, they will do the same, and you can build a good natural filter for deals.”

– Daniel Rumennik, GP at AirAngels

3. Angel investing is more about access than picking:

“There are three parts to angel investing: capital, access, and picking. Based on my experience, access is by far the most important part. If you have access, you can raise capital, and generally the most popular deals (i.e. the ones already discovered) also end up doing well. So picking becomes secondary.”

Takeaway: Work on building your ability to get into hot deals, and don’t stress out about not being able to pick, especially early on.

Note: A line up of experienced investors contributed their insights to the post, but you may need to subscribe to Lenny’s letter to read the full story.

Related: The 1 Thing I Wish I Knew Before Angel Investing

Stop Stealing My Stuff

If you create and sell digital content, the only place you want to deal with pirates is at the movies.

Harvel is a copyright protection tool that automatically scans the web for pirated content.

The tool works with Google and other search engines to de-index the sites with pirated content, ensuring they’ll never appear in search results.

Once DMCA takedown and de-indexing are resolved, you’ll be able to access the official record of the takedown and see every action Harvel took to protect you.

All you need to do is type in the URL for your original content, and Harvel’s crawler will search for instances of infringement across the web.

Best for: Creators, software developers, and instructors looking to protect their original content.

Pricing from $29/month, but we found a lifetime deal for you.

Together With MicroAcquire

 Hot Sheets 

MicroAcquire is the top destination for bootstrapped SaaS and online businesses to list and sell.

There are new listings vetted and posted on MicroAcquire every day.

Here’s a preview of three of the latest hot listings:

Content site with $5,070 in TTM revenue focused on helping early-stage entrepreneurs get an online business off the ground. Provides resources on tools needed to build an MVP and find product-market fit ASAP.

 Profitable service with $6,000 in TTM revenue offering the creation of professional startup decks. This site is a resource for entrepreneurs that lists and analyzes successful startup fundraising decks.

MicroSaaS with $7,684 in TTM revenue providing real-time notifications through text and email when CEOs buy shares of their own companies. This service helps retail investors and traders stay up to date with recent disclosures.

Review the above opportunities and thousands more on MicroAcquire.

 Create your free account today.

Domain Snacks

 Right of the Dot (ROTD), the company founded by Monte Cahn, will be hosting an auction featuring domain names and NFTs in about a month from today. According to a press release, ROTD is seeking submissions for the online auction. The auction will be held on February 24, 2022 on the HiBid.com auction platform.

 Highest reported .VC sale

In 2021 the high mark on .vc was set twice. Climate.vc sold for $21,038 last January and then Defi.vc beat it in April at $33,433. Both sales took place at Park.io.

TheWebBrokers.com broke that record last Saturday at $49,999 for Solar.vc.

 Google Registry launched the .day top-level domain on Tuesday. Don’t bother trying to register your birth.day. How would you use a dot day domain?

Image Glitch

The title says it all.

With this app, you can glitch your own images by dragging an image into the browser window.

Import an image, play around with the sliders in the control panel, and create a weird and wonderful ‘glitched’ image.

Hey, it may even improve some of the photos you’ve taken:)

Brought to You by Smash Digital

 SEOs with Skin in the Game

Smash Digital – a growth agency, filled to the brim with unicorn images and SEO memes.

A team of SEOs with actual skin in the game, ranking their own portfolio of profitable businesses, and offering the exact same services to clients.

An agency with so much link juice you’ll need a mop and bucket to clean it all up.

Check. Them. Out.

 Snippets to Send You on Your Way

 Easier crypto tax reporting: Coinbase is adding a new tax center to its app and website to help US customers work out how much they might owe to the IRS as a result of their crypto transactions. The section is designed to gather every taxable transaction into one place to simplify matters come tax day. (because the IRS classifies your digital assets as property)

 Cracking a crypto wallet: First, he forgot his PIN – then he started looking for hackers. A fascinating tale about how Dan Reich used a hacker to recover $2 million dollars from his Trezor One hardware wallet. Joe Grand (aka “Kingpin”) is the hardware hacker who stated that “anything is hackable.” Grand also said, “the STM32 is used in billions of devices around the world and the issue he found can’t be patched. Which is both awesome and scary.”

 Russian Bitcoin bother: Last week, the Bank of Russia announced that spending, transferring, and mining cryptocurrency would be made illegal. The bank’s stance is at odds with the view of most government bodies, as well as parliament. Andrey Lugovoy, the First Deputy Chairman of the Committee on Security and Corruption Control stated, “we banned certain social networks, and you know how that ended.”

 Alumni for profit: A crypto collective backing web3 startups is seeking new members. The only condition for joining? Applicants must be alumni of the Y Combinator accelerator. The group, called Orange DAO, is an effort to build out a venture structure which can scout out and back young crypto startups. (could we just agree on how to write Web3?)

 Collaboration is the key: Three brothers realised that if they pooled their capital they could achieve their dreams of financial freedom. They started Tribevest to help others form their own investor groups. The company allows investor groups, which it calls “tribes,” to form LLCs, create operating documents, establish FDIC-insured bank accounts and vote to make investment decisions. Tribevest just raised $3 million for their collaborative investing platform. 

 And nothing is new:

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Not financial, investing or tax advice. This newsletter is strictly for information, entertainment and education purposes. Nothing in here is investment advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any assets or to make any financial decisions. This newsletter is not tax advice. Talk to your professional advisors. Do your own research.

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