Nuggies: NFTs are over. Here comes the DAO
Thursday, March 25th, 2021
Welcome to the 41st edition of Nuggies, an email newsletter that aggregates articles and commentary on business, economics, startups, and more, in bite-sized nuggets sent right to your email weekly. Created by and for college students.
Our quote of the week comes from the Yiddish proverb, “words should be weighted, not counted”
This Week’s Articles:
The Dao of DAOs (What Comes After NFTs?): Not Boring
If you are still trying to figure out what NFT’s are, you’re a bit behind. This blog post talks through another hot blockchain based tech on the rise, DAOs, or Decentralized Autonomous Organizations. These are communities that are organized on the blockchain and thus are able to self regulate and follow a set of pre-agreed to rules without any intervention from a centralized power. The author describes them as “a new way to finance projects, govern communities, and share value. Instead of a top-down hierarchical structure, they use [blockchain] technology and rapidly evolving governance and incentive systems to distribute decision-making authority and financial rewards.” Definitely find some time to look into this.
Read it here
The a16z Marketplace 100: 2021, a16z.com
Every year, Andreesen Horowitz releases a list of their top 100 marketplace companies operating at the time, discuss trends in the consumer marketplace industry. Especially in light of COVID, this is worth a read for anyone interested in the VC/startup space. They walk through how different companies navigate the pandemic and how the strongest marketplaces are adapting.
Read it here
Gumroad wants to make equity crowdfunding mainstream, Tech Crunch
Gumroad is a startup that helps creators sell their work. They’re raising $6 million at a $100 million valuation, but the caveat is that only $1 million of that is reserved for traditional venture investors. The rest will be raised by anyone who has at least $100 they want to kick in. New SEC rules that allow for non-accredited investors to invest in startups has opened this opportunity up, and Gumroad is the first startup to take advantage of them. The SEC rule change raised the maximum a startup can raise from equity crowdfunding to $5 million from $1.07 million.
Read it here
This Week’s Tweets:
This Week’s Wildcard (an extra, interesting nugget):
Here’s a table that shows the percent of startups that fail to raise the following round of funding and also the percent of startups that fail to exit, given a certain funding level.
This Week’s Question:
What’s stopping you from throwing $100 at a startup and becoming an angel investor?
What are we listening to this week?:
This week we’re listening to Black Pumas, the 2020 self-named album from the Austin soul duo. They draw heavily on soul sound from the 60s and 70s, but bring lively, fresh production and incredible vocals.
Thank you for reading! Nuggies is created by Thomas Pero and Spencer Koehl, two undergraduate students at the University of Notre Dame.
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