Ben’s List 28
I already asked this question before: should I narrow down my focus or is it good to remain curious when you’re building a niche business?
BCAlso see more startups coverage: /category/startups/
Summertime means a bit more bandwidth for casual reading. As usual I bumped into a wide range of articles covering many different topics.
After one month without publishing this weekly selection, I’m back with only 8 articles. Next week will be stronger.
We talk about communities, one of our favorite topics, as well as the impact of Web3 and NFTs on the creator economy and the retail business. There’s also a very good piece about productivity and meetings management for remote teams.
I discovered Investor Amnesia, a fantastic blog covering financial history. Their article about bubbles and golden ages is worth a reading for anyone wondering if the current valuation madness in technology will ever stop.
Let’s start first with a report from January Ventures about the impact of the pandemic on entrepreneurship. TLDR: it wasn’t good for diversity.
Entrepreneurship
2021 Early Stage Founder Sentiment Report
“While change is the only constant, as they say, the pandemic has certainly accelerated changes in how people work: 48% of Gen Z founders (and 43% of all founders) say it completely transformed the way they work and approach building their startups.”
- 34a0404e-3457-4b9f-8fcc-19732fc72efe.filesusr.com/ugd/8d7061_f955edaf79ba40bba50fcca2a2ebbd53.pdf :: January Ventures
Productivity
Better Meetings Make for Better Days — 20 Tactical Ideas to Try Out With Your Team
“Don’t just ask ‘What did we do?’ Chart your progress by also asking, ‘What did we learn?’ Being driven by questions, rather than achievements, unlocks future impact and further learnings.”
- review.firstround.com/better-meetings-make-for-better-days-20-tactical-ideas-to-try-out-with-your-team :: FirstRoundReview
Community
Media Communities > Media Companies
“Many world class journalists are leaving institutions for more personal (and profitable) platforms like Substack. Podcasts routinely draw more listeners than the nightly news. When it comes to staying informed, consumers are choosing individuals over institutions.”
Community: One JD Doesn’t Fit All
“Generally, community = building collective identity and relationships that self-grow while sustaining relevance. In practice, it means engineering trust through interaction design (online and offline). It is about delivering a great experience through every interaction with customers. It starts from establishing a culture that leads your team to build lasting relationships. At the most operational level, community is about designing interactions that grow trust. A community manager is only one (of many) roles one could play and it is not synonymous with social media management or content strategy tactics.”
Creators
Data Autonomy, the Creator Economy and Web3
“The pandemic has accelerated the rise of the creator economy. It has made calls for fair compensation louder (see Spotify). It has made people go direct to their audience via newsletters instead of relying on Twitter or Medium. It has made people experiment with more direct forms of monetization through livestreams, virtual events, and fan communities on Patreon and OnlyFans.”
- musicx.mirror.xyz/9vQBJYreH45m7uZh2MyyvZsr_XL-FYGyrXjYqH-bplg :: Bas Grasmayer
Marketplace
Kickstarting supply in a labor marketplace
“Advice: Do things that don’t scale—go direct to your potential supply and convince them to try your platform.”
Retail
Inside Retail’s NFT Movement
“Riding on the hype surrounding cryptocurrencies, NFTs have become hot commodities in the digital creation space. While some tech fanatics are bidding on NFT versions of tweets, brand loyalists are snatching up NFT products. But what does the future hold for NFTs? How do they present new opportunities for brands and retailers to fuel digital innovation and virtual experiences?”
History
Channeling Speculation
“The shift from deployment to the installation of the next revolution occurs when the wealth creating potential of the prevailing technologies has been exhausted and decline has set in. The shift from financial mania and collapse to Golden Ages occurs when enabled by government regulation and policies to shape and widen markets”
