Circle Three 60 / Livin’ On A Prayer

Sep 18, 2022

What a crazy week. Ethereum merged smoothly after a 7-year wait and inflation stayed high. Markets reacted with volatility. Excited to step away this weekend to celebrate with friends at a wedding in Omaha (and ticking off a new state while I’m at it)

brain bites: business & investing

Mistakes of First Time Fund Managers. From the Weekend Fund here. A thorough explanation of the ins and outs of fund management. My top takeaways: be clear and upfront with intentions when talking to an LP (avoid “let’s catch up”) and use writing as a high-leverage tool to build an audience.

Find, Vet, Validate Ideas. For those in or interested in product management, I found this outline of how to find, vet, and validate ideas useful to keep sharp on my product skills. Here’s the key takeaway from each step:

Find: Seek out problems. Ideas won’t magically appear, so keep a lookout for pain points in everything from podcasts to youtube comments. Words like desire, annoyed, deficiency should be triggers.
Vet: use tools like reddit or trend mappers to get a sense of the market, the trending direction, and the amount of money flowing through.
Validate: go ask the perfect customer, and be slightly unique in your delivery.

brain bites: technology

The Machine Whisperer. From Dror Poleg here. AI is going mainstream. Unsurprisingly, new businesses are popping up around it. What is surprising is how quickly and how varied. For example, a marketplace that lets you buy and sell AI prompts to generate specific styles of images, like these black metallic icons. Rather than buying icons, the prompts themselves have a marketplace. Woah.

brain bites: books

Cultish. By Amanda Montell. The type of book that makes you think differently. My full thoughts are here.

“Language provides a culture of shared understanding.” We share language more than anything else, so we might as well recognize how the use of that language affects us.

If I had one takeaway: it’s important to listen. At the end of the day, be sure you are able to shed the “linguistic uniform” (great term) of a group. Maintain that separation when not engaged. “Touch grass,” as they say in the crypto cult.

“The fact is that most modern-day movements leave enough space for us to decide what to believe, what to engage with, and what language to use to express ourselves. Tuning in to the rhetoric these communities use can help us participate with clearer eyes.”

brain bites: culture

Two Helpful Tools for Business. I used both this week: google trends for SEO and IconDuck for thousands of free icons.

Lyric: Livin’ On A Prayer

We’re halfway there. Sometimes — like during a project timeline — halfway feels so close. (Hat tip to the 80/20 Rule.)

Usually though, halfway is daunting — halfway done college; hitting a putt only halfway to the hole; halfway through a marathon. That’s a long way to go. Here’s to the optimists like JBJ. ND football always brings this song back into the mix. Especially after an 0-2 start. Oof.

Woah, we're halfway there
Woah-oh, livin' on a prayer
Take my hand, we'll make it I swear
Woah-oh, livin' on a prayer, livin' on a prayer

Stay Curious,

Dan

Circle Three