|#552 MWAVC| — The Sundaylies 🗞️
Hi,
Welcome (back) to MWAVC for my 552nd post on finance, investing, venture capital and all that jazz. My name is Ato (more about me here and here) and I tried to write every single day, inspired by Seth Godin (Seth’s Blog) and Fred Wilson (AVC) but the schedule got crazier and I had to pull back a bit. So please set a reminder to read these newsletters on Mondays, Wednedsays, Fridays and Sundays 😬
In case you’re new here, quick introduction: I’ve been investing in some way shape or form for the last 12+ years and now work with one of the pre-eminent VC firms in Africa - Microtraction, and the family office that acts as the GP - Pave Investments. Read more on us here and here. Much of the writing I’ll share here are based on things I find interesting that I’d like to share and hear your thoughts on. This is also an outlet for my thoughts, lessons, asks etc. and I think you’d find most of it valuable if you’re remotely interested in learning about venture capital.
I’ll be developing the content further, including things I think will be helpful and would appreciate any feedback on what’s working vs. not, and what could be helpful for you over the long term. If you’d like to sign up, you can do so here. Or just read on.
Some smart founders just picked my email and decided to add me to their investor updates. I suggest you do too 😉
The Sundaylies 🗞️
Spot Bitcoin ETF (IBIT) Tops $10 Billion in AUM
Blackrock’s Bitcoin ETF is the ever to reach $10b in AUM. Now, every one can own some portion of BTC and trade easily. Maybe that $100k price isn’t too crazy right now. Enjoy this video of Larry Fink TRYING to sell market. He’s doing a terrible job at it, but selling nonetheless by saying the right things. 😂😂😂 You can just tell he sees this as a money-maker. 🤑
Anthropic says its latest AI bot can beat Gemini and ChatGPT
AI wars are here. Open AI seems to be way ahead with Gemini and Meta AI doing all kinds of funny things here and here, respectively. Claude 3 wasn’t all that impressive according to the TechCrunch team here either. SO I guess we still know who is in the lead.
How India Transformed An English Sport
Never watched cricket, thought it was too boring and slow. Like everything English? 🤔. But India really switched up the game here with One Day Cricket and now T20 and I just might start following the sport and seeing how we can expand it across the continent.
Anything Mario puts out, I read. This is as detailed as always.
We were all looking ofrward to this Apple Car. Makes sense. It’s one of the few T$ markets Apple can scale into because they’re just that big. But they realized they won’t win. Especially as they passed on buying Tesla and Rivian at least once in the last couple of years. They had 2000 people on this team, which says something about how badly they wanted this to work, and given that most of this team will be repurposed to their AI team, they’re re-focusing their bet on generative AI. Let’s see what Apple comes up as Microsoft is already in the lead after investing in Sam and Open AI and owning a “significant minority” in Open AI Global (?). Still don’t fully understand that convoluted structure, but I guess whatever works for Sam Altman. Elon sued Open AI earlier this week. Can’t wait to see what comes out of discovery.
And that’s it for today, folks. I hope this is helpful to some founders out there. I’m happy to speak more on this with anyone looking to build a company and wants feedback. Bringing back Office Hours soon. Be on the lookout for it.
MWAVC Meme Section
Remember: “Until the lion learns to write, every story will glorify the hunter.”
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Till next time,
AB