The Not Boring Talent Collective is heating up.
• 395 candidates looking to make the leap into something new (web3, tech startup, etc)
• 39 companies signed up for exclusive access to these candidates
The next talent drop is on 4/4. We're doing $250/m + no fee until then
We haven't shared metrics on Not Boring for a little while, so let's do it:
Scale and Growth 📈
Email Performance ✅
Audience 🧑🤝🧑
Advertiser Performance 🤝
The Not Boring Talent Collective is live.
275 credentialed and vetted folks looking to work at cool companies, but only 9 companies signed up so far.
Here's the deal:
-we've waived placement fees
-lowered price to $250/m
-1st month free + easy cancel (code: nb2022)
See below:
play-to-earn ➡️ x-to-earn
Gabby Dizon (
@gabusch
) founder of
@YieldGuild
joins the Not Boring Founders pod to talk the future of ownership and earning.
*New Episode of Not Boring Founders*
@mariam_hakobyan
is the co-founder & CEO of
@Softr_io
.
Softr is an easy-to-use no-code tool built on top of Airtable; non technical folks can build dynamic web-apps.
It's growth is impressive, organic & ✨community-driven✨
SCALE & GROWTH (2)
What drives growth for Not Boring? It depends on when you asked us:
Beginning: Product Hunt, Referral System, Syndication
Middle: Major adoption of newsletters during pandemic
Current: Substack Recommendations
Always: High quality content worth sharing.
How do you take on Airbnb?
The $75B travel giant is showing cracks inevitable in marketplaces.
So you counterposition with a Natively Integrated product that creates consistently magical experiences, and then you pour fuel on the fire.
Meet Wander.
Full Not Boring Founders podcasts with
@evervault
CEO
@arcurn
is live.
- Data encryption primer
- Rest vs. Field level encryption
- Encrypting the web
- Crypto usecase
- GTM for API businesses
- What the future holds for Evervault
Show links in thread - enjoy!
.
@merge_api
is at the center of the API sweet spot
Big market x solving non-core (but essential) problems for customers
Perfect example of Bezos' "focus on what makes your beer taste better"
And its growth is wild: 30X ARR + 2,500 customers
@shensi_
is building a rocketship
We need more Moonshot companies.
@rrana03_
makes the case in today's newsletter:
-History of public/private large scale coordination
-How to make a moonshot
-The state of deeptech
His goal in writing this?
Inspire 1 more moonshot that could change the trajectory of progress
Weekly Dose of Optimism
#22
- Alzheimer's Treatment
- Shape Rotators and wordcels on Generative AI
- ChatGPT
- Diplomatic AI
- Wormholes
- Chose Good Quests
Let's get to it 👇
We have 100+ companies actively hiring from the NB Talent Collective
Companies like:
•
@tryramp
•
@Rippling
•
@onequince
•
@merge_api
•
@layerzero_labs
Looking for your next gig? Always free + 1:1 intros to hirers
Looking for Eng, Product, Growth, BizOps, Sales, etc talent
Startup copycats are frustrating but inevitable - if you've built something worth copying it means you're onto something.
@swaykaey
has obsessed over the ideas behind Swaypay for over a decade. The business launched 3 yrs ago - and 5 copycats just launched in past couple months
We're baaaacckkkkk
2022 is the year that web3 starts making a big impact on atoms-based challenges like healthcare and climate.
It's not about putting x on the blockchain. It's about learning from this weird, real-money simulation we've been running.
You know that feeling when you download a new productivity app?
You set it all up, use it religiously for a few days, you're the master of the universe...and then basically never open it up again?
@alicealbrecht
thinks she has a solution with her company
@recollect_ai
Had
@saunders3000
on the pod to discuss bringing web3 to food delivery.
He founded and worked at Grubhub. He's a food delivery insider. He understands the model is broken and wants to re-align incentives using web3 tech/GTM methodologies.
Listen anywhere
Companies in the Not Boring Talent Collective pay $1000s/yr for access
Because they know talent is their most important asset
And because they are actively hiring
Looking for your next role in tech, strategy, or investing?
Sign up here for free:
Today's NBF episode features Not Boring friend & founder
@WillManidis
.
Will is the co-founder and CEO of
@ScienceDotIO
- the Tower of Babel for healthcare information.
He is an incredibly thoughtful thinker & operator, and in this podcast we discuss 👇
👣Bring back trust to the internet👣
That's the mission of
@Footprint_HQ
.
Had
@EliWachs
and
@AlexGrinman
on Not Boring Founders to discuss:
- $6M Seed Round
- Epic investor updates
- How to build trust from a cold start
- Footprint's vision
Wherever you listen to podcasts...
Not Boring launched a new product*
Introducing "The Not Boring Founders Library"
•Episode glossary
•Show notes + links
•Timestamped summaries
•Cover art
•Other fun stuff soon!
*Like any self-respecting VC, we call a well-formatted Notion page that we publish "a product"👇
A behind the scenes look at what went on
@JoinMeow
, a crypto-powered yields company, during the crypto lending meltdown.
@arvanaghi
comes on the pod to discuss:
- Meow's compliance first approach
- Not losing a single $ of customer funds
- Raising a Series A during the UST crash
Not Boring's most successful advertisement was for
@dashdash
(now Rows).
Over 10% of readers clicked on the link -- multiples higher than our avg CTR. It's a great example of audience-product-fit.
We had on its cofounder & CEO
@patife
to discuss spreadsheets & much more
New Episode of Not Boring Founders:
@samiur1204
, co-founder and CEO of
@heyday_hq
, comes on the pod to discuss their $6.5M seed round led by
@sparkcapital
, building great products, and his Black Mirror-esque vision of the future. (link in comments)
At Not Boring, we love brothers that team up to create cool things.
@distorcean
and
@jpalanis
are a great example.
They are the founders of
@StoryDAOxyz
- a radical experiment in community world-building changing the way franchise intellectual property is created and owned.
The internet is a beautiful place.
We've been publishing the Not Boring Founders Library on
@notion
for months, as a place to hold:
-podcast episodes
-show notes/links
-cover art
And then one day
@mostlynotworkin
just reached out and offered to make it pretty and scalable.
Meet the Not Boring Founders Pod
Casual conversations with founders that Not Boring Capital backs, full of lessons and lols.
Kicking it off with a great one:
@marketerhire
CEO
@ChrisToy
The future of work is flexible.
@MarketerHire
is growing like a weed by connecting companies with the best marketer for the job at hand.
@ChrisToy
explains:
- Marketing is the Apex predator
- How to build a marketplace
- Hiring Liquid Super Teams
Last week
@nexhealth
raised a $125M Series C at a $1B valuation.
@alfromnexhealth
came on Not Boring Founders to discuss the company's past, present and future. A few takeaways below:
2020: DeFi Summer
2021: Solana Summer
2022: ???
I think 2022 is going to be ReFi Summer
ReFi is a multi-trillion dollar opportunity to do well by doing good, and Celo is becoming its home.
A rare thread because I think everyone needs to know about Celo and ReFi:
How we've grown not boring:
1. Worked every day for two years straight, writing over a million words.
2.
#2
Product of the Day on ProductHunt.
3. Kept up an active twitter.
4. Got mentioned in this random thread.
Thanks, Alex 🍻
LayerZero is building critical infrastructure to make a multi-chain future possible.
CEO
@PrimordialAA
thinks that in 10 yrs, most people will not have heard of him but everyone will be using
@LayerZero_Labs
.
@notion
@mostlynotworkin
The result is here:
@mostlynotworkin
was a joy to work with. super quick & quality work, responsive, and professional.
If you've been publishing shitty notion pages online, reach out to them and let them fix you up.
Last March,
@OscarHealth
IPO'd north of $7B. Today, it's hovering around $1.5B, even as membership and revenue soar.
Part of the issue? It's building 2 hard, expensive things: insurance business & tech platform.
Let's put together the $OSCR Puzzle.
SCALE & GROWTH
Not Boring is currently the
#2
Business Newsletter on Substack, behind
@lennysan
, whose growth over the past couple of months has been insane!
We currently have 154,751 subscribers and grow 5-10% MoM.
Twitter is the primary top of funnel source for most Substacks, but there's currently no native way to drive traffic from Twitter --> Substack signup.
Unless...your willing to get a bit hacky, like us.
We now have a 1-click newsletter signup natively plugged in our Twitter bio
Dropping 16 more candidates into the talent collective today:
• SWEs from Bolt, Google, Microsoft etc
• Operations Mgr from Klarna
• 2 VP of Growths at major companies
• 2 Sr. Director+ "Strategic Finance" leaders
It's a good time to be a hirer...
Zero-Knowledge Proofs will be woven into the fabric of the internet, eliminating a trade-off: your privacy for the right to operate online.
They're also key to scaling web3 and opening up real use cases.
Aleo makes ZKPs cheaper & more accessible.
New Not Boring Founders episode with
@ginab
, co-founder and CEO of
@MightyNetworks
- which makes creating, growing and monetizing online communities easy.
Gina has been building social products for almost two decades and her optimism for the future of community is boundless.
Weekly Dose of Optimism
#12
- Goalkeepers (Gate's Progress Report)
- Decreasing Child Poverty in the US
- The Merge
- Coal-to-Nuclear Transition
- Patagonia Founder's Gift
+ Bonus thoughts on
@figma
acquisition 👇
So here are two asks:
1/ Any questions about Not Boring? Hit us in the comments -- we'll answer really anything not financials related (to protect privacy of sponsorship partners)
2/ Want to work with us? DM us here or send an email to dan
@notboring
(dot)co
Weekly Dose of Optimism
#35
- Deutsch, Ravikant, Ferriss
- ChatGPT Plugins
- The Age of AI (from Bill Gates)
- RSV Vaccine
- Cowen on the Banking Crisis
- Succession
Weekly Dose of Optimism
#19
- Meta Proteins
- It's Time to Space
- Nuclear Briefing
- RSV Vaccines
- Stripe Layoffs
- Portrait by Vana
Big week, let's jump in 👇
I’m bored with Elon Musk.
I’m bored with Jeff Bezos.
I’m bored with Mark Zuckerberg.
I’m bored hearing nonstop about a few lucky billionaires, who invented nothing, freed no one, and saved no lives, being treated as superhuman celebrities. They’re just rich dudes. Yawn.
741 Substack Publications recommend Not Boring.
Those recommendations have driven 32K subscribers in the past 6 months.
No real observable decrease in the quality of subs (open rates, engagement, etc.) so far.
Substack found its killer feature: Recommendations.
Almost every writer I talk to on the platform says it's making a difference.
The flywheel is spinning. Credit to their team.
It's an uncertain time to be building in web3, so we thought we'd drop some long-term optimism on you.
Today's Not Boring Founders podcast is with
@alexrherrity
, the cofounder of
@animavirtuality
- an AR NFT company making the metaverse real.
Ok ok ok hear me out: NFTs as a social network.
I ran NFTs through
@eugenewei
's Status-as-a-Service framework, and it checks out...
I even made up a thinkboi term for this new kind of social network: the Superverse.
We had on
@arkivedao
co-founder & CEO
@tmcleod3
on the 1st episode of Season 3 of Not Boring Founders. Topics:
- Starting a decentralized physical museum
- Lessons from being a 5x Founder
- The 3 different types of luck
- Hypes cycles
👂 wherever u listen to pods
We just launched a few major updates to the Not Boring Talent Collective.
1/ Jobs + Collective now come bundled
2/ Updated product bundles, new features and lower entry pricing.
Bonus: 40+ new, top tier candidates actively looking for their next role.
.
@MainStreet
, the 1-year-old startup that finds businesses the money the government owes them, has raised a $60 million Series A led by
@SignalFire
.
Read all about it in the first exclusive Not Boring Funding Announcement 💰
I've spent two years gathering the 108k smartest, most curious people on the internet. Now, you can hire them.
I'm launching the Not Boring Talent Collective with Pallet. If you're hiring, sign up to meet over 140 Not Boring readers from TikTok, Stripe, Google, Meta...
Friend of the pod
@loganbartlett
was generous enough to let us x-post the most recent
@cartoonavatars
on the NBF pod feed.
On this epi
@packy
&
@benthompson
join Logan to discuss their business models, web3 & advice for content creators
90mins of internet guys just talking shop
Weekly Dose of Optimism
#25
- Fund III Announcement
- Alzheimer's Accelerated Approval
- Cancer Death Rates
- Beiruti Solar Resilience
- Ancient Roman Blemishes
- Bonus: Not Boring Founder epi + the world wide premier of "Shot of Optimism"
Party Round is now
@capitalxyz
.
You've seen the Party Round Drops on Twiter. Maybe you went to NYC Tech Week.
It's all part of the plan: build a media company that monetizes through financial services, focused on founders.
Doing it right takes taste.
A securitization has ~14 service providers, who collectively add ~1% to borrowing costs.
@humancapitol
saw it first hand as a structured products trader at Citi. Now he’s at
@BlockTower
to help make the whole thing more efficient.
50-100 bps saved on $14T would be a big win.
When it comes to real-world asset loan securitization...
Crypto fixes this.
@humancapitol
told me why, and I asked him to write it up.
This is a Real Use Case™️ in the $14T securitization market that could save borrowers billions of real $$$.
1/ Today we’re launching
@BastionPlatform
, a new type of infrastructure enabling end-to-end web3 experiences that finally feel like web2.
My co-founder
@riyazdf
& I are also announcing a $25M funding round led by
@a16zcrypto
to revolutionize how people pay, play, connect & shop.
Anduril beats the Primes.
US bans the Chinese spy app.
Chinese robot opens beer bottle.
AI creates an open-source gene editor.
Crypto is back (& faster & cheaper) at Stripe.
+ Monumental Labs makes a statue.
++ Self-replicating space economies.
What a week for the optimists.
Last epi of S2 of Not Boring Founders:
@aloktayi
of
@vibe_bio
is building a community to find and fund treatments for rare diseases.
- Challenge w/ rare diseases
- Vibe's solution (community + funding)
- Why Vibe is web3 native
There are very smart & good ppl in this world.
Today, at 2:19pm PST, Varda will launch a factory into space for the first time in human history.
It's the first step in its mission to expand the economic bounds of humankind.
Mindblowing as that is, it's also, crucially, economically viable, thanks to cheap SpaceX launches
This is the most important sponsored deep dive we've written at Not Boring.
Early cancer detection saves lives. Ezra is making early detection more affordable and convenient.
Fuck cancer.
Early-stage cancer has an 80% survival rate, compared to <20% for late-stage cancer.
Early detection might be the cure.
Thankfully, cancer screening is on its own Moore's Law-like cost curve thanks in large part to Ezra.
Throughout history, certain time-place combinations have been astonishingly more productive than the rest.
We're living through one of them: the world's first internet-native, global-scale Scenius.
WAGMI
Remote work, web3, the Great Resignation...
It would be foolish to be the generation with the most individual agency and the least intentional thought about what to do with it.
Let's wax philosophical.
4. Coal-to-Nuclear Transition
"The study team identified 157 retired coal plant sites and 237 operating coal plant sites as potential candidates for a coal-to-nuclear transition."
IT'S TIME TO CONVERT
"What is it worth to be the company that quite literally makes every company more profitable?"
My FOURTH Deep Dive on Ramp started as a piece on Travel, and turned into my first deep dive on AI.
TL;DR: Ramp might be in the best position of any B2B company to capitalize on AI.
This talent pool is legit. Its about a 50% acceptance rate. But we're starting from a pretty curious group of Not Boring readers and community members.
Main backgrounds:
• Scaleups wanting to go early stage
• Consulting/IB wanting to operate
• Fintech looking for web3
Throwback - back in June 2020, we spun up a pretty landing page for the newsletter, called it a "product" and it hit
#2
on
@ProductHunt
. Subscribers grew 73% in 1 day.
Simpler times...
Dear
@packyM
We regret to inform you that we cannot grant you admission to the Not Boring Talent Collective.
As you can imagine, this year was highly competitive. Your experience at Breather was noteworthy, but we prioritized candidates from
@stripe
,
@Meta
& similar companies.
Last 4 not boring talent collective applications from people at Peloton, Instacart, Meta, and IAC 👀
Love seeing people in comfy jobs itching to build again.
The Space Economy
- Launch costs 📉
- Govt and VC investment in space going up 📈
- Objects launched into space 🚀🚀🚀
Analysts expect the Space Economy market size to be as big as $3T by 2040.
@payloadspace
joins NB for a masterful 11k word deep dive into all things space.
Composer was the Not Boring Syndicate's first investment.
I think we picked a winner.
Read
@InvestComposer
's Manifesto and try not to get too excited about investing's creative future.
What if the experience of managing investing strategies not only didn’t suck, but actually delighted? This white paper details what we think this future will look like:
On 4/5, we're raising the monthly fee for companies to $499. Still not charging fees.
Let's say over the next 12 months, you hire just 1 person from NB Talent Collective. That'll cost $2,750 or likely less than 3% of the candidates first yr salary.
Hire 10 people? Same cost.
re:collect sounds like one of those products that is too good to be true. You know, maybe in 10-15 years I could see this working, but probably pretty janky today.
But
@packym
actually uses and loves the re:collect product. It is a crucial part of his current writing stack.
6 - DIMO + Melonfrost
@DIMO_Network
is a connected vehicle platform built on Web3 rails.
@MelonfrostTM
is building the world’s first evolutionary prediction engine.
Subscribe to the Not Boring Founders Youtube to catch convos with both founders.
1 - META PROTEINS
Meta released a model that predicts the structure of 600M proteins. This is about a 3x over AlphaFold's most recent model.
Meta gets a lot of heat, but it also puts out a ton of important AI work.