GZV #50: A New Venture Fund and BeReal
Would you invest?
Good morning everybody. Crazy that this is the 50th edition of this newsletter.
Please shoot me any feedback you may have! Anything you want to see in this newsletter I am open to hearing. Feel free to share GZV as well!
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First, let me tell you about my awesome friends at MakerNY.
Branding and storytelling is possibly the best thing you can invest in as a startup.
Maker is a brand development practice that partners with founders, stakeholders, and investors. They've worked with brands from pre-seed to Series C and beyond. Their partners range from Marram, a luxury hotel in Montauk to Hashdex, who launched the first crypto ETF in partnership with NASDAQ.
Maker is offering 3 hours per week of Open Advisory Services for the rest of the summer to help founders, stakeholders, and investors think about strategy, brand, design and product.
Email info@makerny.com to schedule an hour-long introductory high level discussion.
Disclosure: I am NOT getting paid to showcase MakerNY. I have seen their work first hand and know how valuable it can be. Thought it would be worth it to share.
Let me introduce you to… Be Real
Problem:
Watch The Social Dilemma on Netflix.
TLDR; social media is plagued by filters, followers, likes and just general judgement. No one is real anymore.
Solution
“We are building the first social network where people spontaneously share their real life. Every day at a random time, everyone in the community is notified simultaneously to capture and share a photo in 2 minutes.”
Gen Z View
More and more, kids are realizing how bad social media is. There is definitely room for new innovations that improve the sector for the better. It has been brewing for at least 2 years now. I actually tried to make a company around it for a week or two back in December.
The app idea is simple, once you get a notification to BeReal, you have two minutes to snap a photo of what you’re up to. You can’t put filters on it or edit it, it’s as real as it gets.
This simplicity can allow for more transparent and connecting friendships between people. You can truly feel connect to your friends real life through real photos, instead of the fakes ones on tradition social media
Some stats
10K DAU’s in March >>> 400k DAU’s in June
International company, looks based in France because of language on their twitter.
Fundraising?
Currently raising a series A. No direct connection, but they do list a contact email at the bottom of their website.
I wish I Was Accredited… Not Boring Capital
I figure most have you have heard of, or seen Packy McCormick’s newsletter, Not Boring. If not, than I highly implore you to do so. It is the best business newsletter out there in my opinion.
A little less than a year ago, Packy was a little above 10,000 subscribers and wanted to start monetizing. I had been reading his content for a little while and jumped at this opportunity. With that, I become his first ad.
Fast forward 10 months and Packy has launched an $8 million venture capital fund. You can read that sentence again.
I don’t know about you, but I love this new age of venture capital. People like Li Jin and Packy show there is a very strong attraction for venture capital in niche places. For Packy, it seems to be narrative investing (don’t quote me), and for Li Jin it is the passion economy.
Packy’s deal flow has already been top notch with multiple examples within his Not Boring Capital newsletter here.
One thing I have recognized during my brief stint watching venture capital is that finding great startups us awesome, but being able to get allocations into rounds can become hard.
Packy can add value to every investment he makes through Not Boring Capital. Through his 60,000+ person newsletter, Syndicate, Twitter, and Audio, he adds immediate tangible value.
I can’t wait until he opens up Reg CF opportunities.
Cheers.
Tom