What Would You Bet On Yourself? - #8

So far I've bet over $1,700,000 during a recession on myself, and my people.

I want to bring you into the beginning of the story, as it’s unfolding, now.

Frankly, it’s so damn exciting that my fingers are trembling a bit as I write this. I have butterflies in my stomach.

“It’s f*cking working…!”

It’s working. It’s actually freaking working. WTF do I do now?

From bedroom laptop to a 23 acre Bitcoin Mining facility. Only took 11 years.

PUMP THE BRAKES, CATCH ME UP, WILL YOU?

2022 has been a bombastic year so far. Yes, we’re past the lockdowns. Yes, we’re now in a proxy-war with somebody. Yes, we’re in a recession… but somehow, just somehow, we’re all still here. Building, living, adjusting our lives to new realities and new opportunities. Some of us have changed jobs or careers. Some of us have finally taken on that new hobby or even side-hustle. Many of us are just the same as we were yesterday. For some, a humble life can be afforded from almost any vantage point with the right mindset.

For me and my homies? We got together and we schemed. We schemed hard.

#VentureMedia Deployed in 2022

I first wrote about #VentureMedia in 2019 after I had closed my $10M strategic fund for deployment into bitcoin mining and retail mining investments. The essential thesis was this:

“Venture media” is the industry of communicating the world of venture capital to a global audience using all available technology platforms – Me.

This initial thesis has now evolved over several years of angel investing and venture investing. As we have deployed our experiments into operators and startups, we have adjusted our model and learned amazing lessons through the Scrum and agile feedback loops we’ve created with our operators.

We have now curated and codified a model that is absolutely powerful. A new model to traditional venture investing, perfect for the digital economy and digital finance.

We now wield the power to give every startup entrepreneur exactly what they need to succeed. We now wield the global power of #VentureMedia:

“Venture media” is an alternative investment model that combines four indomitable vectors of profit generation: Platform Market Fit, People Market Fit, Technical Engineering over Financial Engineering, and a Global Community.

1 - Platform Market Fit

Simply put, I no longer invest in single products. I simply cannot. We live in a platform world, where the greatest opportunities are multi-faceted, multi-product, multi-tiered, multi-market, and global. There are entire marketplaces for app-integration, rich-feature-add-ons, and full open-source-no-code solutions so easy your grandma could learn it. There is simply no excuse for having only one revenue stream. Even the hucksters on YouTube tell you to have multiple streams of income. It just makes sense, right?

Absolutely.

In the last eight years since writing my first check as an angel investor, all of the single products failed. The platforms. Oh, the platforms! They have survived. They have taught me well.

Here’s the high-level investment rubric:

1. Does the platform serve multiple product-lines?

2. Does the platform serve multiple user personas and communities?

3. Does the platform have an obvious opportunity for market share from competitors?

4. Does the platform support digital currencies, DeFi, or Web3.0?

5. Does the platform have an obvious opportunity for community growth, even if it’s niche?

Products fail. Platforms can adjust, pivot, amend, change, or grow based on multiple revenue streams. Good opEx/capEx discipline is paramount here, but good operators can move the needle and be agile during times of duress, recession, market sentiment changing, or even market conditions. I’ve seen it myself, and I’ve doubled down on platform investments in 2022.

Platforms can stay profitable through anything.

2 - People Market Fit

It’s no surprise that I have a global community. Hell, this newsletter alone is 23K large. My other newsletter is over 110K. I have many YouTube channels in my possession, allowing me access to over millions of views per month globally.

We grow slowly cuz I’m busy. At least it’s free.

Here’s the point. I’ve amassed a global community to myself that took me almost two decades to build.

Isn’t it about time that I weaponized my community?

It wasn’t hard. All of you came to me with your ideas. Some of you, knocked on my door for years. Thank you. You’re now my greatest investments of all time. Thank you for giving me your secrets and your tireless work to turn my investment into your success. You know who you are! :)

Product market fit has been talked about for ages. Everybody knows that you need your product to ‘fit’ the market, whatever that means in context. Finding product market fit is easier than finding the most important ingredient, People Market Fit:

Are the founders/core operators the right people and personality for this market?

Meaning: We must spend enough time knowing and understanding these operators that they have the personality, temperament, mental models, discipline, perseverance and resilience that will be rewarded in their particular market. This also deeply focuses our investment thesis: We only invest in what we deeply know and understand!

Lucky for me, I’ve had people following me, subscribing to me, and connecting with me for over a decade as I built in the cryptocurrency space. Some of these individuals I grew relationships with in the community. It just so happened that they were amazing entrepreneurs, operators, excellent tradesmen, craftsmen, or even people who have specialized skills useful to building businesses.

• Have I spent years with these highly-skilled individuals? Yes.

• Have I invested in some of them? Yes.

• Have I learned a ton from bad investments? Yes.

• Have I found some great ones? Absolutely.

• Am I meeting amazing founders weekly? LET’S GO!!!

I’ve built several businesses with these community members over the last 5 years! These guys know Bitcoin mining.

Great person market fit is something that is absolutely niche or market-specific. For me, I have spent the last decade in digital currencies, as a retail investor, entrepreneur, and venture capitalist. I know this world of cryptocurrency. I’ve paid for my education deeply. I have the t-shirt and the scars to prove it.

1. I know exactly what is necessary to achieve success in a cryptocurrency startup.

2. I know exactly what ‘type of person’ is required to success in a digital currency company.

3. I know exactly the metrics and data that matter for survival and profitability regardless of economic conditions.

I have earned this education starting in November 11, 2011 when I bought my first Bitcoin. I have deployed my investment thesis into community members that I have known for years.

Our secret weapon? Hand-picked operators from our community who can make us money.

3 - Technical Engineering over Financial Engineering

In my world of digital currency, the product IS the code. We’re dealing with finances. We’re dealing with digital assets. We’re dealing with 0’s and 1’s and charts. It’s all code and calculus. All of it.

Our rubric for a great investment in the digital asset/digital finance space:

1. Must be Agile and use a combination of frameworks like Scrum or kanban. If you’re not building production-ready features at least monthly that can increase revenue, we’re not interested. Only those have a culture of consistent delivery survive. CSM/CSPO/A-CSM/A-CSPO/CSP certifications a plus! NO PMP-traditional-waterfall-process-thinkers.

2. Dogmatic drive towards technical engineering where value appreciation is a function of code. Less is more.

3. Only data-driven feature decisions where value is exponentially grown through minimal/intuitive design.

4. Have already solved for revenue with existing traction. Now they just need more customers.

5. Must have a passive income generator or well known/understood MRR/ARR as a function of growth, scale, and market opportunity.

Did you know that I can create a token and create a webpage to market and sell it to you in less than 24 hours? I can do all of this myself.

We now live in an age where you can program your own digital value. It’s just code after all. With digital currency, cryptocurrency, bitcoin mining, and decentralized finance you can literally create an entire business in an excel sheet before you build.

The only thing you need are all the knowns.

In the digital-currency-startup-world, revenue generation is a knowable function and we’re executing on that knowledge now.

4 - Global Community

You know what all venture funds do? They write checks to operators and hope. This model sucks. Let’s give our founders the necessary ingredient for product-market-fit:

What if you could give your entrepreneur a check of $150,000… and then give them a global community of millions immediately willing to help?

You end up with (one experience example):

• 250+ Jira tickets of how to improve your product in 10 days

• 5500+ new customers in 60 days

• 10M+ views per month on a network of sites spanning 20+ media platforms

• Revenue and growth

We helped one startup grow over 100,000 customers in 18 months.

Investing in community by the community is how you compound returns.

Venture funds of the future are funds where community and social are at the forefront, especially video:

• Global communities give infinite deal flow and ideas if managed and curated well

• Global communities can buy your investment’s products and immediately boost revenue, lower CAC, shorten lead time, improve conversion and IRR

• Global communities give much needed feedback on product functions, features, and UI/UX experiences so your investments can create stickier apps

• Global communities are where your best investments are hanging out, often in sub-niches within larger marketplaces

I thank all of my community that has watched, listened, given feedback, and helped me on my journey to be a better human being. It is my honor and joy to execute on a decade long dream of building a venture fund like no other, where code and math make us money in a digital economy, and I can invest in good people who are willing to help other good people succeed in building their dreams.

Introducing StaaS Fund 2022

I built my venture fund with trusted community members! Amazing!

StaaS Fund RegD 506B (video link) is my execution on the #VentureMedia hypothesis, combining four indomitable vectors of profit generation PLUS, the secret sauce of instant eyeballs to all of our investments. This is a 15-year differentiation grown through relationships in a global community.

We are Strategy as a Service, a strategic fund based on calculus, not guesswork, into operators from our community by our community.

We have all the math and all of the knowns. We’re literally building companies on excel sheets with exactly the right personalities behind each investment.

Crazy right? All of my angel investment experience over the last eight years plus building funds and operating startups have allowed me to deploy the model for real. So real, that I put my money where my mouth is during the worst economic downturn since 1982.

I’m $1,700,000 deep already... and it’s working! WE ARE PROFITABLE!

Four out of six of my investments this year are profitable. Several of them are ready for massive growth. ALL OF THEM ARE COMMUNITY MEMBERS!

Imagine investing millions into your friends and watch them build prosperity platforms for everyone…

• Bitcoin Table Investment Platform (BTIP) - $1M invested since February 2022. $460,000 revenue as of October 2022. Getting ready to deploy our next investment tables in December! Go go! - Community Members since 2017-2021.

• Cryptocurrency Node Wallet Platform - $100K initial investment. ~$234,000/ARR projected for 2023 - Community Members since 2017-19.

• Cryptocurrency Node Platform - $150K initial investment. ~$3000/MRR currently. - Community Members since 2018.

• Cryptocurrency Media Platform - $150K initial investment. ~$4000/MRR currently. - Community Members since 2017-2022.

• NFT Platform - $50K initial investment. Pre-revenue. - Community Member since 2014.

• Blockchain Platform - $250K initial investment. Pre-revenue. Super excited about this one!!! - Community Members since 2016-2017.

To say it’s an ‘exciting time’ for our fund would be an understatement of epic proportions. I’ve finally achieved the beginnings of a dream that can impact the world for good, and it’s all happening now.

All of the investments we’ve made as a fund are in community members new and old who serve the retail public with revenue generating financial tools and platforms. I can’t wait to see how these amazing people build prosperity for all.

We’re actively raising with accredited investors (I can send a deck). Hit me, I’m not hard to find!

I look forward to our retail RegA+ offering to the public soon. I’d love for all of you to participate.

Thanks for being part of my community.

All the best,
ps

I took this picture on 2012.04.23 as a personal goal of mine. I want to have a billion under management deploying it to world-builders for global good. It’s time to manifest this now. Let’s go fam!