I got two Oscars🕴(almost)

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👉 These are the crazy things I learned last week.

1/ Yes, this is me on the left, holding two Oscars (yes, they are real).

How crazy is this?

On the right, we have Rick Carter, who actually won these Oscars and has a mind-blowing career in Hollywood (Back To The Future, Star Wars, Jurassic Park, Avatar, Forrest Gump, and so many more), and he will be a speaker in my conference this December in Athens/Greece!

At the conference, I bring the best storytellers on the planet to the best city on the planet (Athens) to exchange ideas about building worlds, web3, the Metaverse, and tons of other topics that keep me awake at night.

Are you coming?

I guarantee you, it will change the way you live your life. 🔥

2/ When I was in Greece, I thought that the "best product wins". What an idiot. 🤦‍♂️

I spent tons of time and effort to build the best product and then charged less to be competitive (another stupid mistake).

But now I am in the place where I can make more than 40 Startup investments IN A YEAR while I live in Los Angeles, making videos on YouTube (check my latest - I am dressed as Batman surfing in LA) and running my own conference in Europe.

Here is what happened.

After my company got acquired and I moved to San Francisco, I saw that it's not the "best product wins". It's the "biggest network wins". I focused all my energy on meeting people, providing value, and building a big social (and business) circle.

That made fundraising easier. Not easy. Easier.

And then, I moved to Los Angeles.

The first thing I saw when I arrived in LA was how most Startups focus on storytelling. Not branding, not marketing. Storytelling.

In the beginning, I thought it was a gimmick. If you have the best product and the most vibrant network, why do you need storytelling?

I started researching like a maniac. I took a filmmaking course. I started making short videos. I started writing short stories. A newsletter (that now has almost 5k people). And then nothing happened.

Life is not a movie where something big happens in a day.

But without noticing, things were different.

My sales had increased while the NFT market was slowing down without making ANY changes to the website. Crazy, right?

The biggest companies on the planet wanted me as a (paid) advisor (I hate the word consultant) to the point my day had no free hours DESPITE I kept raising my prices (now I have a hard limit of 8 companies per month and 2 smaller gigs - each company paying 5-digits/month). How crazy is this? 🔥

This is not a post to flex but a post to tell you that the thing that MIGHT be missing from your life is how to tell better stories. I was always kind of "ok" - that's one reason why in all my Startups, I always made the biggest sales - but I needed to study to get to the level I am today.

By the way, if you are still reading, this is a successful storytelling showcase! 😉

In the next couple of weeks, I'll post a small "Story Telling for Entrepreneurs" - email course that describes everything I learned and did, and it costs $5.

Why $5?

I usually give everything for free, but I saw that people engage more when they pay "something".

📥 If you email me why you want to learn storytelling, you might even get it for free.

3/ It's been a long time since I posted a new video, so here you are.

I know it is not Startup related, but it was a video that I had TONS of fun making and editing.

If you love Batman, surfing, and LA, take a look, like, subscribe and share!

See this EPIC video here!

4/ Last week, I made my fastest angel investment:

• 1 call with the founder
• 20 days to collect feedback from other companies
• One email "send me your bank account".

At last, I became the investor I wanted to have when I was a founder. 🫡

5/ Here is a quick piece of advice.

Do you want to get INSTANT market research about your idea without building a single thing?

Start pitching to VCs about your "idea", collect information and possible competitors, and then evaluate whether that's a space you want to participate in.

Did you like this newsletter?

I'm tweeting daily about startups, entrepreneurship, and tech. See you there!

That's all for now. See you next week! 🚀

-- Jon V (as in Victory)

- Fri 04 November 2022