Supercomputers, A.I and losing $4M

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It is 2022 and and I am super excited! So many new stuff coming up and so many new opportunities! Let's jump straight to the top 5 highlights.

1/ This is the story, how a DAO bought the wrong item, at the wrong price, for the wrong reasons and lost $3M.

A couple newsletters ago, I talked about how a DAO bought the unreleased album of Wu-Tang from FBI for $4M. Since then, a lot of stuff were bought from DAOs but one of them was remarkably stupid.

If for whatever reason you don't know what a DAO is, check this video I made for you. Back to our story.

SpiceDAO is a DAO with the simple mission to buy the book of "Dune". Money were raised, high fives were given but something went wrong. Very wrong. First, the bought the wrong book. Instead of buying the Frank Herbert’s Dune, they bought the hilarious film adaptation of Jodorowsky’s Dune.

If you don't know about Jodorowsky's adaptation, watch this video. Personally I believe it is a (hilarious) masterpiece.

But there is more. Oh, there is more. The idea was that, after the acquisition of the book, they can create NFTs based on it's chapters and then burn the book! Then it only exists in the metaverse. The issue of course is that when you buy something, you don't own the IP. For example, if I buy a BMW I cannot start selling t-shirts with BMW's logo! Sadly, the DAO learnt about this after acquiring the book for $3M.

And I know what you are thinking right now. They can still sell the book back right? Nope. The actual book costs $30k. Yes, $30k.

But it's ok, we all do mistakes.

2/ This week, we broke the 300 subscribers on my YouTube channel. I am loving it! If you haven't subscribed, consider doing it - it is awesome stuff.

In the latest video, I review the pitch deck of a Startup that kept me excited during the whole time. Very nice pacing and metrics.

Please leave a comment on the video, I would love to know what you think.

Click to see this epic video

3/ If I read back to you the following sentence a couple years ago, you would be looking at me like I am a crazy person.

"Meta (Facebook) has created a supercomputer A.I to support the Metaverse."

Let's go through this again. Facebook, oh sorry I meant Meta, has created the fastest supercomputer with A.I (whatever that means) to support the metaverse - whatever the metaverse might be. If they have added "web3" and "DAO" they would have ticked all the boxes 😀

4/ It seems that DAOs are making VCs even more irrelevant.

First, you shouldn't need to raise outside money because you can raise faster from your community. And now, you can start your own "VC" with a few clicks.

Let me introduce you to SyndicateDAO - (disclosure: I am somewhat affiliated with them).

With SyndicateDAO you can create an investment DAO and invite friends to invest with you. And no, this is not a paid advertisement as there are still tons of issues (see: regulations). You can picture it as AngelList but faster, cheaper and more transparent.

Maybe we do a Syndicate for the companies that I review on my YouTube channel - and make sense to invest in? What do you think?

5/ To make it big in life, you need to take risks. Build your own company, invest aggressively, shoot for the moon.

Elon Musk took "the shoot for the moon" part, a bit literally as one of the SpaceX's rockets will crash into the moon and explode. Well at least it won't come crashing down back to Earth.

See you next week. 🚀

-- Jon V (as in Victory)

- Thu 27 January 2022