The only limitations are the ones we put on ourselves

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👉 These are the crazy things I learned last week.

1/ Starbucks is ready to unveil its web3 strategy. It has to do with their rewards cards - which bring an extra 1.4 billion 💰 to Starbucks.

I heard that you'd be able to use them natively in their app - which is going to be awesome.

2/ My NFT Platform that I built in 14 days for a hackathon has almost crossed 800 🚀 users.

💡 This is how I did it.

Step 1️⃣

I believe that it is the easiest and fastest platform for creating NFTs. Everything is built around the philosophy that YOU DON'T NEED TO BE A CRYPTO BRO TO GET A TICKET. This helped a lot in my next step.

Step 2️⃣

I did a bit of growth hacking on Twitter by piggybacking on LA Tech Week - a huge event with thousands of people who cannot get an invitation. So, I created an event for "Rejects of LA Tech Week" and got another 300 users.

The ticket is here to take a look: LA Tech Rejects.

And below are some of the interactions:

Go to the bottom for more epic interactions with users! 👇

Step 3️⃣

I responded to EVERY SINGLE bug/future request in less than an hour. If you don't do this, you don't have 800 users; you have 800 entries in the database.

Step 4️⃣

I am adding more features, but I generally love having non-stop feedback and at least 10 hardcore users within 3 days of launching.

There is definitely a market there, but for the time being, I love building things people find useful.

3/ Is having competition a good or a bad thing for your startup ❓

Building a new product in a completely new space is risky, and having a competitor helps you de-risk your work. If you have a competitor, you have additional proof that there is an actual market, and you are on to something.

Want to learn more?

👉 Explore the YCombinator library, and you will find plenty of resources.

4/ The only limitations are the ones we put on ourselves.

It's been a long since I last made excuses about building stuff.

I used to think:

Not the right time.

or

I might need this gadget/tool/service to build this

or (the worst)

I AM NOT READY

There is never "a right time". You are ready now. You don't need anything else.

A great example is that the Oscar-winning feature film PARASITE was edited with a 10-year-old copy of Final Cut Pro 7.

The only limitations are the ones we put on ourselves.

5/ In this newsletter, we often discuss the importance of a solid decision-making process.

You are lost in life if you don't have a framework for evaluating scenarios and making decisions.

Here is an awesome collection of thinking tools and frameworks to help you solve problems, make decisions and understand systems.

👉 https://untools.co/

1. Systems Thinking
2. Decision Making
3. Problem Solving
4. Communication

👉 More Interactions I had with my users.

See you next week. 🚀

-- Jon V (as in Victory)

- Fri 12 August 2022