Top Tech & Blockchain Stories

I'm halfway through VC Lab and Republic 's Venture Partner programs, and the takeaways have been broadly instructive for those in my industry or anyone in sales. Spinning up a fund is essentially being a salesman for a financial product of which you are the primary variable being considered. Here are some takeaways that have been useful to me.

1) In presentations and emails, optimize for brevity.

I practice by watching a 15-minute Zoom presentation and then splashing down all I can remember immediately after. It wasn't adequately communicated if I couldn't remember a point made and write it down concisely. I optimize for brevity to deliver the highest potential of a point being retained.

"I didn't?have time?to?write?a short letter, so I?wrote?a?long?one instead." - Mark Twain.

2) There are often 2-3 takeaways that the viewer retains from a 15-page deck or 15-minute Zoom. Mine what those are and optimize to best communicate the most impactful point.

3) Invest in people who are proactive problem solvers rather than spinning when reaching an impasse.

4) There's an inverse relationship between the time demanded of you and the value that will be reciprocated.

When I worked a service industry job, the most considerable tips were those who were a delight to serve. The most demanding and challenging to please inevitably ended up stiffing or shortchanging service staff. The same goes for the order size. Small orders pay large tips, and large orders with the finest wines save money on tips, it seems.

Get rid of your business' time wasters and reward your best customers who respect your time.

5) You treat people how to treat you.

If you offer your time to bend over backward, people will take it, and their respect for you will diminish. When the time comes for a favor, they have a learned behavior of getting their needs met and being functionally taught to actively dismiss yours. This comfortable dynamic will continue. The best meeting is where you communicate your needs and introduce brevity and efficiency as a mark of professionalism. If assistance is asked, direct them to resources that require initiative. They often want you to do the work for them, and aren't inquisitive enough to dig in of their own volition.

Top 5 tech stories

1 - Scores of Stanford students used ChatGPT on final exams.

Students are expected to complete coursework without unpermitted aid,” wrote spokesperson Dee Mostofi. “In most courses, unpermitted aid includes AI tools like ChatGPT.” Usable, accessible AI tools are here, and they're disrupting education in a way administrators have yet to best address.

2 - Microsoft is reportedly going to update Bing with a faster AI version of chatGPT as early as next week

Google has grown complacent and heavy-handed with its search algorithm, often delivering the first four results to a keyword search as annoying ads. Bing intends to disrupt Google's search stranglehold and seems poised to do so with chatGPT's natural language processing that allows you to search for an answer without having to venture out onto external pages.

3 - Electric infrared wallpapers are being tested for broader release domestically

4- ChatGPT passes the coding exam for a level three Google engineer with a base salary of $183,000

Many discount ChatGPT's coding competencies. They are sorely mistaken.

5 - Ultralight, fabric solar cells are now paper thin and capable of charging many devices

Solar changing cells are now as thin as paper and can be used to charge a variety of applications without requiring that you keep a brick in your purse.

Top 5 blockchain stories

1 - The venture capital firm a16z is voting down a proposal that would use a bridge that competes with one of their portfolio investments.

A16z used all 15 million of their UNI to vote against a proposal to use the Wormhole bridge for the Uniswap V3 deployment on the BNB chain.?Andreessen Horowitz's crypto arm, a16z, backs LayerZero as a bridge, while Jump, a competing VC firm, is invested in Wormhole.

When you look at governance participants, you have to consider that people will vote in a way that benefits themselves first and the community second. It's human nature.

2 - The NFT site Rally shuts down.

Collectors looking to transfer their assets off the Rally sidechain may be out of luck. Rally said in its email that the NFTs on the Rally sidechain are not transferable to the Ethereum mainnet, committing one of the cardinal sins of NFT platforms in not being blockchain interoperable.

3 - FTX's Sam Bankman-Fried has been emailing witnesses in his forthcoming trial

The judge is not happy about what is seen as witness tampering. The identities of the two individuals who posted the $250,000,000 bond may also be released in the months before Sam Bankman-Fried's October trial. This will be a widely viewed trial.

4 - Celsius has been allegedly insolvent for years.

Many blockchain platforms use their own token to buttress their balance sheet and mask mismanagement.

5 - Moody's is working on a scoring system for stablecoins

Serious traders use Circle 's USDC stablecoin, backed by 1:1 in an FDIC-insured bank, but rating agencies see potential revenue in rating stablecoins that are more complicated: algorithmic or crypto-collateralized. I suggest sticking to fiat-collateralized, like Circle's product.

Article of the week:

MIT technology review's top 10 breakthrough technologies:

CRISPR for high cholesterol

AL that makes images

A chip design that changes everything

Mass-market military drones

Abortion pills via telemedicine

Organs on demand

The inevitable EV

James Webb Space Telescope

Ancient DNA analysis

Battery recycling

-------

Thanks for reading the Rekt Report.

Subscribe to this free newsletter & sent it to a friend!

If you're researching tech or blockchain platforms or topics, send me a DM. I may be able to point you in the right direction on tools to do so best.

Robert Mowry - Partner, Rekt Tech