Sunday Coffee, Social Investing

Hey All,

As far as updates, I’m sure there are many, so let’s get to them. I realize that everyone is semi-overwhelmed by email. This lets us all catch up on what’s new. Feel free to do the same when you hit reply.


Social Investing

I continue to be bullish on Social Fintech. Investing and “financialization” is coming to every product and market, and I think it’s going to be great.

Previously, you would just be an enthusiast for shoes, or music, or an artist.

Now you can buy and sell the shoes on a marketplace like GOAT. You can buy the baseball card or fractional share of the care or wine on Rally Road.

You can be a part of the artist's journey on Foundation or Zora with artists like RAC.

The new “investing” class will be empowered by technology and markets in everything. I think this is great in that it allows anyone with specific knowledge and passion in an industry or sector to invest in what they know.

I’ve been spending time learning more about NFT’s (Non-fungible tokens) which allows attribution and scarcity in art.

Blockchain will be important here, as will “mirror-world AR/VR” versions of products.

I wrote more on the "social x money" integration here.

The Future of Community Software

This past week Li Jin, investor and writer on The Passion Economy, and I co-wrote a blog post about Community Software.

We both have some experience helping organize or curate Slack communities and so we shared a wishlist that ourselves and a few others wanted to see in terms of software.

I was interviewed on a podcast Friday where I explain my thesis around what’s next for communities.

Essentially it's that; Today, we’re in the great “migration” where community groups are forming across channels that are private instead of public (i.e. Slack, Discord, etc. etc.).

Soon, we’ll be in a phase where an economic value and a transaction layer is ported onto these private communities and I think this is going to be great for creators and community leaders alike.

There is already so much economic value being created and traded in communities, we’ll just see more tooling to make it more legible to all (which will amplify this effect.)

You can listen to my interview with Li, here.

Makerpad Community Program

I’m helping host and moderate a bunch of the talks given at the Makerpad Community Program which feature speakers like Courtland Allen (Indie Hackers), Danielle Maeval (Etsy), Steph Smith (The Hustle), Evan Hamilton (Reddit), and many more.

I’m also giving a talk (virtually) on the dynamic between building public/private communities and curation.

Hosting is its own skill, and I’m continuing to try and learn what my style is. It’s great to be on both sides of the mic.

Coaching

I’m coaching some amazing people right now and this continues to feel like where my highest form of leverage is for individuals. The coaching is two-fold – first as a “thought partner” wherein we examine and clarify your ideas or areas that have been difficult to navigate.

Then we shift gears into a type of “achievement” mode for accountability and real progress beyond the conversation.

I find this dynamic hits right in the sweet spot of personal growth and real-world improvement of skills and responses from the market.


Watching/Reading

My Octopus Teacher on Netflix is a very interesting film about tracking undersea creatures and learning about ourselves in the process.

I thought this Twitter Thread from Jawad Mian on race was powerful.

I'm really interested in the audio media expansion that's happening today, so I have this post from Matthew Ball queued up.

Plus another post on Curation – "Creativity is Dead, Long Live Curation"


Currently Working On

I've just added this section, which I'm kind of love-hating because as I type these out, I realize that I want to have things here that feel like big risks/jumps... Not sure if I'm hitting that mark yet.

• I'm about to ship a new version of my blog-site with some minor tweaks to Ghost.
• I'm testing out a curation account on Instagram for NFT's and digital art.
• I will have my Community Building fundamentals course available to sign up for soon.

Anyway, this feels good to share. So thanks for hanging – and as always hit reply and let me know what you’re seeing/stuck/inspired by, etc…

xx David