Leadership lessons, startup financing, and more Web3 thoughts this week

Leadership Lessons

Every job has a signficant sales and marketing component. Engineering is no exception. You have to communicate what you are doing regularly and emphatically (and also listen to the response you get, and adapt accordingly).

Ryan Petersen of Flexport on the container issue – I love this guy. Not focused on blame or grand policy. Just digs in, identifies issues, and proposes an array of common sense and direct solutions. We need more of this kind of leadership.

Startup Financing

A standard approach to startup cap tables – seems useful and overdue. I spent so much time in excel as both an investor and then as a startup founder. Would be good to regularize this.

Great thread and data on startup exits. I’m surprised at the number of earnouts and I wonder if these are all really earnouts (certain business goals must be hit to get the comp) vs time vesting (employees must stay a certain length of time).

Web3 Gaming

I’ve been mostly looking at using web3 as a developer. I decided to try from a different direction and use web3 as a user. The top game seems to be the Axie Infinity game.

You need to jump quite a few hurdles to try out Axie Infinity.

• First to the Axie Infinity site
• Then download something called Mavis Hub. Why is this a different name? Anyway, downloaded.
• Then log in with a Ronin Wallet (there are some other choices but this is recommended). Who or what makes Ronin Wallet? Don’t know.
• Then led to the SkyMavis site, another organization. Starting to feel like this is part of the game.
• Ronin wallet only runs in Chrome or Firefox, so get Chrome installed (thought all this web3 stuff was going to free us from the Man). Ronin wallet plug in installed.
• Now get ETH in the ronin wallet. Off to the roninchain site (yet another organization) with several choices to buy assets with the Ramp Network, yet another branded service. 3 choices — WETH, AXS, or SLP. AXS seems right.
• And whoa whoa whoa. Just to start playing, need 3 AXS and that is like $380 at today’s prices. $380 to play this game? For a pokemon like-game? Are they naked or something?

First observation — such a jumble of brands and organizations. The general web3 approach of “we will replace monolithic commerical offerings with a mishmash of micro offerings from orgs you have never heard of” doesn’t really fly.

Second, the cost to play is ridiculous. No thanks, I am not putting $380 into this. A smart observer compared it to a pyramid scheme, and later arrivers like me have to dump a lot of cash in to support the earlier adopters.

There are easier and cheaper ways to have fun or to speculate.

I get that new platforms might be cruftier and clumsier than the mature solutions of the preceding generation but there has to be something positive about web3.