🍪 Marc Andreessen gets roasted

Rise and shine, compadres. You know when the stock market is dipping and you’re buying the dip but the dip keeps dipping and now you’re out of money to buy the dip? No, just us?

Ok, let’s move on.

In the oven this week:

• 🔥 Freshly baked: crypto VCs get roasted

• 🍪 Cookie crumbs: 4 snippets

• ☝🏼One big pizookie: how to get unstuck in life with the hotshot rule

• 😂 Snickerdoodles: are meme degens a thing? We're meme-gens.

FRESHLY BAKED

Marc Andreessen and Packy McCormick get roasted

Let’s pretend you were a crypto VC last year.

Hell yes! Talk about being the definition of the in-crowd.

You’re arguing with randos on Twitter, making snow angels in a pile of signed term sheets, and partying with Waka Flocka Flame in Miami. You update your LinkedIn tagline to, “chasing a decentralized future” and your Bored Ape is up 900%.

Life is GREAT.

Then the new year rolls around and the US economy starts to sour. Bitcoin and Ethereum take a slight tumble. You don’t pay much attention - it’s temporary, you tell yourself.

But things slowly get worse. Terra collapses, and people start freaking out and selling everything. The economy slumps. You do a bunch of Zoom calls from your private jet to yell at startups about fiscal responsibility.

A month later, bitcoin is down 70% and Warren Buffet doubles down on bitcoin being "rat poison squared." Where did all the crypto degens go?

You go on Tyler Cowen’s podcast. He asks you to explain a real use case for web3. You get flustered and blubber something about “injecting economics” and book publishing. People clip your interview and bash you as an idiot all over Twitter and Reddit.

At night, you curl up in a ball and all you can do is keep blocking people on Twitter, praying Jack Dorsey doesn’t come dunk on you again.

ANNND scene.

…Except this kinda happened to Marc Andreessen (legendary VC) and Packy McCormick (prominent crypto investor) this week.

Both separately went on podcasts and were asked to come up with specific examples of how web3 can offer unique benefits over what already exists today:

Marc goes on about economics but can’t describe a concrete way people can make money or profit share differently than they do in business today. Meanwhile, Packy gets barbequed down a rabbithole, eventually gives up, and goes, “I don’t know.”

We’re not web3 bears here at Bite Sized Beta, but man, this is why people hate VCs.

COOKIE CRUMBS

• 📉 It’s breakup season - Alphabet, Tesla, and Shopify announce stock splits: Alphabet a 20:1 split, Tesla a 3:1 split, and Shopify a 10:1 split. Companies usually do this in hopes that more buyers will invest at a lower share price and drive up the stock price, but TBD if it’ll do much nowadays… Amazon’s 20:1 split last week was a nothingburger and the stock’s stayed flat since May.

• 🎤 Elon is attending his first all hands at Twitter later today to answer employee questions: think he’ll force remote Twitter employees back into the office too? We’ll report back.

• ☠️ Coinbase lays off 18% of its employees to manage costs, plus employees petition to remove execs: rough week.. CEO Brian Armstrong admitted the company grew too quickly and is laying off 1.1K employees to manage costs. Earlier in the week, employees leaked a petition to fire the COO, Chief Product Officer, and Chief People Officer for a bunch of product/culture failures and Armstrong publicly called it “really dumb on multiple levels.” Meanwhile, Coinbase stock is now $52/share, down from last year's high of $368. How employees are getting any work done in this chaos is beyond me...

• ✍🏼 David Brooks published an amazing list of the greatest life hacks of all time in the NYT. It’s so good you gotta read this in its entirety, but here are my 3 favorites:

  • Take photos of things your parents do every day. That’s how you’ll want to remember them.

  • Getting cheated occasionally is a small price to pay for trusting the best in everyone, because when you trust the best in others, they will treat you the best.

  • If you can’t make up your mind between two options, flip a coin. Then decide based on your emotional reaction to which side came up.

THE BIG PIZOOKIE

We love a good mental model, and this is a sweet one from Kat Cole, the ex-president of Cinnabon. Let me tee it up for ya.

We all have things that we should do but don't. Think: going to the gym, setting up a work meeting with an exec, breaking up with your girlfriend, you get the idea.

Maybe we don’t know how to execute, we’re lazy, or we’re scared of the outcome. Who cares what the reason is - bottom line is, the thing doesn’t get done.

When Kat gets in situations where she's stuck or isn't making progress, she asks herself, “If a hotshot took over my life/job/task today, what’s the first thing they would do?”

Ok, so what’s the magic here?

It gets you to be honest with yourself about what has to happen for you to reach an end goal.

The “hotshot” comes in with fresh eyes and a different take on where you are and what’s possible. Instead of thinking about the situation in the context of your life and habits, the hotshot only sees that you’re at point A, and you gotta get to point B.

Give it a try the next time you’re in a rut.

SNICKERDOODLES

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