The Craziest Stuff We Found On The Internet This Week

01 Mar 2024 (9 months ago)

A company helps VCs improve their deal flow by placing photographers outside top VC firms' offices.
The photographers take pictures of entrepreneurs leaving the offices and send them to the entrepreneurs.
The entrepreneurs share the pictures on social media, revealing their fundraising activities.
Other VCs can then reach out to the entrepreneurs and get in on the deals.
There's a Twitter account called stealth coy that tracks stealth mode projects and LinkedIn profiles of people leaving high-growth startups.

2 - Group therapy on Reddit (3m30s)

Noah is working on a stealth project, a platform for no-code SDK tooling for Enterprise LLM applications.
Jake Kasan, the founder of Movement Watches, sold his company for over $100 million but is now struggling with loneliness and depression despite his financial success.
Jake shared his story on Reddit, describing his journey to find passion and purpose after selling his company, highlighting the importance of open and honest discussions about mental health and the challenges faced by successful individuals.
The speaker appreciates someone's actions and considers them awesome.
The speaker discusses the concept of the "second mountain," which refers to the need to find a new challenge or purpose after achieving initial success, emphasizing the importance of finding fulfillment and helping others in future endeavors.

Alex Horos, a friend of the podcast, invested in School, an online community-building tool founded by Sam Ovens.
Horos promoted School on his platforms, resulting in a significant increase in School's web traffic, from 8 million monthly visitors to a peak of almost 17 million in January.
Sam Ovens invested $10 million of his own money into School, which offers various paid communities focused on personal growth, including digital marketing, manifestation, wealth creation, and lifestyle improvement.
Ovens successfully transitioned his YouTube fame into a lucrative SaaS (Software as a Service) business model, known for his awkwardness and comfort with silence.

Julia Chang, a personal finance expert, analyzed the finances of a couple featured on Instagram who earn $3.7 million annually but have high monthly expenses, including a $29,000 mortgage and $4,000 on personal trainers.
Despite investing $1 million yearly, they only have $2,300 left each month, highlighting the challenge of saving enough money to retire early even with a high income due to excessive spending.
The viral social media post showcasing the couple's extravagant spending habits is seen as "engagement bait," designed to provoke strong reactions and generate comments.
Many people, including those earning millions of dollars, often live paycheck to paycheck and may have expensive tastes.
It is important to surround oneself with friends who have similar financial habits and values.

Liquid Death launched a unique marketing campaign during the Super Bowl.
Instead of buying a $6 million Super Bowl ad, they put their ad on the side of half a million Liquid Death cases.
Coinbase bought the ad space for $500,000, giving Liquid Death free publicity.
The founder of Liquid Death, Mike, emphasized the importance of advertising in the water industry.
Liquid Death has grown significantly since its appearance on the podcast a few years ago and is now preparing for an IPO.

House of Fresh, a small company specializing in air purifier reviews, exposed the practices of larger media companies that dominate the online review space.
Sixteen media companies, including Meredith, Dash, BuzzFeed, and Pensky Media, control a significant portion of online reviews and generate billions of clicks per month.
These companies employ freelancers to write articles and post them across multiple websites they own, creating the illusion of diverse reviews.
The lack of transparency in review processes raises concerns about the reliability of product recommendations.
Trustworthy review websites are rare, and even previously trusted sources like Wirecutter have become less reliable due to their acquisition by larger companies.
Niche review websites that provided valuable information have been compromised as larger companies buy them out and prioritize their own products.
Fake Amazon reviews, where friends or associates of product creators purchase and review products to boost ratings, are prevalent.
News sites often sell their SEO juice to the highest bidder, leading to biased reviews and search results.
The current solutions for finding reliable product reviews are not trustworthy due to affiliate commissions and lack of transparency.
A potential solution could be a subscription-based model with no affiliate commissions, ensuring unbiased reviews.