Hot Take:

The metaverse is going to make everything more extreme.

Here’s how the world is about to go on tilt and what it means for you 👇👇👇

My friend @ShaanVP had an awesome thread on the metaverse a few weeks ago.

He set a clear, understandable definition of the metaverse:

The metaverse is a time, not a place.

It’s when our digital life is more important than our physical life.
If you believe in that definition (I do), then it pushes an interesting second order question.

What happens when that shift occurs?

I think everything gets a lot more extreme.

Why?
The world doesn’t get any bigger, but our surface area of exposure increases exponentially.

We have more insight and visibility into everything that’s going on.

This will put more pressure on the proverbial pressure cooker.

Here are 10 examples:
1. Opportunity

As more economic activity moves online, constraints and barriers go away.

You can be 10,000 miles away and considered as a candidate for a job.

Measurement pushes away from inputs (politics, facetime) to outputs (deliverables).
2. Competition

More opportunity brings more competition.

Tasks will get "re-rated" to their global economic value.

- Growth Assistants in the Philippines (shoutout @jspujji)
- Developers in Eastern Europe
- Bookkeepers in India

Business will now truly be a global sport.
3. Outcomes

Software allows for infinite leverage and (theoretically) infinite upside.

A lot of people in tech think we’re in a bubble.

I think we’re just getting started.

We’re going to see more companies that are started by fewer people with bigger results.
4. Engagement

More stimuli at our fingertips - notifications, tweets, messages, information - creates short consideration spans.

We either engage with short form content - e.g. TikTok - or long form content - e.g. 2 hour podcasts / binge TV.

The middle is no man's land.
5. Empathy

@DaveChappelle has a great quote: "When you see everything, it’s hard to care about anything."

Again the middle drops out.

Pro - there's less friction to engage on things that matter to us

Con - there's zero mindshare to engage on things that don't matter to us
6. Impulse

When friction reduces, decision making becomes faster.

We're seeing this play out live in many areas right now (most notably crypto).

Faster decisions = faster outcomes = faster iterations.

A virtuous cycle on the way up or a vicious cycle on the way down.
7. Voiced Opinions

More and more perspectives will come online with increased connectivity.

This will lead to an increase in bottom up analysis + more ground truth discovery.

It'll also lead to a lot of noise.

Curating the right information diet will be key.
8. Agitation

As more of my life is spent in the digital world, I've noticed I get agitated over the smallest things.

- Phone not connecting? Annoying.
- TV not streaming? Annoying.
- Browser not loading? Annoying

Subconscious, but we'll all continue to push in this direction.
9. Comparison

We get to see a curated sliver of everyone's life in real time now.

In the future, it'll get even more curated and dynamic with faster feedback loops.

If you’re not careful this can create serious cognitive distortion.

The comparison game can be infinite.
10. Polarization

Most people feel isolated because their viewpoints don't resonate.

But what happens when you take that viewpoint and extend it to 8B people worldwide?

Tribalism increases.

Why change your position if you can find people online that sympathize and agree?
Think about a world that has extreme:

1. Opportunities
2. Competition
3. Outcomes
4. Engagement
5. Empathy
6. Impulses
7. Voiced Opinions
8. Agitation
9. Comparison
10. Polarization

I don't know how that plays out, but I do know there will be lots of disruption and innovation.
As with anything, the metaverse is not “good” or “bad” on its own.

But there will be good and bad that comes from it.

If you believe the premise that everything is going to become a lot more extreme like I do, the second order effects are really interesting to think about.
If you enjoyed this tweet, give me a follow.

➡️@RomeenSheth ⬅️

I tweet about:

- Scaling a $50M+ bootstrapped business
- Interviewing titans of business
- Investing a few million a year in world class founders

More from Romeen Sheth

I love Twitter.

It’s truly the Town Square of the Internet.

But finding the diamond in the rough voices can be tough.

Here are 20 of my favorite people to follow:

1. Alex Lieberman - @businessbarista

Alex writes extensively about the Founder journey.

The cool part is he’s lived everything he talks about - starting from $0 and selling for $75M with hardly any outside capital raised.

My favorite piece:


2. Ryan Breslow - @ryantakesoff

Ryan is a Top 1% founder.

This guy is a machine - he’s built 2 unicorns before the age of 27.

Ryan spells out lessons on fundraising, operating and scaling.

My favorite piece:


3. Jesse Pujji - @jspujji

Jesse is who I think of when I think “bootstrapping.”

He bootstrapped his company to an 8-figure exit and now shares stories about other awesome bootstrappers.

He’s also got great insight into all things growth marketing:


4. Post Market - @Post_Market

Post puts out some of the most thoughtful investment insights on this platform.

It’s refreshing because Post cuts through the hype and goes deep into the business model.

Idk who he/she/it is, but the insights are 💣.
The cold hard truth:

Why do companies like Quibi raise billions, while companies like Peloton get nothing?

Because fundraising is a GAME

And the insiders keep the rules to themselves.

Here are 100 tips the insiders don’t want you to see but will help you win the game:

1. You can’t play the game without nailing the basics.

There are 5 core ingredients to a startup pitch.

Most have 2.
Good ones have 4.
The best have all 5.


2. Now that you have a grasp of the basics, it’s time to level up.

Good news - most founders make the same mistakes as each other.

Bad news - these mistakes are really easy to make.

Here's what not to do:


3. Ok so you told me what not to do.

So what should I do?

Read below.


4. We’re in a really unique fundraising environment right now.

It’s important to contextualize all these tips in the “here and now” of what’s going on in the landscape.

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1/“What would need to be true for you to….X”

Why is this the most powerful question you can ask when attempting to reach an agreement with another human being or organization?

A thread, co-written by @deanmbrody:


2/ First, “X” could be lots of things. Examples: What would need to be true for you to

- “Feel it's in our best interest for me to be CMO"
- “Feel that we’re in a good place as a company”
- “Feel that we’re on the same page”
- “Feel that we both got what we wanted from this deal

3/ Normally, we aren’t that direct. Example from startup/VC land:

Founders leave VC meetings thinking that every VC will invest, but they rarely do.

Worse over, the founders don’t know what they need to do in order to be fundable.

4/ So why should you ask the magic Q?

To get clarity.

You want to know where you stand, and what it takes to get what you want in a way that also gets them what they want.

It also holds them (mentally) accountable once the thing they need becomes true.

5/ Staying in the context of soliciting investors, the question is “what would need to be true for you to want to invest (or partner with us on this journey, etc)?”

Multiple responses to this question are likely to deliver a positive result.
I hate when I learn something new (to me) & stunning about the Jeff Epstein network (h/t MoodyKnowsNada.)

Where to begin?

So our new Secretary of State Anthony Blinken's stepfather, Samuel Pisar, was "longtime lawyer and confidant of...Robert Maxwell," Ghislaine Maxwell's Dad.


"Pisar was one of the last people to speak to Maxwell, by phone, probably an hour before the chairman of Mirror Group Newspapers fell off his luxury yacht the Lady Ghislaine on 5 November, 1991."
https://t.co/DAEgchNyTP


OK, so that's just a coincidence. Moving on, Anthony Blinken "attended the prestigious Dalton School in New York City"...wait, what? https://t.co/DnE6AvHmJg

Dalton School...Dalton School...rings a

Oh that's right.

The dad of the U.S. Attorney General under both George W. Bush & Donald Trump, William Barr, was headmaster of the Dalton School.

Donald Barr was also quite a


I'm not going to even mention that Blinken's stepdad Sam Pisar's name was in Epstein's "black book."

Lots of names in that book. I mean, for example, Cuomo, Trump, Clinton, Prince Andrew, Bill Cosby, Woody Allen - all in that book, and their reputations are spotless.