In movies, screenwriters always include a moment called the Premise Promise. It’s the part of the story where the audience merges into the new world they’ve entered.
One of my favorite examples is in the first Harry Potter movie, when Hagrid takes Harry to Diagon Alley, the magic mall introduces him (and us) to the wizarding world.
Hitherto, web3 has not paid off for the Promise of the Premise: open source software that runs directly on the blockchain.
“It’s still much easier to develop a Web 2.0 app simply because the ecosystem is mature and there is a community,” said Devin Abbott, who specializes in design and development tools, React and web3 apps. developer grows and develops.
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According to Abbott, the web3 development community is approaching “an inflection point where our own tools are getting pretty powerful,” but “that doesn’t mean Reddit is going to get rid of its Web 2.0 cloud servers.” me”.
Most of the hype about web3 so far has come from investors and journalists, so Abbott’s perspective as a developer makes this a useful read.
Most of the early use cases of web3 didn’t interest me. Again, I’m not a developer, so I don’t really appreciate the value of mobile games, GPS, and cloud storage until they reach product market fit and integrated into my smartphone.
Today, I wouldn’t consider buying a device that can’t help me find a restaurant or hotel. As it turns out, I suspect web3’s killer app will be similarly pragmatic.
Thanks for reading,
Walter Thompson
Editorial Director, TechCrunch +
@yourprot character
3 ways to hire well for your startup
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For early-stage startups, “this is arguably one of the worst times to find talent,” said Champ Suthipongchai, founder and GP of Creative Ventures.
Opportunistic hiring managers may argue that widespread layoffs have shifted the balance in their favor, but “it’s usually not the employees who carry out core business activities. core”.
Often, startup recruiting resembles scenes from heist movies where characters are assembling a team: It’s an urgent process designed to fill in gaps in knowledge. knowledge or experience, not necessarily to find the best match.
“Whenever possible, it’s always better to slowly integrate a great candidate as a consultant or part-time contractor and let things run smoothly,” Suthipongchai writes.
“Just like customers test products, companies should test their most important tenants whenever possible.”
8 questions to answer before your startup faces technical due diligence
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Outsiders study many aspects of a startup to determine its value and quality, and the health of the codebase is one of them.
Matt Van Italie, founder and CEO of codebase analytics firm Sema, writes.
Once the due diligence process begins, no narrative can cover up the secrets buried in GitHub and Jira.
To help companies prepare for TDD, Van Italie wrote a brief with eight questions the founding team must be able to answer confidently. Tomorrow we will run his detailed TDD checklist.
To better prevent ransomware attacks, startups must master the basics of cybersecurity
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Creating systems that are resistant to ransomware isn’t the most important thing for early-stage startups, but many don’t even follow basic best practices. copies, to their detriment.
“Enable multi-factor authentication (MFA) on everything you have,” says Katie Moussouris, founder of Luta Security. “Turn it on on every account you have.”
Last week at TechCrunch Disrupt, Moussouris and Brett Callow, threat analysts at Emsisoft, talked about the need to invest early in locking down their systems, starting with MFA.
“It’s a matter of layering security on top of security,” says Callow. “MFA combined with employee training – combined with other things – is all about reducing risk.”
Black startup founders raised just $187 million in the third quarter
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The recession seems to disproportionately affect the ability of Black founders to raise capital.
Tiana Tukes, an investor at Colorful Capital, said: “When the venture capital industry catches a cold, founders without representation get pneumonia.
In Q3 2022, Crunchbase reports that Black founders raised just $187 million, “a staggering drop from the nearly $1.1 billion they received in Q3 of 2012. 2021 and is significantly down from the $594 million the cohort raised in Q2,” wrote Dominic-Madori Davis.
Investors are sitting on a mountain of cash: Where will it be deployed?
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Regardless of what’s happening in the public market, bees make honey and venture capitalists raise money: that’s just what they do.
But since the “recalibration of extreme valuations” in the public market, VCs are accumulating more and more dry powder, Irving Investors’s Jeremy Abelson and Jacob Sonnenberg write.
More disappointing news for founders: Investor funding “is underway to end the year at $172 billion,” but capital deployment is dwindling.
“Dollars are flowing and will continue to flow, but it will be more capital for fewer companies,” they wrote.
Now that “traditional SaaS has become too expensive and second-saturated,” sectors such as web3, life sciences and agritech will attract more investors, they predicted.
