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Age of Miracles

Age of Miracles

By Packy McCormick

A narrative show that explores the complex industries that will play an important role in creating an abundant future for humanity.

Every season, host Packy McCormick – a venture investor and writer of the popular Not Boring newsletter – brings in an expert cohost to go deep into the possibilities and challenges of making “sci-fi” dreams our reality in our lifetimes. The first season starts at the root of all progress and prosperity: unlocking 10x more clean and reliable energy by splitting and fusing atoms themselves.
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Selling a Lot of Shares a Little Too Early with Brett Beller (ex-Drizly)

Age of MiraclesFeb 05, 2021

00:00
38:14
Introducing: Age of Miracles

Introducing: Age of Miracles

Age of Miracles is a narrative show that explores the complex industries that will play an important role in creating an abundant future for humanity. Episodes 1 and 2 drop October 27th. Every season, host Packy McCormick – a venture investor and writer of the popular Not Boring newsletter – brings in an expert cohost to go deep into the possibilities and challenges of making “sci-fi” dreams our reality in our lifetimes. The first season starts at the root of all progress and prosperity: unlocking 10x more clean and reliable energy by splitting and fusing atoms themselves.

Oct 13, 202301:58
Not Boring Founders: Crusoe Energy (Chase Lochmiller and Cully Cavness)

Not Boring Founders: Crusoe Energy (Chase Lochmiller and Cully Cavness)

Crusoe is on a mission to align the future of computing with the future of the climate. It has pioneered infrastructure that taps into stranded energy — methane being flared or excess production from clean and renewable sources — to power the compute resources we need to drive our shared progress and reduce its environmental impact.

The company is building an AI-native cloud infrastructure from scratch, and doing so by colocating and powering its data centers with stranded energy from some of the harshest and most remote locations on earth. Packy sat down Crusoe's CEO Chase Lochmiller and President Cully Cavness to discuss the company's unique founding story and its future.

Sep 07, 202357:41
Not Boring Founders: Emi Gal, Ezra

Not Boring Founders: Emi Gal, Ezra

Emi Gal is the founder and CEO of Ezra.

Ezra is on a mission to detect cancer early for everyone in the world. The company offers full-body MRI scans in order to catch cancer earlier to increase the odds of beating it. 

I recently did an Ezra scan myself, and while it was nerve-wracking to face cancer, confirming that I’m cancer-free was a priceless relief. My scan took 60 minutes, but Ezra just received FDA clearance for the world’s first 30-minute full body MRI to screen for cancer. It’s faster, more affordable, and just as accurate thanks to Ezra Flash AI. 

Book your Ezra scan and use the code PACKY150 to get $150 off. 

Jul 19, 202333:46
Not Boring Founders: Dylan Beynon, Mindbloom

Not Boring Founders: Dylan Beynon, Mindbloom

Dylan Beynon is the founder and CEO of Mindbloom. Minbloom's mission is to transform lives today, to transform the world tomorrow through psychedelic medicine. It's starting with Ketamine therapy serving patients with depression and anxiety. 89% of Mindbloom clients report improvements in anxiety and depression symptoms. Beyond Ketamine therapy, Mindbloom is riding a wave of new research and regulation that's mainstreaming psychedelics for clinical use and shaping how approach physical, emotional, and mental wellbeing.

Jun 15, 202341:57
Not Boring Founders: Brandon Arvanaghi, Meow (pt. 3)

Not Boring Founders: Brandon Arvanaghi, Meow (pt. 3)

Brandon Arvanaghi⁠⁠ is the co-founder and CEO of ⁠⁠Meow⁠⁠. Meow is Costco meets financial services. It offers low-cost, high-value cash and treasury management products for high-growth businesses. This is Brandon's third time on the podcast, and this time he discusses Meow's navigation of the recent banking crisis and why Meow is built to last.

May 31, 202321:49
Not Boring Founders: Zach Marks, Jia

Not Boring Founders: Zach Marks, Jia

Zach Marks is the co-founder and CEO of Jia. Jia connects capital to small businesses in every corner of the world. Here's how Jia works: When business owners repay a loan, they drive value to lenders and the economy. They deserve to be compensated as owners of that economy. That’s why Jia rewards borrowers with an ownership stake in Jia’s long-term growth. Ownership leads to better borrower behavior, which benefits the entire ecosystem.


Packy and Zach discuss how blockchain can help align incentives in emerging market lending, Jia's launch, and in a small-world moment, Jia's partnership with Oze (a company founded and run by Packy's sister, Meghan.


You can learn more Jia and it's recent funding in this TechCrunch article.

May 17, 202334:53
The Unbearable Heaviness of Being Positioned

The Unbearable Heaviness of Being Positioned

LINK TO ESSAY:


Google isn’t facing the Innovator’s Dilemma; it’s just so deeply Positioned in search that it’s been a sitting duck for the first superior technology or business model strong enough to take it on. 

Positioning is the flip side of one of Hamilton Helmer’s 7 Powers, counter-positioning: “​​A newcomer adopts a new, superior business model which the incumbent does not mimic due to anticipated damage to their existing business.” As Helmer points out in the book, counter-positioning is distinct from disruptive innovation. 

Similarly, Positioning is distinct from the Innovator’s Dilemma. We can define Positioning as: “An incumbent is susceptible to a new, superior business model due to anticipated damage to their existing business.” The goal of this essay is to provide a framework – Positioning – that we can all lazily reach for any time an impressive new technology or business model threatens an established incumbent (and many more situations, from the personal to the national, besides) without tripping any technical definitions. 

Apr 24, 202337:28
Intelligence Superabundance

Intelligence Superabundance

LINK TO ESSAY

Will AI steal our jobs, let us work less, or force us to do more, better? 

Induced demand, Jevons Paradox, the Marchetti constant, and consumer psychology 101 suggest that the increased supply of intelligence will create more demand for tasks that require intelligence, that we’ll turn gains in intelligence efficiency into ways of doing new things that weren’t previously feasible. 

Instead of a zero sum competition with the bots, we might be on the cusp of intelligence superabundance. We may the same amount of time working, we’ll just achieve much more in those hours than we currently do. 

Apr 17, 202314:30
Not Boring Founders: Trevor Bacon, Kellan Grenier, Jason Lewris (Parcl)

Not Boring Founders: Trevor Bacon, Kellan Grenier, Jason Lewris (Parcl)

Trevor Bacon, Kellan Grenier and Jason Lewris are the founders of Parcl.

Parcl bridges traditional real estate investments with cutting-edge blockchain technology to provide data-driven solutions for modern investors. Parcl was built to revolutionize how users approach real estate as an investment towards generational-wealth.

By giving everyone the tools they need to access one of the world's most desired investment classes, Parcl aims to deliver real estate to everyone.

Parcl is a Not Boring Capital portfolio company and is taking on the exact types of hard problems that we like.

Mar 09, 202354:07
Not Boring Founders: Andrew Herr, Fount

Not Boring Founders: Andrew Herr, Fount

Andrew Herr is the founder and CEO of Fount. Fount is crafting the operating system for the human body. 

To start, it provides extremely high-touch personal health services to clients: blood tests, fitness plans, meal prep, supplements, and much more to meet its clients personalized health needs. But Fount is running a series of experiments that will allow it to develop software that scales its luxury health services to millions of customers.  

Andrew Herr knows more about health & fitness than perhaps anyone on the planet. Prior to his current positions, Andrew led studies on the future of human performance and biotechnology for the Department of Defense, taught courses on optimizing performance to U.S. Government personnel preparing for deployment to Afghanistan and Iraq, and worked with the Departments of Homeland Security and Energy on emerging technology strategy, nuclear weapons detection, and radiation dosimetry.  Andrew has been selected as a Mad Scientist by the U.S. Army’s Training and Doctrine Command, a Fellow by the Synthetic Biology Leadership Excellence Accelerator Program, a Leader of Tomorrow by Global Biotech Revolution, a Next Generation Fellow by the Center for a New American Security, a Foreign Language and Area Studies Fellow by the U.S. Department of Education, and a Science & Technology Fellow by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. He also regularly judges at iGEM, the International Genetically Engineered Machine Competition.

Mar 02, 202340:22
Not Boring Founders: Ryan Glasgow, Sprig

Not Boring Founders: Ryan Glasgow, Sprig

Ryan Glasgow is the founder and CEO of Sprig. Sprig is the easiest way to collect product feedback, inform product decisions, and increase your speed of innovation. The world’s best product teams including the teams at Notion, Loom, and Robinhood use Sprig’s in-app surveys and concept and usability tests to capture insights from their customers and build better products.

Every week, at the bottom of this newsletter, I use a Sprig survey to get your feedback -- you click a button to tell me whether you loved or hated the newsletter and write a comment, and Sprig categorizes responses with machine learning so that I can get a quick pulse check.

Here’s what I love about Sprig:

  • The UX is clean and simple, consumer-grade, and they have 75 templates which makes getting started so easy
  • It’s incredibly fast to source participants and launch a survey or concept test
  • As a dashboard junkie, I love watching the results and AI-driven insights roll in in real-time, even, and especially, when the feedback is harsh!
  • We actually almost stopped publishing this newsletter after edition #11 until we ran a Sprig Survey and discovered that 95% of you enjoyed reading it…so you can thank Sprig for the Weekly Dose of Optimism!
Feb 16, 202334:38
Anton Teaches Packy AI | E6 | Stable Attribution

Anton Teaches Packy AI | E6 | Stable Attribution

Packy an Anton discuss Chroma's (Anton's company) launch of Stable Attribution

Stable Attribution is a tool that let's anyone find the humans behind AI generated images. Given any image generated by Stable Diffusion, Stable Attribution is able to identify the images in the model's training set which most contributed to the generated image.   Packy and Anton discuss the development of Stable Attribution, how to understand the data underlying these sophisticated AI models, and the implications of attribution for creators and artists.

Feb 10, 202349:30
Not Boring Founders: Sam Levin, Melonfrost

Not Boring Founders: Sam Levin, Melonfrost

Sam Levin is the co-founder and CEO of Melonfrost. Melonfrost is using the power of evolution and machine learning to launch the next generation of microbes that will revolutionize the fields of therapeutics, biomaterials, food, and agriculture. You'll learn more about what exactly that means in this conversation between Packy and Sam.  

Melonfrost, a Not Boring Capital portfolio company, recently announced its latest round of fundraising -- a $7M seed round led by  Refactor Capital and Alexandria Venture Investments. Forbes did an awesome write up on the company and the round here. The company is one of the most ambitious and complex in the entire Not Boring portfolio, and is the exact type of company we are proud to back.

Feb 02, 202348:07
Not Boring Founders: Andy Chatham, Dimo

Not Boring Founders: Andy Chatham, Dimo

Andy Chatham is the CEO and co-founder of Dimo. Dimo's mission is to be the driving force behind the future of mobility: a future where data shapes infrastructure, emissions are lower, roads are safer, and life behind the wheel is—well, better. 

DIMO helps you get more from driving. Save money. Learn how to better take care of your car. And, contribute to a future where driving apps work for vehicle owners, not the companies that build them—just by sharing your data. 

DIMO is the people-powered movement behind the next generation of mobility services. By connecting drivers and their data with developers and manufacturers, we’re building the largest, most useful IoT network of user-owned devices—starting with cars. 


LINKS:  

Not Boring Dimo Discount: code NOTBORING on https://shop.dimo.zone/  

"Every car has been hacked":  https://samcurry.net/web-hackers-vs-the-auto-industry/  

The Soking Tires Podcast: https://open.spotify.com/episode/5jGw9uGNXSKMQzSIDTSh6t?si=d077ce27c6474e15


SPONSORED BY CAUSAL: Many of us rely on Excel, and we couldn’t imagine a world without it. Excel lets us quickly crunch numbers, build financial forecasts and model out scenarios to make better decisions.  But modelling in Excel and G-Sheets comes with its challenges: manual data dumps, #REFs, untraceable errors, and a lack of data protection create a constant stream of manual work, stress and a lack of confidence in the work you just did — **and that’s where Causal comes in.**  

Causal is a better way for working with numbers. It's like Excel minus the arcane formulas (no more Sheet1!$E$4 or VLOOKUPs), plus effortless modelling, live data integrations (accounting systems, CRMs, etc.), and beautiful interactive dashboards.  And given current market conditions, every startup needs a solid financial model to steer the ship. I've worked with the Causal team to create the Startup Suite — a set of 4 template models for early stage companies. It includes your revenue model, hiring plan, P&L and runway projection: the basics for any startup to keep an eye on the finances and plan for the future.  If you’re a startup founder, early-stage employee or just a lover of all things data, you’ll love Causal.

Jan 26, 202352:10
Not Boring Founders: Michael Kelly, Open Forest Protocol.

Not Boring Founders: Michael Kelly, Open Forest Protocol.

Michael Kelly is the co-founder of Open Forest Protocol.   

Open Forest Protocol (OFP) is a scalable open platform that allows forest projects of any size, from around world, to Measure, Report, and Verify (MRV) their forestation data.  Through OFP, individuals, communities, NGOs, entrepreneurs, and governments are able to create transparent, immutable, proof-of-impact data that is comprehensively verified by a network of independent experts.  OFP is creating the foundation for more inclusive, scalable, and data-backed financing mechanisms for nature-based climate solutions.  

SPONSORED BY CAUSAL: Many of us rely on Excel, and we couldn’t imagine a world without it. Excel lets us quickly crunch numbers, build financial forecasts and model out scenarios to make better decisions.  But modelling in Excel and G-Sheets comes with its challenges: manual data dumps, #REFs, untraceable errors, and a lack of data protection create a constant stream of manual work, stress and a lack of confidence in the work you just did — and that’s where Causal comes in.

Causal is a better way for working with numbers. It's like Excel minus the arcane formulas (no more Sheet1!$E$4 or VLOOKUPs), plus effortless modelling, live data integrations (accounting systems, CRMs, etc.), and beautiful interactive dashboards.  And given current market conditions, every startup needs a solid financial model to steer the ship. I've worked with the Causal team to create the Startup Suite — a set of 4 template models for early stage companies. It includes your revenue model, hiring plan, P&L and runway projection: the basics for any startup to keep an eye on the finances and plan for the future.  If you’re a startup founder, early-stage employee or just a lover of all things data, you’ll love Causal.

Try Causal for free at the special Not Boring link.

Jan 19, 202353:08
Not Boring Founders: Nicholas Chadwick, Mission Zero Technologies

Not Boring Founders: Nicholas Chadwick, Mission Zero Technologies

Nicholas Chadwick is the founder and CEO of Mission Zero Technologies. MZT is developing direct air capture (DAC) technology that will recover high-purity CO2 from the air while incurring only a fraction of the costs and energy it takes to do so today.  Frontier is a recipient of an advanced market commitment grant from Frontier, the effort from companies like Stripe, Shopify, Meta, and Microsoft to ensure there is a market for carbon removal credits.


This podcast is sponsored by Causal:

Many of us rely on Excel, and we couldn’t imagine a world without it. Excel lets us quickly crunch numbers, build financial forecasts and model out scenarios to make better decisions.

But modelling in Excel and G-Sheets comes with its challenges: manual data dumps, #REFs, untraceable errors, and a lack of data protection create a constant stream of manual work, stress and a lack of confidence in the work you just did — and that’s where Causal comes in.

Causal is a better way for working with numbers. It's like Excel minus the arcane formulas (no more Sheet1!$E$4 or VLOOKUPs), plus effortless modelling, live data integrations (accounting systems, CRMs, etc.), and beautiful interactive dashboards.

And given current market conditions, every startup needs a solid financial model to steer the ship. I've worked with the Causal team to create the Startup Suite — a set of 4 template models for early stage companies. It includes your revenue model, hiring plan, P&L and runway projection: the basics for any startup to keep an eye on the finances and plan for the future.

If you’re a startup founder, early-stage employee or just a lover of all things data, you’ll love Causal.  Use the Startup Suite as a starting point, or sign up for the product for free. The links are in the description!



Jan 12, 202354:09
Not Boring Founders: Exponential

Not Boring Founders: Exponential

Exponential makes it easy to discover, assess and invest in liquidity pools across chains. It wants to be the Coinbase of DeFi. We were joined by the companies three founders: Driss Benamour, Mehdi Lebbar, and Greg Jizmagian to discuss the current crypto market, Exponential's risk-first approach, and how to asses a digital risk-asset.


You can learn more at exponential.fi. You can also watch the full video version of this conversation on our Youtube channel @notboringmedia.

Dec 20, 202244:16
Blank Page

Blank Page

LINK to essay

Every new year is a blank page, a chance to start fresh with new ideas and new sources and new energy. Of course, January 1st isn’t actually any more different from December 31st than December 31st was from December 30th. But the collective time we all spend away from the daily routine during the holidays feels like a reset. And we’ve all tacitly agreed that the new year is a different thing than the old year. So it’s close enough to actually different.

This particular upcoming new year feels even more different, like a decadal reset.

Markets have crashed (optimistically) or are in the process of crashing (realistically). The wave of momentum that the tech industry has been riding since the early 2010s has crashed (optimistically) or is in the process of crashing (realistically).

The past few years have been chaotic and weird, and it came to a boiling point in 2022. The things that made sense a couple of years ago, the sure things, don’t make as much sense, are no longer sure. You might be experiencing the weird as a general vibe or very specifically in your life and career.


This post was sponsored by Masterworks. Learn more.

Dec 19, 202216:53
Four Seasons Total Tech

Four Seasons Total Tech

Audio Essay: Four Seasons Total Tech


Link to full essay: https://www.notboring.co/p/four-seasons-total-tech


Packy analogizes the Gartner Hype Cycle to the four seasons, to explain why some technology winters feel so long and cold while all summers feel pretty much the same. We're coming out of a many decades long winter for a bunch of frontier technology spaces (AI, Space, Nuclear, etc) seemingly all at once -- it's still spring, but Packy predicts that the we're about to enter a long, hot summer.


Today’s Not Boring is brought to you by… Oceans

Oceans matches busy executives and high-growth teams with top EA+ candidates from global talent pools. Oceans recruits, vets, trains, and employs top talent and you get a high-quality, reliable EA+ for a fraction of the cost!

Dec 05, 202224:21
Anton Teaches Packy AI | E3 | The First AI Winter

Anton Teaches Packy AI | E3 | The First AI Winter

Packy and Anton breakdown one of the early, foundational artifical intelligence papers, "A logical calculus of the ideas immanent in nervous activity," which was first published in 1943. The researchers, Warren S. McCulloch and Walter Pitts, were trying to understand how the brain could produce such complex patterns by using basic, connected cells. Their work was foundational in understanding neurons, and l introduced the concept of the neural network which has since become a key concept in artificial intelligence. This was the oldest paper that Anton and Packy have discussed, and its naturally age led to a lengthy conversation on the history of artificial intelligence. That history -- like the history of many technological fields -- is spotted with long winters, golden ages, broken timeline promises, and sudden developments. Today, it seems, we may be in the middle of a golden age for artificial intelligence.   

LINKS:

Youtube Link: https://youtu.be/MpBdVJEx2Aw

A logical calculus of the ideas immanent in nervous activity: https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~./epxing/Class/10715/reading/McCulloch.and.Pitts.pdf

History of the First AI Winter: https://towardsdatascience.com/history-of-the-first-ai-winter-6f8c2186f80b

AI Winter: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AI_winter#The_abandonment_of_connectionism_in_1969

Bitter Lesson: http://www.incompleteideas.net/IncIdeas/BitterLesson.html

Chroma: https://www.trychroma.com/

Dec 05, 202201:19:44
Decentralization
Nov 27, 202201:03:50
Anton Teaches Packy AI | Ep 2 | Chinchilla

Anton Teaches Packy AI | Ep 2 | Chinchilla

We're back! In Episode 2, Anton Teaches Packy about Deepmind's March 2022 paper, Training Compute-Optimal Large Language Models, or as it's more commonly known, Chinchilla.  Prior to Chinchilla, the best way to improve the performance of LLMs was thought to be by scaling up the size of the model. As a result, the largest models now have over 500 billion parameters. But there are only so many GPUs in the world, and throwing compute at the problem is expensive and energy intensive. In this paper, Deepmind found that the optimal way to scale an LLM is actually by scaling size (parameters) and training (data) proportionally.  Given the race for size, today's models are plenty big but need a lot more data.   

In this conversation, we go deep on the paper itself, but we also zoom out to talk about the politics of AI, when AGI is going to hit, where to get more data, and why AI won't take our jobs. This one gets a lot more philosophical than our first episode as we explore the implications of Chinchilla and LLMs more generally.  If you enjoyed this conversation, subscribe for more. We're going to try to release one episode per week, and we want to make this the best way to get a deeper understanding of the mind-blowing progress happening in AI and what it means for everything we do as humans.  

LINKS: Training Compute-Optimal Large Language Models: https://arxiv.org/abs/2203.15556 

chinchilla's wild implications: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/6Fpvc... 

Scaling Laws for Neural Language Models (Kaplan et al): https://arxiv.org/abs/2001.08361

Nov 25, 202201:02:45
Anton Teaches Packy AI | E1
Nov 07, 202201:08:47
Not Boring Founders: Joe Connor, Odyssey

Not Boring Founders: Joe Connor, Odyssey

Odyssey (formerly Agora) fully believes in the power of technology to provide families with opportunity to choose the educational environment and services that help them best meet their unique learning needs.  In order to help parents do that, we have partnered with the best K-12 providers and vendors in order to create a robust marketplace for our families.


Joe Connor is the founder and CEO of Odyssey, and brings with him years of experience in education & law. Packy and Joe have been friends for 23 years, so it was especially special to have Joe come on the podcast to talk about his work at Odyssey.


This episode was sponsored by Hyper. Hyper is a different kind of startup accelerator back by a16z and Sequoia Capital. Hyper supports participating startups with access to deep networks, media presence, and now hands-on support from unicorn founders.  You can learn more about Hyper and apply here. Tell them Not Boring sent you!

Nov 01, 202255:55
Capital & Taste

Capital & Taste

Capital & Taste audio essay.


Capital is banking built for founders. If that sounds like you, sign up for a Capital account today, whether you’re just raising your first million or doing millions in ARR.


Capital expands Party Round’s offering from fundraising to a full suite of financial services focused on startups. Today, that’s banking – so you can hold, spend, and send the money you’ve raised with their flagship fundraising tool (fka Party Round). In the future, it might be treasury management, payroll, credit, software, and services. Capital is a big name for a small company. It hints at big ambitions.

There’s a very long way between here and there, and myriad well-funded competitors lurking on the path, but if Capital lives up to its name, it will be because of its taste.

Oct 31, 202236:55
Formic: Automating Abundance

Formic: Automating Abundance

Formic delivers Robots by the Hour to manufacturers. It’s making small and medium American businesses stronger, fighting inflation, and creating abundance

Link to full essay here.

--------------------------

The goal is abundance.

We want more and better things, more cheaply. We want those things to be made closer to home. We want less fragile supply chains, so that those things are always available when we need them. We want more good jobs, and more time unlocked to maximize our human potential.

Over the long-term, there are a lot of things we can do to create abundance. Generate clean, cheap, renewable electricity. Improve the education system. Build more houses. Change laws.

In the immediate term, the answer is robots.

Formic is creating the largest workforce of robots in the country -- and delivering Robots by the Hour to its customers, so that they can increase productivity and generate abundance.

Oct 24, 202246:03
Not Boring Founders: John Andrew Entwistle

Not Boring Founders: John Andrew Entwistle

John Andrew Entwistle is the founder and CEO of Wander. Wander is a fully-integrated platform for experiencing magnificent short-term rental homes. Wander owns the customer experience end-to-end: the homes, the booking platform, and the value-added services. Over 100,000 people have joined the Wander waitlist. In this episode, John Andrew announces, for the first time, Wander's newest product: Wander Atlas - the world's first and only vacation rental REIT. Through Atlas, you can earn passive income, diversify your portfolio, and own a piece of Wander's magical network of homes. 

Oct 20, 202241:27
Social vs. Science Experiments

Social vs. Science Experiments

Social vs. Science Experiments: We talk a lot about progress here in Not Boring. Progress can be difficult and messy and winding, and importantly, progress moves at different speeds and follows different paths for different kinds of products. Today’s essay is my thinking on two types: science experiments and social experiments.

Successful science experiment products clearly move the world forward; social experiment products are less obviously beneficial and messier in the short-run, but I think they’re every bit as important in the long run, especially in combination with science experiment products.


Sponsored by Secureframe: Secureframe is the leading, all-in-one platform for security and privacy compliance. Secureframe makes it fast and easy to get and stay compliant so you can focus on what matters: Scaling your business, customers, and revenue.

With Secureframe, hypergrowth organizations can:

  • Get SOC 2 audit ready in weeks, not months
  • Stay compliant with the latest regulations
  • Scale compliance with your business to meet ISO 27001, GDPR, HIPAA, PCI, and other requirements

Plus, Secureframe helps sales teams respond to RFPs and security questionnaires quickly and easily with AI so they can close more deals, faster.

Click here to set up a demo. Mention “Not Boring” during your demo to get 20% off your first year of Secureframe. Promotion available through October 31, 2022.

Oct 10, 202219:28
How Do I Teach These Kids?!

How Do I Teach These Kids?!

In "How Do I Teach These Kids?!" Packy confronts the challenge of how to properly educate his two young children in a rapidly evolving world.


"Dev and Maya get a blank educational slate to start with. Puja and I are responsible for figuring out how to give them the best education possible, one that helps them love learning, have fun, and get prepared for life beyond school. I don’t think the answer is as simple as “Get them into the best schools possible.” I think it’s a lot more complicated than that, and will only get more complicated as things move faster.

This isn’t meant to be a complete survey and analysis of the modern educational system, it’s more of an exploration of how I’m thinking about it personally in the very specific context of Dev and Maya’s education. What’s the best way to prepare my two kids?"

Oct 03, 202228:13
Tegus: The Outsiders

Tegus: The Outsiders

Tegus is building the modern investment research platform for fundamental private and public market investors, starting with a novel twist on the classic expert call model, and expanding into adjacent opportunities by listening intently to customers.

This audio essay covers:

  • The Course to Tegus
  • Modernizing Investment Research
  • The Tegus Business Model
  • The Outsiders: Fundraising, Buybacks, and Acquisitions

Read the full newsletter here

Sep 29, 202232:37
Not Boring Founders: Peter Johnston, Polywork

Not Boring Founders: Peter Johnston, Polywork

Peter Johnston is the founder of Polywork.

Polywork is a place to discover opportunities to collaborate with other professionals. Existing networks like LinkedIn focus on connecting us to 9-5 opportunities — but where do you go to find opportunities to speak on podcasts? Or discover partners for your side project? Check out who at Google or Netflix is open to angel investing or starting a company? If LinkedIn is built for the 9-5 generation, Polywork is built for the collaboration generation.

It’s been in private beta for just over a year, but this week it publicly launched for everyone, was #1 on Product Hunt, and announced its Series B funding. So what’s its magic?

Polywork understands that as professionals, our list of job titles don’t do a good job of telling our full stories. Furthermore, it’s purpose built for professionals who want to connect with one another beyond their 9-5. There’s a growing network of amazing professionals from places like Figma, Snapchat, and Github all sharing what they want to do — making it incredibly easy to collaborate with anyone, on anything.

Sep 27, 202201:13:40
The Enchanted Notebook

The Enchanted Notebook

The Enchanted Notebook: on the real and growing power of writing down the future you want to see exist. In the context of a recent Lex Fridman and Ray Kurzweil podcast conversation, Packy explores where we are with AI today and what the future may hold.


This essay and audio essay were sponsored by Secureframe. If you're starting a software company or getting up-to-speed on enterprise, schedule a demo with Secureframe.


Sep 26, 202213:45
Indistinguishable from Magic
Sep 19, 202224:60
Not Boring Founders: Mike Saunders, Captain

Not Boring Founders: Mike Saunders, Captain

Mike Saunders is the co-founder and CEO of Captain. Captain powers restaurants and their communities through a mix of web2 and web3 technologies. Mike is an experienced food delivery entrepreneur, having previously started campusfood.com, which subsequently sold to Grub Hub where Mike served as an exec for a number of years. Captain, in many ways, is a response to many of the problems that Mike contributed to creating while building web2 food delivery platforms. One of Captain's first products is Supper Club: the digital wallet for the future of dining. Customers can find restaurants and earn rewards through fun games. In the process, restaurants gain access to a community of loyal customers. Food delivery is a massive industry and increasingly dominated by a handful of middlemen that extract a high-take rate, disconnect restaurants from customers, and abstract away customer relationships. Captain is an attempt to empower restaurants to creatively engage with their community of customers.

Aug 16, 202235:19
Not Boring Founders: Eli Wachs & Alex Grinman, Footprint

Not Boring Founders: Eli Wachs & Alex Grinman, Footprint

Eli Wachs & Alex Grinman are the co-founders of Footprint. Footprint's mission is to bring back trust on the internet. The company wants to put people in control of their identity while solving KYC, IDV, and PII storage problems for enterprises. Footprint just announced a $6M Seed Round led by Index Ventures.

Aug 05, 202247:08
Not Boring Founders: Brandon Arvanaghi, Meow

Not Boring Founders: Brandon Arvanaghi, Meow

Brandon Arvanaghi is the co-founder and CEO of Meow. Meow is a startup that opens corporate treasurers up to crypto markets. This is Brandon's second time on the podcast -- and he's on to discuss raising Meow's Series A & navigating challenging times in the crypto markets.

Jul 26, 202229:32
Amplified Tribalism

Amplified Tribalism

Amplified Tribalism: Over the past few months, I’ve noticed a vibe shift online: the conversation seems to be getting more negative, aggressive, and polarized. Today’s piece is an attempt to unpack why so many people are talking past each other, why it’s so unproductive, and what to do about it. It’s not as upbeat as a lot of Not Boring pieces, but I think addressing this issue is crucial to unlocking progress.


Sponsored by Athletic Greens. Athletic Green's AG1 is foundational nutrition you can count on. Learn more at athleticgreens.com/notboring and when you use our link get a free 1 year supply of Vitamin D + 5 free AG1 travel packs.

Jul 25, 202228:32
Circle & USDC: Building a Stable Platform

Circle & USDC: Building a Stable Platform

Sponsored Deep Dive on Circle & USDC. In one of our longest essays yet, we tackle the following topics:

  • What are stablecoins?
  • How do stablecoin issuers generate revenue?
  • Why are stablecoins a valuable primitive?
  • How are USDC and Circle a platform?
  • What is Circle’s competitive advantage?
  • What would a new financial system built on Circle’s rails look like?

This essay is sponsored by Circle. To learn more about how we decide to do deep-dives, checkout our policy here.

Jul 21, 202201:01:40
Intertwining Threads

Intertwining Threads

Monday Essay -- "Intertwining Threads": Imagining the wild things that might happen when we mix and remix new technologies.


Sponsored by Athletic Greens. Athletic Green's AG1 is foundational nutrition you can count on. Learn more at athleticgreens.com/notboring and when you use our link get a free 1 year supply of Vitamin D + 5 free AG1 travel packs. 

Jul 18, 202213:35
Not Boring Founders: Thomas McLeod, Arkive

Not Boring Founders: Thomas McLeod, Arkive

Thomas McLeod is the Founder and Executive Director of Arkive. Arkive is redefining culture by building the first-ever decentralized physical museum. Its mission is to curate, own, and create culture. Its community helps shape the future, by curating the past -- members vote on what items to acquire, how to display them, and much more. The first item Arkive acquired was the patent to ENIAC -- the first computer. Tom is a 5x founder, having also previously created over a dozen mobile apps and starting storage company Omni. 


SPONSOR -- Tegus


This episode is sponsored by Tegus, the leading modern research platform for institutional investors. Tegus is the most comprehensive database of expert call interviews with former executives, customers, competitors, and industry experts.


It's a a tech-first platform that makes it easy to surface and search SEC filings and earning transcripts. Plus you can get expert calls at a fraction of the typical cost. It has unmatched info on public and private company.


Check it out today: https://www.tegus.com/trial/notboring

Jul 15, 202249:34
Not Boring Founders: Alok Tayi, Vibe Bio

Not Boring Founders: Alok Tayi, Vibe Bio

Alok Tayi is the founder and CEO of Vibe Bio. Vibe Bio is a community of patients, scientists, and partners committed to identifying, funding and developing promising treatments to rare diseases and empowering patient communities with unprecedented ownership over the process. Packy and Alok discuss how rare diseases can find cures, the biotech industry today, and why Vibe is built on web3 rails.


Sponsor

Season 2 of Not Boring Founders is sponsored by FTX US. You may know FTX because of its innovations in crypto derivatives or its ultra-rich & altruistic founder, SBF -- but what you may not know is that the FTX App is available in the US for all crypto traders...and that it's the cheapest exchange out there, with no minimum, ACH, or withdrawal fees. The company is moving fast and now offers crypto trading (Bitcoin, Eth, Sol, Doge, etc) and supports NFTs -- and is releasing new products seemingly every month. Download the FTX App today, invest $10 and get a free coin from FTX in exchange. Use this download link and enter code "notboring" when you sign up to redeem the offer.

Jul 01, 202244:17
Not Boring Founders: Samiur Rahman, Heyday

Not Boring Founders: Samiur Rahman, Heyday

Samiur Rahman is the co-founder and CEO of Heyday. Heyday is a browser extension that automatically saves web pages you visit and pulls in content from your apps. It uses AI to resurface that content alongside Google search results, overlay it on articles, and curate it into a knowledge base that fills itself. Samiur joins the show to discuss some big news, building great products, and Heyday's plans for the next few months.


Sponsor

Season 2 of Not Boring Founders is sponsored by FTX US. You may know FTX because of its innovations in crypto derivatives or its ultra-rich & altruistic founder, SBF -- but what you may not know is that the FTX App is available in the US for all crypto traders...and that it's the cheapest exchange out there, with no minimum, ACH, or withdrawal fees. The company is moving fast and now offers crypto trading (Bitcoin, Eth, Sol, Doge, etc) and supports NFTs -- and is releasing new products seemingly every month. Download the FTX App today, invest $10 and get a free coin from FTX in exchange. Use this download link and enter code "notboring" when you sign up to redeem the offer.

Jun 28, 202233:39
Not Boring Founders: Alexa Grabell, Pocus (Pt. II)

Not Boring Founders: Alexa Grabell, Pocus (Pt. II)

Alexa Grabell is the co-founder and CEO of Pocus. Pocus is a Product-Led Sales platform that helps go-to-market teams use data to improve customer acquisition, conversion, and expansion - without relying on engineers. This is Alexa's second time on Not Boring Founders and she joins us to discuss some big news, what Pocus has been up to for the last 8 months, and how she's approaching operating Pocus in an uncertain macro environment.


Sponsor

Season 2 of Not Boring Founders is sponsored by FTX US. You may know FTX because of its innovations in crypto derivatives or its ultra-rich & altruistic founder, SBF -- but what you may not know is that the FTX App is available in the US for all crypto traders...and that it's the cheapest exchange out there, with no minimum, ACH, or withdrawal fees. The company is moving fast and now offers crypto trading (Bitcoin, Eth, Sol, Doge, etc) and supports NFTs -- and is releasing new products seemingly every month. Download the FTX App today, invest $10 and get a free coin from FTX in exchange. Use this download link and enter code "notboring" when you sign up to redeem the offer.

Jun 24, 202234:06
Not Boring Founders: Henry Ward, Carta

Not Boring Founders: Henry Ward, Carta

Henry Ward is the co-founder and CEO of Carta. Carta helps companies and investors manage their cap tables, valuations, investments, and equity plans. Packy previously described Henry as a "Worldbuilder" - an entrepreneur who can see something non-obvious about the future, timestamp their prediction, and then execute against that prediction (sometimes for over a decade) until they end of building something really, really important. They address the accuracy of that title, the current state of the market, N-of-1 markets, and much more. 


Sponsor

Season 2 of Not Boring Founders is sponsored by FTX US. You may know FTX because of its innovations in crypto derivatives or its ultra-rich & altruistic founder, SBF -- but what you may not know is that the FTX App is available in the US for all crypto traders...and that it's the cheapest exchange out there, with no minimum, ACH, or withdrawal fees. The company is moving fast and now offers crypto trading (Bitcoin, Eth, Sol, Doge, etc) and supports NFTs -- and is releasing new products seemingly every month. Download the FTX App today, invest $10 and get a free coin from FTX in exchange. Use this download link and enter code "notboring" when you sign up to redeem the offer.


Jun 22, 202237:03
Not Boring Founders: Justin & J.P. Alanís

Not Boring Founders: Justin & J.P. Alanís

Justin & J.P. Alanís are the co-founders of StoryDAO. Story DAO is a new kind of production studio where individuals have the opportunity to collaborate with established Hollywood writers and artists to create and co-own the next generation of culturally relevant story franchises. It's a radical experiment in community world-building and is changing the way franchise intellectual property is created and owned, bridging the gap between Hollywood and the metaverse.

Sponsor

Season 2 of Not Boring Founders is sponsored by FTX US. You may know FTX because of its innovations in crypto derivatives or its ultra-rich & altruistic founder, SBF -- but what you may not know is that the FTX App is available in the US for all crypto traders...and that it's the cheapest exchange out there, with no minimum, ACH, or withdrawal fees. The company is moving fast and now offers crypto trading (Bitcoin, Eth, Sol, Doge, etc) and supports NFTs -- and is releasing new products seemingly every month. Download the FTX App today, invest $10 and get a free coin from FTX in exchange. Use this download link and enter code "notboring" when you sign up to redeem the offer.

Jun 17, 202248:39
Not Boring Founders: Will Manidis, ScienceIO

Not Boring Founders: Will Manidis, ScienceIO

Will Manidis is the co-founder and CEO of ScienceIO. ScienceIO's mission is to make all healthcare data computable. It's products enable real-time transformation of unstructured healthcare data into structured data that can be used for search & analysis. If Will and team are successful, he envisions a world in which healthcare is more connected, transparent and equitable.   Packy and Will go deep on healthcare, company building, and a variety of tangentially related topics, including NLPs for biblical text, the supply chain crisis, and building companies that matter.


Sponsor

Season 2 of Not Boring Founders is sponsored by FTX US. You may know FTX because of its innovations in crypto derivatives or its ultra-rich & altruistic founder, SBF -- but what you may not know is that the FTX App is available in the US for all crypto traders...and that it's the cheapest exchange out there, with no minimum, ACH, or withdrawal fees. The company is moving fast and now offers crypto trading (Bitcoin, Eth, Sol, Doge, etc) and supports NFTs -- and is releasing new products seemingly every month. Download the FTX App today, invest $10 and get a free coin from FTX in exchange. Use this download link and enter code "notboring" when you sign up to redeem the offer.

Jun 14, 202233:49
Not Boring Founders: Humberto Ayres Pereira

Not Boring Founders: Humberto Ayres Pereira

Humberto Ayres Pereira is the co-founder and CEO of Rows. Rows is the spreadsheet with superpowers. With Rows, you can esily create and share powerful, interactive models with a passionate community of other spreadsheet users. It's taking on the likes of Microsoft & Google head on, and doing so by focusing on its interactivity and sharing functionality. In this conversation, Packy and Humberto discuss tactics for taking on incumbents, the power of spreadsheets, and startup culture in Portugal.


Sponsor

Season 2 of Not Boring Founders is sponsored by FTX US. You may know FTX because of its innovations in crypto derivatives or its ultra-rich & altruistic founder, SBF -- but what you may not know is that the FTX App is available in the US for all crypto traders...and that it's the cheapest exchange out there, with no minimum, ACH, or withdrawal fees. The company is moving fast and now offers crypto trading (Bitcoin, Eth, Sol, Doge, etc) and supports NFTs -- and is releasing new products seemingly every month. Download the FTX App today, invest $10 and get a free coin from FTX in exchange. Use this download link and enter code "notboring" when you sign up to redeem the offer.

Jun 10, 202247:05
Not Boring Founders: Paul Kromidas & Woods Buckley, Summer

Not Boring Founders: Paul Kromidas & Woods Buckley, Summer

Paul Kromidas and Woods Buckley are the founders of Summer. Summer is re-imaging second home ownership -- with a unique rent-to-own model, members get the benefit of homeownership without the headache of the purchasing process, furnishing, and rental management. In this conversation, they discuss Summer's ten year vision, why people do & don't buy homes, wealth creation, and creating a great customer experience. Excitingly, Summer officially launched today June 7th, 2022 -- and you can go check them out at gosummer.com to learn more.


Sponsor

Season 2 of Not Boring Founders is sponsored by FTX US. You may know FTX because of its innovations in crypto derivatives or its ultra-rich & altruistic founder, SBF -- but what you may not know is that the FTX App is available in the US for all crypto traders...and that it's the cheapest exchange out there, with no minimum, ACH, or withdrawal fees. The company is moving fast and now offers crypto trading (Bitcoin, Eth, Sol, Doge, etc) and supports NFTs -- and is releasing new products seemingly every month. Download the FTX App today, invest $10 and get a free coin from FTX in exchange. Use this download link and enter code "notboring" when you sign up to redeem the offer.

Jun 07, 202233:41
Not Boring Founders: SAFA + Valet Jones, Tally Labs

Not Boring Founders: SAFA + Valet Jones, Tally Labs

Tally Labs is a software-enabled web3 media business blurring the lines between community and creators. Packy is joined by its two pseudonymous founds, SAFA and Valet Jones. Tally Labs started as a media business built around the Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT known as Jenkins the Valet -- and today the team is working on a book with Neil Strauss, a series of podcasts, and partnerships all built around that character. But one level up, Tally is a decentralized storytelling company and its building the necessary tools, like Writer's Room, to make that possible. 


Sponsor

Season 2 of Not Boring Founders is sponsored by FTX US. You may know FTX because of its innovations in crypto derivatives or its ultra-rich & altruistic founder, SBF -- but what you may not know is that the FTX App is available in the US for all crypto traders...and that it's the cheapest exchange out there, with no minimum, ACH, or withdrawal fees. The company is moving fast and now offers crypto trading (Bitcoin, Eth, Sol, Doge, etc) and supports NFTs -- and is releasing new products seemingly every month. Download the FTX App today, invest $10 and get a free coin from FTX in exchange. Use this download link and enter code "notboring" when you sign up to redeem the offer.


Jun 01, 202248:04
Not Boring Founders: Amjad Masad, Replit

Not Boring Founders: Amjad Masad, Replit

Amjad Masad is the co-founder and CEO of Replit. Replit's mission is to bring the next billion software creators online. The company believes that the ability to write code should be as ubiquitous as the ability to write essays -- and it wants to be the first place that anyone writes a line of code.

In this wide-ranging, long-form conversation Amjad tells us of his roots in Jordan, how he first started making money with software, and why he think's there is still alpha in being authentic. His story is central to the story of Replit.

In Packy's Deep Dive on Replit in December of 2021, he called that "Replit will be a $100B company" and after listening to today's conversation with Amjad, it's hard to not at least root for that.

Sponsor

Season 2 of Not Boring Founders is sponsored by FTX US. You may know FTX because of its innovations in crypto derivatives or its ultra-rich & altruistic founder, SBF -- but what you may not know is that the FTX App is available in the US for all crypto traders...and that it's the cheapest exchange out there, with no minimum, ACH, or withdrawal fees. The company is moving fast and now offers crypto trading (Bitcoin, Eth, Sol, Doge, etc) and supports NFTs -- and is releasing new products seemingly every month. Download the FTX App today, invest $10 and get a free coin from FTX in exchange. Use this download link and enter code "notboring" when you sign up to redeem the offer.

May 25, 202201:41:44