Changes

Good Morning. Today’s National Plan for Vacation Day. Where’s the first place you’re headed once we’re able to travel again? Reply to this email and let me know.

It’s the Amalfi Coast for me.

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Today, I have some newsletter-related updates that I think you’ll want to tune into. But first, I’ll leave you with a few mind-twisting nuggets to kick off your week.

• On October 7th, 2020 Square purchased ~4,709 bitcoins at a cost average price of $50 million. At the time of writing, this position is now worth roughly $154 million.

• If you missed this week’s Friday Fuel, NBA Top Shot has been on a tear. As of 2:30pm EST, the marketplace has processed over $125,000 of GMV (gross merchant value) every 30 minutes. That’s on pace for $5 million in transactions per day.

• Mr. Beast’s newest crazy business idea: You can now pay $10 to have a photo sent to the moon.

✔️Important Updates

A few weeks ago, I listened to Tim Ferriss’s interview with Matthew McConaughey. The whole episode is gold, but I was moved by one story in particular.

McConaughey attended The University of Texas with the intention of becoming a lawyer, but after a chance encounter with a special book, he decided to pursue a career in filmmaking. There was only one thing standing in his way.

His father’s approval.

Matthew nervously called up his dad to deliver his big pitch and received a response that’s served as a guiding beacon throughout his prolific life.

“Don’t half-ass it…I’m saying if you’re going to do it, you better damn well go do it well and don’t half-ass it.”

This is a mantra that I’ve championed for years. If I decide to do something, I do it. I obsess over details and don’t settle for mediocrity. Recently though, I’ve felt the strain of consistently publishing while working a demanding full-time job. I haven’t been able to give this newsletter the full focus it deserves, but I refuse to half-ass it.

Eight months ago, I started Crashing Up as a way to stay busy during quarantine and continue to foster my writing habit. More than 65 issues and hundreds of subscribers later, I’m still working to deliver you interesting and actionable ideas each week.

Part of this process has been learning how to efficiently invest my time and effort to yield the greatest return. This has honestly been more challenging than the writing.

The other part has been learning about you. In eight months of publishing, I’ve been rewarded with a wide range of feedback. I’m finally starting to pick up on which topics spark curiosity and which can be left in the drafts.

A few points have become very clear:

• The response to a combination of punchy curation and unique ideas has been overwhelmingly positive.

• Newsletters aren’t meant to be long. Too many words and you risk losing your readers.

• The Friday Fuels get a lot of love. Ironically, these are the ones that stray farther from the tech realm and take less time to write.

With that being said, I’ve decided to make some adjustments to the current structure of the newsletter. The content will improve and will be delivered in a different format and cadence:

Starting on February 1st…

• I’ll be sending one email each week on Monday mornings.

• Every week I’ll either be writing a long-form blog post (what you have currently been receiving on Mondays) or recording a podcast interview with a guest thinker. The blog posts will live on my website, while the Crashing Up Podcast interviews can be accessed wherever you listen to podcasts. I’ll start each Monday email with a brief overview of my past week and links to any of my new work.

• The bulk of the newsletter will consist of what you currently know as Friday Fuel — a collection of the most interesting things I’ve read, listened to, or learned from in the past week.

This will eliminate any half-assedry, help me manage my time more effectively, and most importantly provide you with even better weekly content. It will also keep the emails shorter and let you pick what content to consume as I fight for your prized attention.

I encourage you to keep the feedback coming and to hold me accountable. If you see that my words aren’t being backed up by my actions, I welcome you to call me out on it.

Thanks for reading and I’ll see you on Monday,

Randy