Good morning. March Madness kicks off on Thursday which means it’s time to get started on your bracket. I’ll be rooting for my Syracuse Orange. Who do you have winning it all? I need some opinions here.
If you’re reading this but haven’t subscribed, make sure to do so here.
🏡Some Housekeeping
I’ve noticed these emails often get eaten up by Google’s dreaded filtering algorithm and end up in tabs which shall not be named. If you’re one of these unlucky folks who sometimes miss Crashing Up landing in your inbox every Monday, here are some actions you can take to fix that:
Reply to this email with “yes.” This will teach the algo that this is an email you want to receive.
Follow the image below to click into the circled tab, select emails from me and drag them into your primary. You’ll then be asked if you want to do this for future messages. Click “yes”.
Let’s get into it. Here’s a weekly collection of things that I’ve been learning from or enjoying recently.
📕What I’ve Been Reading:
With states now free to legalize sports betting how they see fit, the sports betting market has ballooned. Hundreds of companies and casino operators are looking to cash in on the action (literally) but very few are taking the SimpleBet angle. SimpleBet is focused primarily on micro-betting, with a goal of turning every play of the game into a betting opportunity. In The Company Building The Future of US Sports Betting, Joe Pompliano breaks down the idea of micro-betting, SimpleBet’s most recent capital raise, and the early success of its partnership with FanDuel.
📺What I’ve Been Listening To:
Over the weekend, Naval Ravikant released a collection of all of his podcast episodes on happiness. Happiness is a complicated subject. It’s a driving motivator in nearly every decision we make and is the topic of one of the hardest universal questions to answer: How do I stay happy?
This episode dives deep into the practical philosophy of happiness, putting its sources, truths, and general existence under a microscope for careful examination. It’s intense, honest, and thought-provoking. If you’re looking for another take on it, here’s what my mom had to say:
Wish she said this about my podcast…
🧵By a Thread
Here are three amazing Twitter threads I came across in the past few weeks.
Elon Musk & Jeff Bezos’ Unique Approaches to Space Exploration (featuring a gusty cold call from Musk to rocket science expert Jim Cantrell)
In 2004, Bezos and Musk met up to discuss their space exploration endeavors. SpaceX was a few years ahead of BlueOrigin, so Bezos began picking Musk’s brain. Musk was unimpressed by his progress and offered some candid, and honest advice, “Dude we tried that and it turned out to be really dumb, so don’t do the dumb thing we did.” According to Musk’s account, it was largely ignored.
Top Lessons Founders Wished They Knew Before They Started
Scroll through the replies here. Hundreds of founders from various industries sharing their pitfalls, so you don’t make the same mistakes. Don’t pull a Bezos, take note of what works and what doesn’t.
The Importance of First Principles Thinking
"First principles thinking" is a problem solving technique that requires you to examine the foundational truths of a problem and build upward. This lets you break down complex problems into their most basic elements.
🎉Surprise and Delight
The average person is exposed to 4,000 to 10,000 ads per day. The majority of these are ignored. In order to cut through the noise, the best marketers aim to surprise and delight their future and current customers. Whether through guerilla marketing, targeted outreach, or thoughtful creative, the brands that go above and beyond on details are often rewarded with our money and attention.
Consider the two examples above:
a) A local hairdresser’s business card encouraging customers to cut out their own hairstyle
b) Bumble’s socially distant bench, making it easy to safely date during the pandemic. It even includes a hand sanitizer pump.
These are both genius ways of using creative details to create memorable and personalized experiences. You probably won’t recall the 20 Subway ads you saw on your daily commute. (yeah, remember that timesuck?), but you’ll definitely remember the photo you took on the Bumble bench. Even better, these assets were built to be shared and discussed which adds an immeasurable amount of free social impressions and brand awareness.
🧰Tool of the Week:
I often talk about the importance of a proper content diet. In order to be physically healthy, you need to stay active and reduce your junk food consumption. The same goes for media consumption, but instead of working out your muscles, you need to exercise your brain. A great way to do this is through content creation. I have “Create > Consume” written on the whiteboard by my bed as a reminder to stay aware of what I’m putting into my mind.
The Creator Library is a free resource for digital creators to help them start, grow, and monetize their following. It covers everything from finding the right gear to building a team and even offers ways to combat the mental highs and lows that come with putting your work out to the world.
If you’ve been on the fence about sharing your work online, let this doc give you the push you need.
That’s all for this week. I’d really appreciate if you clicked one of the links below to share your thoughts on today’s edition. If you enjoyed it, I encourage you to share it with your favorite business minded friends.
Until next time,
Randy