Shiny Object Saturday - 1/21/2023

Nick Conn

Jan 21, 2023

Hi everyone,

Greetings from cold Kentucky.

Welcome back to Shiny Object Saturday.

I dig through the mud of the internet and find shiny objects, so you don’t have to get your hands dirty.

Here are my favorite diamonds of the week:

1. JP Morgan DD

Mike (Niche Twins) @NicheDown

😦😦😦 withfrank(dot)org sold for 175MM but turned out to be fraud. JP Morgan figured it out when they sent an email to 400,000 people on the email list and there was a 70% bounce rate 😂 Big Yikes.

Genevieve Roch-Decter, CFA @GRDecter

JP Morgan paid $175 million for a college financial aid site called "Frank" Turns out, the founder created 4 million fake customer accounts just before completing the sale. JP Morgan is shutting the website down.

Looks like even JP Morgan doesn’t know how to do proper due diligence. 😂

After that bounce rate was reported, I would love to be in the room.

2. Starting a Startup in a Bad Economy - Paul Graham

Paul Graham wrote an essay in 2008 that is great to look back on today.

Some would argue we’re in a recession, some argue we are not. Technical indicators say yes. The truth is, none of it matters if you’re a builder. PG proves that here.

The best tech companies in the world were founded during hard economic situations.

In 2008, PG gave the examples of Microsoft (1975) and Apple (1976). Decently big companies right?

He predicted this perfectly because the unicorns in 2008:

Airbnb (2008)
Square (2009)
Uber (2009)

and these are only some of the public companies.

3. YouTube Thumbnails

Dan Toomey @dhtoomey

i made YouTube thumbnails for mundane life events

🤣

4. Welcome Homes

Welcome Homes raises $29M — Image Credit: Welcome Homes

Digital Ocean is one of the top cloud tech companies in the world. Now their co-founders have set out on a new venture. Welcome Homes. They announced last week a Series A funding round that raised $29 million.

The goal is to help address the housing shortage and help offer more move-in-ready homes.

Digging into their website a bit, I love these houses. But they are quite expensive.