Munch.
Monday, woot woot. Left my car window open with a raging thunderstorm last night. Anybody have a good recommendation for how to soak up $15k in damages?
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🥄 Today's Spoonful
Alexis Ohanian peaces out from Initialized Capital.
You may remember Alexis as the guy who dropped out of Reddit (which he co-founded) and then urged for a black board member replacement. Michael Siebel has since taken the spot.
It looks like Alexis isn’t stopping there.
On Friday night, Ohanian announced he would also be leaving Initialized Capital, the investment firm he co-founded in 2011. The firm has raised four funds since its founding, and has made largely successful bets in companies like Codecademy and Instacart.
Alexis is reportedly dropping out to work on ‘pre-seed efforts’, although a comment form TechCrunch indicates that Ohanian will be working on “a new project that will support a generation of founders in tech and beyond.” Godspeed, good man. 🚀
Scotts Miracle-Gro just launched a $50M (!) VC fund.
Yes, Miracle-Gro — that mush your Dad uses to spruce up the lawn. 🌱 Everyone and anyone is starting their own VC these days.
The fertilizer giant, which has also become a big player in cannabis and hemp 🌿, launched a $50M corporate fund called 1868 Ventures.
Per their website: “We’re here for all growers.” 😏
Miracle-Gro is literally raising $50M for gardening ventures.
Note: the fund is launched in collaboration with Touchdown Ventures, which helps corporations manage their venture capital programs. The company is worth a scope.
Note note: is that Ernie from Sesame Street watering hemp!?
Chinese learning app Zuoyebang raised $750M. Yeah.
Seven. Hundred. Fifty. Million.
To be fair, it was the startup’s Series E, and the investment brings the company’s aggregate raise to just over $1.3B.
In all honesty, the hefty investment isn’t too much of a surprise given Asia’s surging edtech market and the sheer number of students that need academic resources like Zuoyebang every single day. For context, Zuoyebang has approximately 170 million active monthly users. 🤯
🥣 Cereal of the Day
It is what it is 👁️ 👄 👁️
I’ve been asked quite a bit if I know whether a DRFer started this trend on PH. Honestly, 🤷♂️. It did pretty well on the platform though, receiving the second-highest number of votes on Friday.
Let’s focus instead on another business making headlines on Product Hunt — ZELF.
While I’m not the biggest fan of black, purple, yellow, and green as a branded aesthetic, I do love ZELF’s mission: instant banking and money movement in messengers.
No apps. No installations. According to the founder, Elliot Goykhman, using ZELF is as simple as sending a message.
We’ve seen tons of companies explode into the messenger space — Spike and Hey are two immediate startups that come to mind, both vying to disrupt email by making it IM-based.
But ZELF’s value-prop (i.e. instant money management in one of the most-used apps on your phone) positions it uniquely in the world of FinTech. Plus, their card has no fees and is available both online and offline. 😍
Getting mad Revolut vibes, but it seems that ZELF has a workable help system at the very least. (smh @ Revolut Support 😠)
Check ZELF out here!
Coolness meter:
🍳 A Healthy Serving of...
The other day, my product mentor was talking to me about OKRs.
Of course, I couldn’t help but think about Cardi B screeching Okurrrrrr:
But don’t let that distract from the fact that OKRs are a powerful but simple way of setting goals. They’re typically used for collaborative goal-setting but I think a similar method is great for keeping track of milestones (and aspirations) in your internships!
Think SMART goals but about half as corny (and maybe half as effective? Idk, it works for me, though!).
Don’t know how OKRs work? Check out this article on whatmatters.com.
The acronym ‘OKRs’ is short for Objectives and Key Results, and is pretty self-explanatory once you get past the Cardi B-induced hallucinations. It’s simple, but powerful, and can really provide direction in an otherwise unguided environment.
Get to it!
We’re donezo. Sending love from the middle of a rainstorm in Boston <3
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Munch.
The Cereal Intern.015