March 16th 2023

SPICE CAPITAL PRESENTS: 🔥 🌶 HOT SAUCE 🌶 🔥 

Here at Spice Capital, we’re focused on making big bets in areas primed for rapid change. To do that, we believe it’s important to stay up to date with what some of the most exciting thinkers and builders are saying day-to-day as well as mixing up your content intake with some fun from the corners of the internet. We know there’s a lot of noise and the space can feel overwhelming. Don’t worry! We’re here to be the Hot Sauce in your bag so you can make sure you always keep things spicy!

1) Nobody needs my SVB bank run hot take... instead read David Phelps phenomenal reflective essay 🥺

David Phelps wrote a moving piece questioning money, crypto, and decentralization based on his own life experiences through the 2008 financial crisis and family upbringing.  I am so grateful to count him as a friend. Here are my two favorite excerpts:

"It’s easy enough to say that culture is just a history of how people feel across different economic eras. It’s harder to realize that the economy itself is just a history of how people feel culturally about each other and their institutions in given pockets of time."

"For the irony is that it’s still the Fed that subtends belief in crypto. When USDC tanked to 88 cents on the dollar over the weekend, we saw how irrational traders would be even when their tokens remained solvent for $1 each. They were more or less backed by full collateral, but even collateral itself turned out to be a myth to traders until the Fed stepped in to ensure it would remain. Banks weren’t bailed out, but our imaginations were. The Fed gave us, if you like, an emotional bailout." 🤯

lol...

2) Michael Dempsey, partner at Compound wrote yet another banger that makes you question everyone's investing strategies over the past few years.

The market the past week has felt like the meme stock/vibe economy is back. Also conviction is a term overused by VCs (myself included).

...Imagining the wall street bets gang making a killing off of Inflation Data/FDIC news/and Bank Stock volatility.

3) Arjun from Doola reminds us of the founding story of Twitter.

Arjun's been putting out some great content lately - worth a follow. He also publishes his startup's investor updates publicly here (beast move)

Reminder that pivots are more common than you think!

4) Looking for monthly passive income? Check out Bonside.com - they help finance fast growing brick&mortar concepts and give investors passive monthly income. 

Had an interesting call this week with a founder of an Ice Cream brand that told me their retail locations are profitable and also critical to their grocery store sales. If there's no physical location in a new city, the grocery store sales perform worse. Given I'm in the venture/tech bubble - I'm consistently amazed at how important physical retail is to culture and brand building.

The CEO - Neha Govindraj shared her returns publicly in the screenshot below.

(Disclaimer I'm an angel investor in Bonside and investor on the platform!)

5) Worksheet - how to work for yourself by Nikhil Krishnan.

Demystifying the process of going solo.

6) AI News besides GPT-4. 

@google

@midjourney