A collection of letters encompassing simple insights and recognition of foundational shifts that any bright minds trapped within the old norms of a VC mindset can use to break free, whether they are just starting their journey or reflecting back on what they wish someone had told them in their early days.
Dear YC Founders,
This letter is a special edition, just for you.
You may not all be VCs yet, but you are certainly in training— conditioned to look for the exits at all times and think that it makes you clever.
No wonder you’re trained by letters like the latest from YC to grab as much capital as you can, to make the most of the everything bubble in collapsing old centralised economies, and squawk all about how smart you are for stocking up the survivalist bunker until everyone else shakes out of the market.
Raise a billion or 10 if you can.
Or maybe instead build something people actually want to better equip them for the radical economic shift so obviously underway.
Maybe you don’t have it all figured out and what we are really seeing is not a staggering collapse in demand, but rather a race for supply to keep up with it.
Your paper investments likely won’t do too well in the transformation.
For all readers, it’s always a smart move to always ask “Cui Bono?”
And, in this case, it’s clear that YC and similar VC/web2 founder frat members are poorly positioned for current market opportunities so would rather everyone believe that the sky is falling for all.
If they can’t benefit directly, at least with emails like those above, they can maintain their position and keep shilling the tired old 101 Startup playbook of leveraging debt to cover 12-24 months instead of building a business that can thrive in all conditions.
The real alpha is in the YC name itself.
Rather than playing games with debt. Build things that people can use to build things.
At lower costs, less overhead, faster time to market, greater efficiency and more prosumer empowerment.
And, most importantly, in times like these, unleash greater ability to create across the full range of the market activity — from IRL to ever more immersive digital, from manufacutring to culture and commerce.
So, where’s a great place to start?
No bias here, but it should be obvious that fabrication is one of the most direct paths— new hardware production utilising local equipment combined with web3 tooling capitalises on vast opportunities for globally distributed reshoring of manufacturing capacity and everything that comes with it.
Emerging methods like DTG (Direct-to-Garment) represent a profound transformation for how gains in efficiency, reductions in transport time and every other complementary enhancement translates into a radical increase in range of available actions and self sovereignty for consumers, producers and founders and funders like yourselves.
If you’re in a position where you raised too much, just enough, or best yet, not at all, there’s no better time than now to raise ahead of anyone foolish enough to listen to YC’s advice.
Get busy building for this radical shift while the YC frat is busy hibernating.
After all, PG said it best way back when, “Make stuff people want”.
Any value brought in from sales of NFTs minted through this article will be used for building out the F₃M Realm treasury, which will eventually be governed and coordinated by the DAO, furthering to decentralise the web3 fashion capital stack.