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Litquidity - 2022 Year End Letter

A recap of what I've been up to the past year and where I see the future of the Litquidity brand. Happy New Year everyone!

Fellow LitGang,

I said this last year but I'll say it again... what a year it has been. 

2021 was the year of GameStop, the Goldman Sachs 13, and all-time highs across equities, crypto, NFTs, and literally anything that could be traded for money. It was truly a year of irrational exuberance.

2022 was the exact opposite. It has been an absolute rollercoaster. The Russia / Ukraine conflict, nuclear threats, inflation, recession fears, widespread layoffs, frauds, the list goes on. See below for a quick summary of pretty much all major events in 2022 in visual form:

For me personally, 2022 was a year of growth, loss, and learning. 

As I mentioned last year, I left a career on Wall Street in late 2020 to focus growing my brand instead of being a cog in the machine of major banks or private equity funds. Two years later, I have never looked back.

It has been liberating to work for myself, building a sustainable brand, and meeting / working with incredibly talented entrepreneurs and investors. Despite the current market environment, things are going strong on the meme front and I've been able to diversify my revenue streams enough to be somewhat insulated from a recessionary environment. But this hasn't been without costly learnings and driving over potholes... I've certainly taken my fair share of BIG FAT Ls that I will touch upon later in this letter.

This letter will cover my experiences, observations, learnings, and predictions in various categories:

  1. Business building

  2. Digital media

  3. Venture capital

  4. Crypto / web3 (some big fat Ls here smh)

But before we begin, I'd like to announce a quick life update: I signed a lease in Miami and will be splitting time between here and NYC. Looking to network, build, and play tennis/golf/padel so hmu if you're in town: [email protected]. WYA Orlando Bravo and Francis Suarez???

And with that, let's dive in.

1. BUILDING THE BUSINESS

In late 2020, I left a career on Wall Street to capitalize on an opportunity to build a vast digital media empire balancing financial education, culture, and humor. My vision was grand (and still is) but I was building alone as the sole person behind Litquidity. The plan was to scale beyond Litquidity and build the "Barstool Sports of Finance" with a roster of talented creators who could deliver strong, credible finance content via social media, newsletters, podcasting, and live events. Funny enough, I met with Barstool in mid-2021 and decided against it because Litquidity would not fit well into the culture of "degenerate day traders" Barstool wanted to cater to. It would've been dilutive to my brand. They've since launched Barstool Finance and it is exactly how I expected lol. I've also turned down multiple offers to join large digital media groups because I know my upside is greater than what they're giving credit for and I want to truly challenge myself in building something up from the ground floor. 

So in late 2021, I hired my first employee, Mark, to help me grow the meme account into a full-fledged digital media business.

Over the course of a few months, we accomplished some great things. Here are a few:

  • Launched the Big Swinging Decks podcast which rose up the charts

  • Hosted the first ever earnings call on Twitter spaces ($RICK)

  • Overhauled the merch backend logistics

  • Revamped the Litquidity website

  • Published widely-read compensation reports

  • Launched a student-athlete program

However, as an anonymous founder with a public-facing employee, this created confusion amongst some followers and also got me into a bit of an identity crisis. Since starting Litquidity in 2017, I have been the sole individual running the account, engaging with the audience, and creating all the content. I've been interviewed by New York Magazine, Bloomberg, Fortune, and other media outlets for the brand I created, all while remaining anonymous. I was invited to be a venture scout for Bain Capital Ventures (as an individual) given my prior work experience, personal angel investing portfolio, and audience building experience (more on BCV later in this letter).

To have this "clout" (cringe, I know) attributed to an individual who had just joined did not sit well with me, especially when our personalities and tweets were very different. It was becoming a case of the "forgotten founder". It was clear to me that there needed to be a clear separation between the two individuals to avoid confusion. 

Not only did this lead to confusion from a content perspective, it also led to confusion from partnership and deal flow perspective which started to create plenty of awkward conversations around chain-of-command (Founder/CEO vs. employee relationship), brand vision, compensation, and ownership of client relationships (i.e. the business is reaching out to Litquidity (the business), not the employee).

Also, while all of this was going on, various business partners that I once considered friends were clawing for equity ownership and trying to skim money that was ultimately owed to me. For months I thought I was being paranoid but it was only until months later that email trails confirmed all of my prior suspicions. Trust all across the board had been broken. 

Hbo Head Shake GIF by SuccessionHBO

To put it succinctly, it was a clusterfuck. But it was also valuable firsthand experience that you can't learn in an elite MBA program.

In hindsight, a lot should have been done differently and dealing with this dynamic while trying to lead the business, create content, scale my newsletter, raise outside capital, launch a podcast, grow merch operations, and secure new advertisers, was a logistical nightmare and it took a big toll on my mental health. I wanted to do everything but was pushing myself to the max. In my 8+ years working across investment banking and private equity, I had never experienced stress and anxiety as intense as I did this past year. But y'all probably didn't get the sense based on the content and headlines we were making :)

Funny enough, the perfect encapsulation of the identity crisis I faced as an anonymous founder was this Bloomberg article with a headline that made a lot of people think I was shutting down shop and being slighted by Bloomberg:

The headline reads as if there was only one person at Litquidity and that one person was leaving. Pretty annoying.

This piece was originally pitched to me as a way to announce Litquidity's incubation of an investor relations firm, along with what was in store for the brand. The published article was not that. The final product was effectively one-sided PR for a new IR firm with a photoshoot and minimal context about the future of Litquidity. What followed was a ton of inbound DMs and emails asking what would happen to the social media accounts, my merch business, and everything else as if Litquidity was effectively dead.

My answer to them: It's not going anywhere and business is still boomin'. This prompted me to respond to Bloomberg with this post

Now that we have gone our separate ways, my mental health has recovered 💪, the memes are flowing like the good ol' days 🌊, and I wish Mark the best in his endeavors.

KEY LEARNINGS

My advice to those who are building a personal brand:

  • Own it 100%. Audiences value authenticity and prioritize individual voices over brands

  • Draw clear and distinct boundaries

  • If entering a business relationship, make sure you are legally covered with appropriate documentation

  • If you're going through a rough time mentally, don't be afraid to be vulnerable. Seek appropriate help and find ways to remove the stressors in your life as soon as possible. Life is too short

  • Trust no one. No matter how honest you are and how you feel like you're surrounded by trustworthy people, clout demons, snakes, scumbags, and fraudsters are out to get you or trick you into signing a shitty deal when there is a whiff of success. It's cliche af, but it's true

As I'm writing this, The Information published an article yesterday about the creator economy and how others have formed traditionally investable companies as placeholders for their personal brand equity. Worth a quick read. 

WHAT'S IN STORE FOR THE BRAND: As for me, given the tough macro environment and complications with trying to scale a personal brand. I am putting plans to build "the Barstool of Finance" & raise outside capital on the back-burner for now and focusing on the following:

  • Grow the social media portfolio, merch business, and newsletters (Exec Sum & Eight Ball)

  • Further build out my angel investment syndicate

  • Network with more startup founders and VCs, remotely and irl

  • Get deeper into financial services recruiting business (announcement here soon 👀)

  • Bring back my podcast with a new co-host

  • Ad-hoc investor relations / public relations work (a 2M+ built-in audience helps)

All of this is being done through a mix of part-time contractors, incredible college interns, and joint ventures to avoid bloated overhead and equity dilution.

Let's now dive deeper into a few verticals I've spent a lot of time in this past year.

2. DIGITAL MEDIA📱📰 

Social media

The @litquidity instagram and @litcapital twitter accounts both grew tremendously over the year and were both verified! *Scammers trying to impersonate me are fuming rn*

The audience has grown to 743k on IG (up from 628k last year) and 310k on Twitter (up from 187k last year) at the time of writing. The other accounts in network (including @wallstreetintern, @thisguyfuchz, @venturekaepital@retrowallstreet) have also grown considerably. 

Instagram: It's been pretty annoying to keep up with the IG Reels format that's been prioritized over static images or widescreen video montages. That said, I've occasionally posted cringe IB TikToks (a trend that needs to die a quick death) for roasting purposes and uploaded video memes as reels but I'm still sticking with the tried and true formats that made y'all follow in the first place.

It has been great to continue serving as a conduit for sharing real-time layoff information, bonus figures, and other happenings across Wall Street to provide much-needed transparency. It's also been epic sharing photos of y'all rocking the LitCap merch to help build a stronger sense of community 🤝 On community, I co-hosted my first networking event at the inaugural NYC Tech Week alongside Republic and Carta and plan on doing many more of these in the new year. It's time to bring the community closer together!

Twitter: Growth has been correlated with the amount of time I've spent on the platform. While in earlier years I had more time to focus on meme creation and cranking out hype videos during the depths of the pandemic (when I should've been updating financial models), my bandwidth this year was eaten up by the responsibilities I mentioned earlier. Twitter is simply an easier platform to shit post. It only take a few seconds to jot down thoughts or throw a quick caption over an image / video. As I look to delegate more of the business operations through partnerships and part-time help, I plan on cranking out more fire memes and dedicating more time to deploying capital into promising early-stage startups in 2023.

M&A: This year also saw some Meme Account M&A. Litquidity's M&A team was hard at work over the Fall and successfully closed its first transaction by acquiring an account with over 500,000 followers (now rebranded as @pikacap on Twitter). Valuation and revenue multiples not disclosed 😉 If anyone is interested in helping run a general-humor shitposting account, hit me up! If anyone is looking to sell their accounts, hit me up as well! 2023 will be #ROLLUPSZN.

Monetization: It's been a delicate balance trying to secure lucrative ad partnerships without diluting the brand's strength and authenticity. My framework in accepting partnerships has always been to properly vet the quality of the product, the integrity of the founders, and the relevance to the audience - the same way I would vet a startup for a potential investment. More often than not, the products advertised on my pages are products I personally use and/or for which I can personally vouch. However, in the context of building a strong pipeline for 2022 and 2023 and attracting outside capital, there were a few that fell below the high bar I've always set and for that I have given myself 40 lashes. Looking mainly at you FTX & SBF... 

I will use 2023 to continue diversifying revenue streams and making social ads a smaller piece of the mix. Audiences value authenticity and I will always aim to remain as transparent and authentic as possible.

As Aryeh Bourkoff (founder/CEO of LionTree) eloquently said in his latest year-end letter:

"...in the currency of this vast, youthful ecosystem, relatability and authenticity are gold, while talent is silver. Expertise is a base metal."

That's all I've got for social media right now. I'll leave y'all with some of my 2022 bangers before moving onto the next topic:

Newsletters 

Exec Sum is the daily newsletter that I launched in late January 2021 (coincidentally right when the Gamestop frenzy was getting started). At its core, the newsletter is quite simple: summarize the most relevant financial news in as few words as possible. Over the past two years, I'm proud of the immense value this simple newsletter has provided to thousands of individuals. If you're not signed up, wtf are you waiting for??? 

Exec Sum is not providing financial advice and is not here to write essays about interest rates and yield curves. We’re simply summarizing financial news in a way that (hopefully) doesn’t make you want to gouge your eyeballs out.

Some haters say "I just don’t get it, it's summarizing the news, I have a Bloomberg Terminal bro GTFO this is dumb" and that’s fine. We aren’t worried about them. We’re here for the bankers and investors who are too busy getting crushed on live deals to follow the news (it happens). The ones who aren't glued to a Terminal. The college students who are busy partying but also need to prep for their interviews with Goldman Sachs, Evercore, Morgan Stanley, Moelis. The folks who don’t even work in the industry but want a quick five minute brief of what’s going on in the markets. We're here for you guys!

It's always fulfilling to receive DMs from people who say they looked great in front of their bosses / clients because they took 5 minutes to catch up on the latest business news. It's equally amazing to hear about those who were able to secure internships / full-time jobs at major investment banks because they were so on top of the market news. 

Exec Sum has grown to over 200,000 subscribers (majority organic) and boasts a unique open rate of over 55%. For context, that's stronger than pretty much any large business newsletter like Axios Pro Rata, Morning Brew, Bloomberg Deals, or The Hustle. The LitGang is an incredibly strong community and I hope to keep this momentum going strong into 2023!

News and memes have been my bread & butter but we've gradually added new sections to the newsletter to expand the content (and value) for its subscribers. A few of them below:

  • Exec’s Picks: A wide variety of recommendations curated by the Litquidity team (a mix of organic & paid) 🤝

  • Investment Offerings: Offering opportunities to invest in early-stage startups to subscribers who are accredited investors

  • Job Board: a one stop shop for highly-curated job opportunities powered by Pallet (one of my angel investments). If you work for a company that's actively looking for brilliant talent, don't hesitate to list on my job board and reach a targeted audience of 200k+ folks

  • Compensation Reports: Having unique access and deep penetration amongst people who work in Wall Street and Silicon Valley has helped produce valuable insights on compensation. We've put out reports that helped raise base salaries, bonuses, and even meal stipends due to the broad reach and transparency

Monetization: Exec Sum is a free newsletter, so obviously there are ads to help pay the bills. I try to do my best to understand you (the audience) in order to source the most relevant sponsors and keep things interesting! Plus, if the ad doesn’t appeal to you, guess what… you can just keep scrolling (although link clicks help us out so we appreciate any and all clicks from y'all 😩🙏). That said, I've been incredibly proud to work with a wide variety of amazing sponsors and affiliates such as Eight SleepMizzen + Main, Ledger, Vauban, and more.

If you want to partner with Exec Sum, pls fill out this quick form!

While Exec Sum is my flagship newsletter, I've also been quietly growing a new newsletter called Eight Ball. For the Thursday Lines / Gator Tails aficionados reading this, it is sadly not a drug related newsletter but rather a macroeconomic newsletter that was made in partnership with Kalshi, a prediction markets platform.

If you're looking to read more about inflation, mortgage rates, probabilities of a recession, and other macro events, please feel free to subscribe below. We're currently at 12,000 subscribers and growing like a weed!

Observations

There's been an interesting shift in the 'finance meme' space with many accounts launching their own newsletters. I believe there are a few reasons for this trend:

  1. Natural progression: Email is a natural progression for those who have built up an engaged following and have fallen in love with creating content and communicating with their audience. Anonymous finance meme accounts aren't really equipped to shake their asses or expand into cringe TikToks so email is a perfect next step.

  2. Audience ownership: Every dank meme account has been hit with a "community guidelines violation" warning by IG, Twitter, TikTok, etc. at some point. The possibility of losing your entire audience overnight is very high and it's simply a prudent move to mitigate this risk. Email allows you to reach your audience no matter where you are and connecting with your audience through this medium is incredibly powerful if done correctly.

  3. Monetization: It's a sneakily good monetization channel. See below for email marketing spend from 2020 and its expected growth through 2027. Email ad CPMs have traditionally been higher than social media ad CPMs, which means a smaller email list can go a long way compared to a large social media account. But again, this all comes down to authenticity which is measured by open rates and click-thru rates.

One final thing to note about newsletters is the recent M&A there has been in the space. There is considerable value in delivering engaging content at scale and more people should be paying attention to this. See graphic below:

From my 2021 letter (yes I'm quoting myself):

"Newsletters are valuable to media operators because they expand their product offerings and, in some cases, expands their content mix (such as Barstool Sports acquiring a business newsletter). Newsletters are valuable to non-media entities like consumer brands or tech companies because they are Customer Acquisition Cost ("CAC") plays. All about increasing that LTV and minimizing that CAC."

With the rise of newsletter platforms such as Substack & Beehiiv (another one of my angel investments), starting, growing, and monetizing a newsletter has never been easier. If you're looking to dip your toes into the newsletter game, you can check out Beehiiv here to get started. This is the platform I use to publish Exec Sum every day.

And finally, a big shoutout to the Exec Sum undergrad interns, ChristianTJ, and Aadil, who have been an immense help over on the newsletter the past year! Any employer will be lucky to have these solid guys. Shoutout to Exec Sum's editor Jack Raines for keeping the newsletter tight and timely. He's been crushing Linkedin and has been growing his own Young Money newsletter (now at ~30,000 subs). 

Podcast

Whew... where to begin here...

BSD launched with a BANG this January. We had secured a lucrative $1.5 million exclusive podcast sponsorship with crypto exchange, CoinFLEX, and released 26 episodes that were well-received by the community and shot us up the Spotify & Apple business podcast rankings. We touched upon the importance of mental health in the industry, shared funny tales from our time on Wall Street, and interviewed amazing VCs / founders / content creators / and former investment bankers.

Everything was going strong until our sponsorship came to a screeching halt because of crypto market turbulence (and, well, the fact that every other asset class was getting smoked too).

Fire Burn GIF

We were completely blindsided by the news from CoinFLEX in which they suddenly found themselves in a $80M+ hole from a single customer, Roger Ver, (who also happens to be an equity shareholder in the business) and they made the controversial decision to halt customer withdrawals. In the original due diligence for this deal, we were under the impression that every single customer account on the platform was sufficiently collateralized and that's how it was portrayed when we had CoinFLEX guests on our podcast to talk about their business. It was only until the crypto market began to blow up that this risk was discovered. We could not address the situation head on because we were learning everything in real-time through press coverage and phone calls with the team. It was incredibly frustrating and we ultimately had to walk away from this deal that was comprised of a mix of cash, FLEX tokens, and equity in the business. That said, I truly believe the team was acting in good faith and were caught in shitty situation, despite (now) obvious flaws in the business model. 

Chalk this up to one of the biggest Ls and learning lessons of the year.

Shortly thereafter, Mark left to begin Equity Animal and we went our separate ways. 

WHAT'S NEXT? My intention for 2023 is to reboot and rebrand the podcast with another co-host who has strong Wall Street work experience and a better aligned vision for the content. The idea is to focus on interviewing deal makers, startup founders, celebrity / athletes-turned investors, and also share more tales / tips from our times in the bullpen. 

If anyone can introduce us to solid sponsorship candidates, lmk. Preferably companies focused on fintech, financial services, mental health, or alcohol (lol). Email is: [email protected]

Many thx in advance!

3. VENTURE CAPITAL 🦄💰

Prior to taking the leap to build Litquidity full time, my primary goal was to build this into a high-growth digital media business and I had zero experience investing in pre-seed / seed stage tech startups. Oh how things have changed! When I look at my weekly calendars, my time is now fairly evenly split between media business-related calls and startup pitches / calls with VCs. 

Over the past two years, I've learned a ton about venture capital and angel investing while building up a portfolio of over 25 investments across fintech, consumer, and web3. You can see my portfolio here

Best of all, I had the immense pleasure to announce my role as a Venture Scout for Bain Capital Ventures. As I told Fortune back in January, this opportunity came about through Twitter DMs and phone calls with BCV partner, Christina Melas-Kyriazi. Memes, media distribution, and community-building expertise are all sought-after by startup founders and have provided me with unique and unparalleled access into funding rounds led by Tier 1 VC funds such as Andreessen Horowitz, Bessemer Venture Partners, Founders Fund, and more. I am incredibly grateful for Christina in recognizing this and believing in me to help identify investment opportunities at the earliest stages. For those wondering, scouting isn't a job or an internship. There's no clocking in or quotas that need to be met. You can read more about it here

Having the opportunity to partner with one of the biggest names in venture capital has been an absolute game-changer. It has provided credibility to me and the brand I've built, it has improved deal flow, and has greatly expanded my network. From fintech trivia nights and demo days in NYC to hanging out on a yacht during Miami Tech Week, I've gotten to know many of BCV's investors and am proud to be part of the Bain fam.

Check out the podcast episode where I interviewed Christina about her journey from investment banking at Goldman Sachs to partner at BCV:

This year, I was fortunate to invest in a wide array of startups that I truly believe in through a mix of personal funds, BCV scout checks, and SPVs that I raised through my syndicate. All-in, I was able to deploy ~$1 million of equity capital. Here are some of my investments from 2022:

  • Beehiiv 🐝: an all-in-one newsletter platform. Lead investor: Social Leverage

  • PIN 📍: a platform that lets communities pool capital to invest in startups together. Lead investors: Initialized Capital and NEA

  • Royal 🎵: a marketplace for music NFTs where fans can take ownership stakes in songs and earn royalties. Lead investors: a16z, Founders Fund, Paradigm

  • Sweater 💸: a fintech company democratizing venture capital by building the first fully-managed VC fund open to everyday investors. Lead investors: Motivate VC and Akuna Capital

  • Trym 🌿: a SaaS startup that helps commercial cannabis farms manage operations, optimize crop yields, and maintain regulatory compliance. Lead investor: Delta Emerald Ventures

To reference something from last year's letter (again):

Venture Capital is an entirely different ball game than working on Wall Street. The funniest thing about having worked in IB and PE is seeing how little financial modeling there is in early-stage VC. Adjusted EBITDA bridges, Net Working Capital analyses, Debt Paydown models? lmaoooo what even are those anymore? I've learned that it’s about backing founders, supporting their visions for the future, and having a very forward looking view on the world (whereas Wall Street tends to focus on historicals and perhaps 1-2 year forward projections). I am now speaking directly with founding teams, helping them at the ground level by ~rolling up my sleeves~, and providing product feedback, audience insights, go-to-market guidance and more. Something not really possible in billion dollar public mergers or middle market private equity. 

This has continued to be true, as I've primarily invested in companies from the pre-seed stage up to Series A where I believe I can still move the needle as a value-add investor. 

In 2023, I aim to solidify myself as a go-to strategic investor / advisor by focusing on the following:

  • Relentlessly networking: In order to see more deals from founders and have deals referred by VCs, I need to be scheduling calls, coffee / drinks, and traveling to conferences

  • Improving my syndicate operations: While the accredited investor base has grown to over 5,000 individuals, my focus will be finding individuals who can help execute deals (memo writing, diligence, and admin) in order to move faster and be more efficient

  • Fine-tuning my "playbook": As I scale my portfolio, I'll need to be more efficient in helping founders and have clearly defined value-add capabilities that founders can tap into

In the background, I've been laying the groundwork of what a "Litquidity Ventures Fund I" may look like but current macro conditions and the recent FTX blow up have made that an uphill battle. If you work at a fund-of-funds, family office, or VC fund that invests in emerging managers, email me to chat more: [email protected]. I can't openly solicit investments thanks to archaic SEC laws so y'all know where to find me if you simply wanna have a chat when the time is right.

For now, I'll continue to invest through personal funds, BCV scout checks, and SPVs. If you're an accredited investor or qualified purchaser and want to be part of my angel syndicate, fill out this quick form below:

Here's to a big 2023. Please don't hesitate to reach out if you're a founder raising a round or a VC with a relevant portfolio company: [email protected]

4. CRYPTO / WEB3 / DEFI ⚡💀

I'm already ~5,000 words deep in this letter so I'll try to keep this section brief. 

Last year, I made it a personal goal of mine to do a deep dive into this trillion dollar industry that has crossed the chasm into the mainstream.

In short, Web3 aims to usher in a new internet paradigm where value on the internet can accrue to users and contributors, not just a handful of VCs and company shareholders. This seems like a great vision for the future indeed.

a16z launched its fourth crypto fund in May with $4.5B in commitments, Paradigm has been deploying capital out of its $2.5B crypto fund, and countless other investors have been pouring in money into the space. Facebook changed its name to Meta, Ukraine accepted crypto donations to help fight Russia, BlackRock made moves to give investors access to bitcoin, the list goes on. Crypto made big strides in terms of adoption this year, no doubt.

While promising and visionary, 2022 was the year crypto experienced its own 2008 financial crisis brought on by faulty business models, contagion, and fraud of epic proportions. Centralized exchanges, crypto lenders, and crypto hedge funds such as Three Arrow Capital, Celsius, CoinFLEX, Voyager, BlockFi, FTX, and others all blew up and billions of customer deposits have been lost, stolen, or locked. 

Animated GIF

On top of that, crypto tokens themselves such as Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Solana are down 65%, 68%, and 94% YTD, respectively. 

Getting to the major Ls and learnings...

In late 2021 and early 2022, I wrote sponsored deep dives on BlockFi and FTX that broke down their business models, cap tables with world class investors, and their visions for the future. These were best-in-class names that I was excited to work with. However, while mentioning some risks in the deep dives, I failed to account for the risks of contagion and outright fraud. These two companies recently blew up in spectacular fashion. 

Heck, I didn't just write these because they were sponsored, I also used their platforms because I truly believed in them and have personal deposits locked up. I know I'll never see some of that money again but I do remain hopeful some of my money on other platforms will be released in the near future (*ahem* looking at you Gemini Earn, pls fix asap, thx).

See below for how I feel after taking horrendous Ls in crypto this year:

All of this is to say that I've been burned badly by the crypto / web3 space this year and it sucks major ass. From the podcast sponsorship going up in flames to publishing content on companies that engaged in fraud... it's simply damaging the trust of the audience I have spent 5+ years building. I promise to do a lot better going forward and will be even more diligent in how I approach this space, and I hope major investment firms that also got burned follow suit 😤

One positive note in all of this is the narrative around protecting your digital assets. "Not Your Keys, Not Your Coins" and "Don't Trust, Verify" have never been more relevant than now. Here are some pics from Ledger's keynote speech during their Op3n event in Paris earlier this month:

I had the opportunity to fly out to attend this conference and met with execs from Ledger and crypto thought leaders. Although I felt like a "TradFi" guy for most of the time, I thoroughly enjoyed meeting a ton of great individuals and making new friends. While crypto and NFT prices are in the gutter this year, Ledger has been at the forefront of crypto security helping its users avoid the potholes that I, and many others, fell into.

While I still think there is plenty of promise in this industry, trust needs to be re-established, bad actors need to be thoroughly punished, more rigorous DD needs to be conducted, and more oversight is required to protect users and enable this space to flourish similar to the traditional finance ecosystem. Words like "decentralization," "trustless," and "permissionless" don't mean much if the space is overrun by fraudsters and hackers. 

In closing, this is my mood to close out 2022: 

I am still holding my BTC, ETH, SOL, and select shitcoins tho.

ENDING NOTES

Ngl, it feels pretty fulfilling to reflect and jot down all my thoughts in writing. As I said in the beginning of this letter, 2022 was a year of growth, loss, and learning. I've tried to be as transparent as possible with what is going on in my world and shed light on building a business and quick recap of progress made across digital media, venture capital, and crypto. If you're interested in any of these verticals, I hope my words end up being helpful. 

I appreciate y'all for taking the time to read this and hope we can all find a way to work together or collaborate if it makes sense. If any of the above resonated with you, please send me an email at [email protected]

Thank you for the continued support throughout the past 5+ years. Here's to many more 🤝

Happy New Year!

Best,Lit

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