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After 5+ years, we're winding down POAP. Over the years, we: * minted millions of collectibles across hundreds of communities. * did incredible collaborations with world-class organizations - Coinbase, Amex, WMG, Bayer, and a long tail of others, including countless in crypto. * ran one of the biggest activations at Devcon, minting 8000+ collectibles over the course of a week. * built an Airport Rally to let collectors get POAPs at airports around the world. POAP meant something to a lot of people. Unfortunately, crypto's funding cycles and distribution dynamics made it hard to build a sustainable company without cannibalizing the ethos that made POAP mean something. Building on a fragile and quickly evolving stack, in the middle of an incredible hype cycle, only added to the challenges. Still, there are some big lessons I am carrying from the POAP story. First: Customer communities are the most undervalued asset a company can have. If you build something with soul, people who use it and love it will take your brand everywhere. Do not underestimate the power of customer communities. Second: Connection is still the point. It's easy to lose that thread when the conversation is about the latest bubbly tech or price speculation, but the people using POAPs at events, in classrooms, at hackathons were getting something real out of it. Third: Longevity and brand equity are the only moats left. With the time to building and shipping something new collapsing quickly, and distribution becoming increasingly an engineering problem, customers increasingly want to make sure they can trust that the things they are buying will grow and evolve with the market, without changing radically. Grateful for everyone who believed in what we were building. It's too soon for me to say what's next, but for now, I'm thinking a lot about what GTM looks like in the age of AI.

hello there the jacobian conjecture is false thanx to my close friend akhil for asking about it and my other close friend fable for working during the world cup final ((1+xy)^3 z + y^2 (1+xy) (4+3xy), y + 3 x (1+xy)^2 z + 3 x y^2 (4+3xy), 2 x - 3 x^2 y - x^3 z): \C^3\to \C^3, has jacobian determinant -2, and sends (0, 0, -1/4), (1, -3/2, 13/2), and (-1, 3/2, 13/2) to (-1/4, 0, 0)

I completely agree on the overall uncertainty. I might be totally wrong, but I think that in an uncertain, ever-evolving landscape, anyone who has truly mastered a craft in depth will win. To what extent, we'll see. Last week I got to look through 80+ applications from a seed-level incubator batch, through a friend. Every website was a 8/10, all vaguely similar, and the copy and grammar were a solid 8/10. All were "in principle fundable," because even the TAM analyses, the metric projections, and most importantly the MVPs were "equally decent." Honestly, in some cases the differentiating element was very hard to find. I couldn't tell, the way I sometimes could five years ago, where there was a founder with a special edge, or a product clearly better than the next one. Almost all were pre-revenue or low revenue, so PMF was still an open question. Being practical: if one of them was a 40-year-old with a good track record and real in-depth industry knowledge, everything else aside, that's who I'd have bet on. It's not my job, so maybe the anecdote isn't that telling, I may be easily not skilled enough on this. But realistically, compared to the last 20 years, where mastering leverage itself was the winning move, I think there's a hard correction coming. So in your example, maybe the edge won't be the ability to copy an app. It'll be a decade of in-depth experience in a specific industry, plus the parts that aren't AI-able: regulatory barriers, personal relationships (and/or being great people-persons), etc.. And who knows, the people who benefit might include those who, until now, looked destined to never "make it" monetarily. The classic "graduated in history" type. I think we all have a friend like that