Li Jin @ljin18 Twitter profile

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Li Jin

3 years

Investing, for me, is a form of activism to create the world I want to see, and I'm beyond honored that the @nytimes wanted to spotlight it. 🙏🙏❤️❤️

She’s the Investor Guru for Online Creators (Published 2021)

Li Jin, 31, began backing creators years ago. She has raised her own fund to invest in influencer-related start-ups.

www.nytimes.com

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Last Seen Profiles

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Li Jin

@ljin18

2 years

7 steps to transition to web3, for non-technical folks. It can be daunting to make a career shift to web3, especially for those who don’t code. There are new roles that don’t exist in other industries, and recruiting seems informal and network-based. A mini-guide 🧵

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Li Jin

@ljin18

2 years

DAOs (decentralized autonomous organizations) represent the next step forward in the labor movement. A thread 🧵

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Li Jin

@ljin18

2 years

bish i wrote it

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Li Jin

@ljin18

3 years

I don't want an engagement ring, I want an engagement NFT

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Li Jin

@ljin18

3 years

The biggest opportunity of our time is to reconfigure the relationship between capital and labor.

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Li Jin

@ljin18

3 years

New year, new VC firm ✨ Meet @AtelierVentures , a new VC fund that is dedicated to advancing the passion economy!

Li Jin launches Atelier Ventures, her debut fund to invest in the passion economy

A special edition of Lenny's Newsletter

www.lennysnewsletter.com

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Li Jin

@ljin18

6 years

Thread: There are over 400 startups trying to be the next Warby Parker, but history shows that 90%+ of e-commerce companies will fail. What separates the successes from the failures? Here are 5 things I look for to figure out if an e-commerce startup is a good opportunity -->

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Li Jin

@ljin18

3 years

The new American dream is to make a living from one's creativity. 1/3 of kids want to be YouTube stars. But the inconvenient truth is few creators are actually attaining financial security today. My new blog is about building the creator middle class 👇

Building the Middle Class of the Creator Economy

The American Dream exists, but what is the reality?

www.lisnewsletter.com

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Li Jin

@ljin18

2 years

A year ago, I raised my first fund of $12m, and it took 6 months and entailed pitching 1,000 prospective LPs & hearing 900 "no's".

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Li Jin

@ljin18

3 years

Off to Paris with no return flight 🇫🇷

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Li Jin

@ljin18

3 years

Who's building the best crypto wallet for normal people? 🙃

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Li Jin

@ljin18

5 years

Thread: “Fake it til you make it” is a key strategy for overcoming the chicken-and-egg problem of starting a new marketplace, popularized by companies like Uber and Yelp. The idea is to bootstrap one side of the marketplace inorganically in order to attract the other side.

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Li Jin

@ljin18

2 years

Web3 applications lack some traditional sources of defensibility, but have a new powerful one: tokens. Let’s explore “token network effects” ⬇️

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Li Jin

@ljin18

3 years

Let's stop celebrating creator funds, incremental creator features, and shallow rhetoric about creator empowerment. All of these will fail to solve creators' economic precarity, so long as we fail to fix the fundamental issue, which is OWNERSHIP.

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Li Jin

@ljin18

6 years

1/ Consumers increasingly trust Amazon, Stitchfix, and other aggregators to sort and surface the best products, which diminishes the importance of individual manufacturers. This means the algorithm is the new consumer brand--signaling trust and quality.

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Li Jin

@ljin18

4 years

New post! To make a living as a creator, you only need 100 true fans, not 1,000. As social evolves from a "bigger is better" ad-driven model to niche communities with direct user payment, the playbook for how creators succeed also changes. Thread 👇

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Li Jin

@ljin18

4 years

Many people ask me about my path to VC. The truth is - I actually *COLD* applied to @a16z . Story time 👇

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Li Jin

@ljin18

3 years

To all the creative people - you are the reason why I do this, and I'll never forget it.

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Li Jin

@ljin18

5 years

Thread: Looking at China illuminates just how nascent the US “influencer stack” is. While the US continues to debate whether influencer marketing is even effective, China has an entire industry of influencer incubators who work end-to-end to turn individuals into big businesses.

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Li Jin

@ljin18

5 years

Thread: The best consumer marketplaces end up supply-constrained, because they tap into an incredible amount of demand. For instance, Airbnb, Lyft, and Uber have seemingly infinite demand since the product/market fit is so strong--and this demand puts pressure on supply.

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Li Jin

@ljin18

5 years

In the next few years, we'll see more large communities moving off major social platforms where they originated + setting up their own independent properties, with built-in direct monetization models. This is a fascinating example of the Passion Economy at work. Thread 👇

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Li Jin

@ljin18

4 years

Some personal news: today is my last day @a16z . Nearly 4 years ago I dropped out of bschool for what @withfries2 promised would be a “much better MBA.” It’s lived up to that and more. I’ve learned so much from my colleagues & all of the amazing founders I've met.

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Li Jin

@ljin18

4 years

The Bad: I haven't published on my newsletter for a while. The Good: The hiatus is due to writing a very long piece on internet-empowered micro-entrepreneurship, and it's coming tomorrow! 📨 Here's a visual glimpse 😊

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Li Jin

@ljin18

2 years

the feminine urge to help explain crypto to ppl in a nuanced non-maximalist way

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Li Jin

@ljin18

2 years

Dropping the last essay of 2021 💥 The Web3 Renaissance This is the story of how the web2 internet broke the business model of media, and how web3 holds promise to tilt the scales in favor of creators.

The Web3 Renaissance: A Golden Age for Content

By Li Jin and Katie Parrot

every.mirror.xyz

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Li Jin

@ljin18

5 years

I believe the next era of marketplaces is going to look very different than the marketplaces we’ve seen so far.

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Li Jin

@ljin18

3 years

$19,800 is the number the average American sees as a "life-changing" amount of money.

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Li Jin

@ljin18

3 years

What’s next for the creator economy & its intersection with web3? 🧵

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Li Jin

@ljin18

2 years

In Silicon Valley, ownership has long been embraced by startups to align incentives with employees. But the vast majority of internet users own exactly 0% of the products they contribute to. That's now changing via the ownership economy.

The Ownership Economy 2022 – Variant

A primer on the state of web3 as the ownership economy turns users into owners.

variant.fund

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Li Jin

@ljin18

3 years

I'm hiring!💥 I believe crypto is the future of the creator economy & consumer technology. To that end, I'm hiring for 2 roles: 1) A research partner focused on crypto to help with: - data science & analytics - evaluating projects' technical feasibility - mechanism design

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Li Jin

@ljin18

2 years

Do things that make your friends & family worried about you

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Li Jin

@ljin18

2 years

Fashion NFTs feel inevitable. NFT ownership is about community, belonging, status, investment, and utility -- all of which are components that drive us to purchase fashion in the real world.

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Li Jin

@ljin18

2 years

the old American dream is to own a house the new American dream is to own a part of the internet

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Li Jin

@ljin18

3 years

Creators include: - chefs - teachers - podcasters - writers - fitness gurus - small business owners - coaches - community leaders ...and anyone else doing non-commoditized work supported by digital platforms. They're not just "social media influencers."

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Li Jin

@ljin18

3 years

NFT collections would do well to learn from Legos (the toy bricks) 🧱 Here’s why:

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Li Jin

@ljin18

5 years

New post! Over 30% of Americans now regularly listen to podcasts, and here’s my (with inputs from consumer team and research) 68-page overview + investment analysis on the industry. Thread 👇

Investing in the Podcast Ecosystem in 2019 | Andreessen Horowitz

In the world of podcasting, the flywheel is spinning: new technologies including AirPods, connected cars, and smart speakers have made it much easier for consumers to listen to audio content, which...

a16z.com

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Li Jin

@ljin18

2 years

Crypto is like Vegas. Yes, there's a lot of gambling, but I'm here for the food

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Li Jin

@ljin18

3 years

Sharing some big news today 🔥 @AtelierVentures and @VariantFund are joining forces! Together, our partnership will advance a more meritocratic internet, and push towards a future in which users own the products and services they use.

The Passion Economy Is the What, the Ownership Economy Is the How – Variant

The ownership economy has the opportunity to address one of the biggest and most morally troubling issues of our time: economic inequality.

variant.fund

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Li Jin

@ljin18

2 years

What does the future hold for NFT marketplaces? Today, we are in the “eBay era,” with the largest NFT marketplaces aggregating everything into grids of products, focused on transactions. But in the future, the best NFT marketplaces may not even look like marketplaces at all. 🧵

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Li Jin

@ljin18

4 years

The landscape of software tools for building an online community online is exploding, with 130+ companies mapped here. There won't be a single de-facto set of tools for running an online community. That’s because community is incredibly broad.

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Li Jin

@ljin18

3 years

Pinching myself that I got to write about the future of creators & ownership in @TheEconomist "Creators will harness their power, leading to the birth of a new set of platforms that confer ownership and control—and treat creators as first-class citizens"

Li Jin on the future of the creator economy

There is a stark imbalance of power between proprietary platforms and the creators who use them. Shared ownership and control is the way forward

www.economist.com

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Li Jin

@ljin18

2 years

Every day I hear from a creator that NFTs have changed their life: they were able to quit their day job, focus on their art, stop doing brand deals, etc. Creators: don't let the haters FUD you from participating in NFTs & web3. There's room for you here, too ❤️

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Li Jin

@ljin18

2 years

Last year, I taught a 4-week long course about the creator economy ⁠— covering history of the industry, creators as businesses, web3, future predictions, & more. Now, all of the videos & materials from that course are available to everyone for free! 📚

Learn How to Build for the Creator Economy

The course videos and content from Li’s highly-rated Creator Economy Course, held Spring 2021, are now available to all for free. While thousands of students applied to join the first cohort, only...

creatoreconomycourse.xyz

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Li Jin

@ljin18

2 years

A female NFT PFP project where the women look happy

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Li Jin

@ljin18

3 years

"Trees die when they're moved; humans die if they're not moving" - one of my favorite Chinese proverbs that my mom always says. It doesn't sound very poetic in English but you get the gist: always be evolving

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Li Jin

@ljin18

2 years

The ownership economy, ideally, makes us more free. But, in practice, crypto culture is 24/7— people constantly checking prices, aping into new projects, etc. Freedom is not just financial, but also liberation of attention & time. How can crypto make us free in that regard?

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Li Jin

@ljin18

5 years

New blog post! The next decade of work will be about passions, not gigs. New platforms and tools allow people to earn a livelihood using their creativity and unique skills. Thread 👇

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Li Jin

@ljin18

2 years

It's incredible to consider how much value Twitter has contributed to the NFT ecosystem, yet has captured exactly $0 of it.

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Li Jin

@ljin18

2 years

Are there any DAOs experimenting with implementing Universal Basic Income or any other sort of redistributive projects?

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Li Jin

@ljin18

3 years

SURREAL

Opinion | What Are You Paying for When You Buy a GIF for $25,000? (Published 2021)

NFTs are the future of the attention economy. Or a scam. Or both.

www.nytimes.com

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Li Jin

@ljin18

2 years

web2 monetizes attention web3 monetizes passion

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Li Jin

@ljin18

2 years

Excited to drop our Transition to Web3 guide, for non-technical roles! 📔 Packed with curated reading, links, and people to follow, this is the career transition resource for people new to web3.

Transition to web3: a guide for non-technical roles

It can be daunting to make a career shift to web3, especially for those who don’t code. This guide aims to help make a career pivot into web3 less ominous.

guidetoweb3.xyz

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Li Jin

@ljin18

3 years

New checkmark who dis

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Li Jin

@ljin18

1 year

Done under the guise of consumer protection, the attack on crypto is hindering innovation and denying Americans a path to new economic opportunities. @GaryGensler @SECGov My op-ed for @FortuneMagazine

Anti-crypto regulators are blocking the pathway to a digital American dream

Without a workable framework for crypto companies and projects, the U.S. risks forfeiting a massive economic opportunity.

fortune.com

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Li Jin

@ljin18

2 years

People often want ownership from an economic perspective, but don't want to act like an owner from a responsibility perspective How do we change this?

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Li Jin

@ljin18

5 years

Thread: New tools are emerging and focusing on *consumers* first. That's because consumers today aspire to become businesses tomorrow. I’ll dub this the "Enterprization of consumer."

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Li Jin

@ljin18

2 years

Reminder to not conflate a group of people with economic incentives with a healthy community

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Li Jin

@ljin18

3 years

I have a paid newsletter too ....it's called my LP update

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Li Jin

@ljin18

3 years

Mindblowing stats about OnlyFans 🤯🤯🤯 - $2Bn paid out to creators to-date (founded in 2016!) - implying $500m cumulative net revenue to OnlyFans in <5 years (20% take) - Over 100 creators have exceeded $1M earnings - No outside investors & profitable

OnlyFans Chief Talks Sports Ambitions and Role of Adult Content in Site

One of the buzziest companies in tech today, OnlyFans, is about as far from a typical startup as is possible. OnlyFans has no outside investors, is already profitable and isn’t looking to raise...

www.theinformation.com

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Li Jin

@ljin18

2 years

If you had asked a creator 1 year ago what they needed, you would've likely heard: - better understanding of their fans - tips for the TikTok algo - help on taxes You wouldn't have heard: digital ownership via NFTs that offers a new business model. Build cars, not faster horses

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Li Jin

@ljin18

2 years

this chart is everything @0xstark

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Li Jin

@ljin18

4 years

The Hey vs. App Store dispute is a manifestation of Karl Marx’s ideas about the struggle between capital and labor, updated to a 21st century world in which a platform, rather than a factory owner, controls the means of production and distribution.

Hey.com exec says Apple is acting like ‘gangsters,’ rejecting App Store updates and demanding cut...

“I thought you were supposed to wrap the threats in euphemisms or something. But it was pretty clear.”

www.theverge.com

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Li Jin

@ljin18

3 years

Let's shift away from "creator monetization" to what fans (people) are actually trying to accomplish: People desire: - relationships, connection - status, affirmation - knowledge, education - transformation, results Creator monetization needs to be in service of end user goals!

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Li Jin

@ljin18

2 years

my pfp is still my face should i just mint it as an NFT to make it hexagonal?

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Li Jin

@ljin18

5 years

Network effects are powerful but too often seen as black-or-white: a company either has them or doesn't. In reality, they vary widely in types & strength. I compiled a list of 16 metrics to measure network effects, coauthored with my colleague @dcoolican :

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Li Jin

@ljin18

3 years

Announcement ✨ I’m launching a cohort-based course on building for the Creator Economy! I'll teach live classes with amazing guest speakers, including case studies & frameworks I’ve learned from studying this space & meeting w 100s of companies. Apply:

Creator Economy Course by Li Jin on Maven

Dissecting the underlying fundamentals of the Creator Economy so you can apply it as an investor, a founder or a builder.

maven.com

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Li Jin

@ljin18

6 years

1/ Kylie Cosmetics did $600m sales in its first 18 mos, driven by social media. But that’s just the beginning. To become an enduring, standalone business, it's necessary for all influencer brands to go beyond being tied to a single person, and create a "purpose brand.”

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Li Jin

@ljin18

4 years

People often say that IG feels aspirational, polished, and often leads to feelings of inadequacy, while TikTok is authentic, fun, and uplifting. Why? Creator monetization is a huge, underrated factor (in addition to content format & interest vs. social graph). Thread👇

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Li Jin

@ljin18

2 years

Unpopular opinion but we should stop glorifying the pursuit of generational wealth. Why should starting points in life differ so much just because of the family someone is born into?

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Li Jin

@ljin18

2 years

Metamask now at 21 million monthly active users, up 4x since April. That represents: - 0.7% of FB's MAU (2.89B) - 6% of Twitter's MAU (331M) - internet users in 1996 We are still super early (but growing fast!)

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Li Jin

@ljin18

8 months

A metric that I like to ground convos about crypto in is that Ethereum just crossed 245m cumulative unique addresses. Meanwhile, the internet had 248m users in December 1999. We're at December 1999 levels in terms of onchain activity

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Li Jin

@ljin18

2 years

Just because it has "-DAO" at the end doesn't mean it's actually a DAO

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Li Jin

@ljin18

3 years

Are you raising for your startup and want to pitch a group of creators who collectively represent 48 million followers? I'm teaching a cohort of amazing creators about angel investing, and we're doing group pitches every Friday in June. Apply here!

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Li Jin

@ljin18

3 years

Which startups are using TikTok in interesting ways for user acquisition or building in public?

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Li Jin

@ljin18

3 years

Creators are eating the world.

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Li Jin

@ljin18

3 years

The creator economy is starting to resemble the gig economy, with commoditization of workers and economic precarity masqueraded as entrepreneurship. New post about the perils of the creator economy and how we move forward from here:

The creator economy is in crisis. Now let's fix it.

Nearly two years ago, I published “The Passion Economy and the Future of Work,” which laid out a vision for online work that was informed by and a reaction to the challenges of the gig economy. While...

li.mirror.xyz

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Li Jin

@ljin18

3 years

onlyfans for pets

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Li Jin

@ljin18

3 years

Reminder that your cap table is a reflection of who you want to enrich in the world. Do diligence on investors!!!

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Li Jin

@ljin18

2 years

I need more friends who ski

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Li Jin

@ljin18

4 years

The moral of the story: warm intros are helpful, but shouldn't be necessary. Talent is universal, but opportunities to connect to people aren’t. To quote Ratatouille: "Not everyone can become a great artist, but a great artist can come from anywhere."

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Li Jin

@ljin18

3 years

Platform take rates are essentially taxation without representation Etsy - 5% App Store - 30% YouTube - 45% Twitch - 50% Instagram - 100%

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Li Jin

@ljin18

3 years

the disruption of VC is nigh by creator angels by investment DAOs by treasuries what else?

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Li Jin

@ljin18

4 years

Announcing our new talk show, Passion Economics! Each week, we'll do a live Zoom session with a new guest who's building for the Passion Economy. This Friday's show will star @shl , founder of Gumroad! We'll edit and post the full episode on YT later.

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Li Jin

@ljin18

2 years

A powerful narrative around web3 is that it is a movement toward a fairer internet. But web2 started with similar promises of removing intermediaries & empowering individuals — which were never fulfilled. How do we design platforms that promote fairness?

Web3 Is Our Chance to Make a Better Internet

Web3 represents a chance to reimagine the internet and rebuild platforms from fresh principles. But in order to do that, we need to agree on what those principles should be and why. The social and...

hbr.org

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Li Jin

@ljin18

3 years

since this morning, i have made $100+ from a digital "billboard" in my link in bio i am shook

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Li Jin

@ljin18

2 years

A common pushback I hear from folks regarding crypto is that it "financializes everything." My answer: everything is already financialized, but that value just isn't accruing back to the users/contributors today. Crypto enables that to change.

Money for Everything: A Future Where Every Inch of Culture Is Monetized

In a fully tokenized future, everything is money. Is that a good thing?

www.coindesk.com

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Li Jin

@ljin18

1 year

Moments on @LensProtocol that altered my brain chemistry: - Making a post on @lensterxyz and seeing it on @orbwagmi (& others) - Realizing that curators who mirror (re-share) posts can earn referral fees on post collects, simply for being in the chain of distribution

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Li Jin

@ljin18

2 years

Who is a Notion pro and wants to help me build a website to open-source my entire curriculum/lectures from my Creator Economy Course last year?

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Li Jin

@ljin18

2 years

Facebook stock dropped 26% in 1 day (the largest wipeout of market cap for a company in history), due to saturation and negative network effects. What can NFT projects learn from this?

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Li Jin

@ljin18

2 years

A review of what’s going on for @MagicEden vs @Opensea : Magic Eden has held on to its market share despite Opensea’s Solana NFT launch last month. Not only that, but ME is now at comparable user numbers, *much* higher transaction frequency, and closing the gap in GMV with OS 👇

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Li Jin

@ljin18

1 month

pov ur meeting with me on zoom today

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Li Jin

@ljin18

2 years

The most successful web3 social apps are going to look completely different than web2 social (rather than building "decentralized Twitter/FB/X") They'll lean into financial speculation & create new economic status games.

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Li Jin

@ljin18

3 years

In 1935, the US enacted various New Deal cultural programs to provide relief for jobless artists and democratize public access to art. A century later, it’s time to renew that spirit. Enter: Universal Creative Income 🪙 New blog by me & @lilashroff

The Case for Universal Creative Income

By Li Jin and Lila Shroff

li.mirror.xyz

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Li Jin

@ljin18

2 years

One of the most significant trends in web3 is the re-imagining of fandom: the blurring of lines between fan and creator, between canon and “fanon,” and how fan labor is funded and rewarded.

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Li Jin

@ljin18

5 years

As consumers desire greater control over how they spend their attention, an emerging biz model will be paying for ongoing access to *people*--or what I’ll call “Community-as-a-Service.” Thread 👇

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Li Jin

@ljin18

3 years

Why Miami when we can Hawaii?

Emily Hanks

@Ejhanks

3 years

kauai tech week who’s in

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Li Jin

@ljin18

2 years

Discussions about web3 social mostly focus on two possible approaches: (1) Protocol-first (e.g. starting with a social graph protocol) (2) Product-first (e.g. starting with an application that gains adoption) But there’s a third path to building in web3 social: community-first.

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Li Jin

@ljin18

1 year

Someone recently told me that DAOs were just childless people larping PTA meetings and I haven’t been able to get over it

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Li Jin

@ljin18

3 years

Today, it seems inconceivable that for much of human history, people accepted the 'divine right' of monarchs as a legitimate source of power. Years from now, we may look back on this era and wonder why we were accepting of autocratic companies led by 'enlightened dictators.'

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