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🗓 What Happened on Tech Twitter in October

☕️ Morning Brew and Paystack get that $$$, 🇺🇸 The election run-up debates got heated, 🤬 Bad board members were exposed, 📈 The next crypto bull run began

Brett Goldstein

Nov 23, 2020

Yo! ✌️ I’m Brett! I am a founder and former Cognitive Science researcher. Social Studies is a semi-weekly newsletter for people building great products for humans. It includes recaps of what happened on Tech Twitter every week plus deep analysis using frameworks from Psychology, Economics, and the other Social Sciences.

Sorry for the delay, yall! Been running around Tulum for the last month. Now that I’m back stateside, consistency will be back as well!

✨ TLDR

October was quite an eventful month! Here’s a quick rundown of the top stories.

☕️ Morning Brew and Paystack get that $$$ - Two huge acquisitions shined the spotlight on our two favorite things to talk about - newsletters and Stripe.

🇺🇸 The election run-up debates got heated - A debate about Prop 22 and the future of the gig economy got Tech Twitter riled up.

🤬 Bad board members were exposed - A scathing email from Ryan Caldbeck to a seemingly comically terrible board member started an important conversation on how to evaluate board members.

📈 The next crypto bull run began - Bitcoin broke $14K and several meaningful crypto projects reached wider adoption. Many were saying that this is the real deal this time.

☕️ Morning Brew and Paystack get that $$$

Daily business news media company, Morning Brew was acquired by Business Insider for $75M+!

Kinsey Grant ☕️ @KinseyGrant

you still count as popular even if it's your new legal guardian that calls you a "popular podcast series"......right?

businessinsider.comA big welcome to Morning Brew!Insider Inc. has acquired a stake in the awesome email and podcast company Morning Brew. Welcome to the team!

Biggest deal about this deal? They only raised ~$750K in total.

Web Smith @web

The @MorningBrew story is a great one. It shows what's possible when you work hard and choose to avoid the traditional VC game. If the deal closes, the two will take home more than most growth founders. And still have tremendous upside for the future. There's more than one way.

Naturally, everyone had a hot take to share.

Austin Rief ☕️ @austin_rief

All the sudden everyone is a media analyst. I love this site.

The most important point is that not all newsletters are created equal. Morning Brew nailed the daily business news media play, which is significantly more massive opportunity than the typical weekly research and analysis newsletters that everyone seems to be starting these days.

There are still tons of huge opportunities.

Ari Lewis @amlewis4

The local newspaper will be replaced by the local newsletter in the next 10 years. Trucking, warehousing and print expenses are unnecessary when they can be replaced with an email.

Stripe also acquired Nigerian payments startup, Paystack in October. Huge news for the African startup ecosystem.

Paystack @paystack

In the midst of a tough week in Nigeria, we have some positive news to share. Paystack will be acquired by @stripe to accelerate online and offline commerce across Africa. paystack.com/blog/company-n…

🇺🇸 The election run-up debates got heated

In weeks before the election, the biggest discussion in tech was around Prop 22, which “Exempts App-Based Transportation and Delivery Companies from Providing Employee Benefits to Certain Drivers.”

Uber and Lyft were strong advocates for it, as well as a number of their drivers, but a few people spoke out against the bill.

Li Jin @ljin18

Prop 22 codifies everything based on "engaged time" so workers would earn far less than min wage (~$5.64/hr). Drivers would need to work 39 hours/wk just to qualify for the minimum healthcare benefit. Prop 22 rolls back existing protections against harassment & discrimination.

A few people shared their voting guides.

Mike Solana @micsolana

if you're looking for direction on our local house of horrors (government), a san francisco voting guide for people who aren't insane:

solana.substack.comEndorsements for Human Civilizationa san francisco voting guide for people who aren’t insane

🤬 Bad board members were exposed

Delian dropped a scathing email from Ryan Caldbeck to one of his board members. It’s worth the full read.

delian @zebulgar

Absolutely eviscerating email from a founder to a former board member on all of their extremely unproductive and harmful behaviors Woof, tough to read...

docs.google.comEmail to former board member---------- Forwarded message --------- From: Ryan Caldbeck {{12 - - - - - - - - -}} Date: Sun, Sep 29, 2019 at 8:38 PM Subject: Feedback To: {{13 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -}} {{14}}, I believe in the importance of feedback for both people in a relationship. We will never work...

It got awkward.

Richard Burton @ricburton

@zebulgar Alright I’ll do it: @cshapiro, what gives? It doesn’t sound like @collabfund is very collaborative.

Craig Shapiro 🇺🇸 @cshapiro

@ricburton @zebulgar @collabfund @ricburton, thanks for asking. Ryan releasing his own redacted email without context is disappointing and misleading. There are always two sides to every story.

This naturally started a larger conversation about board members where more questionable board members were exposed.

Kim Taylor @kimmytaylor

Twitter is free. inc.com/minda-zetlin/s…

📈 The next crypto bull run began

It’s that time of the cycle again. Crypto is headed for another bull run similar to 2017. BTC, ETH and other cryptocurrencies saw explosive growth in October.

priyanka desai🍦 @pridesai

14k tomorrow 👀

What’s new this time? Big companies are putting Bitcoin on their balance sheet (Square bought $50M) AND more importantly, actually building stuff people use (Reddit is testing turning their karma feature into an Ethereum token).

Linda Xie @ljxie

The list of positive news in crypto continues to grow incl: - PayPal launches crypto support. Venmo in 2021 - MicroStrategy purchased $425m of bitcoin - Square purchased $50m of bitcoin - Kraken received bank charter approval - DeFi grew exponentially ($11bn total value locked)

Linda Xie @ljxie

Really exciting how much positive news there's been in crypto recently incl: - JPMorgan banking Coinbase & Gemini - Paul Tudor Jones' public support of Bitcoin - Square Cash App's major growth in bitcoin revenue - Reddit's beta testing of Eth tokens There's a lot of momentum 🔥

NFTs (non-fungible tokens), which allow people to create and sell unique digital items (e.g. photos, music, etc) are also having a field day. RAC

RAC @RAC

Today at 1PM we accepted the highest bid for "Elephant Dreams" at 70 ETH ($26,185) from @MaxStealth5. the first of our @reisingerandres x @RAC collab. Thank you to @MaxStealth5 @rabmarut2 for battling it out. We broke the @SuperRare_co I believe.

Social tokens are also a growing new category. Social tokens are basically cryptocurrencies tied to creators and communities. I launched one in October called $THANKS.