Hi team,
What a week. We have officially closed our Series A round.
I'll reiterate what I said in that post, this is the chance to build a great company but it is not a guarantee. It is up to us to stay focused and recruit a great team + build a great product and protocol.
Raising money in tech is almost solely about giving us the opportunity to hire the greatest people in the world to join us. That’s what this moment is about. That’s why we decided to raise more capital. It’s a tool for us to have conversations with the best people in the world, and if we’re lucky we can convince them to join our mission.
Excited to dig in this week on the story we want to tell to the world that only we can tell. One that sets us apart and helps bring more talent into web3, and more talent wanting to work with all of us at XMTP.
Here's to a great week, Shane Mac
News this week
- Great meeting about recruiting with Flora. Notes here: Meeting with Flora: Talking Recruiting
- Had a really great meeting with Rachael Horwitz who leds comms at a16z and she will be helping us with our story + the a16z story as well
- We met with the founder and CEO of Keybase about recruiting and he ended up wanting to invest as well. This will be a great person to help us build the right team. They were acquired by Zoom and were a really technically advanced engineering org
- @petermdenton is in the final stages of a recruiting engine built off of twitter graphs and influence. Excited for everyone to see this
What we are reading/listening to
- OpenSea became the first NFT platform to pass $1 billion in monthly trading volume. The platform makes up most trading volumes, making up $1.23 billion in volume this month while the entire marketplace saw $1.27 billion of total volume. Link
- This week was all country for me, I listened to the song Buy Dirt for way too many times. It's the most country of country songs lol https://open.spotify.com/track/69AIpwGNLxr4qS1X5ynx60?si=c66bfed3447b4001
A week in the life with @Darick
So, we want to start featuring others in this section. Who wants to share their week and what they were up to? I'll edit the post and update but I'll also start asking people each week to share. It's awesome to see the real lives of our team behind the scenes!
Who wants to share @petermdenton @flora @darick
@Darick: I'll go since I took some photos on my PTO this week.
On Monday morning, my family (wife, 2 kids) drove out to the Oregon Coast to celebrate me and the wife's 7-year wedding anniversary.
If you've never been to the Oregon Coast, it's quite beautiful up and down the 101. If you're lucky, you can catch a weekend of no wind and sun. The downside is that the water is so cold that you're gonna need a dry/wetsuit if you're planning on getting into the Pacific.
We stayed at a trusty Airbnb/VRBO that is right on the shoreline and just 1 house away from a ramp that gives you beach access. Super convenient, especially for trucking kids back and forth.
On Tuesday we visited the Oregon Coast Aquarium which was small but had some great features. We ended up driving up and down the 101 to a few coastal cities.
View from the house. If anyone is ever in Oregon and wants the link to book the house, let me know.
Cuddling the baby
My 4-year-old loving the sand. You can see how grey it can get out there. No rain this day. It was also quite warm even though it doesn't look like it.
Total nerd moment but this switch had an e-ink screen. Thought it was super cool and I'd actually never seen something like this.
Thanks for reading all, let's go find our team these next few weeks and months.