Hi team,
193 days. That's how many days it has been since @mg sent me the first email about joining XMTP to go do this.
On one hand, I can't believe it's been 193 days. On the other hand, it feels like we've been working on this forever. It's a good reminder for me to keep making progress weekly and make sure we are tracking our goals and impact weekly. While also knowing that this is a 10+ year game we are playing so enjoy the ride.
Last week was a very focused week that also flew by. We are building the core protocol, exploring the implications of a Local and Global strategy for rolling it out, and planning for NFT NYC to share for the first time what we are working on and why with our community.
Excited stuff all around. Let's jump right in this week...
- Shane Mac
Last week goals
Oct 25-29th
- Prepare and finalize presentation for NFT NYC
- Discuss Public / Private relay architecture idea
- Transition Community Discourse to .org and get it ready for new users
- Invite all community to event in NYC (over 150 RSVPs)
Next week goals
Nov 1-5th
- Attend and present at NFT NYC
- Review the Product Prioritization & Network growth plan to determine best use cases and partners to start with https://coda.io/d/Product-Prioritization_d99Wz4t13U2/Product-Organization-Overview_suoxH#_lubui
- Start running the weekly meeting as product sprints so we all know what we are working on and what we are delivering - this will be led by @petermdenton for the time being
- Need to get focused on more outbound for recruiting again
XMTP Updates
- Martin has accepted our offer to join XMTP! Start date November 29th
- Ashish provided references and we will be chatting with them this week
- We are still chatting with Jason
- We have meetings with a16z this week to discuss more crypto-focused engineering talent
- Met with Product BD leader at Whatsapp who wants to join. Notes here.
- Great meeting with Ali from a16z about our approach and monthly update
Crypto industry news
- Facebook changed their name to Meta :)
- Reddit, Facebook, Twitter, and Coinbase are all working on NFT platforms and verification
- FWB raised from a16z https://twitter.com/cdixon/status/1453398799129456650?s=20
What we are reading/listening to
- This podcast with our investors Chris Dixon and Naval, was the single best podcast I've heard on simply explaining how big and important this next wave of the internet can be: https://open.spotify.com/episode/3U4wMKyvMUhB83qf8FaA3I?si=-zEkah06S0a3hdJOal3qhg&nd=1
- This NYTimes article really articulated a16z's ambitions in crypto and regulation. Really shows how lucky we are to have them as our partners in this journey https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/29/us/politics/andreessen-horowitz-lobbying-cryptocurrency.html