Good day team,
First off, it was exciting to welcome our first team members this past week. Welcome again @flora and @darick.
@mg was on vacation this week and we were focused on closing the round and pulling in the last group of investors for it. Hopefully we are on track to close early this week.
I’m really excited to close the round, focus on building, and continue to build out our team. Looking forward to a great week ahead, hope everyone has a good one.
News this week
- The industry news was all about the Infrastructure bill. It was inspiring to see an entire industry come together and try to help guide and educate Congress on the passing of this new legislation. We still have so much work to do. I really enjoyed Dorsey’s proposal for the time being. — Matt and I had a long discussion about how to be more helpful as a company when more things like this are going to arise within the government, more to share soon for all of us to discuss.
- We had great conversations with more strategic investors to join our community round we will be doing alongside the main Series A closing round. This will allow us to bring in smaller but more strategic checks into XMTP that can help with recruiting, distribution, and initial product feedback.
- @petermdenton started building out initial databases for recruiting and we are going to work on focusing this list over the coming weeks. Here’s the initial list of people based on who the top people follow in the industry: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/16lKRdCtvKmV2LBf4A3fPseZKS6vEa_moCPFOfUfbjRw/edit#gid=0
- We selected a new assistant to join us and work with all of us. She will be replacing Ari who is leaving because of a medical issue. Hailey will be joining us the week of August 23rd. We will make intros then.
What we are reading / listening to
- Good read on the infrastructure bill from Fred Wilson: https://avc.com/2021/08/crypto-and-the-infrastructure-bill/
I would love to know what everyone else is reading in the comments. Last week was not a lot of reading, mostly just a bunch of conversations.
A week in the life with Shane Mac
This weekend I attended an outdoor music festival in Iowa with my dad, brother, cousin, and girlfriend. The photo above is with my dad and my brother. The festival was called Hinterland and was headlined by one of our favorite bands, The Avett Brothers.
We’ve been traveling to shows to see them for 15 years. The blow up couches were the life savers. It was a quick trip and excited to be back home with the pup.
Hope everyone has a great week.
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FYI: We are going to start asking our team to share “Week in the life” for this section of the weekly dispatch. It’s just a little behind the scenes of your week so that people can get to know everyone, hear a little bit about their life, and help us all learn a bit more about different people in our company.