May - kashvireads #5

Confession time 👀 VeeFriends 🐐 More crypto Ξ

May 31, 2021

Hello 👋🏽

It’s time for a confession! I haven’t been reading much. This has been a crazy month, and I mean that in the best way possible.

During the first week of May, I gave my final exams. And, I got the opportunity to be a moderator at GaryVee’s Discord server for his NFT project, “VeeFriends” 🤯 I was pumped about this because I had been really active since I joined in and this role made me feel even better about participating in the community 🥰

🖼️ If you’ve been reading this newsletter since February, you know I feel about NFTs. And about Gary in general. I strongly believe that web 3.0 is revolutionizing the world, and I am in awe of how Gary has launched his NFT project. More on this at the end of this post!

☕ Another update: I'm interning at a really cool startup, Filter Coffee HQ, who are on a mission to change everyday media for GenZ. Would really appreciate you checking it out and giving it a sub if you're into entrepreneurship, finance and technology. We’re giving Instagram a shot too! 🚀

📘 What I’m Reading:

  1. “Find Your Red Thread” by Tamsen Webster: Renowned speaker, consultant, and TEDx idea strategist Tamsen Webster shares the same step-by-step process she's taught to hundreds of clients, helping them deliver memorable ideas as powerful stories that will help them build an audience. 🧵

  2. “A Wild Sheep Chase” by Haruki Murakami: A marvellous hybrid of mythology and mystery, A Wild Sheep Chase is the extraordinary literary thriller that launched Haruki Murakami’s international reputation. 🐑

Also, still reading the books I started when I sent last month’s newsletter. Not stonks :(

🎧 What I’m Listening To:

  1. Modern Finance: MoFi covers all things cryptocurrency, DeFi, yield farming, NFTs, FIRE, robo-investing, finance hacks, and more. Entrepreneur and technology venture capitalist Kevin Rose interviews experts and entrepreneurs building modern finance tools. 💰

  2. Bankless ft GaryVee: This conversation was a part of the VeeFriends press release and sheds light on how smart contracts can revolutionize the NFT space when used correctly. Gary shares some amazing insights about crypto and keeps a great vibe going. The interviewers didn't shy away from asking difficult questions and Gary definitely didn't shy away from answering them. Listen to this to gain a deep understanding of the VeeFriends project ⚡

  3. Decentralizing Everything with Ethereum's Vitalik Buterin: In this Tech Crunch talk, Vitalik is in conversation with Naval Ravikant to discuss what decentralization is and how it can be useful. They also acknowledge the barriers that come with it and compare Bitcoin with Ethereum as currencies.

🎶 May Playlist:

Olivia Rodrigo’s SOUR, Billie Eilish and a few more hits…

📚 Advice from Books:

"The line between “inspiringly bold” and “foolishly reckless” can be a millimetre thick and only visible with hindsight. 👀

⚔️ Risk and luck are doppelgangers. This is not an easy problem to solve.

👉🏽 The difficulty in identifying what is luck, what is skill, and what is risk is one of the biggest problems we face when trying to learn about the best way to manage money.

But two things can point you in a better direction.💯 Be careful who you praise and admire.⚡ Be careful who you look down upon and wish to avoid becoming.

Or, just be careful when assuming that 100% of outcomes can be attributed to effort and decisions.

💌 After my son was born, I wrote him a letter that said in part:🎰 Some people are born into families that encourage education; others are against it. Some are born into flourishing economies encouraging of entrepreneurship; others are born into war and destitution. I want you to be successful, and I want you to earn it. But realize that not all success is due to hard work, and not all poverty is due to laziness. 🧬

Keep this in mind when judging people, including yourself. 🎯

📑 Therefore, focus less on specific individuals and case studies and more on broad patterns. Studying a specific person can be dangerous because we tend to study extreme examples—the billionaires, the CEOs, or the massive failures that dominate the news—and extreme examples are often the least applicable to other situations, given their complexity. 💰

🌠 The more extreme the outcome, the less likely you can apply its lessons to your own life, because the more likely the outcome was influenced by extreme ends of luck or risk. 🤷🏽‍♀️"

- The Psychology of Money, by Morgan Housel

💭 A quote that summarises this month:

“Never be so polite you forget your power. Never wield such power you forget to be polite.” - Taylor Swift

📸 Photo of the Month:

🌎 Interesting Links that you can Explore:

  1. Building the Middle Class of the Creator Economy: In this essay, Li Jin dissects what it means to be a creator in 2021 and the opportunities that come with it. She writes about how platforms can evolve to provide better opportunities for creators and thus grow the middle class of the creator economy. I'm a huge supporter of her writing, and this essay was a fantastic read for me because it helped me understand the opportunities that I can pursue as a creator 📱

  2. How Casey Neistat Became the Greatest Vlogger of All Time: Casey is the OG vlogger! I've been a fan of his aesthetic for years now (NYC, bad handwriting, black sunglasses) but I'm slowly also learning about his consistency. In this video, David Perell breaks down how Casey got to where he is today. “Creativity is the ability to believe in the way in which you see the world so much that you actually create an art form out of it” and Casey Neistat does EXACTLY that! Watch this video to learn about his journey 🎥

  3. Why Decentralization Matters: Decentralized networks can win the third era of the internet for the same reason they won the first era: by winning the hearts and minds of entrepreneurs and developers. Crypto networks combine the best features of the first two internet eras: community-governed, decentralized networks with capabilities that will eventually exceed those of the most advanced centralized services. This Medium article dives deep into the concept of decentralization and how it is a core element of web 3.0 🌐

  4. Uncovering stories of Indian women taking companies public:

  5. The Mess We Miss: A 97-second ode to all the messes we never thought we’d miss and to finding our way back to a better tomorrow. As many of you know, I love learning about marketing and watching ads like this brings a huge smile to my face. 🥰

More about VeeFriends 🐐

To foster a sense of community, Gary started a Discord server for the project and it has grown to be a hub of cool conversations among 150k+ people! I had been active since Day 1, helping with questions and connecting people to the right resources.

On 3rd May, I helped sort out a spam influx while most of the team was asleep. One of Gary's team members recommended me to be a Moderator 🤯 This role made me feel even more incentivised to participate in conversations and help people out. I'm so pumped to be a part of this 45-year project and can't wait to keep sharing more with all of you. But wait. There’s more.

The VeeFriends project has 10,255 tokens divided into 3 main categories: Admission, Access and Gift. Every VeeFriends token comes with 3-year access to VeeCon which is a multi-day superconference where only VeeFriends token holders will experience an extraordinary lineup of content including iconic keynote speeches; aggressive amount of innovative and educational talks, panels and Q&A sessions; and many collaborative experiences including competitions, gatherings, and team sessions.

I want to talk to y'all about the 3rd category i.e Gift! This category has 555 tokens called “Gift Goat” which is verifiable for an exclusive gifting experience curated by Gary Vaynerchuk and the VeeFriends team + VeeCon.

A minimum of six (6) physical gifts will be sent to Gift Goat token holders per year for three (3) years until token experience expires. The auction ceiling price was 15 ETH (~$40,000) and a floor of 5 ETH (~$13,000). All of these tokens are sold out.

Why am I telling you about these?

On 23rd May, Gary decided to give away a few free tokens on the Discord server. It was at 4:30 a.m IST but as a mod, I felt compelled to be a part of it because there would be higher activity than usual. I did weird things with my sleep schedule and woke up in time for the giveaway! The adrenaline rush alone was enough to keep me awake - the winners being announced made me super happy because they were all really well-deserving. Every single win brought about an unbelievable wave of congratulations messages and well wishes.

After approximately an hour of tokens being given away, one of Gary’s team members messaged me asking for my wallet address. My heart DROPPED! At this point, I knew what was about to happen. And I couldn’t stop smiling :)

At 6:00 a.m. I was quite literally at the edge of my seat for every upcoming message on the server.

At 6:13 a.m. it happened! My phone screen lit up in yellow with a discord mention from GaryVee#1565. It wasn’t an admission token, but a GIFT GOAT! 🐐

Still can’t believe that this is real. Check this out for my reaction and the “VeeFriends” Highlight on my Instagram for more details! I feel super grateful for Gary, yes, but even more so the community that he has built over the years. If you told me in January that I am a moderator and a giveaway winner of a digital asset listed on the blockchain traded in a currency called Ethereum, I would’ve laughed. I never would have seen this coming. And I wouldn’t want it any other way.

🙏🏽 Thank you for reading, and for subscribing to this. I appreciate all 357 of you. If there’s anything that I can help you with, please connect with me on the social links below. Hoping that June will be a great month for us all! I can’t wait to write to you again :)

All the love,Kashvi 🤍

🎙️ Listen to the latest episode of kashvireads…

It is available on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, and other podcasting platforms as well.