Eric Seufert

Join the Sui Overflow hackathon and compete for a share of $5000 in Sui by integrating BlockEden.xyz's RPC and Indexer services. Learn how to participate, the prize distribution, and judging criteria in our latest blog post. Discover the benefits of using BlockEden.xyz and start building your innovative project today!

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Yesterday, my team at Vareto announced the first-ever multiplayer modeling platform for Finance. 😍 Now that I can finally speak publicly about what we've been working on, the first thing I want to share is a screenshot from a live multiplayer session we did internally at the company. One of the interesting things about building enterprise software as a startup is that we're still too small to *need* our own product. So instead of doing what our customers do--expense budgeting, headcount planning, etc.--we use Vareto's multiplayer modeling to forecast fun things like total pet spend. Yep, that's right. We had 40 people go into a Vareto model and enter in bottom-up inputs for how much they expect to spend on their cats and dogs this year. 😂 While this isn't very useful--especially since many people entered in clearly exaggerated numbers--sessions like this helped prove that our new 2.0 platform can handle even "extreme" usage situations. (In reality, even if some enterprise customers have thousands of users in Vareto, only a handful are ever likely to be in the same model page at the same exact time given granular data permissions.) You can see more useful, realistic ways that finance and business teams can use Vareto multiplayer here: https://lnkd.in/gV9gqKwz

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🤪 💵 Wow, this is so wrong... Bolt (not the ride-hail company Bolt, but another one) had a revenue of $30 million (2021) and raised a total of $960 million. Pay attention here—its valuation was an astonishing $11 billion, which was... 400 times its annual revenue (yes, 400!) 🤯 To put the scale of the problem into perspective, even assuming a 30% net profit margin (which is rare on the market), investors would need to wait over 1,000 years to see money back 😱 👉 But the story doesn't end there. It gets even more interesting. Unsurprisingly, given this insane valuation, there are lawsuits and scams happening in parallel. So, what did the founder do with a company that has $960 million of investor money, an unrealistic valuation, and modest growth? Naturally, he took a personal loan of $30 million secured by Bolt (meaning if he doesn’t repay the money, Bolt will cover it). Cool, no? Predictably, the $30 million wasn’t repaid, and now Bolt shareholders are suing the founder. However, they will get more Bolt shares, not money 😜 It sounds like a very strange, partial exit strategy from an overinflated balloon 🎈 Of course, a high valuation can be justified for a truly unique product that solves a significant problem for humanity (space exploration, unique medication etc.) However, Bolt is a payment provider (you can personally find 30+ competitors with a quick search) that was growing at a modest 20%. 😱 How did this happen? How was such an overhyped valuation accepted by experienced investors? And how did the founder have the moral right to execute the loan scam? It’s just crazy... https://lnkd.in/dBV5r5Yc https://lnkd.in/dfjK2cJV https://lnkd.in/duKYMKYc. #valuation #exit #bolt

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I've talked to 50+ crypto projects over the last few weeks and they're all looking for help onboarding KOLs (Key Opinion Leaders) Many are hiring agencies, BD people, assistants - just to fail miserably Here's what they don't get: Before we get into how to onboard KOLs, just know: KOLs won't fix your problems If users can't understand your product, if your value prop is not strong enough... then go work on fundamentals and then work with KOLs KOLs work great when they amplify sth that's already great Now, back to onboarding KOLs 1) Outreach Most of the teams I've talked to use cold outreach, copy-pasting the same DM over and over again If that's you, you need to stop that NOW - nobody likes spam This is how you win and set yourself apart: - Try to get a warm intro if possible (this is where agencies can help) - Personalize your outreach! - Own your pitch! 💡No agency can do a better job than you at pitching your product! 2) Why your project is a great fit Make it obvious why their followers should care about a project like yours! Share metrics that show traction, Social proof (investors, PR articles, etc) Demo about how to use your product 💡Onboard them to your product as if they were users! 3) Remove friction from generating content Ok so now they buy that your project is legit, but now are thinking how painful could it be to generate content? (yes many of them are lazy) 💡Share some of your own content that has worked, content from other projects/KOLs can work too 4) Landing a good deal Lastly, negotiating a deal that makes sense for both sides is what will make or break this process Make sure incentives are aligned 💡Remember: No deal is always better than a bad deal! That's all - there's not much else to it tldr 1. Personalized outreach 2. Make it clear why your project is a fit 3. Remove friction from generating content 4. Land a good deal If you'd like me to go deeper into KOL deals, please reply to this post and I'll follow up with you

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tl;dr: Finding external advocates for your product is one of the most foolproof ways to build developer trust. If you’re generous enough with your incentives, loyal customers don’t just become endorsers — they become revenue-generating machines. Your biggest fans could be generating 10% of your revenue. At ScraperAPI, our affiliate program did just that by converting loyal users into top salespeople. Here’s how we spotted the opportunity: We realized that a lot of our customers would outsource web scraping tasks to freelance software engineers who would use the same tool over and over again for different companies. That left us with a great opportunity to build relationships with those freelancers who had the potential to bring us more and more new customers over time. Here’s how we did it in practice: It’s super simple. We offered killer incentives to everyone involved: -25% recurring commissions for affiliates -10% first-month discount for the new customers they referred Because our product was well-designed and easy to use, freelancers were happy to recommend us over and over again.

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7 RECOMMENDATIONS FOR HARDWARE STARTUPS It’s hard to understate the difficulty of the v1 launch of a consumer hardware company. I see a ton of new HW startups coming out. Here are some counterintuitive recommendations… 1) Target a small market for v1, not a large market. You need a small number of people to love your product and this will earn you the right to build a v2. You have to understand your v1 will not make you a successful company. Your v1 needs to prove that you deserve to exist in the first place. In the case of WHOOP, we started with pro athletes who were willing to put up with our v1’s short battery life and flaky Bluetooth connections because they so desperately needed Sleep and Recovery data. A broad consumer base would have rejected it. 2) Be great at no more than 1-3 things. If you try to be great at more than that, you will build a hardware that is mediocre at a wide range of things. You won’t think it’s going to be mediocre, but it will be. 3) You want a small launch. Not because you want small sales but because you want to have a steady ramp. It’s much better to do 100k of sales steadily over 12 months than in 2 months with a huge drop off. Keep in mind you need to manage your manufacturing partner and that there’s nothing better or more efficient than steady and predictable. 4) CAC is your enemy. Referrals are gold. The magic of referrals is that they signal high NPS and they help you grow steadily. Again everything that helps you have a steady HW manufacturing plan is good. Building a referral program for v1 launch is a good use of your time. 5) Be excellent at Software. Turns out being good at both Hardware and Software is a hard thing and something that your BIG COMPANY competitor is actually not great at (excluding Apple here). For some reason, there’s such a magnifying glass on the Hardware development, that Software is then overlooked by consumer startups. Don’t make that mistake. You can be great at both. 6) You should spend an unreasonable amount of time and money on ONE aspect of your Hardware. Could be the design or a technical breakthrough. But something needs to be SPECIAL. In our case, we designed a modular battery pack that allowed Whoop to be charged without taking it off your body. This made our development timeline much longer, but it allowed us to achieve something that no other wearable has achieved since: 24/7 health data. 7) Finally, have an unrealistic belief in yourself and your team. You are not supposed to succeed and the odds are stacked against you. Building hardware takes confidence and you’re up against big players who will rip you off. We went so far as to leave a message for our competitors on our circuit board (pictured below). In the case of Amazon and others, the prophecy came true. If you’re building consumer hardware, I wish you nothing but success. It will be super hard, but super rewarding. Good luck 👊🏼 #consumer #hardware #wearable #startup #whoop

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📊 New insights from Tubular Labs show an emerging trend that every podcaster should take note of: full episodes and longer clips are driving serious engagement on YouTube. 🎙 Tubular’s analysis shows that podcasters like Kill Tony (No. 1 on the list) earned a massive 933.5 million minutes watched across YouTube and Facebook - up 238% YoY by posting full episodes. 🎞 Shannon Sharpe’s Club Shay Shay, Joe Rogan, and Theo Von are seeing similar success with long-form video strategies. And this means one thing. 💰 A huge increase in ad Revenue Potential We know audience attention aren’t shrinking and extended sessions on YouTube mean more ad opportunities against each upload. These full video episodes and longer clips are a monetisation goldmine. P.S. If you're looking to turn your YouTube channel into a revenue driving machine which engages with younger audiences, DM me to find out how we can help.

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An internal meeting today. Theodore & Megon casually reporting on the traffic numbers for one of our partners. Teddy: "The Reddit traffic is up for this partner. It's now at 5k". Vlad: "Wow, 5k, good stuff! Per month ... right?" Teddy, casually: "No, that's weekly." Vlad: "Wait, we are driving 20k views per month from Reddit?" Megon: "Yep." 20k high-intent views / mo, from a handful of Reddit threads. Because Google ❤️ Reddit since ± Aug 2022, and because Reddit now owns a large % of most valuable SERP real estate, we see Reddit as an important block in the media strategy for every SaaS company.

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During a fascinating conversation with Pippa Short, one topic we discussed was the accelerating trend of publisher diversification. Something we recently wrote about on solli. -> https://lnkd.in/eXfhQNg4 1️⃣ How far will this diversification trend develop? 2️⃣ How are clients capitalizing on these broadening services? 3️⃣ What positive or negative impact does this have on agency/publisher relationships? Thank you for inviting me to be a part of the conversation. #solli #solliglobal #globalpharmamedia

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With Redpanda Data's recent acquisition of Benthos I've gotten some questions about how it compares to Arroyo. In short: Benthos is *stateless*, while Arroyo (like Flink or RisingWave) is *stateful*. This may sound small, but adds up to a fundamental difference in how these systems are designed, built, and used. In a streaming engine, statefulness combines two inter-related features: * Repartitioning data (GROUP BY in SQL) * Remembering previously seen events With just these two features, we can support most of normal SQL (window functions, joins, aggregation, etc.) plus time-oriented streaming operators (time windows, event-time semantics, watermarks). Stateless engines on the other hand are limited to simple transformations and filters (SELECT and WHERE in SQL terms) that operate on individual events. But all of this is a tradeoff; stateful systems are much harder to operate. So if you don't need joins, aggregates, or windows, a stateless system can be a better choice. They also work well as infra glue, routing data between different systems—Benthos in particular has a huge connector ecosystem. For a deeper dive on this, I wrote down some thoughts on our blog:

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As we near the US presidential election, prediction markets have been surging. So, what are prediction markets and where does this budding industry go post election? As prediction markets gain mainstream traction, platforms like Kalshi, PredictIt, Polymarket, Betfair, and Smarkets are transforming how we leverage event-based insights for betting purposes. While regulatory frameworks evolve, these platforms are setting the stage for data-driven market intelligence. The industry's growth is primarily supported by: ◽ Increased Interest in Real-Time Data: Prediction markets serve as valuable tools for organizations and individuals looking for near real-time information and market sentiment on key events. This shift is encouraging broader use cases, from economic forecasting to risk management for bettors. ◽ Expansion of Regulatory Frameworks: Platforms are navigating complex regulatory environments with increasing success, providing legitimacy and attracting new users. Regulatory acceptance is anticipated to pave the way for more mainstream platforms, leading to greater user adoption. ◽ Advances in Blockchain Technology: Some platforms leverage blockchain for decentralized prediction markets, allowing for transparent and secure transactions, which appeal to users interested in global, crypto-based markets. There is even a new startup aggregating content across the prediction market industry, Prediction News. I have also seen that some prediction market platforms are going to start offering sports betting... What role does prediction markets play in the overall betting ecosystem? Will it grow faster than sports betting due to it's broad range of events? https://lnkd.in/g3R9Sgpu #PredictionMarkets #Fintech #FutureOfFinance #Kalshi #EconomicInsights #Blockchain #DataDriven #EventTrading

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The hybrid game of YouTube you should be playing (a longform): It is not enough to chase views, virality and likes. More subscribers do not equal cash. Eventually they do, but only when you have been in the YouTube game for multiple years and are getting millions of views per month. As a YouTuber, you need to see your channel as more so of a business, a machine that aims to solve a problem that your "customers" (audience) has. By doing this, you can charge for the solution like how a real business would by creating a paid product that gets the customer from major problem --> desired result. But, it is not enough to just solve a problem and have a solution to something if you don't have the traffic to send people to the solution. You can have the best solution in the world, but if there are no eyes on it, it doesn't matter. It's as good as if you didn't have anything in the first place. And you don't want to just post and post and post, hoping that by staying consistent you will eventually attract people to your paid solution. This method works, but it's as viable as just waiting multiple years for you to eventually get millions of views per month. It just takes too long. So, if this is the case, then what's the solution? By the title of this post, you should already know the answer. We need to combine the strategies. It is not enough to do either on its own by itself. You need to combine the two. You need to be optimizing your content for views and traffic still, but you don't want to be doing it just to get paid by AdSense and sponsorship companies. You are doing it because we want to get as many people as possible to our paid solution. What we actually want to do is optimize our content to attract as many of the Dream Audience Members as we can to our videos and then eventually our paid solution. The Dream Audience Member (DAM) is the one person in your audience that you are trying to solve their major problem in their lives. You figure this out by talking to your audience and figuring out the #1 pain that the majority of your audience has. In your videos, you want to speak directly to that person. But, by optimizing your videos for as many impressions as you can get from the DAM, you have optimized your channel and your videos to help as many of the Dream Audience Members as possible, the people who you want to buy your stuff anyway. This is why you must combine the strategies. This is the key to getting as many of the right traffic as we can, while still sending this right traffic to our paid solution so that we can make money directly from our audience, rather than rely on vanity metrics such as views, subscribers, and likes that literally pay us no money unless we are getting millions of views per month (the majority of YouTubers just aren't). Take action on this.

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Roblox has been Hindenburged. Cause for concern? Yes. But a slam dunk short? Not convinced. Here's my immediate thoughts on some of the points: Overinflated Metrics: 24%-42% of actual people DAU versus accounts. Roblox does disclose this, and has been asked about this as the report notes, but it does look misleading to call it "people" in other contexts IF the discrepancy is that much. Toxic (and worse) Content: This is bad. It's always horrible to see this kind of content on a platform with such young users. However it depends on how pervasive it is and how much is due to negligence from Roblox. Not clear to me they demonstrated that, but equally surprising to see how easy they could find explicit content. Never Made a Profit: This analysis seemed pretty surface level for a high growth company, I'd have liked to see more detail. Didn't look at bookings, took cash flow multiple from FactSet and just a comment on large stock based comp. Bookings growth largely tracks DAU growth so the issue would be with the absolute number. Overvalued vs Comparables: Looking at Take Two, EA, and Nintendo is overly simplistic. These are not similar businesses. Having said that, it's not an easy one to compare. https://lnkd.in/ekMiQiMA

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Before, we only focused on: - Creative outputs - Past metrics - Current performance Now, we know better. Here's what we need to master: ⚪️ Pre-testing Data (Ψpast) • Offers a probabilistic glimpse of potential outcomes. • Limited by observer effects and uncertainty principles. • Collapses upon measurement, providing a snapshot. 🔘 Media Data (Ψpresent) • Provides concrete metrics on current performance. • Exists in a state of perpetual lag. • Offers insights that are valuable yet outdated. 🟣 Creative Data (Ψfuture) 👈 We are focussed here • The elusive dark matter of marketing. • Holds the key to unlocking advertising effectiveness. • Exists in quantum entanglement with past and future insights. Unlock the future of marketing by mastering the Data Triad. (Or chat to us about our BrandCheck product ;) ) #ai  #marketing  #content --------------------------------------------- Fergus 👈 'tis me (Building AI Workforces for Enterprise) 🔔 Ring da bell or 🔝Connect or Follow

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"Context is king!" In a recent insightful discussion with Edo Liberty, Founder and CEO of Pinecone, alongside Derrick Harris and Satish Talluri from Andreessen Horowitz, the importance of how vector databases and #RAG can deliver the most relevant context for AI products. At Perigon, we understand that to extract the maximum value from LLMs, providing the right context is essential. This isn’t just about recognizing the subject matter—which many conversational AI applications can manage—it’s also about ensuring temporal relevance. Without it, even the most sophisticated AI can miss the mark, delivering outdated or irrelevant information. Why does this matter? Because in a world where data is constantly evolving, the accuracy and relevance of the information provided by AI must be on par with what we would find if we did the exploration ourselves for it to be trustworthy. I invite you to experience this firsthand through Perigon’s chat feature on our homepage. Powered by our API, it not only captures subject matter accurately but also ensures the information is timely, tapping into real-time, dynamic data from across the web. Check it out and see the difference real context makes: www.goperigon.com #AI #ConversationalAI

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Nuclia’s Tailored RAG Optimization 👉 There is no one-size-fits-all RAG solution. That’s why, at Nuclia • AI Search & RAG as a Service, you can automatically discover the best combination of embedding model, LLM, prompt, and retrieval strategy to achieve the perfect output for your use case.

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New Capitaliply Acquisitions: RecurrinGO! and Split Payment. $1.72M to Buy, $2M to Grow 🥳 Capitaliply - RollUp Fund in Shopify market is making big moves with the acquisition of two powerful Shopify apps, RecurrinGO! and Split Payment, for $1.72M. With an additional $2M planned for future investments, this strategic expansion is set to redefine what's possible in the e-commerce space. Check out the full story on Benzinga, the leading financial platform with over 25 million monthly readers, to see how Capitaliply is gearing up to make a major impact 📈 https://lnkd.in/dyYu7bki #Shopify #ShopifyApps #PrivateEquity #Investments #SaaS #Aquisitions

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It is getting interesting... As some companies start experimenting with in-house developed tools vs off the shelf products, platforms like Airbyte could prove to be deadly, if they are able to achieve what they promise. #GenAI #LLM #AI #Airbyte #API

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One of aspects of Carta's product development that excites me the most is not something we have an opportunity to talk about a lot. Its the infrastructure behind the product experiences we build that is so foundational to the ecosystem. Carta money movement infrastructure moves billions of dollars every year to facilitate crucial transactions. Now we are bringing automated money movement to fund admin and it is a game changer. This infrastructure will work to eliminate the manual, black box, and cumbersome ways that fund transactions are processed today. The future is transparent, seamless and predictable for Carta Fund Admin customers. I am pumped! https://lnkd.in/g3W_cRxn

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