Gm. Why listen to music when there’s Balaji podcasts?

POLLS

“Went snowboarding at Lake Tahoe... while the US banking system collapsed. Also, bought Bitcoin.” You are officially playing on God mode.

“Went to an Guo Pei: Art of Couture exhibition in Los Angeles. Guo Pei dressed the most fashionable and famous women of our time - most notably Rihanna in a majestic yellow cape for her red-carpet entrance to the Met Gala in 2015. I wanted to try all the dresses in the exhibition, but security guards were not taking any bathroom breaks.” Next time, dress like a security guard and sneak it, do what you gotta do!!!

“Fine wine, ribs, and mousse cake - chef kisses. But i'm crying as i type this, coz it is Monday again.” Epic weekend

“Got an epic haul of 70s tees at this estate sale” For sale????

“Chopped some wood, built a bonfire, hung out with a baby in the mountains. Not much else needed in life.” 🥰 wholesome, I love it

“I saw the sun...Spring is showing up in Seattle.” Same here in NYC, been taking lots of long walks complete with Balaji podcasts.

FRESH POWDER

Looking at three startups that just raised. Congrats!

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SOCIAL MEDIA

Enter Edutainment

People spend a lot of time talking about why TikTok is bad. The addictive algorithm. The Chinese surveillance. The effects on mental health.

Those are all fair criticisms, but Tok does come with positive outcomes as well.

One of these is the rise of education-as-entertainment, aka edutainment.

A Broken System

The education system isn’t exactly what you’d call “cutting-edge”. Schools work pretty much the exact same way now that they did 150 years ago. 20 to 30 kids sit in a classroom for 8 hours while a teacher lectures about some topic they don’t really care about.

It’s also not a system you could even call particularly effective. A grossly high percentage of students aren’t reaching basic benchmarks in math and reading.

So, you have an archaic system that is producing poor results.

You know what I call that?

A space ripe for disruption.

Bill Nye The TikTok Guy

What if, instead of painful lectures where all the kids are on TikTok and YouTube anyway, we can just meet them where they are and make educational videos?

That’s exactly what some of the biggest edutainment players are doing, and judging by their following counts, it’s working.

• Legendary science guy Bill Nye has 9.7M TikTok followers. The man is simply a creatorpreneur legend.

• Hank Green has 7.4M TikTok followers, while his edutainment YouTube channel Crash Course has 14.6M subscribers and a partnership with Arizona State University.

• Khan Academy, which we’ve all watched at one point or another, has 7.8M YouTube subscribers.

A Market Forms

Where there are millions of eyeballs, there is the potential to make money. And where there is the potential to make money, there are investors and startups.

EdTech VC firms GSV Ventures and Avalanche are already making investments into the space, while startups like Edgi Learning, Zigazoo, and Revyze are building the future of the space.

As long as schools keep sucking (a trend I don’t think is reversing anytime soon), edutainment will have a lot of room to run.

AI

Traveling With AI

Justine Moore over at a16z gets consumer tech.

So when she publishes a thread saying this is a16z’s thesis on AI x Travel, you’ve gotta listen.

a16z sees AI disrupting travel in 4 key aspects:

1. Using AI for Inspiration

2. Using AI for Itinerary Planning

3. Using AI for Booking

4. Using AI as an On-Trip Assistant

We’ve already seen AI-driven suggestions for travel destinations. Now with options like Where To and BetterTravel, you can plug in a few parameters and ChatGPT will spit out a potential trip for you.

There’s also AI-assisted planning websites like Tripnotes. I tried it out and it’s pretty cool. This isn’t an ad, I just highly recommend giving it a spin.

I love the idea of AI connected to all my travels and reviews. Tbh I want to be the guy who does the first fully AI-decided vacation and writes about it, but who knows if that’ll be possible.

If you’re building that product, reach out to Bryan ([email protected]) and Justine ([email protected]) so you can make me my app!!!

QUICK HITS

Seed Round

Stat: 150M: How many US users TikTok has. That's just crazy to think about.

Story we're watching: Tesla has finally started rolling out Full Self-Driving Beta v11. The perpetually delayed dream of a car that drives itself might finally be inching closer, and if it does finally come to fruition, Tesla’s best days might still be ahead.

Rabbit hole: Who Becomes An Entrepreneur? (Generalist)

WHAT ELSE IS GOING ON

• Washington is preparing to go to war with Amazon.

• Microsoft is working on an iPhone app store.

• OpenAI says up to 80% of US jobs could be affected by AI.

• Duolingo is cooking up a music app.

THREE LIES AND A HEADLINE

News is so weird these days. Three of these headline are fake stories from The Onion while one is actually true. Can you spot the truth amongst the fakes?

A. Clearblue Introduces New At-Home Test That Tells You If You’re Beautiful

B. Donald Glover Confirms Barron Trump Will Be Writing On ‘Swarm’ Season 2

C. Invasion Of The Blackout Rage Gallon

D. Aaron Rodgers Mentions He’s Only Heard Great Conspiracies About New York

LAYOFFS TRACKER

trueup.io/layoffs

Notable layoffs this week

Upward Farms: 78 people

Fetch Rewards: 100 people

Amazon: 9,000 people

FOUNDERS CORNER

The best resources we came across this weekend that will help you become a better founder, builder, or investor.

🐦 Need a Twitter scheduler? Check out TweetHunter. You can schedule tweets, do auto-plugs, auto-DMs, and more.

❓Tim Ferriss shares 17 Questions That Changed My Life.

🎤 Listen to Balaji Srinivasan chat with OnDeck founder Erik Torenberg, Spindl founder Antonio Garcia Martinez, and Farcaster founder Dan Romero:

IRL

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3 Lies Answer:

C.