Gm. Thanks to everyone who supported Homescreen's Product Hunt launch on Friday. Here are some stats from our public debut:

• Subscriber list grew by 464% to 1,957

• Finished as the #1 product of the day

• 472 upvotes, 73 comments, 17 reviews (all 5 stars)

We are so incredibly grateful for the support from the homies. Appreciate each and every one of you.

FRESH POWDER

Looking at three funds that recently topped up their coffers. 

CRYPTO

Twitter's cannonball into web3

In a blog posted Friday, Stripe announced a partnership with Twitter that gives creators the option to access their payouts in crypto. But Twitter already uses Stripe to power its monetization features like Tips and Super Followers, so on the surface, adding crypto to the mix doesn't seem all that exciting. But there are two main storylines that make this announcement worthy of your attention. 

1. Firstly, Stripe is using Polygon to power its crypto processing which is a major endorsement of the protocol in the battle for Layer 2 dominance. 

2. Secondly, by building out its crypto payment rails, Twitter may be looking to cannonball into the web3 space that it has tiptoed around for so long. 

What is Twitter up to? 

Right now, the only way Twitter monetizes its hoards of crypto-obsessed users is by letting people who pay for Twitter Blue turn their profile pictures into lame-ass hexagons. In other words, they aren't doing much. 

This new partnership gives the social media platform the infrastructure to potentially go all in on something like their own NFT storefront and OpenSea competitor. It makes sense on a lot of levels. 

• “Twitter is basically serving as the central curation frontend for every NFT storefront and letting users leave the platform to transact,” TechCrunch’s Lucas Matney writes. Twitter has the community, but makes very little attempt to monetize it. 

• Now that it has the ability to process crypto transactions, it could make an effort to try and snag a piece of that off-platform transaction pie. 

Bottom line: Twitter is the best in the world at being bad at monetizing its users, so it’s still a big “if” as to whether it can, or even wants, to establish a lucrative foothold in the web3 ecosystem.

SOCIAL MEDIA

Startup to watch: BeReal

Apptopia

If you’re a college student reading this, you are well aware of the app, BeReal. But if your hangovers last more than one day, here is everything you need to know about the startup that has taken the youths by storm. 

How it works: BeReal sends out push notifications twice a day to prompt users to post a photo. After the notifications are sent out, users have two minutes to snap a pic using both the front and back cameras. No editing allowed.

The numbers

BeReal has been around since 2019, but it really started to pop off in January of this year racking up almost 75% of its total installs since January 1. Those users are sticking around too. MAU are up 315% since the beginning of 2022, topping out at 2.9 million. 

• Reality check: Instagram MAU sit at around 1 billion

Zoom out: There’s a history of apps trying (and failing) to carve out a niche by promoting authenticity—Clubhouse and Dispo, to name two— so it's still too early to say if it has actual staying power. But But BeReal has established a serious foothold with a generation fed up by the fake and filtered IG lifestyle which could bode well for its longterm success.

QUICK HITS

Seed Round

Stat: Nanocar Race II, a competition that pits the smallest cars in the world against each other, took place in Toulouse over the weekend. Eight teams revved up their nanometric engines to see who could propel their microscopic cars the furthest. C64H22CuF6N4, the chemical formula of the winning molecular car, came out on top after traveling a distance of one micron (1 millionth of a meter) in 24 hours. Sounds like a new Netflix series: Formula Micron. 

TLDR: Over the weekend, autonomous driving startup Pony.ai became the first self-driving company to secure a taxi license in China. That heavy breathing you’re hearing? It’s Elon over in the corner thinking about Tesla rolling out its fleet of robotaxis in the region. But it ain’t easy getting a special taxi license—it took ​Pony.ai 2 years of autonomous driving testing without any traffic accidents to secure permission to operate. 

Rabbit hole: If you haven’t heard of Project Gutenberg—a library of over 60,000 free eBooks—you should check it out. (Project Gutenberg).

WHAT ELSE IS GOING ON

• Jack Dorsey is no longer the “CEO” of Block, instead calling himself “Block Head and Chairperson.” 

• Lapsus$, the hacker group led by a teenager that has targeted Microsoft and Samsung, has also breached T-Mobile’s systems and stolen its source code. 

• The EU passed legislation that will require Google, Meta, and other tech companies to make their algorithms transparent so users can see how they work.

• Twitter is testing out a feature codenamed “Vibe” that lets users add a status to their profile and tweets.

TRIVIA

How’s your stock knowledge? Match the stock tickers to the companies they represent.  

• TGT

• XOM

• HOG

• COST

• CRM

• Bonus - CAKE

MONDAY MUSING

BeReal is huge on college campuses and has some gaudy growth figures, but how many of you have actually heard of it before today? 

Have you used (or heard of) BeReal before? Let us know here.

FOUNDERS CORNER

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

🤹 A guide to being a great manager

📈 8 steps to improve your startup’s SEO on a budget

📘 Stephen King’s On Writing is the best book to up your writing game

TRIVIA ANSWER

• TGT: Target

• XOM: ExxonMobil

• HOG: Harley Davidson

• COST: Costco

• CRM: Salesforce

• Bonus - CAKE: Cheesecake Factory