Gm. Tonight is the Met Gala in case anyone wants to see even more pictures of Kim K and Pete Davidson holding hands.

The real question is, when is someone going to host a Tech Gala? Everyone just comes dressed in their old faded FAANG shirts.

FRESH POWDER

Looking at three funds that recently topped up their coffers.

ECOMM

Is Bolt just Fast in disguise?

One of these days we’ll wake up and never think about a one-click checkout company again…but today is not that day. Bolt was in the news a lot last week: first, for being sued by its most prominent customer, then for a report from The Information that revealed its revenue growth was slowing due to getting its butt kicked by Shopify.

Things are looking less than swell

Bolt has generated just over $5 million in gross revenue in Q1 of this year. While not laughably small compared to Fast’s now-famous $600k figure, it is minuscule compared to its outsized valuation. And it’s that absurdly high valuation of nearly 400 times annual transactional (non-SaaS) revenue that keeps us all invested in Bolt’s every move.

Why is Bolt struggling?

First off, it's losing merchants. The total number of accounts using its service fell to 316 in Q1, compared to 328 in 2021, per The Information. Shopify is also poaching customers and making it extremely difficult and costly for Shopify merchants to use Bolt’s technology. Toss in a lawsuit from Authentic Brands and a reluctance from investors to pour more funds into the company and you have the makings for another one-click disaster.

• Rorschach test: Whether you think Bolt will come back down to earth or not is likely a good proxy for your perspective on startup valuations in general right now. Bolt is Sand Hill's ink blot test.

Bottom line: Despite the challenges that have rocked Bolt and Fast, investors just can’t quit the checkout game. Volume, another company offering merchants one-click checkout tech, closed a pre-seed round of $2.4 million just last week.

NFTS

There are still gas fees on the Otherside

Three things are certain in life. Death, taxes, and gas fees ruining absolutely everything. The boogeyman of the crypto world struck again on Saturday during the Otherdeeds mint.

• Catch up quick: Otherside is Yuga Labs' new metaverse. The BAYC developer sold 55,000 Otherdeeds (property rights for land in the metaverse) on Saturday all priced at 305 ApeCoin. In total, Yuga raised around $320 million in what is now considered “the largest NFT mint in history.”

Even though Otherdeed’s could only be minted using ApeCoin, the process still required ETH. And given the demand for the mint, gas fees ended up going parabolic, with users shelling out anywhere from $6,500 to $14,000 just for the right to carry out their transaction.

Zoom out: If we wanted to put our cynical hat on, one could say that the mint actually went perfectly to plan for Yuga. First, ApeCoin pumped as users were forced to acquire it for the mint. Then, high gas fees made the project accessible to only the richest and most influential collectors, which helped raise the profile of the project. It’s a cynical take, yes, but Yuga does comes out the winner in all this, while regular crypto investors get punished by gas fees once again.

QUICK HITS

Seed Round

Stat: Not sure if there is a speedrunning record for getting kicked off a social media platform, but MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell may have just set it. He got re-banned from Twitter just 3 hours after returning to the platform since his initial ban in 2021. The reason? He tweeted, “Hello everybody, I'M BACK ON TWITTER” which, you know, you can’t do, if you’ve been banned from the platform.

Story we’re watching: Elon has entered into an agreement to buy Twitter, but the actual deal might take 6 months to close. One reason for the delay? Elon needs to come up with $24 billion in cash. He’s been selling Tesla stock like a mad man—$8.4 billion as of this week—but if Tesla’s price takes a nosedive, things could get complicated. (More here)

Rabbit hole: I accidentally loaned all my money to the US government (Bean Log). 

WHAT ELSE IS GOING ON

• Coinbase hired the former head of Snap India to help figure out what the heck to do in emerging markets that are anti-crypto.

• Charlie Munger called bitcoin “stupid and evil” at Berkshire Hathaway’s annual shareholders meeting this week.

• Robert Krakoff, cofounder of Razer and the investor of the gaming mouse, passed away.

• The Wikimedia Foundation has stopped accepting cryptocurrency donations.

TRIVIA

Name the finance/startup movie based on the incomplete cast

• Andrew Garfield, Justin Timberlake, Rashida Jones

• Jonah Hill, Kyle Chandler, Rob Reiner

• Michael Douglas, Martin Sheen, Charlie Sheen

• Ryan Gosling, Brad Pitt, Jeremy Strong

• Kevin Spacey, Jeremy Irons, Zachary Quntio, Stanley Tucci

MONDAY MUSING

Bill Gurley wrote a thread on Friday that argued if you want to use sales multiples, "10X should be considered AMAZING and an upper limit. Over that silly."

Do you agree with Bill? Has the market normalized absurd valuations to point where things are getting out of hand?

FOUNDERS CORNER

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

🎨 A 4-minute creativity test

🛠 Should you build in public? A Hacker News discussion.

📓 Someone tested all the notebooks out there so you don’t have to.

TRIVIA ANSWER

The Social Network

Wolf of Wall Street

Wall Street

The Big Short

Margin Call

Want more trivia? Check out @triviacorner for new questions every day