Elon pushes Dogecoin, COVID-19 shapes mental health, great tweets, great pods, what more can you ask for.
Welcome to The Takeoff, a newsletter and podcast helping students and young professionals learn more about startups, tech, venture capital, and more. In this newsletter, we share content that our team found enjoyable over the past two weeks. If you enjoy the content, please subscribe below, share it with friends, and give us a like by hitting that ❤️ button!
What’s up people! Lukas here :)
We are into February, the Super Bowl has passed, and the weather in St. Louis has somehow gotten even colder.
Welcome to the February 13th Edition of What We’ve Been Following, our bi-weekly newsletter highlighting some of the newsletters, podcasts, blog posts, tweets, startup news, and more that our Team found interesting over the past few weeks.
If you missed the last Edition of What We’ve Been Following, published on January 30th and written by Spiro, you can check it out, here.
SURVEY: Mental Health & Mindfulness in College.
Spiro is working on a cool project for his UX Research Methods for Design class. If you want to help conduct research for the project (and be informed about his findings), consider filling out the survey!
New content since the last What We’ve Been Following newsletter from Jan 30th.
(Podcast) Roshan chatted with Jim McKelvey (YES!), WashU alum, billionaire philanthropist, serial entrepreneur, and, not to mention, the co-founder of Square, to discuss how Square fought off Amazon, his new book The Innovation Stack, starting Square with his former intern Jack Dorsey, what it means to be an entrepreneur, and more.
Listen on Substack, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and Anchor.
(Podcast) Michael chatted with Dave Fano, Co-Founder & CEO of Teal about what the early days of Teal were like, creating an obsession to grow your career, building a “Peloton or your career,” and the Miami tech scene. Dave also offers some great advice for current students and aspiring founders.
Listen on Substack, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and Anchor.
What’s coming up.
(Podcast) Michael recently chatted with Sara Mauskopf, co-founder & CEO at Winnie for the pod! The episode will go live on February 15.
(Newsletter) Roshan recently chatted with VC & TikTok legend Turner Novak about his thoughts on some interesting social media companies. Release date: stay tuned!
(Q&A) I chatted with Shiv Gaglani to discuss his company, Osmosis, and how he is building a more seamless system for medical education delivery, online! This episode will go live on March 1st.
What We’ve Been Following.
(Podcast) “The Besties” discuss Robinhood’s decision to stop GameStop buys, why it happened, and what’s next.
(Podcast) Chamath Palihapitiya, the founder, and CEO of Social Capital sits down with one of my favorite podcast hosts, Patrick O’Shaughnessy, to give us a glimpse into the wonderful mind of Chamath, specifically his interest in creating equality for various races and economic class and working harder to prevent climate change. Listen here!
(Podcast) This one is a must-listen. Elon Musk, as honest as he is, gives a blow-by-blow on everything he’s doing (he got a monkey to play video games with his mind!). If that in itself isn’t enough, Vlad Tenev (Co-founder of Robinhood) comes on to give his side of the Robinhood debacle. This audio is the recording of a Clubhouse room.
(Podcast) Joost van Dreunen comes on Patrick’s show to discuss all things gaming. If you don’t know much about the industry and want to learn more, this is the place to start!
(Podcast) Figma’s Dylan Field on Invest Like The Best.
(Podcast) Asana Co-founder & CEO Dustin Moskovitz (yes, the same Dustin Moskovitz from Facebook) joined Patrick O’Shaughnessy to discuss avoiding burnout, building a killer culture at Asana, 10X Asana’s current impact, and more.
(Blog) TJ Nahigian and Chris Zeoli of Base10 dive into my favorite industry (mental health care) and how COVID-19 has drastically shaped the demand and layout of the space. Stay tuned for my own deep dive into the space!
(Blog) TikTok has become the most addicting app of our generation. The result: companies are thinking more and more about how they can use the app to their benefit. Check out Li Jin and Lila Shroff’s article on how startups can gain attention on TikTok.
(Blog) Ben Carlson on why “It’s OK To Build Wealth Slowly.”
(Blog) Old but gold. 1969 interview with Marshall McLuhan on media and the world.
(Documentary) Check out this hour and a half long documentary on the most American billionaire on this planet. From his humble beginnings in Omaha and daily breakfast at McDonald’s, Warren Buffett’s persistence led him to build one of America’s greatest empires in Berkshire Hathaway. And, his character has allowed him to give back to this world in incredible ways.
(Funding) Israeli fintech startup Mesh Payments raised $13m. Mesh is a corporate payments company that helps companies lower and better manage spend (I mentioned Mesh in my SaaS Management deep dive!).
(Funding) Ramp landed $150M in debt from Goldman.
Tweets, threads, and other Twitter fun.
LOL!
Elon has been pushing Dogecoin, getting memes to influence the market.
More Elon! Tesla added Bitcoin to their balance sheet, pushing Crypto even further into the mainstream.
Oh, and, don’t forget, he’s doing this while not respecting the SEC.
Learn more about what Patrick O'Shaughnessy is building with Colossus.
Moderator: Lukas Steinbock (Co-Founder at The Takeoff. Senior at Washington University in St. Louis. Growth Marketing Intern at BlueSprig.)
I’m on Twitter @lukassteinbock 👋
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