We built a $1M/year company in 42 days.

No viral threads.

No content engine.

No ads.

No hype.

Just a product that solved a real problem and a distribution strategy that worked.

Here’s what I’ve learned (that no one tells you) about building companies:

Estimated reading time: 3 min 15 sec

Progress update

2024 has been the year of quiet execution and now we’re starting to share more again.

We recently spoke at a few conferences during 📍 Toronto Tech Week and met some incredible builders.

From the ☘️ Clover Retreat in June 2025

We’re also working on a short behind-the-scenes vlog from the week, coming soon.

🎥 Watch the Youtube channel here: [Vlog]

Quietly Scaling

The last couple of months have been heads-down.

We’ve been building and refining, launching products, and dialling in our systems

One of our most recent companies went from $0 to $1M/year in 42 days purely through our internal growth engine.

The funny thing is we use our own agents to get us more customers.

That momentum has allowed us to scale the team to 15 full-time people; lean, fast, and focused.

And this is just one part of a bigger plan.

The Portfolio Strategy

What people don't understand about the portfolio approach is that by having products that cross-sell between each other, it increases the LTV per customer.

As such, we want to do one company per distribution lever.

Each company is considered a leaf.

Leading us to have four companies.

Each product follows the same playbook:

• Ship fast

• Distribute smarter

• Scale profitably

The agents do this at scale, leading to unfair distribution.

So far, we’ve stayed profitable from day one, averaging $1M ARR within six months across products, with millions of users already.

🔗 CloverLabs website

And we’re just getting started.

We just publicly launched here:

🐤 Twitter: https://x.com/MattEspoz/status/1950594192868093987

📨 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/mattespoz_its-official-clover-labs-is-the-fastest-activity-7356360002451726338-n4V7/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop&rcm=ACoAAC_HMxsBq7NVVCTZB63cLkiRVt0a1p_rzhA

Quick 1-min request: would appreciate any boost on those platform 🙏🏻

If you aren't subscribed to this newsletter, subscribe here.

Chat soon,

~ Matt | (@mattespoz) 🥷🏼

Hope you’ve enjoyed this post, tag me on X if you shared it - love hearing feedback.

Subscribe here if this was forwarded to you, or read my past updates.

Was this 🚀 or 🗑. I read every response 🤩

6 months ago, we sold our first company to private equity.

Since then, we’ve incubated 3 more companies in private.

Here’s the next couple products I’m building (+ where I’m headed):

Estimated reading time: 7 min 08 sec

Went on the Founder of Skillshare’s Podcast!

This was a super fun podcast where I talked about how I’m building & buying internet companies. It’s quickly become one of the most popular episodes on his podcast.

👉 Watch the full interview: [Building a Startup Studio at 22] 😄

The Next Decade Play

At the start of this year, I wanted to find something that I can spend the next 10+ years on.

This lead me into the holding companies.

But since my latest acquisition in April.. I went a bit quiet.

The pressure to outcompete myself was always there.

And I wanted to prove to myself that I can systematically scale a company without any outside influence or capital.

Since then, we incubated 3 companies that I will be sharing some of the details in this email.

Two have full-time operators, and the latest one is built by the core team.

All the companies have been extremely profitable, and growing on autopilot.

Finally felt the ease of life being on cruise mode.

A large part because my co-founder Ryan is one of the most brilliant revenue-focused people I’ve ever met.

Allowing me to focus more on operations, product, and inbound.

Eventually we will launch these companies, but for now I plan on sharing the high-level details of them.

• COMPANY #1: a design agency that allows us to incubate more companies in parallel

• COMPANY #2: software company that is partnered with a billion-dollar company for distribution

• COMPANY #3: creator-focused company where we partner with creators to build b2c mobile apps with them.

We are growing them all the same way.

For now…

Meet 1Price - our b2b software partnered with Stripe ↆ

1Price - revenue experiments on autopilot for SaaS founders

We just publicly launched here:

🐤 Twitter: https://x.com/MattEspoz/status/1856413181515636828

📨 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/mattespoz_its-official-meet-1priceco-a-platform-activity-7262179636053188609-6rr9?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop

Quick 1-min Request: would appreciate any boost on those platform 🙏🏻

If you aren't subscribed to this newsletter, subscribe here.

Chat soon,

~ Matt | (@mattespoz) 🥷🏼

BTW - I’m planning on having a new newsletter out every other week. Now that I’ve started to get momentum on my holdCo, this newsletter has become my playground for documentation.

Hope you’ve enjoyed this post, tag me on X if you shared it - love hearing feedback.

Subscribe here if this was forwarded to you, or read my past updates.

Was this 🚀 or 🗑. I read every response 🤩

Exciting news: Journey+ has officially been acquired 🎉

Here's the crazy untold story of how we built, scaled, and sold a company to a private equity (in 3 months):👇

Estimated reading time: 7 min 09 sec

Progress update

We’ve added two new team members (growth & dev) to Halation.

The last 3 months was spent too much on focusing on one portfolio company (Journey+).

This limited our potential to scale as fast I wanted.

Now we got the team in place, we can focus on more ventures.

We will be launching 12 new companies in 12 months.

Just released our company newsletter for monthly updates:
🤝 https://halation.beehiiv.com/subscribe

Learnings in Selling to Private Equity

This acquisition will always have a special place in my heart.

It was the first portfolio company in Halation, and our first major win.

Now we are launching ONE new company a month, but Journey+ was the one that started it all.

Here is the story of how it went down:

1/ Only build products to solve problems.

From search data alone, there was strong search indicators of of the problem we were solving:

(side note: I'm building a tool to figure out pain killer ideas -- email me to get access)

2/ Get the A-team together

Brought on the best designer I know (Hannah) to create the product mockup. And my close friend (Miguel) to develop the software alongside me.

Little did I know what would happen next..

3/ Test Ideas Publicly

Our launch went VIRAL!

Hundreds of comments in a couple hours.

And even hundreds more through direct messages.

We easily got our first batch of paying customers.

4/ Scale FAST

We aggressively grew over the next 3 months.

At our peak we were getting 5 new users every 3 seconds.

And customers absolutely LOVED us.

Churn rate was nearly non-existant.

5/ Find One Growth Channel

We experimented ALOT with different growth channels.

But we finally found it: influencers & directories

From there, we doubled our revenue every month after.

6/ Build to Sell

Yet, at the peak of our growth... we got a message.

It was from a private equity firm.

They saw the potential to scale it even further.

Through a couple discussions, it was clear it was the right fit.

Just like that I signed one of the most important contracts of my life.

Absolute shivers.

Right then, I sold majority stake of Journey+ to a private equity firm 🎉

Here are the main story breakdowns:

1. Build to Solve Problems

2. Get an A-Team Together

3. Test Ideas Publicly

4. Scale FAST

5. Find One Growth Channel

6. Build to Sell

Forward this to someone who might also want to build companies (and eventually sell them). It's free to share. 😉 

Chat soon,

~ Matt | (@mattespoz) 🥷🏼

If you aren't subscribed to this newsletter, subscribe here.

🧪 This is going to be my place in my newsletter where I can run some fun audience experiments

REPLY to this newsletter with:
1) what aspect of the story surprised you the most
OR
2) any topics you would want me to dive into further

Hope you’ve enjoyed this post, tag me on X if you shared it - love hearing feedback.

Subscribe here if this was forwarded to you, or read my past updates.

Was this 🚀 or 🗑. I read every response 🤩

I'm obsessed with building a software empire.

We've raised $0 and have been profitable from day 1.

Today we are at six-figures and growing quickly.

This might be the most important post I've written in a while...

Here's how I'm playing asymmetric bets so I don't lose:

Estimated reading time: 6 min 13 sec

Why I’m Building a Portfolio of Companies

I’m a taking a bit of a contrarian route.

Rather than put all my chips on a single company, I’m building a portfolio of companies.

In particular, I’m building a holding company (holdCo).

There was a couple ‘aha’ moments for me that led to that conclusion.

One of which is the fact that the “largest percentage of billionaires come from private equity (building, buying, and selling companies)”

I’ve explained the other reasons for my decision in a previous post.

But since that conclusion, I’ve been going full-force.

AND THINGS ARE WORKING BRILLIANTLY!

We’ve been incubating a new company at least every 3 months.

And although I haven’t gotten around to buying any companies yet, that is definitely on the horizon.

Things are still early (started in August), but here are 5 MAJOR LEARNINGS that have made all the difference.

Here is a diagram to show the flywheel of how things works

1) Build to Sell

Not all your products will succeed.

Focus on profit-first companies

If it can't reach a significant user adoption then sell.

I've seen $300 MRR software sell for $5,000

As long as you break-even consider it a win.

Then reinvest all the additional capital in your next project

You just need one cash-flowing winner.

2) Build a Core Team

Currently the main team at Halation (@halationco) is 3 killers.

A dev, a designer, and me.

Our last company was built & scaled in less than 35 days.

The product has gotten 5 new users every 3 seconds.

We then took what worked (and also what didn't) and then adopt it for the next venture.

This allows us to learn faster than anyone else.

Paired with revenue-based incentive models, I'm convinced this is the best way to build companies.

3) Bring an Operator

This is an area I've still fleshing my knowledge in.

It's unrealistic to be running more than 3 different companies at a time.

This is where bringing a management team (CEO, CTO) comes in.

If you have a rollup of similar companies (e.g. all b2b software) you can have a top management team running all of them.

Similar structures can be found in holding companies like Constellation Software.

4) Share the Winnings

I’m very much a ‘if I win, we win’ typa guy.

And I've seen a couple way to redistribute profits.

But the most popular is the dividend model

Essentially the cash flow from the companies is given to the shareholders every quarter.

5) Hold or Sell

Not all companies you own need to exit.

Some are cash-cows that grow 50% a year.

If you don't need immediate liquidity —just hold them.

Or take the cashflow to reinvest into new ventures

To summarize, here are the main components to building a tech empire

1. Build to Sell

2. Build a Core Team

3. Bring an Operator

4. Redistribute Winnings

5. Hold or Sell

Forward this to someone who might also want to build an empire of tech companies. It's free to share. 😉 

If you aren't subscribed to this newsletter, subscribe here.

🧪 This is going to be my place in my newsletter where I can run some fun audience experiments

REPLY to this newsletter with the answer to: ‘what’s your end goal in life’.

That could be in terms of net worth, it could be terms of job/family. Honestly whatever first comes to mind. Interested in hearing some responses, and will share some common answers on the next newsletter!

Also, the most voted topic from the last experiment ended up being:
‘How to Reverse Engineer an Exit / How to Sell Companies’

So that will be the topic for the next issue :)

Chat soon,

~ Matt | (@mattespoz) 🥷🏼

BTW - This newsletter has been super fun to make — I’ve gotten more positive responses from the last newsletter than from anything I’ve ever written online lol. Will continue posting these every 2 weeks, I’m backlogged with the amount of topics I wanna chat about.

Hope you’ve enjoyed this post, tag me on X if you shared it - love hearing feedback.

Subscribe here if this was forwarded to you, or read my past updates.

Was this 🚀 or 🗑. I read every response 🤩

Two years ago I didn’t know how to code.

Today, I’ve built software used by hundreds of thousands of people.

Here’s what I’ve learned (that no one tells you) about becoming technical:

Estimated reading time: 2 min 13 sec

Progress update

2024 is the year of distribution.

I’ve started to share more life updates on my Twitter (X).

Follow for updates as I scale a portfolio of SaaS and productized services to $5M ARR 😄

How to Build ANY Product You Want

I still remember how frustrated I was when I paid thousands to a development agency only to find that they were unable to fulfill my vision.

We eventually hired a CTO for that startup and he built the product in 5 weeks.

In comparison, the development agency took 3 months.

After selling my first company, I made a promise to myself:

“I would learn to code.”

But not just learn to code, I wanted to build ANY product I want.

It took me 2 years to get to where I’m at.

Here are 6 massive learnings I’ve had along the way:

1) Rule of Two

I've never had fun building solo projects—it get boring very quickly.

All my most impactful projects I did with at least one other person.

Find someone that is 10% better than you then start BUILDING.

You can often find them while doing hackathons.

My coding buddy is Miguel

2) Projects > Courses

There's tons of courses & programs about: 'How to Code.'

As soon as you got the basics, I would then start building projects.

Find tutorials on how to build projects, not on how to code.

Work backwards from your end goal.

I started with a course on ‘Building Projects in React’.

I learned more from that project-focused course than any lecture in school.

3) Master a Single Stack

Instead of mastering a language, focus on mastering a stack.

I recommend looking into the MERN stack if you want to build web apps.

From there you can branch out to other stacks.

Chose the stack to build the app you want.

4) Frontend First

Frontend is the front facing part of the application

In this case, it’s the text you are reading on screen right now.

Although not for everyone, I recommend it for 99% of developers.

When starting to code, the best way to learn is quick feedback loops.

Being able to change code and have it affect the app immediately is the fastest feedback cycle there is.

5) Get Paid to Learn

Cold email early stage startups.

Learn on someone else’s dime.

Go to VC Firms & Startup Accelerators then search by recently companies they have invested in.

Email all the startups that are interesting to you.

You just need one to take a chance on you.

Prove your worth.

Here are the main highlights:

1. Rule of Two

2. Projects > Courses

3. Single Stack

4. Frontend First

5. Get Paid to Learn

Forward this to someone who might also want to be technical (and eventually want build a portfolio of internet companies). It's free to share. 😉 

If you aren't subscribed to this newsletter, subscribe here.

🧪 This is going to be my place in my newsletter where I can run some fun audience experiments

REPLY to this newsletter (with an emoji) on which topic you wanna hear about next:

• 🧐 How to Reverse Engineer an Exit / How to Sell Companies

• 😮 The Hidden World of $1B Venture Studios

• 🏷️ How to Hyper Optimize Pricing Pages (433% improvement)

• 🧪 + give other suggestions

Chat soon,

~ Matt | (@mattespoz) 🥷🏼

BTW - I’m planning on having a new newsletter out every other week. Now that I’ve started to get momentum on my holdCo, this newsletter has become my playground for documentation.

Hope you’ve enjoyed this post, tag me on X if you shared it - love hearing feedback.

Subscribe here if this was forwarded to you, or read my past updates.

Was this 🚀 or 🗑. I read every response 🤩

Hey it’s Matt! 👋 

If you’re getting this email you likely know me from one of my companies/projects: Halation (holdCo), Agora Labs (acquired), Inner Circle, amongst others.

Welcome to Compound Advantage, my monthly(ish) newsletter for sharing my latest frameworks as I scale my holdCo. Here’s my January updates:

The Guide to Finding Your North Star

Sold my first software company a year and a half ago.

Since then, worked at a couple incredible companies, built some fun profitable projects, become extremely technical, & met some my current closest friends.

Yet, at the back of my head I was always thinking “what’s the next big play” 

I wanted to build something I can spend the next decade on.

In early 2023 I got introduced to the concept of holding companies and venture studios.

I then wrote this message to my private telegram group:

Sent: March 28, 2023

Once I started studying the ‘playbooks’ of my idols (Andrew Wilkinson, Alex Hormozi, Greg Isenberg, etc.) they all had the same pattern.

Here’s the pattern:
→ they own close to 100% of what they’ve built
→ all are building holding companies (holdCo), not building individual startups → they are doing a mix of incubation of new startups & buying majority stake in companies
→ they are building ‘moats’ of leverage; distribution through organic methods such as large social followings

Interestingly, all got to their end goal in different ways: Alex Hormozi built a gym brand that was acquired for $40M, Greg Isenburg sold his startup for millions, Andrew Wilkinson built an agency that used the cashflow to buy companies.

Yet — all lead to the same conclusion. It just took them a decade.

From here, I got a small team together and started building.

Not all the companies/projects have been publicly revealed yet, but currently in the holding company we have Design Flair (6-figure design agency, owned by my partner), and Journey+ (AI photo generator).

Will start to be more public about everything soon.

Couple interesting learnings from all of this

1. View life in decades instead of individual years

2. Take what you admire about others and understand why you admire that aspect of them.

3. Reverse engineer where you wanna go by comparing someone’s stage one, not their stage ten.

If you’re interested in following the company journey..
follow —> HalationCo (twitter)

Quick life updates..

1. It’s 2024! The biggest highlight over the last year was becoming extremely technical. I’m at a point now where I can build any product I want. I’m finally unstoppable.

2. Neo Scholar: I was accepted as one of the 32 scholars for the Neo Scholar batch! I will be going to Colorado in August for the Neo Accelerator, and to Arizona in October for the Neo Annual Reunion.

Experiments 🧪 

Current projects, insights & thoughts

1. Launched Journey+: the first ever Midjourney-powered interface. Built it with two close friends in 30 days and launched publicly mid-January. Got tons of people willing to beta test (150+ comments in 24 hours). I haven’t done a major launch in over a year, so this was really fun to execute on - the feedback from beta release has gone incredibly well.
   
   If anyone reading is interested in trying out the product, I got a couple more invite codes I can send over; just reply to this email. Here’s my partner’s post about it:

Twitter tweet

2. Writing a Letter to My Future Self: this is something I do twice a year. - New Years and my birthday. I mostly mention the major moments of the year, and predictions/goals for the next year. Interestingly, I’ve never been right about my predictions lol. I use FutureMe.org to be able to schedule the letters. It is sent to a 1, 5, 10 year older version of me.

Be well,

Matt | (@mattespoz) 🥷🏼

P.S. I’m experimenting with longer newsletter posts, rather then just quick life updates. Let me know by replying what y’all think about this format of diving deep into a topic while also giving the normal updates.

BTW - our design subscription DesignFlair has had a huge amount of overwhelming demand recently.

If you’re looking for a design team to level up your app, website, brand, decks etc… you’ll be getting a $30,000 month of value for $6,000.

You can set up a call with our team by click “Get Started” on our website.

Subscribe here if this was forwarded to you, or read my past updates.

1. 🐦 Follow me on Twitter -> where I share my tons of product experiments publicly

Was this 🚀 or 🗑. I read every response 🤩

Hey it’s Matt! 👋 

If you’re getting this email you likely know me from one of my companies/projects: Agora Labs (acquired), Inner Circle, amongst others.

Welcome to Compound Advantage, my monthly newsletter for sharing my latest projects, frameworks, and actionable ideas. Here’s my August updates:

August 2023 Updates

What I’ve Been Up To 😼 

Quick life updates..

1. Launched my new company at Microsoft! We were stealth for a bit but we decided to make it semi-public — and what better place to do that than the Microsoft office! Only attendees who were able to make it to that (it was limited to ~300 people) know about it so far. Making it public to everyone else soon ;)
   
   Here are some photos from the public release:

in front of Microsoft sign 🤩

presenting at Microsoft. Name of company (AlterEgo) revealed 🙈

2. Joined Buildspace and WIP Community: both are builder-focused communities for people that enjoy building products. Built an ai content tool at BuildSpace S4 cohort, and still on the onboarding process for WIP. But will share the profile of my WIP account once it’s more fine tuned lol.

3. Judging Startup Competitions: I was invited as a judge for Hack the 6th, and Ignition Hacks. In both cases judged the startup/entrepreneurship projects. Really fun way to give back to community! Also had a talk in both about building & selling startups.

Experiments 🧪 

Current projects, insights & thoughts about: tech, life optimization, investing..

1. Rebuilt My Personal Website (from the ground up): I released my new website (mattespoz.com) this month. My previous website was getting extremely outdated. I’m super happy with this new design for the latest website. Any feedback/thoughts would be awesome!

Personal Asks 🙏

1. I’m looking at launching a product on Product Hunt soon. If you have any resources / guides / tips on that send them over!

Chat next month,

Matt | (@mattespoz) 🥷🏼

Subscribe here if this was forwarded to you, or read my past updates.

1. 🐦 Follow me on Twitter -> where I share my experiments, learnings & framework publicly

Was this 🚀 or 🗑. I read every response 🤩

Hey it’s Matt! 👋 

If you’re getting this email you likely know me from one of my companies/projects: Agora Labs (acquired), Inner Circle, amongst others.

Welcome to Compound Advantage, my monthly newsletter for sharing my latest projects, frameworks, and actionable ideas. Here’s my July updates:

What I’ve Been Up To 😼 

Quick life updates..

1. My Last Week of NYC (& HackNY): I’m part of this program this summer called HackNY, a co-living experience with a cohort of 13 ‘hackers’ interning at different companies - it’s allowed me to experience the full NYC experience. The program finishes next week, and honestly its a major reason why I’m considering this the best summer I’ve ever had. Met some incredible friends through the program, and it confirmed to me that NYC is where I wanna be after I graduate. I’ll be headed back to Toronto for the rest of summer, will probably be at ETHToronto as well. I’m also confirmed to be judging at a couple startup competitions later in the month.

2. More NYC Adventures: Went whitewater rafting last weekend which was an absolute blast! A couple other highlights this month was going on a VC cruise, Rooftop Mixers, Chess Competitions, and Startup Hangouts.

3. Got MLH Top 50 Award: Was named MLH Top 50 2023, an recognition given to hackers who have made a meaningful contribution to the hacker community. They wrote a really well documented blog about my journey. Plus, they sent some swag to my Toronto place which I’m excited to try out!

4. Build Mindset: I’ve really been enjoying the build grind. I wanted to catalyst on that, so I started two fun initiatives:
    
   (1) I have a private weekly builder group with a couple builder friends. We call every Sunday and talk about what technical projects we are building and any problems and learnings we’ve had.
   (2) I started a private daily(ish) newsletter called Daily Ships, where I post what my technical learnings are every day. It’s been a fun way to share some private projects I’m working on, and distill what I learned in writing form.

Experiments 🧪 

Current projects, insights & thoughts about: tech, life optimization, investing..

1. Did an AI Hackathon!: honestly really fun experience; stayed up for most of the night building w/ my team mate Miguel. After this, I want to ship more products, publicly. Used Chakra UI for design, OpenAI for generated script, and ElevenLabs for the audio. We built in ~7 hours:
   

   

   My Hackathon Project

2. Meetings on Mondays: been starting to batch all my calls I have on Mondays. I took this method from my friend Bobby, and I’ve noticed a considerable difference in extra time I have in the week. It greatly reduces latency from outside forces.

Chat next month,

Matt | (@mattespoz) 🥷🏼

P.S. If we haven’t chatted in a while feel free to reach out! I’m a bit too occupied in NYC to setup catchup calls, but would love to reconnect :)

1. 🐦 Follow me on Twitter -> where I share my experiments, learnings & framework publicly

Was this 🚀 or 🗑. I read every response 🤩

Hey it’s Matt! 👋 

If you’re getting this email you likely know me from one of my companies/projects: Agora Labs (acquired), Inner Circle, amongst others.

Welcome to Compound Advantage, my monthly newsletter for sharing my latest projects, frameworks, and actionable ideas. Here’s my June updates:

What I’ve Been Up To 😼 

Quick life updates..

1. Moved to NYC! Took me about a week to adjust, but finally built out a solid routine, and have been building close friendships in the city. I’ve been learning a lot from this experience from participating in Chess Tournaments, exploring major tech offices like Spotify and Datadog, to even meeting the CEO of BuzzFeed. I’m here for another 5 weeks before I head back to Toronto.

2. Figuring out the O1 Visa Process. Been talking to a couple lawyers and friends who have gone through the process. Before this month I thought it was incredibly complex, but I finally understand the visa lingo and the setup is starting to make sense. I feel a lot more confident about the whole thing and it has relieved a lot of stress.

3. Building a New Company: I’m currently working on 3 stealth projects, some of them with co-founders. It feels good to be back in the build mode. I’ll periodically share updates as them come about / become relevant.

Experiments 🧪 

Current projects, insights & thoughts about: tech, life optimization, investing..

1. The End Goal: been thinking a lot about what life will look like after I graduate. From the city to live at, the friends I’ll have, to the projects I’ll be working on. I haven’t figured out all the answers yet, but have been making some tremendous progress.

2. Crafting the Ideal Day: with little outside forces, I’ve been able to make my ideal day a reality. Now that I have my routine setup in NYC I’ve been incredibly consistent from work/fitness/life ratio.

Personal Asks 🙏

1. If you’re a Product Manager, or Designer would love to chat! I’m building an AI product and looking to understand some problems you might have to see what solutions it may solve. I just need 15 mins of your time.

Chat next month,

Matt | (@mattespoz) 🥷🏼

P.S. If we haven’t chatted in a while feel free to reach out! I’m a bit too occupied in NYC to setup catchup calls, but would love to reconnect :)

1. 🗂 For Founders, Developers & Investors -> I’ve got a great dealflow network, so if you are looking to hire, be hired, or add investors on your cap table (just message me!)
2. 🐦 Follow me on Twitter -> where I share my experiments, learnings & framework publicly

Was this 🚀 or 🗑. I read every response 🤩

Hey I’m Matt, and welcome to my monthly newsletter for sharing my latest achievements and learnings on my startup journey 📬

🆕 Personal Updates

It's officially mid-October!

It's been a while since my last major update (back in July). Over the last 3 months, life has been incredibly exciting. I recently sold my crypto startup to a $50M company, joined a startup as Lead of Tokenomics, had 2 meetups with Inner Circle, starting preparing for coding interviews, got featured on Yahoo, Bloomberg, and BitcoinInsider, setup $MATT token on Talent Protocol, and isolated myself 5 hours away from Toronto to focus on this next stage of my life. 🔑

I'll keep this update short as I'm working on a couple side projects which I hope to announce soon. But in the meantime, you can read about my story of going from 0 to exit on my previous crypto startup on Twitter or an in-depth version on Medium:

Twitter tweet

As always, feel free to reach out! 💪

Until next month,

Matt | @mattespoz 👨🏻‍💻

Hey I’m Matt, and welcome to my monthly newsletter for sharing my latest achievements and learnings on my startup journey - while sharing some hidden gems and resources along the way 📬

Thank you to the 188 new subscribers joining Web3 Club they are joining 1480+ others who are receiving highly curated nuggets every week. If you enjoy this issue, share it with your Twitter friends!

🆕 Personal Updates

It's officially July!

I've been on an insane building mode mostly shipping fun products while meeting awesome people in the process 👨🏻‍💻

Built my first web3 project on the Solana blockchain, started a 20 day build challenge on Inner Circle, co-hosted my first web3 IRL event in Toronto (maxed at 120 attendees in 48 hours!), attended Collision Toronto 2022 conference, built a fun quote generator that allows you to auto-tweet to Twitter, had fun optimizing my github profile and resume, attended a UW blockchain IRL meetup with partnership with Sonr, transitioned my newsletter from Revue to Beehiv, and officially getting a monthly sponsorship for this newsletter 🤫

^ This was a photo of the pre-inner circle meetup (1 hour before the main event) w/ the OG Inner Circle Members. It was insane being able to finally meet people I've only chatted with from discord before. 🎉

P.S. if you plan on attending ETHToronto in August, or Hack the North shoot me a REPLY to this email! We can meetup and get coffee! ☕️

🦄 Sponsor of the Month: Beehiiv

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Thank you to Beehiiv for supporting my crypto journey ❤️

🎖 "Yup... Crypto has Died"

We are certainly in a bear market.

I'm seeing lots of people remove the word 'web3' from their bio, whereas the biggest believers (yours truly) continues to believe in the space.

Despite lower VC funding in the space recently, we are still seeing some incredible stories and companies moving the space forward

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Twitter tweet

I'm still a steady believer that in this early stage of crypto we will see infrastructure focused companies take a front mover advantage.

Crypto, for me, has always been primarily defined by the people

And the biggest believers haven't changed their position.

Here's the best advice I'm probably heard from my friend Anton:

"In a bull market everyone is a genius. But very few people can keep it together in a bear market."

With that, stay strong, buy the dip, and keep building - I know I will ✌🏼

🔥 Tweet Worthy

• The top books recommended by the world's most successful people

• Li Jin opens up her 4-week creator economy course to the public

• Solana launches mobile platform, the first step in a mass marketing crypto?

• Are soulbound the future of crypto? Vitalik's thoughts

• How Morning Fame algorithmically gives you suggestions for video ranking *

Hey I’m Matt, and welcome to my monthly newsletter on my journey building my startup - directly to your inbox 📬

🚀 TLDR (for this month);

• Personal Update (March + April)

• Raising Capital -> Strategic Exit

• My Favourite Things This Month

• Top Reads This Month (worth your time)

• What's Next For Me

🆕 Personal Updates

It's now Mid-May!

I skipped the April update (mostly cause I was focusing on exams), but I'm excited to dive into too cool things I've up to recently!

Did a Y Combinator interview, finished my Envision Founder Cohort, partnered with Curious Cardinals (Forbes 30 Company), been binging The Drop Out w/ Inner Circle, participated in a pitch competition at Visible Hands, joined Republic as a venture fellow, did a pre-mint for the Dolce&Gabbana, and created an investment thesis around the tokenization of startups.

Right, let’s get to it - time for this months roundup 🚀

~ Matt

🧩 Raising Pre-Seed -> To Strategic Exit

This past couple weeks made the exciting decision to go for a strategic exit with my web3 company.

We had a pre-seed of with some of my dream venture capitalists and angels, but before taking in much more capital we decided to truly evaluate the market.

I chatted with Sunita Rao who was previously head of tokenization and crypto at Republic and we had a deep dive on the current token market. We ultimately came up with the 3 main stages we believe the token market is headed:

1) Token Investment in Companies (Republic is leading this charge and democratizing access to wealth)

2) Token Investment in Organizations (Multiple DAO tooling options here)

3) Token Investment in People/Creators (We were leading this charge)

I believe it was summed up perfectly with one line:

"You're building the equivalence of Virtual Reality in 2012, it's genius but the market just isn't there (yet)."

Eliot from Coinvise also shares his similar thoughts on why Social Tokens are doomed in 2022

I also had a chat with my investors, and it was super heartwarming to hear that they would invest the same amount of capital in whatever I build next. Especially in pre-seed stage, it's truly betting on the founders succeeding instead of the main startup idea.❣️

I learned more this past year building a true startup, raising capital, building the team, etc. than I ever could have otherwise. The startup gave me a reason to break into the web3 space, and x1000 my network in the tech world.

Planning on taking (at least) a 9-11 month hiatus from building another impactful startup, and currently working on some smaller projects, and working on some new aspects of myself (will update monthly on this newsletter).

🦄 Sponsor S/O: Collective (Get Hired in Web3)

Everyone is currently looking into breaking into the web3 space.

With Collective (talent matching network), it makes it 10x easier for top companies and talent in web3 to connect.

Being built by my friend Ryan Haraki, this is a very promising web3 project, and it takes less than 1 minute to get started!

Getting connect to web3 talent || Get your first job in the web3 space.

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💠 My Favourite Things This Month

🎬 YouTube Video - 10 Years of Coding Everything I've Done - a great motivator for those getting into the development space. It gives a great overview (+ motivation) towards getting into coding and building projects

🎧 Audiobook - Bad Blood - in complement to watching the HBO Series The DropOut, I wanted to do some additional research about Theranos. This gave me a great in depth analysis on the the entire Theranos story and startup crime

🎧 Audiobook - Before Happiness - analysis and prequel to the Happiness Advantage that I read the previous month.

📬 Tweet of the Week

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Twitter tweet

🛠 Ending Remarks + What's Next?

That's it for this month!

For those curious, after exiting my web3 company, I'm currently building projects on buildspace, completing a full-stack course, teaching web3 at Curious Cardinals, and just really focusing on building stuff

Thank you to everyone that’s been a part of my life and with me on my journey (especially the investors!)

If you made it this far, hit REPLY and tell me what you thought of this newsletter. Was this 🚀 or 🗑. I read every response 🤩

If you enjoy this issue, share it with your Twitter friends!

Until next month,

Matt | @mattespoz 👨🏻‍💻

P.S. I'm going to be at Collision Startup Event next month! If are a developer and want free tickets, you can get them here. Shoot me a message if you plan on going, we can meet up IRL!

🆕 Personal Updates

It's officially March (it's actually my birthday today! 🎂 )

Another insane 30 days.

This month, I've been featured in this innovative tech podcast, featured on Talent Protocol's Twitter Space, featured in this VC Newsletter, met amazing top founders and VCs at ZFellows, accepted into Microsoft's tech mentorship, revamped my personal website, revamped my web3 community, joined the Developer DAO, bought a fractionalized Azuki NFT, and paid company taxes.

The company I co-founded (Agora) recently got accepted into the Envision Accelerator Program, and have received the $10K Harmony Protocol Grant

I thought last month was insane in terms of accomplishments, but this month it's been unreal! So grateful for everyone in my life.

Right, let’s get to it - time for this months roundup 🚀

~ Matt

🧩 Becoming ZERO to HERO in Web3 Economy

Crypto/Web3 might be one of the most confusing areas to get started on.

To get your foot into the door I recommend these resources which helped me when I was first started getting into the space:

🔥 Learning DAOs

Odyssey - the "khan academy" of web3 in my opinion

Invisible College - admittedly haven't joined (requires NFT pass) but I've heard really good things about it from my web3 friends

Crypto Culture & Society - part of the latest cohort, and it's a super supportive community to get anyone started in the web3 world

She256 - mostly use it for cool resources and events they post

💠 My Favourite Things This Month

🎬 YouTube Video - The Intelligent Investor's Road to $1,000,000. 30 min video on the analysis of increase profitability as you get older.

🎧 Audiobook - Shoe Dog by Phil Knight. Story of the creator of Nike and the journey to create a profitable business (before the era of VCs).

🎧 Audiobook - David and Goliath. Analysis of how under-rated individuals succeed in life. For example, a high percentage of billionaires have ADHD.

🥇 10x Growth Per Month

From last month's newsletter the biggest question I've received is:

"How are you doing what I do in a year, in a single month?"

I think it comes down to 3 main pillars

1. Seizing opportunities (actively look for top opportunities/fellowships like ZFellows, and Envision to exponential growth your learnings)

2. Network (I actively meet AT LEAST 3 new amazing people every week. This combined with #1 leads to compound gains)

3. Time Management (I can do a deep dive on this alone in the future, but the best method is to completely eliminate 80% of things that aren't getting you further in life, and double down on the 20% activities that is accelerating you)

Of course there is some factors of luck, but using these 3 methods alone you can outwit your odds.

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🛠 Ending Remarks

This past month has been super impactful for me.

Thank you to everyone that’s been a part of my life and with me on my journey.

Until next month,

Matt | @mattespoz 👨🏻‍💻

🆕 Personal Updates

It's officially February (mid-February as I write this lol)! 🥇

January felt like a whole year for me, with lots of areas of personal improvement and growth.

In fact, I just got accepted into some of the most prestigious programs in North America with the most notable one being the ZFellows Program. Essentially it's a program where they will give you $10K to skip class or work for 1 week. I'm one of 10 people selected for the latest cohort.

I've also been accepted to the KERNEL Batch 05 (learning about Ethereum with a group of 400+ web3 enthusiasts), Crypto Culture and Society Batch 02 (learning about web3 tokenomics and DAOs), and Safary (learning web3 growth tactics from the best in the industry).

I've also successfully rebranded my company from BitPerks to Agora, hired 2 growth leads, and officially announced the new CTO of my company

I'm honestly really happy with where I am in life, and so I hope this trajectory continues throughout the year.

Right, let’s get to it - time for this months roundup 🚀

~ Matt

🧩 Web3 Pay-To-Learn

Recently got asked:

What's the best way to get started learning about crypto/web3?

I personally recommend looking into companies that are offering an incentive to learn about new blockchains and protocols. These are my 2 favourites:

🐇 Rabbithole — rabbithole.gg

• Earn crypto through discovering and using the latest crypto applications

💎 Layer3 — alpha.layer3.xyz

• Contribute to a DAO and earn crypto. Tweet, make memes, create YouTube tutorials, and more.

Both of these give you the option to LEARN and then EARN by contributing either to DAOs or crypto applications. Once you have the firm understanding of how cryptocurrencies work you can certainly expand beyond these options, but I think it's a great first option.

P.S. I also recommend getting a Coinbase account to manage your crypto portfolio

💠 My Favourite Things This Month

🎬 YouTube Video - The Problems with NFTs by Folding Ideas is a 2-hour video explaining the "damage" of NFTs. Very eye-opening concepts were brought up.

🎧 Audiobook - Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell. Always been fascinated by how to increase luck for success and this gives a great insight into how the best in the world (ex: Bill Gates) were able to move life in his favour. Very actionable advice throughout.

🎧 Audiobook - The Happiness Advantage by Shawn Achor. We are more successful the happier we are - not the other way around. Inner circles are so important to thrive in life.

🎧 Audiobook - The Third Door by Alex Banayan. Been obsessed with "success factors" this past month. This book dives into mentors and how to break into and dominate any industry.

💬 Quote of the Month

From Outliers by Malcom Gladwell. Resurfaced using Readwise

Until next month,

Matt | @mattespoz 👨🏻‍💻