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Happy New Year, all.

First up, in this week’s episode of Ventures, my guest Jed Collins (https://www.tiktok.com/@fullbackoffinance) and I discuss the basics of financial literacy and Jed’s journey into the NFL and entrepreneurial venture thereafter. Of particular interest is not only Jed’s story and important content he is teaching young people, but also how he has been using TikTok as a marketing engine to grow his business.

Check it out: Teaching financial literacy after the NFL and embracing TikTok for marketing :: with Jed Collins

Web 2.0 has proven dangerously problematic. We need the full Web 3.0 era ASAP

Roughly speaking, Web 1.0 is content publishing, Web 2.0 is social media, and Web 3.0 is decentralization. Importantly, the new era will come with personal data ownership and global trust protocols for things like governance and finance. While bitcoin is having an amazing run, it’s price will always fluctuate and “breathe”. Bitcoin was/is of course a key trojan horse for ushering in the Web 3.0 era, and we all should be thankful for it. Check out podcasts I hosted on Web 3.0 here, here, here, and here.

It’s also worth pausing for a moment and considering what we’ve learned over the past couple of decades or so from Web 2.0. While there are plenty of stories of good that have come from it, what is alarming is - in my opinion - the asymmetric downside. The Netflix documentary The Social Dilemma did a good job highlighting some of the extensive list of problems when we combine centralized data and machine-learning algorithms to optimize for ad revenue. Soaring teen suicide rates and nations interfering with elections are just the start.

Personally, I’ve tried popping in and out of social media occasionally over the past five years. Thus far, I’ve tried to avoid the extremes (e.g. deleting my accounts…. or on the flip side, diving in to be super active on them). I’ve actually found traditional networks like Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn to be quite enjoyable when I only log in every few months or so. As for Twitter, after a decade I still have no idea what to do with it; I suspect it’s only useful for people like Trump, AOC, and Elon. I’d be curious to hear what you think.  

Have a great rest of your week,

~Will