Tom Cruise Needs Your Money

No BS, let’s just get into it:

• ⛳️ Hit the Links: All the startup investing updates you need

• 📽️ Access Hollywood: Tom Crusie needs our money

• 👎 Deals I Don’t Like: A few deals that fell short…

HIT THE LINKS

Startup investing links from around the web:

🧑‍🤝‍🧑 Wefunder hits 500,000 investors across their platform (link)

⚔️ Hubtas is taking on Kingscrowd, and they just added a key commentator in the space to their founding team (link)

🔻 The first half of 2023 has seen exits decline by 65% vs a year ago (link)

💼 Republic is hiring a community manager for Republic Note! (link)

🏡 Fundrise, the online platform for investing in diversified real estate projects, is opening a startup fund. I’ve been a satisfied user of Fundrise for over 5 years, you can use my link to grab a $50 voucher to get started (link)

📅 After 21 long months, StartEngine is ending its fundraising round (link)

💰 Why venture money loves America, according to Peter Thiel - of companies started since 1990 that are worth $100B+… 11 are in the US, 6 in China. Zero everywhere else (link)

ACCESS HOLLYWOOD

Issuance is turning Shark Tank upside down

Shark Tank allows millionaire celebrities the chance to invest in every day people. Uno-Reverse specialist Issuance is laying the groundwork to let every day people invest in celebrities.

Now before you draw-4, here’s a quick refresher on Issuance. Their software enables startups to raise money independent of an ecosystem.

The benefit here is that you you get all the tools to raise on your own website and have much greater control over the process. The con is that you aren’t tapping into a community of exisiting investors, which is what you would get if you raise on StartEngine/Wefunder.

Issuance has inked a deal with the Creative Artists Agency (CAA), one of the largest talent agency in the world. They represent huge names across all industries; Tom Cruise, Ryan Gosling, Lady Gaga, and many more.

Under their agreement, the CAA will push their roster of talent to raise funds from the public using Issuance’s tech. CAA is financially incentivized to do so, as they will receive a revenue-share from all business that they drive.

Celebrities have found that launching their own products is highly lucrative, with Ryan Reynolds (Aviation Gin, sold for $610M), The Rock (Teramana, worth $3.2B), and Kim Kardashian (Skims, worth $4B) leading the way.

The dirty secret behind these brands is that despite the huge followings, a lot of these celebrities need to raise outside funding to get their business off the ground.

Issuance essentially took the firehose of celebrity deal flow, and is turning it onto the equity crowdfunding community. I believe this could be a huge turning point - any brands that these celebrities launch will come attached with millions of eyeballs.

And the way the deal is structured, CAA only benefits financially if they send deals to Issuance. I personally am excited to see the exposure that equity crowdfunding gets as a result of this.

DEALS I DON’T LIKE

I’ve been writing about some gems…

The Sill + Triagenics both received an investment from me. Here’s some of the recent deals I passed on, and a very brief why:

Olympian Motors, $28M cap

What they do: Make iconic-looking retro cars, but with clean electric batteries

Why I’m passing: Car design has evolved for a reason - the old designs didn’t protect riders during crashers, did not optimize storage space, and were not efficient for fuel consumption. Olympian won’t have major adoption from rational consumers, and so they need to sell small batches at exorbitant prices to car fanatics. However, I think that small audience of car fanatics would prefer the actual iconic car, not an electric remake. TLDR: I have doubts around demand.

Studio Pod, valuation tbd

What they do: Mobile, self-service, fully automated pro photography studio for headshots

Why I’m passing: AI headshots are already here, and much cheaper than booking this booth. This one is dead-on-arrival for me.

Ghost Boards, $8.6M

What they do: Customizable, clear longboards

Why I’m passing: This doesn’t seem like something that’s scalable, and the staying power after the ‘cool factor’ wears off seems low.