Categories
Personal

My Journey with Blogging! and Why I’m Writing on Here

For a long time I have been writing different kinds of blogs online. I started a blog focused purely on technology back in 2006 – it was called Crenk. After two years of running Crenk it was doing really well – it got to a million readers every month and things were great. Then Google changed their algorithm and overnight it went from a million readers a month to about ten thousand.

 🌏 End of the world!

Everything I had built for the past two years were gone in an instant!

A long time after that I decided not to write a blog. I thought it was futile!

However – we were starting a new company that would in 2008 and we really need to grow an audience – but we had $0 marketing budget. The only way we were going to drive an audience to our site and keep them there was to produce a strong blog! It had no extra costs – was based upon time and quality of content – and allowed us to drive people to find our site instead of us having to find them (this was the same time Hubspot coined the term – Inbound Marketing!).

 ✍️ This was the start of the RouteNote Blog

The RouteNote blog took a year or two to really start to grow, but it helped us drive the majority of new customers to our service in the early years! It was hard going and long hours and I was the only writing on that blog for the first 4 years or so.

The RouteNote blog now gets over 250,000 new readers per month and drives a large minority of all signups still on the main RouteNote site. Its invaluable and by far the best investment I ever made!

That brings us to now…..

I still own Crenk and write on there from time to time, but it isn’t the same product as it used to be. The RouteNote blog has gone from strength to strength and now has 3 fulltime writers there.

and I have started writing here….

WHY?

Im still not entirely sure why.. If I write articles on Crenk I will get a lot more SEO and a lot more natural readers, but it has always been focused on Tech. I wanted a place that was mine – somewhere I could share my thoughts (not matter what the topic). I don’t really care if lots of people read articles on my site or not – I’m writing on here purely for the love of writing …. and I find it really helps me to express myself and to my ideas out of my head!

So expect a lot more articles (a lot are going to be random).

Categories
Business Finance

Paula Volent: US is in a Bear Market!

Paula Volent sat down with David Rubenstein to talk about the US economy and stocks now being in a Bear Market.

Paula Volent is now the chief investment officer of Rockefeller University.

Categories
Business Music

Beggars Music Group Financials for 2021 – Revenues up 29.7% Year on Year

Beggars Music Group had a strong 2021 (as they have just released their numbers in a filing on UK Companies House).

Beggars Group generated GBP 79.98 million in 2021 – which was up 29.7% year on year.

This figure includes Beggars’ share of various joint venture businesses including XL Recordings, Matador and Rough Trade, in each of which Beggars owns 50%.

Beggars is a huge player in independent music market and it’s great to see that they are still growing strong and getting a strong slice of the market.

Categories
Business Tech

How Dharmesh Shah Built a $90,000/Month App Side Hustle In 48 Hours

Im a huge fan of Dharmesh Shah – who is the CTO of Hubspot. Dharmesh loved Wordle so much that he build an app that was based off the popular game but with some key twists. Its a great story and really worth watching him explain this in the above video.

Categories
Football Video

Trent Alexander-Arnold – Would Obviously Rather Retire than Play for Man United

This is a great little interview with Trent Alexander-Arnold – Would I Rather.

The last question is a classic and provides the right answer for a scouser.

Categories
Business

Creating a Brand is Hard and It Takes at Least 5 Years!

The other day we official launched RouteNote Create under the RouteNote umbrella.

RouteNote Create was originally intended to be a standalone product – but I learnt a lot about starting a brand over the past 12 months and it is getting harder and harder with time to build meaningful brands online. The landscape and places you need to be visible are getting larger and larger and it’s very difficult trying to keep them all up to date and heading in the same direction with the same branding, tone of voice and message.

Note to self – If you are going to build a brand – then make sure it focuses on a new customer type and expect it to take at least 5 years to really show fruit!

Categories
Business

Im Tired of YouTube Investment “Gurus”

There are so many investment “gurus” on YouTube and it simply just feels like this is now a step above a used car salesman!

Here is a very good example – Investment Advice! When he simply just adds his money into a very basic Vanguard ETF based off the S&P500.

This is probably as far as it gets from someone who should actually be giving investment advice!

What you really should be watching is video interviews from Warren Buffett – and then also spending a huge amount of time reading and working out your own way to value companies and their intrinsic value.

Categories
Tech

Justin Kan – Q&A – Solid Startup Advice

I’m a big fan of Justin Kan (co-founder of Twitch). He has been running a YouTube channel for quite some time and here is his most recent Q&A.

If you’re looking for very simple and easy to digest startup advice then look to his channel.

Categories
Tech

Schedule Messages on Text Messages, iMessage, Whatsapp, etc.

Why can’t I schedule send text messages or messages on Facebook Messenger or Whatsapp?

I struggle to understand at the moment why this isn’t a standard feature in all messaging apps.

Please, Please, Please!

Categories
Tech

Apple Freeform – Whiteboard Collaboration Tool for iOS 16

Apple is moving into the Whiteboard game with Freeform. Freeform is going to be a new whiteboard style app that enables groups of people to collaborate in real time in a completely open space. Freeform is coming out on the new iOS 16 – which is scheduled to come out later this year.

Categories
Business Finance Tech

Fidelity Investments Slashing Valuations on Reddit, Stripe, Bytedance and Instacart

It seems like private market valuations for startups are getting slashed because of overall economic outlooks. In the past few months we have seen heavy declines in the public markets and now the private markets are following behind.

Fidelity Investments is cutting some of its portfolio company valuations.

  • Reddit valuation is down by more than a third.
  • Stripe valuation is down by about 13%
  • Bytedance valuation is down by 13%
  • Instacart is valued at half of its value from last year.

These are only private valuations inside of Fidelity and this was back in April – so its expected that these valuations have dropped even more since then.

It’s a tough time economically for everyone!

Categories
News

Johnny Depp Wins Defamation Case Against Amber Heard

It seems like the entire world has been gripped with the Johnny Depp vs Amber Heard trial – and it finally came to a conclusion a few hours ago.

  • The jury has awarded Depp $10m (£8m) in compensatory damages and $5m in punitive damages
  • The jury found that Heard’s statements about her marriage were “false” and she acted with “actual malice”
  • But jurors also found that Depp defamed Heard – through his attorney – and awarded her $2m

This trial seems to have been a circus from start to finish and Johnny Depp has cleared his name, but apart from that there are very limited winners in this matter.

It made good TV for some!

Categories
Tech

Apple Tap to Pay is Going to Help Small Businesses Accept Card Payments Immediately – No Hardware or Contracts Required!

Apple announced back in February that they were going to launch Tap to Pay.

Tap to Pay is a new feature that will enable any merchant to accept payments with only an iPhone – this could obviously really hurt companies that take a cut in the middle like Square or Stripe.

This is going to be an amazing feature for small businesses – who wont need any new hardware or contracts. Just an Apple phone and a dream!

Now, it turns out that Apple is already testing the feature at its own Apple Park visitor center in Cupertino.

Categories
Business Video

Why Dont More People Invest Like Warren Buffett?

warren buffett

This pretty much sums up his whole approach in about a 1 minute video.

Categories
Tech

ClubHouse Offering Music Audio Listening Without Any Music Licensing

clubhouse audio music listening

ClubHouse has been a popular audio app for some time now, but it seems like they now have audio listening rooms (Pandora style).

It seems like ClubHouse has forgot one huge downside to this and that’s the fact that they don’t actually have any music licensing to be able to offer such a service.

I wonder whether this is part of the ClubHouse strategy or whether this has just become something that is happening inside their app without their control …. I’m not too sure. However, it won’t take very long for music PRO societies to notice this and come calling for an appropriate license.

Categories
Cryptocurrency Tech

How Much Does it Cost to Create an NFT on Opensea?

opensea logo ventures

Opensea charge between $70 and $100 dollars when you setup your account and you want to start selling on the Euthereum blockchain. However, you can now choose to mint NFTs on the Polygon blockchain and there is no setup fee and it can be done completely for free.

Take a look here at Opensea.

Categories
Cryptocurrency Gaming

Fractal Raises $35 million for Blockchain Gaming Assets – Justin Kan is back!

fractal gaming nfts

Moving assets from game to game is going to be a game changer. However, it really requires the game companies and studios to work together – which they haven’t exactly done well in the past.

Fractal is a very interesting company that can hopefully bring more companies together. I could see this working very well on Steam or by a very large company like Activision Blizzard.

https://www.cnbc.com/video/2022/04/04/blockchain-assets-are-a-new-business-model-for-gaming-says-justin-kan.html

Categories
Sports Tennis

Kokkinakis and Kyrgios – Bring the Fun and the Fans to the Doubles Courts!

Kyrgios Kokkinakis

It is great to see Kokkinakis and Kyrgios playing more and more doubles events on the tour. They bring the fun to the doubles court – when then in turn brings a lot more spectators compared to numbers they would normally get on the outside courts for a first round doubles match.

I hope this continues and drives more singles players onto the doubles court.

Categories
Business Cryptocurrency Tech

Coinbase Very Close to Acquiring Brazils Largest Crypto Exchange – Mercado Bitcoin

mercado-bitcoin

Report came out today that Coinbase (COIN) is currently in talks to acquire 2TMM, owner of Mercado Bitcoin, Brazil’s largest crypto exchange.

Mercado Bitcoin has reached 3.2 million customers in 2021, of which 1.1 million were added last year, with a trading volume of $7.1 billion in 2021.

Why it matters:

This gives Coinbase a very strong position in a market in which they have been struggling to gain traction. Brazil and South America overall is going to be a very important market in future for cyptocurrencies.

Categories
Business Cryptocurrency

Katie Haun – Launches Haun Ventures with $1.5 billion in Capital to Invest in Crypto Startups

Katie Haun (who was previously at a16z as the head of their crypto investments division) has started her own venture firm focused on the crypto market and has raised $1.5 billion.

The capital, the largest ever for a solo female founder-led venture, is split across two funds, with the first $500M tranche set out for backing early-stage startups. The remaining $1B “accelerator” fund will focus on late-stage well-established firms across Web3.