astukari Newsletter #59 - How to be Successful
Hello there,
We’re back with the second Substack newsletter. Things have stayed remarkably stable, which I’m happy about. It looks like the open rates of the first email weren’t very different from how they had been on Mailchimp, so I’ll take that as a hint that you all received it just fine.
As school is beginning to wrap up, I’ve got a lot of exciting projects in the works and I’m looking forward to sharing some with you soon! I’m also beginning the transition out of college, starting with the COVID vaccine on 4/16. Here’s hoping I’m not stuck in bed sick for finals week. Anyway, let’s get started!
🔨What I’ve Been Making
Free to Play Models for SaaS Services - Free to Play games use a variety of ingenious models to bring in revenue. I’m surprised I haven’t seen equivalents in SaaS.
A Recap on my 2020 Politics Posts - Without attempting to stoke the fire, I made a couple of non-biased predictions earlier in 2020 to how things might end up. I was surprised by the results.
📚What I’ve Been Reading
How To Be Successful - Usually I stay away from startup pundits, because I don’t particularly appreciate the culture. That means YC alum, and in particular, it means Sam Altman. So when I recommend one of his articles despite these differences, it means you should be paying attention.
Infrastructure Investment Tricks - The main takeaway here is right at the beginning — infrastructure is a lot more multifaceted than we think it is. Usually when we think infrastructure, we think roads, waterways, etc — we rarely think about the norms of our institutions, such as educational or political, which are in every way just as much infrastructure as the “hardware” we put down.
Bitcoin: the Stripe perspective - This post argues that the main value of bitcoin is not as a store of value (its highly variable) or as a unit of account (it’s worth $60,500 a coin as of writing), but rather as a medium of exchange. It is extremely difficult to transfer money from one place to another in today’s society, and the idea is that bitcoin (well, really, crypto in general — bitcoin is still a pain in the ass to transfer) is the solution to this problem.
How do content creators make money? - This blog goes over the major ways most content creators make income to sustain themselves. A great guide if you’re getting into the monetization stage of your journey.
We Need 100x More Creators Online - A big, long write-up as to why you should create online. As we’ve mentioned before, not everyone wants to be a creator — but for those who are structure-averse and live life doing their own thing, here’s a good list of reasons why you should give it a shot.