🗓 What Happened on Tech Twitter in October

Yo! ✌️ I’m Brett! I am a founder and former Cognitive Science researcher. Social Studies is a semi-weekly newsletter for people building great products for humans. It includes recaps of what happened on Tech Twitter every week plus deep analysis using frameworks from Psychology, Economics, and the other Social Sciences.

Sorry for the delay, yall! Been running around Tulum for the last month. Now that I’m back stateside, consistency will be back as well!

October was quite an eventful month! Here’s a quick rundown of the top stories.

☕️ Morning Brew and Paystack get that $$$ - Two huge acquisitions shined the spotlight on our two favorite things to talk about - newsletters and Stripe.

🇺🇸 The election run-up debates got heated - A debate about Prop 22 and the future of the gig economy got Tech Twitter riled up.

🤬 Bad board members were exposed - A scathing email from Ryan Caldbeck to a seemingly comically terrible board member started an important conversation on how to evaluate board members.

📈 The next crypto bull run began - Bitcoin broke $14K and several meaningful crypto projects reached wider adoption. Many were saying that this is the real deal this time.

Daily business news media company, Morning Brew was acquired by Business Insider for $75M+!

Kinsey Grant ☕️@KinseyGrant

you still count as popular even if it's your new legal guardian that calls you a "popular podcast series"......right?

businessinsider.com

A big welcome to Morning Brew!

8:37 PM · Oct 29, 2020

1 Repost · 95 Likes

Biggest deal about this deal? They only raised ~$750K in total.

Web Smith@web

The @MorningBrew story is a great one. It shows what's possible when you work hard and choose to avoid the traditional VC game. If the deal closes, the two will take home more than most growth founders. And still have tremendous upside for the future. There's more than one way.

12:25 PM · Oct 14, 2020

28 Reposts · 447 Likes

Naturally, everyone had a hot take to share.

Austin Rief ☕️@austin_rief

All the sudden everyone is a media analyst. I love this site.

3:31 AM · Oct 14, 2020

18 Reposts · 454 Likes

The most important point is that not all newsletters are created equal. Morning Brew nailed the daily business news media play, which is significantly more massive opportunity than the typical weekly research and analysis newsletters that everyone seems to be starting these days.

There are still tons of huge opportunities.

Ari Lewis@amlewis4

The local newspaper will be replaced by the local newsletter in the next 10 years. Trucking, warehousing and print expenses are unnecessary when they can be replaced with an email.

4:48 AM · Oct 14, 2020

3 Reposts · 56 Likes

Stripe also acquired Nigerian payments startup, Paystack in October. Huge news for the African startup ecosystem.

Paystack@paystack

In the midst of a tough week in Nigeria, we have some positive news to share. Paystack will be acquired by @stripe to accelerate online and offline commerce across Africa. paystack.com/blog/company-n…

1:35 PM · Oct 15, 2020

19.4K Reposts · 29.9K Likes

In weeks before the election, the biggest discussion in tech was around Prop 22, which “Exempts App-Based Transportation and Delivery Companies from Providing Employee Benefits to Certain Drivers.”

Uber and Lyft were strong advocates for it, as well as a number of their drivers, but a few people spoke out against the bill.

Li Jin@ljin18

Prop 22 codifies everything based on "engaged time" so workers would earn far less than min wage (~$5.64/hr). Drivers would need to work 39 hours/wk just to qualify for the minimum healthcare benefit. Prop 22 rolls back existing protections against harassment & discrimination.

3:04 PM · Oct 22, 2020

11 Reposts · 56 Likes

A few people shared their voting guides.

Mike Solana@micsolana

if you're looking for direction on our local house of horrors (government), a san francisco voting guide for people who aren't insane:

solana.substack.com

Endorsements for Human Civilization

10:51 PM · Oct 16, 2020

123 Reposts · 770 Likes

Delian dropped a scathing email from Ryan Caldbeck to one of his board members. It’s worth the full read.

delian@zebulgar

Absolutely eviscerating email from a founder to a former board member on all of their extremely unproductive and harmful behaviors Woof, tough to read...

docs.google.com

Email to former board member

2:36 AM · Oct 16, 2020

177 Reposts · 1.71K Likes

It got awkward.

Richard Burton@ricburton

@zebulgar Alright I’ll do it: @cshapiro, what gives? It doesn’t sound like @collabfund is very collaborative.

3:35 AM · Oct 16, 2020

4 Reposts · 164 Likes

Craig Shapiro 🇺🇸@cshapiro

@ricburton @zebulgar @collabfund @ricburton, thanks for asking. Ryan releasing his own redacted email without context is disappointing and misleading. There are always two sides to every story.

9:15 PM · Oct 16, 2020

2 Reposts · 17 Likes

This naturally started a larger conversation about board members where more questionable board members were exposed.

Kim Taylor@kimmytaylor

5:17 AM · Oct 17, 2020

6 Reposts · 153 Likes

It’s that time of the cycle again. Crypto is headed for another bull run similar to 2017. BTC, ETH and other cryptocurrencies saw explosive growth in October.

priyanka desai🍦@pridesai

14k tomorrow 👀

8:18 PM · Oct 22, 2020

1 Repost · 23 Likes

What’s new this time? Big companies are putting Bitcoin on their balance sheet (Square bought $50M) AND more importantly, actually building stuff people use (Reddit is testing turning their karma feature into an Ethereum token).

Linda Xie@ljxie

The list of positive news in crypto continues to grow incl: - PayPal launches crypto support. Venmo in 2021 - MicroStrategy purchased $425m of bitcoin - Square purchased $50m of bitcoin - Kraken received bank charter approval - DeFi grew exponentially ($11bn total value locked)

Linda Xie @ljxie

Really exciting how much positive news there's been in crypto recently incl: - JPMorgan banking Coinbase & Gemini - Paul Tudor Jones' public support of Bitcoin - Square Cash App's major growth in bitcoin revenue - Reddit's beta testing of Eth tokens There's a lot of momentum 🔥

4:35 PM · Oct 21, 2020

49 Reposts · 272 Likes

NFTs (non-fungible tokens), which allow people to create and sell unique digital items (e.g. photos, music, etc) are also having a field day. RAC

RAC@RAC

Today at 1PM we accepted the highest bid for "Elephant Dreams" at 70 ETH ($26,185) from @MaxStealth5. the first of our @reisingerandres x @RAC collab. Thank you to @MaxStealth5 @rabmarut2 for battling it out. We broke the @SuperRare_co I believe.

superrare.co

8:15 PM · Oct 10, 2020

17 Reposts · 160 Likes

Social tokens are also a growing new category. Social tokens are basically cryptocurrencies tied to creators and communities. I launched one in October called $THANKS.

Brett Goldstein 🚀🏠🌴@thatguyBG

4/ I have been a fan of @kanakhey's writing for a while, so I'm super excited to have her as the first of hopefully many guest writers (also social experimenters) on @__socialstudies. Check it out 👇 socialstudies.substack.com/p/a-primer-on-…

socialstudies.substack.com

🧠 A Primer on Social Money by Holyn Kanake

5:59 PM · Oct 30, 2020

3 Reposts · 15 Likes

As we prepare for the next bull run, it’s important to remember… take it easy!

Ari Paul ⛓️@AriDavidPaul

Thoughts on the psychology of the crypto cycle: Entrepreneurs and traders in any industry go through cycles of exuberance and burnout. Crypto accelerates both the magnitude and speed of swings. The second best mentality is to maintain an even keel throughout the whole cycle /1

2:22 PM · Oct 1, 2020

12 Reposts · 62 Likes

Here are a few more big stories from October.

Josh Constine -SignalFire@JoshConstine

Quibi is shutting down -- a $1.75B crash due to 4 problems I listed upon launch: -Stodgy Hollywood directors instead of mobile-native creators -No screenshots = No memes -Slow content + weak discovery = no attention -No social or 2nd-screen features

techcrunch.com

Quibi is the anti-TikTok (that’s a bad thing) – TechCrunch

7:51 PM · Oct 21, 2020

368 Reposts · 2.54K Likes

Alec Stapp@AlecStapp

🚨 House Judiciary Committee report on tech and antitrust is out! Thread with some of my initial reactions as I go through it...

8:08 PM · Oct 6, 2020

83 Reposts · 333 Likes

If you enjoyed this, feel free to buy me a coffee - oat milk lattes ftw.

Check out this hilarious TikTok duet!

Eade Bengard@eade_bengard

That’s another 500M from @TurnerNovak

4:39 AM · Oct 20, 2020

207 Reposts · 2.9K Likes