What-if
McCormick: I likely would have written a positive sponsored post on Theranos
“One of the tests that I always run for myself, and I probably actually would have failed this test, is if Theranos had come to me on a sponsored post, you know, however many years ago, chances are, frankly, I would have written something positive on Theranos b…”
Insight
McCormick: Independent creator-investors lose value when joining traditional venture firms
“As soon as I go in-house somewhere, Like I lose half of my value or, you know, X percent of my value as soon as I go in-house somewhere. And that is kind of one, even though, you know, I do do sponsored posts and all of that, there is like this independent voi…”
Opinion
McCormick: Opendoor stock will outperform rivals due to its iBuying lead
“I think that Opendoor is gonna do the best. I think they have the biggest lead in, in iBuying, and I think that's a huge, huge opportunity Particularly because they have the best company value in all of the world, which is bips for breakfast.”
Opinion
McCormick: A DAO with physical locations is perfect for modern social clubs
“I mean, today, what not boring club would have been is really a Dow probably with physical locations. I think actually that model works really well for what I was trying to do at the time.”
Prediction Held up
McCormick predicts Not Boring will cross $1M in revenue in 2021
“And I have a few pieces kind of coming up, and so I think chances are we're going to just kind of cross a million dollars in 2021.”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
McCormick: 80% of DAOs will fail, but the top 20% outperform corporations
“I think Eight out of 10 DAOs might totally fail because they have like kind of that leadership issue or like who is the final decision maker issue. But I think those other two are going to do things that like you might not have ever thought to do with a tradit…”
Disclosure
McCormick: Not Boring Capital never led a round across 91 investments
“Did you lead a single round? Did you write any term sheets? Were you the biggest check in any one of those 91 investments? Never. And that's all part of the strategy, right?”
Disclosure
McCormick: Not Boring Capital does less diligence than most co-investors
“I wrote in both the public and private memo that like I'm doing probably less diligence than most people on a specific company than most people who are investing in a company will.”
Disclosure
McCormick details the scope of his advisory role with a16z Crypto
“The advisory there is like, you know, working with some of the companies in their portfolio to think about how they tell their story, writing pieces. Like I wrote with Chris in the economists, like they'll introduce me to companies, you know, that they've inve…”
Assertion Supported
McCormick: Opendoor generated an adjusted EBITDA profit in 2021
“They finally turned, ah, an adjusted EBITDA profit last year so they can make money on this business.”
Insight
McCormick: Playing an online persona makes creator work unsustainably difficult
“If you're not yourself, it's not like a be true to yourself kind of thing. It's like, you're going to have a miserable experience because all of your interactions are going to be other people wanting to interact with this persona, or if I were writing from a d…”
Insight
McCormick: Paid newsletters succeed when companies expense them for specific roles
“Lenny's audience is so specific and like, you know exactly who you are and who should be paying for that, which is people who do product or people who do growth. And not only do they know that they should be reading that and that they need to pay for it, their…”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
McCormick: A tech bear market will lead to attacks on my optimism
“I think when the market turns and when we enter a bit of a bear market and in tech and web three, like it will be really easy to throw stones at me. Like I am unabashedly optimistic about all of this and like things are going to turn on. I'm going to like, you…”
Insight
McCormick: Independent investigative journalism is severely limited without institutional legal backing
“I think it's really hard to do that kind of journalism. Independently because you need lawyers who have your back and you need editors to make sure that you get everything right. And you need like all this stuff to protect you when you're doing this really bra…”
Assertion Partly supported
McCormick: Solana's token increased 3.5x two months after his deep dive
“And then of course, Solana, like three and a half X in the next two months.”
Insight
McCormick: Running a venture fund scales better than writing sponsored newsletters
“It does scale a lot better to run a venture fund than to show up every week and get a sponsor and then write, write an essay.”
Disclosure
McCormick: I made 91 investments in Not Boring Capital Fund 1
“Fund when I did fund when I did 91 91 investments and not all of them have investment memos.”
Insight
McCormick: Expanding creator brands beyond core content risks turning into shill factories
“The more I do of that stuff, the more dilutes the core thing. And the more it makes it seem like kind of a shill factory”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
McCormick: Not Boring can reach 1M subscribers within five years
“There's a path to this being a million person newsletter at some point in the next five years.”
Disclosure
McCormick: Becoming a full-time VC partner would never be attractive
“I've had that other conversation with funds, too, where it's like, hey, you want to come work and, you know, be a full-time partner at this fund? And no, like, we've talked for the past couple of hours about how much fun I'm having doing this particular thing,…”
Insight
McCormick: Winning founder allocation depends on if they are already active readers
“I don't think it's gotten, you know, any easier convincing founders to give me allocation at 50,000 readers or 88,000 readers. Like if they're a reader, then they kind of get it. And if they're not, then You know, they don't on the sponsorship side. It's diffe…”
Insight
McCormick: Venture funds cannot deploy a billion dollars purely with follow-on checks
“It changes the strategy completely though. You can't deploy a billion dollars in follow checks.”
Disclosure
McCormick: I bought 38 Bitcoin at $100 and sold at $150
“I bought Bitcoin at a hundred, sold it at one 50.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
McCormick: I was the largest Uber Rush consumer worldwide during Breather's expansion
“We actually, I was the largest consumer of Uber rush messengers in the world for a while.”
Packy McCormick