John Andrew Entwistle is the founder and CEO of Wander. Wander is a fully-integrated platform for experiencing magnificent short-term rental homes. Wander owns the customer experience end-to-end: the homes, the booking platform, and the value-added services. Over 100,000 people have joined the Wander waitlist. In this episode, John Andrew announces, for the first time, Wander's newest product: Wander Atlas - the world's first and only vacation rental REIT. Through Atlas, you can earn passive income, diversify your portfolio, and own a piece of Wander's magical network of homes. 

Social vs. Science Experiments: We talk a lot about progress here in Not Boring. Progress can be difficult and messy and winding, and importantly, progress moves at different speeds and follows different paths for different kinds of products. Today’s essay is my thinking on two types: science experiments and social experiments.

Successful science experiment products clearly move the world forward; social experiment products are less obviously beneficial and messier in the short-run, but I think they’re every bit as important in the long run, especially in combination with science experiment products.

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With Secureframe, hypergrowth organizations can:

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Click here to set up a demo. Mention “Not Boring” during your demo to get 20% off your first year of Secureframe. Promotion available through October 31, 2022.

In "How Do I Teach These Kids?!" Packy confronts the challenge of how to properly educate his two young children in a rapidly evolving world.

"Dev and Maya get a blank educational slate to start with. Puja and I are responsible for figuring out how to give them the best education possible, one that helps them love learning, have fun, and get prepared for life beyond school. I don’t think the answer is as simple as “Get them into the best schools possible.” I think it’s a lot more complicated than that, and will only get more complicated as things move faster.

This isn’t meant to be a complete survey and analysis of the modern educational system, it’s more of an exploration of how I’m thinking about it personally in the very specific context of Dev and Maya’s education. What’s the best way to prepare my two kids?"

Tegus is building the modern investment research platform for fundamental private and public market investors, starting with a novel twist on the classic expert call model, and expanding into adjacent opportunities by listening intently to customers.

This audio essay covers:

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Peter Johnston is the founder of Polywork.

Polywork is a place to discover opportunities to collaborate with other professionals. Existing networks like LinkedIn focus on connecting us to 9-5 opportunities — but where do you go to find opportunities to speak on podcasts? Or discover partners for your side project? Check out who at Google or Netflix is open to angel investing or starting a company? If LinkedIn is built for the 9-5 generation, Polywork is built for the collaboration generation.

It’s been in private beta for just over a year, but this week it publicly launched for everyone, was #1 on Product Hunt, and announced its Series B funding. So what’s its magic?

Polywork understands that as professionals, our list of job titles don’t do a good job of telling our full stories. Furthermore, it’s purpose built for professionals who want to connect with one another beyond their 9-5. There’s a growing network of amazing professionals from places like Figma, Snapchat, and Github all sharing what they want to do — making it incredibly easy to collaborate with anyone, on anything.

The Enchanted Notebook: on the real and growing power of writing down the future you want to see exist. In the context of a recent Lex Fridman and Ray Kurzweil podcast conversation, Packy explores where we are with AI today and what the future may hold.

This essay and audio essay were sponsored by Secureframe. If you're starting a software company or getting up-to-speed on enterprise, schedule a demo with Secureframe.

Monday Audio Essay: "Indistinguishable from Magic"

Packy explores "magic" in tech and how it impacts the startup lifecycle: "It’s the Magical Startup Circle of Life. A startup, if it’s lucky, creates magic, turns that magic into dollars, and transitions to life as a successful Big Muggle Company, capable of enormous profits and power but no longer able to conjure magic. Then a new Magician comes along, using sufficiently advanced technology to build something indistinguishable from magic, and uses that magic as a wedge to challenge the Big Muggle Company."

To read the full essay with graphics, head over to notboring.co. 

Thanks to Polywork for sponsoring this Monday's essay! 

Mike Saunders is the co-founder and CEO of Captain. Captain powers restaurants and their communities through a mix of web2 and web3 technologies. Mike is an experienced food delivery entrepreneur, having previously started campusfood.com, which subsequently sold to Grub Hub where Mike served as an exec for a number of years. Captain, in many ways, is a response to many of the problems that Mike contributed to creating while building web2 food delivery platforms. One of Captain's first products is Supper Club: the digital wallet for the future of dining. Customers can find restaurants and earn rewards through fun games. In the process, restaurants gain access to a community of loyal customers. Food delivery is a massive industry and increasingly dominated by a handful of middlemen that extract a high-take rate, disconnect restaurants from customers, and abstract away customer relationships. Captain is an attempt to empower restaurants to creatively engage with their community of customers.

Eli Wachs & Alex Grinman are the co-founders of Footprint. Footprint's mission is to bring back trust on the internet. The company wants to put people in control of their identity while solving KYC, IDV, and PII storage problems for enterprises. Footprint just announced a $6M Seed Round led by Index Ventures.

Brandon Arvanaghi is the co-founder and CEO of Meow. Meow is a startup that opens corporate treasurers up to crypto markets. This is Brandon's second time on the podcast -- and he's on to discuss raising Meow's Series A & navigating challenging times in the crypto markets.