Phyllis🥑 retweeted
Fellow Africans - why don't we put money together and buy and make into a resort?
I am selling my island in Lake Tanganyika, Tanzania. Gorgeous place, but we don’t use it enough. $7.9 million or best offer. Anyone interested should contact me directly at [email protected]
Phyllis🥑 retweeted
we became a unicorn today! 🦄
and big head only joined us because he thought the idea of a rabbit coding was cool! 🤣
incredibly proud of what we’ve built at @coderabbitai. this is a huge milestone for us, but we’re only getting started.
Phyllis🥑 retweeted
CONGRATULATIONS Central Bank of Nigeria @cenbank on launching your regulatory sandbox for #VirtualAssets 🥳🥳🥳😎😎😎
There will always be a need to find everything that is wrong, but starting today, I beg, just for the next week or so… let’s just appreciate the fact that #CBN, after banning #crypto, is about to approve #virtualassets and #stablecoin payments, issuance, custody and exchange firms to operate in Nigeria?
The 3rd largest economy on the continent.
Can we just stay there for bit please? #blockchainwon 😎😎😎
VASPs Go Apply Now!
sandbox.cbn.gov.ng
sandbox-portal.cbn.gov.ng/
#poweredbyEMTECH
Phyllis🥑 retweeted
When we started investing in African stablecoin startups in 2023, one of our core theses was that we don't know what would happen re: regulations, but that the technology was so effusive that it would force a K-shaped result.
At that time, it was taboo to even say the word "stablecoin" in a central bank meeting. But amidst the ridicule, the crackdowns, the refusals, the userbase just kept growing.
Today, we have portfolio companies who are moving billions a year, crossing 8-figure revenues, and getting licensed. More importantly, they've unlocked productivity for an untold amount of African businesses.
Our thesis is now at a milestone. African governments have been forced to the table and are now testing how to regulate, tax, and monitor these flows. Development finance is starting to come onboard (which is the signal for consensus).
This shifts our ecosystem into a new phase of compliant institutionalization (a global trend), but also into dangerous territory where heavy-handed regulation/greed will drive volumes back into the shadows.
Crypto is allergic to control and over-aggression does not shut off the flow. It simply drives the other side of the K-shaped result.
Phyllis🥑 retweeted
@KulipaXYZ and @golemonhq are shutting down.
Everyone talks about the raises, but it’s times like these which means more.
Phyllis🥑 retweeted
An Indian institute filmed a professor teaching classical physics with no notes, no slides, and a green board. Almost nobody outside India watches it.
This is Classical Physics, lecture 1, taught by V. Balakrishnan at IIT Madras, published free by NPTEL, India's national open courseware programme.
Balakrishnan taught at IIT Madras for decades. Students who sat in that room describe the same thing: the whole subject held in his head, delivered in order, no paper on the podium.
Lecture 1 is the introduction. What classical mechanics claims, where the claims hold, and the exact points where they stop holding and quantum takes over.
Watch how he speaks. Complete sentences, no filler, each idea finished before the next begins. Rare in any lecture hall on any continent.
A physicist I know worked through the whole NPTEL series and rates it above the western courses he paid for.
Free on YouTube, 17 years online, low resolution, no marketing.
The teaching was never concentrated in the famous universities.
Phyllis🥑 retweeted
You would run tests, think of different scenarios and there’s still a high chance something isn’t working as expected once an actual user uses it. 🥲
Phyllis🥑 retweeted
I think you should be ridiculously optimistic about life however it sways. Do it with glee, do it with a deep sense of wonder.
Phyllis🥑 retweeted
I watched a video on Instagram where Ibukun Awosika was being interviewed by the interior designer that just finished working on one project at the chair center. (Massive building beside my office btw)
When she spoke, she said “well I’ve had this building since i was 38 or so and I’d never really done anything with it…”
Omo na once I close the video, carry my laptop begin work.
Phyllis🥑 retweeted
“This boy calls you father, do not have a hand in his death”
This line will forever stay with me🥲🥹🥹.
Phyllis🥑 retweeted
Two of our worst VC stories:
1. A Sequoia partner passed on Cloudflare because he didn’t think a woman could lead a security infrastructure company. Seriously. 🙄
2. I got introduced to @pmarca. Meeting got scheduled for a Monday, which should have been a clue. I thought it was just a casual meeting. He thought it was a pitch and brought the whole @a16z partnership team. Hilarity ensued. 🤪 At one point one of them said: “You don’t seem very prepared.” Which was true because I wasn’t. I framed the rejection letter they sent.
I was once pitching in a board room at a top 3 VC firm for a $15M Series A.
12 people in the meeting. One of the GPs fully fell asleep. Out cold for 30+ minutes. Nobody acknowledged it. Everyone just kept going.
I kept presenting my Series A slides to an unconscious man in a Herman Miller chair and somehow that was considered normal. That's venture capital.
You might fly across the country to perform for people who may or may not be conscious.
It's a dance.
And sometimes you lead and sometimes you follow and sometimes your partner is unconscious.
If you're raising right now, just know: every founder has a story like this. The process is weird. The power dynamic is weird. You're not crazy for thinking it's weird.
No one talks about it because they want to continue raising. But I'm happy to stick my neck out there.
It is weird.