Picks and shovels

The Scrabble-bot kid behind a 90,000-person NFT Discord

Shaan marvels at a founder who at 15 wrote a bot to win a million-dollar online Scrabble tournament, and now runs Rarity Sniper, a 90,000-member Discord for finding undervalued NFTs. He sees a whole new demographic of anonymous, young 'new rich' builders emerging from crypto.

“At 15 or 16, I entered an online Scrabble tournament that was like a million-dollar tournament, and I just wrote a bot for me back then that nobody else— they didn't know how to outlaw this. So I won the tournament, like I won the million-dollar Scrabble tournament using a bot at age 15.”

Invest in the picks and shovels — the tastemakers, not the art

Geoffrey Woo argues the durable bet in NFTs isn't picking which artist wins but owning the infrastructure that crowns winners — the Christie's, Sotheby's, galleries, and curators. He notes a multi-billion-dollar industry already exists to decide why a $40,000 wine is worth $40,000.

“I think we have some alpha is there is going to be a similar infrastructure around the Christie's, the Sotheby's, the gallery owners, the tastemakers, the curators. There is a multi-billion dollar industry that chooses winners, right? Like, who, who, who says that a Rothschild $40,000 wine is worth $40,000, right? There's a, an ecosystem that chooses that wine. Or that chooses that artist to be the next winner.”

Steal thisWhen a speculative category is too hit-driven to pick winners, invest in the picks-and-shovels infrastructure that crowns them.

Picks and shovels: sell to the gold rush, don't join it

CoinMarketCap sold to Binance for a rumored $400M by just displaying crypto prices rather than speculating. Shaan ties it to the picks-and-shovels playbook: in any gold rush, sell tools to the miners instead of mining yourself.

“whenever there's a big gold rush, don't try to be one of the people in the gold rush. Go sell shovels to the people who want to go get gold.”

Steal thisWhen a market is exploding, build the neutral data/tools layer for everyone playing, not another speculative bet inside it.

Build the CoinMarketCap for any hot industry

Shaan generalizes the data-display playbook: become the searchable info/leaderboard site for any space with a lot of interest, the way DeFi Pulse does it for NFTs, Crunchbase for funding, and Chartable for podcasts.

“And I think you could take that same principle to really any space that's hot, right? Like, you could do it with— Crunchbase or whatever did it with startup funding news. Every time there's funding, cool, we're going to write it down here, and it's a searchable database of that. And you can just do this in any industry where there's a lot of interest.”

Steal thisPick a hot, data-rich niche and become its at-a-glance info display and searchable database before anyone else does.

Sell picks and axes, not gold

Discussing the Shopify roll-up, Sam and Shaan note the smart play is buying the plugins (the picks and axes) rather than the shops themselves (the gold) — the tooling around a gold rush is the durable business.

“No, these guys would never do that. No, it's picks and axes, not gold.”

Steal thisIn any gold rush, sell the picks and axes — build the tools merchants need, not the merchant business itself.