You're listening to the founders list. Audible versions of essays from technology's most important leaders selected by the founder community. This is the great online game by Patty McCormick, founder of the Not Boring Club, a newsletter on business strategy and pop culture. This episode is read by Paki himself.
Now most of the time at not worrying are right about companies with facts and figures and histories and graphs occasionally, I'll write about concepts and business models, like the metaverse, styles, or APIs. Sometimes I'll just let you in in my brain to see what's going on in there before any idea is fully baked when it's just a bunch of wisps starting to form a brain. Today is one of those pieces. It's shorter. It's meant to be interactive.
Most of the fun will happen when you take the idea and try to apply it to your own worker life. So let's get to it. This didn't start as a piece about games. I set out to write a piece answering this question. Why are tech gross sacks sagging while crypto moons and valuers back? But I figured out how to explain that in way fewer crypto is just more fun. The same people who would pay high multiples for companies like snap and Twitter, read me, I hold both, are the most likely to buy crypto.
And right now, crypto is moving faster, generating better returns, has more rabbit holes to explore, many of which you need Pete to access, and has an incomprehensibly large future TAM. And for the people who were just gambling anyway, cryptos are more pure play casino. Plus, crypto is the in game currency for the whole internet. That's a more fun topic to explore than which asset class is outperforming which. And it starts with this idea. We're all playing a great online game.
How well we play determines the rewards we Pete. Online and offline. The great online game is playing currently by billions of people online as themselves with real world consequences. Your financial and psychological well-being is at stake, but the downside is limited. The upside on the other hand is infinite. Social media is the clearest manifestation of this meta game. Beginner level Twitter feels weird, like a bunch of people exposing their personal thoughts to the world.
Medium level Twitter is threads and engagement hacks. Twitter mastery is in indistinguishable from an ongoing game. This is also true for Reddit Discord, Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and other social networks. Social media is just one piece of an interconnected game that spans online and offline spaces.
The way you play in one area unlocks opportunities and others, Sharing ideas on Twitter might get you invited to a Discord, your participation in that Discord might get you invited to work on a new project, and that new project might make you rich. Or it might bring you more followers on Twitter and more discord invites and more project opportunities and new ideas that you want to explore, which might kick off any number of new paths.
We now live in a world in which by typing things into your phone or your keyboard or saying things into a microphone or snapping pictures or videos you can marshal resources, support, and opportunities. Crypto has the potential to take it up a notch by baking game mechanics, points, rewards, skin, teams and more right into the whole internet. The great online game is free to play, and it starts simply by realizing that you're playing a game. Every tweet is a free lottery ticket.
That's a big unlock. Anyone can play. You can choose how to play given your resources and skills at the current moment. You can level up fast. Financial and social capital are no longer tied so tightly to where you went, who you know, or what your boss thinks of you. This game has different physics and wormholes through which to jump. It's exponential instead of linear. To understand how the game works and how to play, we'll work our way up. What is a video game?
The great online game, meet the players, how crypto superchargers the game, and how to play the game. By the end of this post, I hope I've convinced you to throw a couple coins in and start playing. But I think I might need to show you that we're even playing a video game first. What is a video game? It's Monday morning. You're tired. You have to go to work. Have an assignment that you pushed off on Friday because it's practically hot fact summer and you had plans, but now it's Monday and damn.
Now you need to do that thing. This does not seem fun. This does not seem like a game. So it might take me a minute to convince you that, yes, it is even for you. I'm gonna start my argument like a shitty high school valedictorian. The Oxford English dictionary defines a video game as, quote, a game played by electronically manipulating images produced by a computer program on a television screen or other display screen.
If you're working remotely from a computer, what you're doing perfectly fits the definition of a video game. Nick Milanovich nailed it. He said, sometimes it's weird to remember that we're all effectively competing to hit the right keys on our keyboards in the right order and that if we do it for long enough, we can buy a house. Hit the right keys in the right order make money. Work is just an often boring sub James within the meta James, but that's still a little literal and a lot reductive.
Let's go deeper. The best games according to gaming entrepreneur term top solo investor, Josh Buckley, are creating spaces that bring you into flow. On a Beller like the best, Buckley said, The biggest games today really take advantage of this, but you wouldn't actually think of them as a game. I look at Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, as games and three billion people are playing them actively. They're essentially big layers on top of a slot machine.
Buckley went on to lay out 4 elements of successful game design. 1, frequent feedback loops. 2, variable outcome. 3, a sense of control, and 4, connection to a meta game. All four are present in the great online James, none more importantly than the connection to the meta game. The great online game. The internet is incredible. You'll hear that a lot from people who've started to master the game.
As I typed that last sentence, Blake Robbins tweeted this, I think people still underestimate the power of the internet. Twitter specifically has changed my life in so many ways. I met some of my closest friends, mentors, etcetera, all through Twitter. Getting good at the great online game makes seemingly absurd things happen. Your business icon and your James. That person whose videos you don't miss just to reach out for a collab.
Your dream job reaching out to to you to tell you why company x might be a fit. Blake has successfully translated hanging out on the edge of the internet. Into a career as a venture capitalist at Ludlow Ventures. He's a go to source on creators, gaming, and future internet stuff more broadly for some of the smartest people in the world. Blake summarized his approach in another recent tweet. He said, this is a perfect summary of how I've approached my career and life to date.
Try to add with no expectation of anything in return. Play the long game. He's playing an infinite James, going down rabbit holes, learning, helping Pete, meeting new ones, going down more rabbit holes and so on.
James Kars, who coined the term in his 1986 book, finite and infinite games, a vision of life, is playing possibility, wrote The infinite game, there is only one, includes any authentic interaction from touching to culture that changes roles, plays with boundaries, and exists solely for the purpose of continuing the game. A finite player seeks power. The infinite one displays self sufficient strength. Findate games are theatrical, necessitating an audience.
Infinite ones are dramatic involving participants. The great online game is an infinite video game that plays out constantly across the internet. It uses many of the mechanics of a video James, but removes the boundaries. You're no longer playing as an avatar in Fortnite or Roblox. You're playing as yourself across Twitter, YouTube, discord's work, projects, and investments.
People who play the great online game rack up points, skills, and attributes that they can apply across their digital and physical lives. Some people even start synonymous and then probably their private brilliance into jobs and money. The game rewards community and cooperation over individualism and competition. You get points for being curious, sharing, and helping with no expectations of reciprocation. By increasing your surface area, you're opening yourself up to serendipity.
For good actors, the game has nearly unlimited upside and practically no downside. You can jump into the great online game at any point Beller it's a total unknown or an accomplished person and start building the world that you wanna build. It can take you on any number of paths. We'll explore a few. Meet the players. The inspiration for this essay was Elon Musk's SNL appearance. No one plays this game better than Musk. And Devin in the background is a Elon Musk fan, apparently.
The best way to explain his out of body run is that he's playing a video game with cheat codes. He's doing things that people didn't think were physically possible. Pete, Tesla, SpaceX, and Starling while getting away with things that people didn't think were legal. See, pumping Dutch coin 420 private day private tweet and getting high on Joe Rogan. He's playing a post modern game against modern rivals. He's like Neo, He's not trying to forcefully bend the stew bend the spoon.
He understands that there is no spoon. He has more money points than all but two people in the world to show for it. Musk plays an advanced version of the game in which he builds rocket ships and electric cars and internet satellites, but you don't need to vent atoms or become the wealthiest person in the solar system to win. Don't even have to reveal yourself as a real person. A couple of weeks ago, Austin Sharif and I had e had borderline Musk on our weekly Twitter spaces show spaces connects.
Board Elon is a Sedonymous account. He Pete ideas for inventions that Elon might have if you're bored and 1,700,000 people follow him on Twitter. A couple months ago, he started selling NFTs. He pulled in $1,000,000 in less than a month. How about a non Elon example? Take Alex Danko. Alex has literally built himself a world. Thankoland. In an excellent post on his journey, Alex drew an actual map of his journey through the great lane game.
He started by running about startups, moved down to bubbles in mania, passed through the swap of scenes, and made it to the humanity's mountain range. While he wrote, he got to meet new people, test new ideas, and build up a reputation. It helped him find his next thing. He said, this new letter was obviously part of a fishing expedition to find what I wanted to do next. Next was a dream job at Shopify. Thanks in part to the newsletter.
Instead of claiming mission accomplished though, he's continuing to play the great online game, expanding his world by branching into new communities. Specifically, He's gonna have a recurring segment on Jim O'Shaughnessy's infinite loop's podcast and become a more active participant in Anagat's magical, the inner intellect. Those will no doubt lead to new opportunities and new worlds to explore. Or take Morgan leads.
Leads parlayed YouTubes of herself literally playing video James, the sins Flint Roblox content, into making games, into a 1,000,000 YouTube, 1,000,000 plus person YouTube following, $8,000,000 game studio and $1,000,000 online store. Her quote in Rex Woodbury's thread captures the great online game beautifully. She said, there's nothing I've done that anybody else can't do. It's about learning, learning the code, learning how the game works, and creating. All you have to do is start.
Start, follow your curiosity, build relationships, stay open to new opportunities, and keep playing. How about Lil Nas X Morgan Montero Hill after the Mitsubishi Montero. Little Nasdaq started messing around on Facebook, Instagram, and finally, quote, hopped on Twitter, where I really was a master. That was the first place I could go viral. He started making music in his closet. And in December 2018, he dropped Old Town Road, which he made with a $30 and $20 worth of studio time.
The song was played over 2,000,000,000 times in 2019 alone. He came out on the last day of pride month in 2019 and has used this platform to represent the LGBTQ community as one of the very few out wrappers. Earlier this year, he released Montero. Call me by your name. In which he gives the devil a lap dance in the music video. Montero to means to music to Montero. Little Nas X continues to use Twitter like a young meme lord. He's playing the game.
The great online game overlaps with the creator economy. Banco wrote a newsletter. The leads had a YouTube channel, LAZX makes music, but it doesn't necessarily mean living as a full time creator. Banco is a full time job. Leads runs companies with employees. There are countless more examples from Kim Kardashian and Donald Glover to turn to Novak to Harry Stebbings to AOC to keep fucking value to soldier boy to the extended Pampliano universe.
All these people seem like they're having a blast while they're quote working. And that's just my corner of the internet. There are millions of people playing the game well, and I linked to a tweet that I where I ask people for their best examples in the piece at notpouring.co. Each one is internet native. Each plays the James. And each has cashed out some internet points for things like TV shows, Grammy winning records, metro funds, companies, and political victories.
It's less about a particular platform or outcome, and more about the idea that there are different ways of playing the game and new ways to acquire and grow new types of assets, like cities. Miami Mayor Frances Suarez became a Twitter darling last year when he decided to embrace the tech community. Since responding, how can I help Pete Dillon's tweet in December, Saguarez has pulled a ton of high growth companies into a city?
He's become the go to example of how to grow a city by playing the great online game. Not surprisingly, he's also embraced crypto. With crypto's ascent, there are thousands of newly minted millionaires and dozens or 100 of billionaires who built their fortunes by hanging out in Discord learning about and investing in new coins, playing with new protocols, and treating investing like a game. Millions of people are playing the James, just by hanging out and watching.
I have multiple friends who, a couple months ago, had normal jobs at startups. Then they started hanging out in crypto escorts and telegram trading, learning, meeting people tweeting, going deeper and deeper down the rabbit hole. I can't imagine they'll ever work in a non crypto job from here on Cryptos an asset class that rewards participation in the great online game.
The fastest way to understand what's legit and what's not and which coins people are gonna buy and which they're gonna ignore It's a spend time participating and learning online. The right Discord to Twitter follow is a massive source of alpha. Plus, crypto is kind of the native token for the great online game. How crypto supercharge is the game? People in crypto seem to understand better than anyone that this is all a game.
The right meme can send a random coin to the moon and make people legitimately rich. But beyond that, crypto is an in game money for the internet. It rewards participation directly. Early users, supporters, builders, stakers, validators, and community members get tokens. Until now, I didn't fully understand social tokens. They like another way for influencers to monetize with no clear value.
But in the context of the great online game, there are points that reward good gameplay across the internet and give followers an incentive to join and support a team anywhere it goes. It's like a super follow-up for the whole internet with financial rewards. Crypto also lets players exchange value directly. Recently, I experimented with selling an SAS and NFT, which Clint Kisker bought for 2.19 ETH. That's a direct connection between two players in the game.
Even though I spent a lot of time thinking about and even playing with NFTs, though, it didn't really click for me until I saw these slides from Patrick from Mira's Patrick Rivera. He had a piece on NFTs in which he said, okay. Okay. But is digital media actually valuable? And he wrote NFTs are similar to in game items and video games. People buy for status, identity, and belonging. The great online game imitates video games.
If people wanna buy skins in Fortnite to express themselves or close and meet space to do the same, of course, they'd wanna buy NFTs to express themselves online. In an open world like the internet, the more you signal who you are and what you care about, the more you open yourself up to new possibilities. It's an abundant game. NFTs are online art, cars, outfits, and houses. They're the digital trappings of digital wealth.
DAOs too are gonna be important infrastructure for the great online game. They make it easier for people to float in and out of projects at internet speed instead of committing to climb the ladder within a company. And allow for lightweight and temporary groupings when people wanna combine their superpowers. Recently party Dow forum to bring a bunch of smaller players together to compete against rich James and auctions.
I suspect that many of the most successful web 3 projects built in the coming years will serve to give the great online game tools that were previously only available within all gardens of specific virtual or corporate worlds. I'm excited about END or an investor in crucible, Mirror, Seed Club, andopolis to name a few. To create online game is only to get more compelling. We're in the early innings. So how should you play? How to play the game?
On Friday, show Shopify president Harley Finkelstein joined us on spaces cadets. To close out the conversation, we asked him for his advice to potential entrepreneurs out there. He said, the cost of failure is as close to 0 as it's ever been in the history of the world. That's a key mental shift. The cost of failure is as close to 0 as it's ever been. And it'll continue to fall. That's true for entrepreneurship, and it's even more true for the great online James.
Because entrepreneurs are trying to build a business when you start playing the great online game, you're just building optionality. Anyone can play the great online game. All you need is some knowledge and curiosity A typical path into the game starts out in one niche community. Maybe you start thoughtfully replying to a few people you respect in your field on Twitter or hop into a crypto discord and get a feel for for asking questions and participating. Ask yourself. What am I nerdyest about?
And then go find your fellow nerds. They're out there. Over time, you go from consumer to creator. You write, make videos, lead discussions, build projects, collaborate on research, or just share your experience as a new player, figuring it out. If you already have an offline reputation, maybe you skip the passive and jump right into activity. In either case, be yourself, but play with the character attributes. You can choose to be someone who's a little good at a lot of things.
Morgan unbelievably good at one thing. Both work. Then you can evolve your character over time. Play with the fearlessness of someone playing a game because you are. These are internet strangers. At the worst they'll ignore you, and you can keep workshopping and start over. At the best, they'll open up new doors. Once you're in, the game follow BUCKley's 4 elements of successful game design, feedback loops. Once you jump into the conversation or start sharing, you'll start getting feedback.
Don't expect it to be a like Pete. A great point there. Maybe some questions and conversations. Pay attention to what's working and what's not, but don't be too calculated about it. People can smell it. Your metric may not be likes or views. A real conversation with one person you respect might be the best starting point. Variable outcomes. Some things will work and some won't. That's okay. You're treating it like a game. That's to be expected. The goal isn't perfection. It's experimentation.
Play around. Try new things. Some will hit. Some won't. That's part of the fun. It'll keep you hungry. A sense of control. In traditional game design, this means that the more you practice, the better you Pete, and the better your outcomes. It's not easy. You get out what you put in. That's doubly true in the great online game because you're not just playing. You're designing a game you wanna play.
Pick the things that you love the most and go Beller, learn, interact, give value with no expectation of anything in return. Keep learning. There's no boss in the great online game. Your success or failure is a direct result of your skill and effort and connection to the meta game. I'm gonna give this one its own non Beller paragraph. It's important. The meta game here is your life and career. The more you evolve and level up, the more opportunities you'll have.
If you build up a following, Pete the right people, and get involved with the right project, you'll put yourself on an entirely new trajectory. The fun part is if you do it right, it really can feel like a game. Don't take it too seriously. Don't wait for the perfect moment to jump in. The vast majority of people reading this won't wanna quit your job and make a living entirely online. That doesn't mean you can't play.
Play on the side, learn some things, build some new hobbies and relationships, give yourself an insurance plan if things don't work out in your job, and a supercharger if they do. You never know when it might come in handy or what new path you might discover. Now an important note, don't be an asshole. It's an easy way to get some followers And if you're trying to James that metric, it might work, but it's also the easiest way to lose your life in the great online game.
I didn't set out to play the great online game when I started writing up boring. But that's accidentally what I did. 2 years ago, bored at my job. I started spending more time on Twitter and writing a newsletter. I just wanted to meet smart people who were interested in the same things I was. I never in a million years thought that my job would become playing the great online game, but that's what it's become. So when people ask my title, I don't have a good answer.
Writer, founder, investor, some guy with a newsletter, they all Flint, and I'm sure I'll add more over time. Playing the game is about having fun and opening doors that you didn't even know existed. It's a lot of work, but it's fun work with exponential upside and compounding returns. Go play. For more of these audio essays from the people who built companies like Instacart, Facebook, Trello, HubSpot, and Dropbox, visit founderslist.nfx.com.
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