#7 Want to know what the dying regret?

"That which you do not hate, you will eventually tolerate" - Malcom X

🧠Quotes that make you think:

  • "That which you do not hate, you will tolerate" - Malcom X

  • “The more a thing tends to be permanent, the more it tends to be lifeless.”

  • “When we attempt to exercise power or control over someone else, we cannot avoid giving that person the very same power or control over us.”

    • Alan Watts

  • "If you can't feed a team with two pizzas it's too large" - Jeff Bezos

  • "Sometimes people don’t want to hear the truth because they don’t want their illusions destroyed." - Friedrich Nietzsche

  • “Best startups generally come from somebody needing to scratch an itch.” Co-Editor Tech Crunch

  • “The purpose of life, as far as I can tell… is to find a mode of being that’s so meaningful that the fact that life is suffering is no longer relevant.” -Jordan Peterson

📈 Trends Of The Week:

VC funding in Insurtech startups

"Cumulative funding in insurtech startups jumped ~200% YoY from $6.4B in Q3 2020 to $12.6B in Q3 2021."

full-time freelance workforce

"After remaining stable at ~27% for the last 5 years, the proportion of the American freelance workforce that reports freelancing full-time grew to 36% in 2020.

The shift has led to the emergence of new companies, models, and products, including:

  • Collective Benefits: Gives gig workers access to a full range of protections and benefits, and has raised ~$13m since February 2020

  • Duuo: A Canadian on-demand digital insurance brand that recently launched a new gig liability product based on a per-day rate

  • Dinghy: Provides pay-as-you-go business coverage for freelancers

  • Snack: Offers microinsurance policies for Grab drivers (a ride-hailing service in Asia) "

Usage-based insurance market size

“A 2020 report by Capgemini found that consumer demand for UBI increased from 35% in 2019 to 51% in 2020. The size of the UBI market is expected to balloon 525% from $24B in 2019 to $126B by 2027.”

🤖Tech News:

  • API Platform Postman Valued at $5.6 Billion in $225 million fundraise

    • "San Francisco-based Postman, which operates a collaborative platform for developers to help them build, design, test and iterate their APIs, said on Wednesday it has raised $225 million in a new financing round that values it at $5.6 billion, up from $2 billion a year ago."

  • 🐶 Toys R Us is coming back next year for holidays, teaming up with Macy’s.

    • “Toys R Us and Macy’s said they are teaming up to open hundreds of toy stores inside the largest department-store chain in the US.Starting next year, some 400 Macy’s stores will include a Toys R Us section including a giant Geoffrey the Giraffe, the companies said on Thursday.”

  • 🎥 Only Fans said it would ban sexually explicit content on the site from October.

    • “On Thursday evening, Only Fans said it would ban sexually explicit content on the site from October. The announcement comes after BBC News approached the personal video subscription company for its response to the leaked documents, and concerns about its handling of accounts posting illegal content. OnlyFans said it would still allow creators to post nude photos and videos if they were in line with its terms of service, which are to be updated.”

  • 🇳🇬 Alzero lands $10.5 million Series Adigitizingtzing Nigeria’s mom-and-pop stores

    • Adewale Opaleye founded Alerzo in 2018 as a last-mile distribution platform that helps retailers stock inventory directly from manufacturers. Its business, officially launched in 2019, is centered on helping street-side vendors and shops in Nigeria’s south-western cities access household supplies quicker and efficiently.Speaking with TechCrunch, Opaleye said he started Alerzo to empower the millions of women who are the backbone of consumer commerce in Nigeria’s $100 billion informal retail sector.”

  • 🦄 Unicorn births surged by 491% year-over-year in the second quarter of 2021. 

    • “Amid a record funding quarter, Q2’21 saw the birth of 136 new unicorns globally —  nearly 6x the 23 unicorns born a year ago in Q2’20, and already higher than the 128 unicorns born in all of 2020. 

    • “Buoyed by the surge in VC cash, companies entered the unicorn club at an average valuation of $1.6B in the first 6 months of 2021, up 33% from $1.2B in 2016.The most valuable unicorns in the quarter were ByteDance ($140B valuation), Stripe ($95B), SpaceX ($74B), Klarna ($45.6B), and Instacart ($39B). "

🎤 Podcast Recommendations:

"Constance Schwartz is the founder of SMAC entertainment where she manages talent like Michael Strahan, Wiz Khalifa and Snoop Dogg. She’s also a producer of television and serves as a strategic advisor to the entertainment industry. In this episode of Women of Impact with Lisa Bilyeu, she talks about how to control your emotions in pivotal situations, how to find fulfillment and success in your career, and why it pays to have a chip on your shoulder."

"Ali Abdaal is a first in his class Cambridge graduate who is an expert in productivity and getting the most out of your life. He finished top of his year at Cambridge, but he wasn’t content with mastering productivity in one field: as well as being a full time student, he built a multi-million dollar business, as well as a youtube channel with over two million subscribers.

Ali manages to squeeze every moment from his day. Yet when you listen to this, you’ll see that the techniques he uses to do this are really simple. He’s learnt them through hard-fought experience, and today he’s willing to share them with us."

📚 Book I'm Reading:

The Top Five Regrets of the Dying: A Life Transformed by the Nearly Departing by Bronnie Ware

“A courageous, life-changing memoir that teaches us to apply the lessons learned by those nearing their death to our own life.

After too many years of unfulfilling work, Bronnie Ware began searching for a job with meaning. Despite having no formal qualifications or experience, she found herself working in palliative care.

During the time she spent tending to the needs of those who were dying, Bronnie's life was transformed. Later, she wrote an Internet blog post about the most common regrets that the people she had cared for had expressed to her. The post, also called 'The Top Five Regrets of the Dying', gained so much momentum that it was viewed by more than three million people worldwide in its first year. At the request of many, Bronnie now shares her personal story.”

Genuinely a perspective & life changing read. It’s a real tear jerker at times but there was a real beauty in the care & attention Bronnie gave her clients during their final moments on this earth. However many truly heartbreaking moments in the book where in periods of deep reflection, Bronnie’s clients realise where they took the wrong path in life just when it’s too late to do anything about it. Hearing the pain in this reflection is enough to make anyone think twice about what they’re focussing on in their own life. A must read. These regrets may seem obvious but the stories behind them will make you realise how easy it is miss what is right in front of you the whole time.

The Top Five Regrets:

  1. I wish i’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me

  2. I wish I hadn’t worked so hard

  3. I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings

  4. I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends

  5. I wish that i’d let myself be happier

⏰ Timeless Insight:

“The stars will never align, and the traffic lights of life will never all be green at the same time. The universe doesn’t conspire against you, but it doesn’t go out of its way to line up the pins either. Conditions are never perfect. ‘Someday’ is a disease that will take your dreams to the grave with you. Pro and con lists are just as bad. If it’s important to you and you want to do it ‘eventually,’ just do it and correct course along the way.”

- Tim Ferriss, author of The 4-Hour Work Week

&

@Visualisevalue