SVRGN Weekly Digest #3 💫

This week we’re reading books and tending to our inner worlds, so have fewer things to share, but hopefully higher quality.

🤼 People

We basically didn’t take any meetings this week. Sometimes, quiet is necessary.

🚀 Companies

Fortaegis - Securing Humankind’s Ability to Operate

Status: Founded Nov 2022

Source: CAVI

Founders: Boudewijn Wijnands

Why it’s cool:

Ultra-secure chips are increasingly important as security becomes deeper and deeper integrated in the stack. Though a simple anti-virus suite or TLS was enough before, we now know that state actors are capable of exploiting devices with all the usual protective features.

Fortaegis is going in the direction of secure enclave products it seems, and we’re excited for more awareness and optionality in this space.

LISA - fractional art markets and collective ownership

Status: Pre-seed

Source: Network

Founders: Ilya Torgovnikov, Ivan Folin

Why it’s cool:

Art markets are absolutely massive, and with far from liquid or efficient. From an asset perspective, they’re ideal for tokenization. LISA is building exactly what Masterworks should be like, providing secondary markets and collective ownership of highly curated art. They are experts in taste and navigating the art world, with the Vancouver Biennale as a partner and a piece from Magdalena Abakanowicz coming out next.

From lisafoundation.com - Waling Figures (2016) by Magdalena Abakanowicz

They are doing this in the cleanest designed app we’ve ever seen. It’s a pleasure to experience! Check out a walk-through here. We at inflection are long-term followers of Ilya and Ivan and owners of a few art shares ourselves.

💡 Ideas & Science - accidentally a16z edition

Ben Horowitz - Hard things about hard things

A classic in the SV-Startup bubble, but not without reason. Ben tells of terrifying and common decisions that most founders will have to make - how to survive when all options look really bad, hiring talent from your friends company, firing your earliest employees, facing strategically critical positions (e.g., Netscape being 5x slower than the (free) Internet Explorer). The style is very to the point, more brawny than brainy and full of rap lyrics. Recommended read for every entrepreneur!

Chris Dixon - Read write own

The newly released book by Chris Dixon makes the strong case for open networks aka crypto and open source having the potential to free innovation on the internet again. The web behemoths of today have profited immensely from open protocols built by non-profit institutions and individuals, without carrying it on. The ideas and reasoning for “why crypto” are clearly laid out, in case you need them. “How crypto” is still in the making…