Welcome back to another day with Renaissance - the newsletter equivalent of ‘if your dad never left’…and if he was suspiciously good at finance and tech.

Get ready for an action-packed edition! In less than 5 minutes you’re about to get 1% better at business, finance, crypto, productivity & lifestyle, and take one step closer with us all towards financial independence.

I’m proud of you…..son👀 - Jokes, but stick with us!

If you haven’t subscribed already, hurry up, or refer a friend and get free research reports! We’re a 10,000+ community and growing!

Talking to your team at the Saturday off-site, 4 margaritas deep🍹🍋🌵 

Here’s what you need to know today:

How to blow up your retirement portfolio…...in a good way £70k - 264M 💰

KIND of a big deal to structure your business deals right (KIND & Private Equity) ⚡

Crypto Gems you didn’t know about and how not to get Shagnhai-ed with ETH ✋

$50 on Facebook -> $50k at Sotheby's 🥂

.......and of course. Your daily source of Alpha 👇

The Board

The S&P recovers after bumpy inflation data meanwhile BTC tops $30k for the first time since June 2022.

The Renaissance Over-Under

Where do you think the markets are going next week?

Business, Money Markets & Financial News

Warren Buffet’s fund manager turned a $70k retirement account into $264M perfectly - here’s his strategy broken down 👇

‘Hey hey, we need to start this week with a really strong piece of alpha to hook them in.’ Bon Appetit 👌

Ted Weschler, one of Buffet’s fund managers, has made your Robinhood account and 401K look like a homeless man’s collection cup! Obviously the Oracle of Omaha is the legendary one 🙏 from Berkshire Hathaway, but here is the evidence that this strategy can be learned…and repeated.

Here’s the TLDR on it: 👇

- 70k to 264M in less than 30 years. 

- ‘In a perfect world no one would know about this. But now that it’s out there …I hope it’s motivation to start saving and investing early.’

- The key to success was starting early for compound growth - he opened the account at 22, and by 27 he had the $70k. Do whatever it takes to get a substantial nut to start, then your returns are meaningful from the get-go!

- Second takeaway - keep your money in equities and tune anyone out who tells you differently! All losses are simply ‘unmonetised lessons’ (and I’ll be adopting this when the bill comes at dinner with my girlfriend)👀

- He compounded at 22% a year for over a decade! How? He focused on only getting intel on companies that he thought were under-priced through intense due diligence. He formed his own opinions and honed them over time, often spotting things that weren’t priced in!

- Maybe you were expecting something sexier here, but after all the rules are all the same - start early, do your due diligence and invest in what you believe in (but what others truly don’t). Do this for a decade and learn a few lessons along the way!

What you don’t have a decade to wait? Well do what this guy did!

ChatGPT creating start-ups

Here’s a guy, Jackson Greathouse, who asked ChatGPT to turn $100 into a business that’ll make “as much money as possible.” 

And the best part, he’s going to do everything it says! We set out the steps it recommended below: 👇

After a string of queries from the AI chatbot, it told him exactly what to do next. It told him to start a business called Green Gadget Guru - an eco-friendly product brand to live sustainably. ♻

THEN he used AI & DALLE-2 to make the website and even the sample products! The AI even made product listings like green gadgets and sustainable kitchen utensils. 🍴 He’s off looking for partnerships for the business now!

(Here’s the site btw https://www.greengadgetguru.com/ )

So far, in a short amount of time, the business has already done $130 in sales and even raised a small investment! His DMs are flooded with investors and the business’s tweets have racked up hundreds of thousands of likes on Twitter!

Here are all the killer tips: 👇

- "Buy a domain and hosting" It suggested one for $10

- "Set up a niche affiliate website in a profitable niche with low competition"

- It even recommended spending $40 from the remaining $100 budget on Facebook and Instagram advertisements targeting users interested in sustainable products!

- Lastly it recommended to "Optimise for search engines" by using SEO techniques to drive site traffic.

Look, you don’t have to do everything a random AI tells you in life, but here’s the alpha ⚡- Leverage the tools → save the time → you’ll iterate, building faster and cheaper by using them!

They’ll help you achieve more than you think if you put the time into learning them.

That is before they come for all your jobs - sorry website designers, digital marketers and pretty much most jobs at any start-up 🤷‍♂️ *searches archive frantically for the right Andrew Garfield gif

KIND of a big deal, literally: Daniel Lubetzky, founder of KIND Snacks, made a $200M bet to keep his company and now it’s worth $5 billion 📈

Many founders will tell you that either raising investment or getting the right deal is the hardest part of entrepreneurship. But when done right can put rocket fuel under your business.🚀 However - when done wrong, it can be deadly.

KIND Snacks was acquired in 2020 by Mars, Inc for $5 billion! 💰 It’s the kind of success story we all dream about here at Renaissance. Though like all growth stories and financial mistakes, I have to take you back to 2008…….

- Originally in 2008 Lubetzky took funding from Private Equity firm VMG to the tune of only $16M. We all know sometimes you need the capital to grow or even just stay alive. 🤷‍♂️

- So he sucked on the sweet sweet teet of Private Equity to wash down those snacks. Under one crucial condition……he had to sell the business in 5 years. (*let’s all picture some kind of 24 Keifer Sutherland timer gif here)

- But when the time came he didn’t want to sell his baby, so he bought out VMG and took control. 💪 The legal deal took 2 years and he had to secure $200M in bank loans! So I don’t want to hear anyone complain about their mortgage payments in this newsletter community okay? We’re not Grant Cardone here. We’re into selling highly collateralised cereal bars, OKAY!

- Big KIND balls is what this guy had, and it paid off! Revenue doubled and 6 years later he sold for billions instead of millions by taking the risk and getting creative with the financing. There are a ton of lessons here!

- Wherever you are in your journey you can take more risk, and adjust the terms to suit you. Even if you have shaken hands.🤝 But you’d better be sure you can hit the growth! 📈

KIND talking to VMG 6 years later 👇

LITTLE BITS 😎

Here’s some other little bits if you thought you weren’t a terrible founder already. When you can’t even beat a cereal bar’s growth…

A canned water bottle and a 40 year old made 700M

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/11/26/liquid-death-ceo-mike-cessario-we-chose-the-dumbest-possible-name-for-water.html 

Bethany Frankel share’s her number one negotiating tip for deals (very fitting)

https://www.cnbc.com/2023/04/12/self-made-millionaire-bethenny-frankel-top-tip-for-negotiating-money.html 

A 29 year-old earns almost 200k and only works 9 months

https://www.cnbc.com/2023/04/08/travel-nurse-earns-187000-dollars-without-a-bachelors-degree.html 

Tupperware stock plunges after warning it could go out of business 📉- I say the same of their stock as I say when I see my stained old Tupperware in the fridge - ‘Dump that shit’ 

https://edition.cnn.com/2023/04/10/investing/tupperware-trouble/index.html 

QUOTE OF THE DAY

Crypto Market & NFT News

Worried about being Shanghai-ed this week? Here’s what you need to know about the Ethereum upgrade

- Shanghai is the final step in Ethereum's move from the Proof-of-Work (PoW) to the Proof-of-Stake (PoS) consensus mechanism. Proof-of-Stake is a more energy-efficient way to verify the transactions and it’s just went live!

- The concern that’s now playing out in real time is this. All this staked ETH earning validator rewards couldn’t be unstaked and sold. Until now…..

-So many holders are now worried about huge amounts of ETH unlocking and creating huge sell pressure! 📉

- Right now 15% of ETH is staked and in the following week we’ll see where we end up. But many people have opposing opinions.

- According to a report from CoinDesk, as much as $2.4 billion worth of selling pressure could hit the ETH market.

- Now here’s our hot take at Renaissance: all of these publications make it sound like it’s going to shit the bed, and they’re incentivised to make it sound awful to sell issues. This is their agenda. What we don’t see them telling you is that only a fraction of that unlocked ETH is immediately sellable at any one time so this sell pressure is orders of magnitude lower than what we would say is priced in!

- It would take around 60 days for 20% of validators (stakers on the network) to unstake their ETH. And as such traders are taking long positions despite the fear, hoping for a small rally! 📈

- Idiots think all these releases for Ethereum lead to sell pressures. 🤷‍♂️ But actually there are EIP-3651, EIP-3855, and EIP-3860, all which are intended to improve the efficiency of transactions on the Ethereum network and lower gas fees for the Dapps. All bullish releases! 🐂

- They call the mix of these releases of Shanghai and Capella - Shapella. 

Bitcoin nearly up 50% since Jim said he’d sell a month ago! The man Does.Not.Miss.

FUCKING BATTLE STATIONS - The guy who bought $50M in SHIB a day before the Binance listing just scooped a massive bag of RenQ Finance (RENQ)

If there’s one tip of alpha and insight we’d like to give you here at Renaissance, it’s this - watch what the whales and their wallets do.🐳 And we’re like Captain Ahab in Moby Dick out here hunting whales. And we’re all over that dick! ……sorry.

- The DeFi project is still in it’s final pre-sale stage after raising $5 million, so it’s early days in Crypto World. The price of RENQ, the native token of the platform, has surged by over 75% since its initial starting price of $0.020. DeFi as a space will become even more popular and trusted as time goes on, so this could even be a key move to speculate on.

- RenQ Finance’s cross-chain compatibility means it works with multiple blockchains. That means it’s not stuck in one camp like other DeFi projects, and it’s open to more users!

- Here’s the whitepaper if you want to learn more, always do your own DD 👇https://renq.io/whitepaper.pdf 

Was this not enough? This guy also bought $22M of DOGE 🐕 minutes before Elon changed the Twitter logo to Doge coin. I’m not saying don’t do your own DD. But guys………hit rate. A fellow source of good alpha, I shall link that twitter here:

And with ETH being unlocked all this liquid staking is something to watch guys.

Wealth Building, Personal Finance Hacks & FAT FIRE

Alright we love business, finance and crypto here. I know, I know! But, sometimes we want to take the risk down a notch and earn some passive income to retire early. The easy way. 😎

- One of the best ways to get to this scale, so you can retire early and with less risk, is Airbnbs or rentals in general.🏠 It seems obvious but there’s inspiration in how some hosts have hacked their way to massive portfolios of passive cashflow!

- If you’re new to the passive wealth game, or the Airbnb game, I’d definitely consider. The cash on cash return can be as high as 40%! Those numbers are insanity to the rest of us that take the slow Index Fund route of 7% per year (definitely not this year😞).

- So here’s some alpha and ideas to get the juices flowing and see what’s possible:

“We turned an old canal boat into a luxury AirBnB as a side hustle and now it brings in £3,000 a WEEK”

“I make $130K in revenue a year running 2 Airbnbs in the Colorado mountains. It's automated and only takes a few hours a week — here's how we set it up.”

 https://www.businessinsider.com/airbnb-remote-passive-income-heres-how-i-run-unique-locations-2023-4?r=US&IR=T “

 “A 30-year-old property owner in Seattle is experimenting with short-term rentals and overcoming the 'Airbnbust' by setting up one-of-kind listings, including a 70s-themed 'Groovy Guest House””

https://www.businessinsider.com/real-estate-investor-setting-up-successful-airbnb-short-term-rental-2023-3?r=US&IR=T

Give us the ole’ renaissance hands up or down if you like this section and fat FIRE strategy. We like to get the feel for what the community likes! It gets the people going!

A man bought a chair for $50 on Facebook — now Sotheby's say it could be worth $50K! 💵

Light on cash? Just buy chairs on Facebook marketplace bro. ✊

This shit is right up our street here at Renaissance. We love it! 

It’s a mix of investing, culture, art, and some old school flipping and thrifting. Like Gary Vee Hotwheels garage sales shit but on classy steroids. 💉

- Sotheby’s fine art department say it’s worth $50k and one of only 50 chairs ever made by the artist (Henningsen)

- He found the grand wing backed chair (pictured), sitting on the driveway of a Beverly Hills home. It looked pretty unique and he thought he’d give it a Google to check prices. The search returned "insane prices" for similar furniture.

- It’s about to hit auction and he’s going to pocket a small fortune. Sick.

Honestly, I love this shit even more than the money markets. This should be a regular section - Facebook marketplace finds. I’m in love! ❤

Physical & Mental Health

Now it’s time to focus on health, and to make sure we are in tip-top shape for these long working hours / boozy business trips. 💪

And boy do we have a good one for you! As if working for yourself wasn’t great enough already!

A study recently examined the health of entrepreneurs compared to non-entrepreneurs. It surveyed over 100,000 individuals from the general population and found that entrepreneurs had a higher overall health score! 📈

This was despite the fact that they worked longer hours and experienced more job-related stress! This is what peak performance looks like Meredith!

But get this - the study also found that entrepreneurs who reported having a strong social network had even better health outcomes than those who didn’t!

Suggesting socialising is an important factor in mitigating the negative effects of job-related stress and long hours on health!

Margarita Mondays are back on the menu 😎🍹🍋

Weekly Negroni

It’s Friday. It’s been a long week of scheming and dreaming here at Renaissance. It’s time to kick back, put our feet up and look at the great things our hard work can let us enjoy. 🙏

The Uncatchable

It’s the 1960s in the US. Frank Abagnale Jr is only 16 and runs away to New York to escape his dull daily life. To survive he reinvents himself. He finds a loophole in the banking system and starts forging cheques to survive. He quickly discovers that it will be much easier for him to do so dressed as an airline pilot. 👨‍✈️ Years of adventures later he has taken on multiple roles and personalities: pilot, lawyer, professor the lot!

Catch Me If You Can - his story made famous from its adaptation into a movie by Steven Spielberg (if you haven’t watched it - watch it).

Now a man that’s had this good a time, needs a timepiece that reflects it!⌚ Frank has been wearing his cherished Rolex GMT model for the past decade and wants something special.

“My whole life has been about time, whether it’s about being in the right place at the right time, or in the wrong place at the wrong time.” He wanted his watch to take him back to the 1960s, the essence of the era and the life he led there.

In come Artisans de Geneve. They offer an exclusive service of watch modification to private customers and quite frankly - they’re pretty sweet. 🍬

They set out to restore and personalise Frank’s watch with every detail reinterpreted to pay homage to the 60s. The crème aged dial of the era, the disc date with font from the 60s. ⌚

Frank drew inspiration from the GMT Master II, a timepiece originally designed in collaboration with Pan American Airways for their pilots - allowing them to follow two time-zones at once.

The same pilots Frank grew up admiring and ultimately impersonated! 👨‍✈️

Check it out below 👇

People You Should Know

Peter Thiel

The tech billionaire who wants to live forever (likely so he can make even more money). The real-life version of Scrooge McDuck, but instead of swimming in a pool of gold coins 💰 he's swimming in a pool of Silicon Valley start-up pitches.

There’s so much to be said about this man we don’t even know where to start. It’s often said there’s luck involved in hitting it big - but then there’s Peter Thiel. This man has been hitting centre court shots his whole life. 🏀

He co-founded PayPal and was the first outside investor in Facebook. He then went on to found a Venture Capital Firm which invested in some of the most successful start-ups of the past decade, including SpaceX, Airbnb, and Lyft.

And our personal favourite! He launched the Thiel Fellowship. Providing young entrepreneurs with $100,000 in funding to drop out of school and pursue their entrepreneurial dreams ✨. $100k and it’s good for my health? What more could we want!

Where do we sign up? After all, this is the guy who convinced Mark Zuckerberg to drop out of college to work on a little social networking site called Facebook. I wonder how that’s going. 🤷‍♂️

Meme of the Day

Music

Ground-shaking techno drums, cutting edge engineering, clone soldiers. All in the pursuit…. 🏃‍♂️

Here at Renaissance we’re always in the pursuit. And if if nothing else the visuals for Gesafflestein - Pursuit may just make it one of the best music videos of all time. 💽

Referrals

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That’s a wrap for today! Meet us on Twitter to talk all about it. Where we’ll send you jokes, tips, and all important news from the world of money, business and crypto and more! (@RenaissanceDly)

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