Welcome to Edition 008 of the No Cap Newsletter ! We’ll cover industry news, key program learnings, and of course, spotlight a RippleX Fellow doing awesome things! ✍🏽 The RippleX Fellowship Course (Free) As we’ve welcomed our 10th cohort into the RippleX Fellowship and launched the RippleX Fellowship Course , it’s unbelievable to see the tremendous progress we’ve had since the start! Time really flies when you’re having fun. The goal of this new online course is to democratize access to learning frameworks for building and investing in venture-backable companies. Available for free (choose the public course). Here is the story of why the fellowship program was created and continues to expand: https://bit.ly/3nJ8jBS Dom takes you through his experiences navigating Venture Capital and why Ripple Ventures continues to invest in the platform driving access to opportunities in this space. Trust me, it’s worth the read. 🏀 Creating the Dream Team When it comes to building a startup, the team executing the vision is just as important as the product itself. Though you may have small victories along the way, a solid team will help you to win the championship you’ve always been chasing. So now you’re probably wondering - how do I create the best team or how do I attract potential hires or better yet retain the current talent I have ? Curious to know what the best motivation can be for potential hires beyond the $$$? ESOP . What is Employee Stock Option Plan (ESOP)? Shares in the business that are put aside to reward employees for taking on the risk of working at a startup company It’s a limited pool of shares in the company that you can draw upon to allocate to individual employees Typically, they don’t get all of the shares upfront How does ESOP work? Allocate options from capitalization structure (typically comes with financing round) Issue options to employees or advisors of the company The options vest over time (explained next) Options either gain or lose value Option holders can either exercise or not exercise their options What’s vesting? Receivers of options don’t get all of them upfront, they have to work for them Usually over four years with a one year cliff Cliff = You get 1/n of your options after the first year and the rest of the (n-1)/n over n years The rest of the options over n years can vest on a monthly or quarterly schedule This lesson doesn’t stop here, there’s actually much more to cover! Take a peek into our course accessible to anyone and everyone: RippleX Fellowship 🔮 Let’s Explore the Metaverse The metaverse! Although this term has existed since 1992 originating from a science fiction novel, it has only just begun to gain tremendous attention in the past few months. As ‘Big Tech’ has made announcement after announcement, vital acquisitions to even a complete name change - you’ve probably wondered, what is the metaverse? The metaverse is a virtual environment where people spend time and interact with others. What are some examples of this you might ask? When Dwight from The Office built his Second Life character when Andy and Angela were together to make his “perfect life” When Travis Scott hosted a concert in Fortnite where over 12M people showed up to watch, digitally, in their avatar form in the ~metaverse~ Is every metaverse related to Web 3? Nope, not every metaverse is related to Web 3! Although Dwight NFTs sound pretty cool, the metaverse and web 3 can individually and mutually exist, but they do not need to mutually exist. These are both topics that are talked about frequently in recent news due to the high amounts of activity in both spaces. What are we most excited about in the metaverse? The big opportunity in our eyes is when existing large communities of people in the metaverse start to adopt Web 3 elements. Imagine Ubisoft, EA Sports, and Zynga adding in NFT items within the game with paid and play-to-earn models - the bridge between the Web 2 and Web 3 worlds start to collide. The problem with most metaverse + Web 3 companies today is that they need to not only create an amazing game, but they need to acquire players at scale to sustain their game and ultimately token economy. Interested to keep reading? This was only a taste of the full article and it’s available here . 💡 Fellow Spotlight Shawn Pang - Co-Founder & CEO of Matterverse When you think of online shopping, it often refers to an e-commerce website with a catalog of different items for you to scroll through, add to your cart, and purchase. The majority if not all the time, this experience is standardized across all online stores. Well, imagine a visual, interactive, and immersive experience to your online shopping beyond the ordinary… Thrilled to introduce Shawn Pang, Co-founder, and CEO of Matterverse. This innovative approach enables brands to create virtual stores with interesting features such as: No-code 3D virtual store creator Cloud-accelerated rendering Interactive streaming Behavior tracking algorithms When it comes to their approach, there is no hardware required to experience content up to 4K resolution in real-time environments. But of course, it’s built to be future-proof with the ability to integrate with VR headsets and future metaverses! See what Steven said about his experience with the fellowship program 👇 “If you are paying 30K a year for business school tuition, please get Dom a $3 coffee because you can get much more learning, growth, and connections at RippleX.” Interested in being featured? Looking to share exciting news? Please reach out to Turja at turja@rippleventures.com. Authored by Turja Chowdhury (Cohort #9).