Jim England

Product design

[Jim England @JimEngland]

@bandiaditya @noondesign Get Noon

[Benjamin Miller @BenMillerise]

In 2011, I pitched a top securities attorney in New York on democratizing investing. After hearing me list all of the ways I believed retail investors were disadvantaged by the financial system, he just looked at me and said:

“Why would you bother with the little guy?”

Today, 15 later, we’re listing the @fundrise Innovation Fund on the NYSE under the ticker $VCX.

The financial system has a structural problem that most people can feel but few can name. The most valuable private technology companies are worth hundreds of billions, even over a trillion dollars, and they’ve never gone public. The wealth creation that used to flow through public markets—enabling everyone to participate—now happens behind a wall that excludes everyday investors.

AI compounds the urgency. The companies building the most transformative technology in a generation are growing at rates we’ve never seen before, and the gap between who owns that growth and who benefits from it widens every quarter.

We started working on the Fundrise Innovation Fund in 2021 to test whether a public venture capital fund could work. Over 100,000 investors now own a portfolio concentrated in the leading private AI and technology companies, making VCX one of the largest funds of its kind to ever list on a major exchange. No accredited investor requirement. Now available in any brokerage account.

When that attorney asked me why I’d bother with the little guy, I told him: because they’re getting screwed! But I believe today marks another step in building a better financial system for the individual investor.

Onward

[Jim England @JimEngland]

Yes!

And as we move from a few billionaire outcomes to many millionaire outcomes

The need for quality design work goes up 10x

And the new moat becomes design

[Todd Saunders @toddsaunders]

I heard an incredible analogy from a VC friend that I can’t stop thinking about.

“The moat in software was the cost of building software. And Claude Code just mass produced a bridge.”

It’s wild when you think about the impact of this.

The SaaS boom produced a few dozen billionaires and a bunch of zero sum winners.

But the AI SaaS era will mass produce millionaires.

There will be fewer ServiceTitans hitting $5B valuations, and instead there will be 50,000 companies doing $500K-$5M each, run by 1-3 people with deep expertise and huge margins.

To be clear, I believe that the total value of software goes up, and the number of companies created goes up exponentially.

But the number of people who capture the value also goes up 100x.

I don’t believe in the “SaaS is dying” headline, I think it’s missing the point.

It’s simply that the power of SaaS is changing hands.

[Jim England @JimEngland]

@robably__ I snagged @jim!

[Jim England @JimEngland]

@tomcritchlow Thank you for posting! Been looking for this tweet for days

[Jim England @JimEngland]

@ItsPeterDesign Unicorn Studio looks sick!

How challenging is it to learn

[Jim England @JimEngland]

@zendadddy Hey Frank! We are looking to do the garage conversion this fall, thanks again for the inspiration!

For the folding door you mentioned, how insulating is it? We are in upstate New York and are curious if that door can be well insulated in the winter time

[Jim England @JimEngland]

🚀🚀🚀

[Benjamin Miller @BenMillerise]

Hmm, this list looks familiar...

[Jim England @JimEngland]

@stevenyuntcap Is there a write up that summarizes this new feature and its benefits?

[Jim England @JimEngland]

@_tomleighton See this: https://t.co/DIkKQjZeKA

[Eyal Weiss @Eyal__Weiss]

That's simply because of the way you interpret marketing expenses. The company's most up-to-date public data is that LTV/CAC~3, which means that a marketing dollar spent today brings home profit.

There was a significant upward trend lately in the company's underwriting quality & cohort LTV & operating leverage, which will reflect in the next 2-3 years strongly.

However if you prefer to invest based on pure GAAP metrics that's perfectly reasonable, just wait a few more years and if everything keeps moving in the same direction you'll be able to join the rest of. The Lemonade story could be a very long one.

[Jim England @JimEngland]

Patrick and Stripe get it

Quality and craftsmanship are trust signals

[Startup Archive @StartupArchive_]

Patrick Collison on the importance of beauty and craftsmanship when building products

“If Stripe is a monstrously successful business, but what we make isn’t beautiful… I’ll be much less happy. The world’s just uglier than it needs to be.”

Patrick believes that the impact of beauty and craftsmanship are higher than people think. And not just for aesthetic reasons — it’s rational for customers to buy beautiful products.

“What does a beautiful thing tell you?” Patrick asks. “It tells you the person who made it really cared."

Video source: @MillionStories (2024)

[Jim England @JimEngland]

@PaperBagInvest I’d guess they are leveraging third-party data sources - they’ve likely purchased telemetry data from other apps then match it to the customer’s Device ID

They likely have a risk score calculated for every single US phone

[Jim England @JimEngland]

@anthonyisonline I am very grateful this is the situation!!!

If we chop around $35 for the rest of 2025 what a GIFT for the long term!!

[Jim England @JimEngland]

@hypergrowth102 @otium33 Yeah anything under $35 is really solid for long term hold

[Jim England @JimEngland]

Speed reduces risk

[Founder Mode @Founder_Mode_]

Patrick Collison (CEO, Stripe) — How to Move Fast

[Jim England @JimEngland]

@KTmBoyle Let’s not celebrate capitalism brain rot thank you

[Jim England @JimEngland]

@bjmtweets $RDDT
$DUOL
$DAVE

[Jim England @JimEngland]

@bjmtweets Brand is still the biggest risk to Lemonade long term IMO

They haven’t nailed it, it’s not set to scale

[Jim England @JimEngland]

@wkohmisd This is super bullish

[Jim England @JimEngland]

@ArranGray9 How would you best explain a bullish divergence?

I’m newer to charts and don’t fully understand it yet!