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Hi everyone. I hope y'all are enjoying your summer! Back in the Spring, I had a weekly cadence to my writing, and I was consistent about it. However, it's been a while since I last posted anything on here. For whatever reason, I lost touch with my passion for writing, which has been the medium through which I like to explore topics across the technology industry, and culture and life more broadly, that interest me. It's also been a busy summer for me. I moved to a new city (Miami), traveled a lot for work and pleasure, and most importantly, have been heads down, building something that has been in the works for a long time now. Even though the idea had been at the back of my mind for years, it took a while to flush it out, and figure out the shape it would actually take. I'm here today to introduce that idea, the company I've been building around it, and what I am looking to accomplish.
I've been lucky to have several great mentors in my professional life. These mentors were especially helpful when I decided to leave a high-caliber job at a Boston-based investment office with $28 billion of AUM, forgo other prestigious private equity offers, and pursue a career in entrepreneurship. They provided counsel, insights, and played the devil's advocate when necessary. One in particular, a college professor of mine whom I talk to regularly, adopted a framework for his entrepreneurial career, which he passed on to me. It is the "Start with Why" framework, popularized by bestselling author Simon Sinek, which is built around a simple idea: people don't buy what you do; they buy why you do it.
While most people, especially founders in the Bay Area startup industrial complex, communicate from the outside in, great leaders and brands communicate from the inside out. Sinek emphasizes that inspiring leaders and organizations communicate by starting with their purpose and belief, then explaining how they do it, and finally, what they do. I'm going to use this framework today to introduce my company, 99 Labs.
The quality of the internet, and internet culture more broadly, has been sliding downhill for a decade. The arrival of AI at scale via commoditized LLMs has only accelerated the collapse. What was once a messy but vibrant commons is now a deafening flood of content, scraped and remixed until there's nothing left to feel. Every feed and timeline is clogged with noise. Every space is oversaturated. The promise of connection has been replaced by an endless scroll of disposable novelty.
We're drifting into a culture that rewards the wrong things. Clout-chasing has become an industry. Memecoin trading, influencer posturing, and algorithmic performance art dominate the cultural stage, crowding out anything meaningful or enduring. The internet used to be a place where you could stumble into the strange, the personal, the unpolished. Now, its a marketplace where every interaction is mediated by metrics.
The platforms that hold our attention are engineered to keep us scrolling, not thinking. They prevent us from truly interacting with other humans. They're optimized for engagement, not expression; for virality, not value. What was once social, expressive and free is now steered entirely by algorithms that flatten culture into trends and trends into templates. The human-to-human spark, the unpredictable and sometimes serendipitous exchanges that make communities and relationships feel alive, have all but disappeared.
It's not just the online world that's slipping away. Offline culture is eroding too. The 24/7 transparency social media provides has drained the mystery out of real life. Every party and gathering is documented and broadcasted before it even ends. There's no such thing as underground anymore, no glamour in being in the right room because everyone outside can see exactly what they're missing. The private moments that once gave these gatherings their elusive texture and allure have been flattened into content. Think about Coachella, or the Met Gala, for example. Even relationships have become transactional and click-based. Fewer people meet in person, commit deeply, or dream about building a family. We’ve traded long-term meaning for short-term convenience.
If we keep going in this direction, we'll lose the internet entirely. Not the infrastructure, but the soul of it. We need to rethink how we interact, online and off. We need spaces that prioritize intimacy over exposure, intentionality over reach. We need networks that don't just connect people, but give them a reason to care about one another again. We need a course correction.
99 Labs is a crypto-native creative studio connecting people and ideas in unexpected ways. A holding company under which we build networks, social experiences and community products that are human, intimate and intentional. Our destinations, both online and offline, have no signage, and are experimental by design. They aren't meant to be widely shared on social media, optimized for SEO, perfectly symmetrical, or easily findable with a quick Google search. Instead of measuring connection through likes, followers and algorithmic clout, we build social graphs powered by symbolic access, shared rituals and cultural capital.
Above everything else, we value human-to-human interaction as the core driver of discovery, creativity and belonging. Every product we create is part of a larger, interconnected ecosystem - a roadmap designed with intention, not speed. Together, these standalone projects are deliberate counterpoints to the noise, disposability, and performative culture that defines the internet today. A collective love letter to the way things used to be.
We think of our products less as applications and more as experiments. Deliberate spaces that challenge how people connect, create and belong. Some are revenue generating, some are free and always will be. Each is a self-contained world with its own rules, but all share common DNA - intimacy over scale, intentionality over speed, and discovery over performance. Taken together, these projects are less about building the next big platform and more about proving there's another way forward. One where culture and networks grow sideways through trust, shared moments and deep resonance, rather than up through brute-force visibility. Each drop is both a product and a reminder that there's still room for weirdness, mystery and meaning online.
Our first drop is Capture the Bag, a memetic arcade game that turns digital scarcity into social electricity. Inspired by the childhood game of Capture the Flag, Capture the Bag players compete to capture and hold a digital pot of SOL. Capture the Bag is currently in private beta on the Solana testnet.
Our second drop is Handoff, a social experiment testing the strength of word-of-mouth distribution mechanics and intention-driven rituals. Access to the Handoff application isn't granted by signing up or paying a fee - it's passed from person to person like a secret worth keeping. Every participant who receives a handoff has the power to invite three more people, creating a visible chain of introductions that documents the network's growth in real time. The further you are from the origin, the richer the story of how you arrived. Coming soon.
Together, Capture the Bag and Handoff serve as fundraising mechanisms for 99 Labs via a 5% protocol fee and a $1 distribution toll, respectively. They are our way of proving that new, non-traditional networks can sustain themselves without ads, external investors or algorithms. We're testing new ways to fund the platforms we want to see - built by people, for people, without the usual gatekeepers.
Our third drop is ctrl+enter, an onchain distribution network powered by the tech industry's main characters. Membership is invite-only, with no public feed or algorithm. Each member holds a permanent tile that proves their place in the circle and allows them to bring others in. Together, the network coordinates cryptic, synchronized drops that give chosen consumer projects a moment of concentrated cultural gravity. It's a small circle, with a large surface area, where ideas are kept in motion. Coming soon.
Our fourth drop is Mixed Messages, a collective emotional API for navigating the messiness of being alive, online and in between. Mixed Messages explores emotional expression by turning stray thoughts, half-finished confessions, and anonymous fragments into a living, breathing mood board of the internet's subconscious. It's a space where meaning shifts and no two people see the same story the same way. Coming soon.
Not-so-distant releases include a quiet social networking application modeled after the utility of a high school yearbook, an onchain distribution tool built on airdrop infrastructure, and a truly underground event series connecting people serendipitously through music, art and fashion. And many more. Follow us on Twitter for updates and new product releases.
I think a lot about the phrase “table stakes” and how it applies to the current state of the internet and my generation (Gen Z). Today, people seem content with the status quo. With what’s considered to be "table stakes," or “good enough.” This is especially the case in the startup world, where derivative work and variations of existing ideas are more common than net-new business model innovation. There's a serious lack of people who aren't capable, and/or aren't incentivized, to think outside of the box and be different. The same goes outside of the startup world. Ask teenagers or young adults what careers they want, and the overwhelming majority will say influencer, content creator, YouTuber, or something similar. Back in 1999, most would have said something like astronaut, doctor, or firefighter.
While there's undeniably money in being a successful influencer or content creator, I often find myself asking, "Are these people truly adding value?" or "Are they making the world a better place?" In my opinion, the answer is no. Of course, some use their platforms for good, but the vast majority don't. The internet, in its current form, has perpetuated a set of warped incentives - rewarding clout over substance and quality - that have propped up the pursuit of lowest-common-denominator work, and interactions.
I've never been a believer in accepting "the way things are." The way I make decisions about who I chose to spend my time with, what I work on, and how I live my life is vastly different than most people my age, especially in Miami. When I'm fortunate enough to start a family, I'd rather my kids grow up in a world more akin to the one my parents knew than the one I did - a world where the next generation isn't glued to their phones. Where they go outside, play capture the flag, and scrape their knees. Where they value raw human connection, even when it comes with the risk of heartbreak. A world where missing a day of technology doesn't send them into a tailspin. I think that being born in 1999, I was was right before the cutoff. I grew up outside, played capture the flag, and scraped my knees. I didn't get an iPhone until I was a Freshman in high school. But those born just a few years after me probably had a much more sedentary, and digital, childhood. Technology, especially the internet, is powerful for all the right reasons. But also harmful for all the wrong ones. 99 Labs is my way of building experiences that maximize the good parts of the internet, and minimize the bad. My way of ensuring my children grow up in a more social and expressive world than I did.
It’s also a reflection of the person I want to be - someone who slows down, acts with intention, lives fully, and surrounds himself with people who share the same values and passion for the world, and for one another. The product roadmap and broader ethos are as much a love letter to the internet and nightlife culture of 1999 as they are to a special person in my life who’s been a constant source of inspiration. Because of the way I see the world, I've often felt like an outsider, and that others didn't quite understand me. But this person did, and I am grateful.
I'll be heads down, working on the product roadmap over the coming months. Looking back over previous market cycles, it's clear that some parts of the cycle are better suited for building internally, some for investing, and some for buying. I think that right now is a time to build, which is what I will be doing. Occasionally, and only when it makes sense, I will invest money off of the 99 Labs balance sheet into startups tackling similar issues as we are here. Ones building private networks, a more human internet, and better spaces for connection and serendipity. These would be small, non-lead, pre-seed and seed checks. I'll also still be contributing to the Investment DAO I am a part of, separately from 99L, so if you're building something cool at the intersection of crypto x culture, reach out on Twitter.
We were born in 1999. So was the weird internet. We're here to bring it back. Thanks for reading, and talk soon.
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