Tools for MGMT: Episode 119

hello from a top 6% Luke Combs listener

Remember when DaBaby had 1B streams last year on his Spotify Wrapped? I certainly do. It was a different time… a simpler time…

We all really thought 2020 was gonna be our year. 😎 😎 😎

My name is Ethan. I manage a screenwriter and a comedian. I started this newsletter to regularly send out a few links and musings that I hope other managers will find interesting. Thanks for reading this nineteenth edition.

Stripe Treasury (!!!!)
This is a really, really, really big. Start with Ben Thompson’s primer, and then consider the possibilities with me…

Companies with corporate treasury or custodial functionalities like business management firms, talent agencies, concert promoters, and ticketing companies could use Stripe Treasury to their great advantage – or find themselves upended by new ventures that recognize the potential of what Stripe is offering here…

• A forward-thinking music distributor like Alpha Pup could use Stripe Treasury to enable the splitting of royalties to provide upside to more collaborators (engineers, graphic designers, music video editors) via their APIs and handle complex recoupment and payout structures.

• A mobile-first ticketing company like DICE could use Stripe Treasury to more quickly scale worldwide, transact, and hold client funds in 130+ currencies.

• Your clients who work with multiple contractors throughout the year could use Stripe Treasury to rapidly spin up temporary accounts and debit cards with granular access controls for specific projects.

Watch this space. Ben touches on this, but the current (small) business banking landscape is unimaginative and stuck in the 90s – often require mountains of paperwork and in-person visits. Sure, Brex and Ramp exist – but those are exceptions to the rule and generally only accessible to venture-backed startups.

Speaking of new tools
Two that I’ve used multiple times this year – check out Mercury (a business bank account that you can open entirely online) and Notarize (basically lets you FaceTime with a notary and handle everything from your phone).

I actually might notarize some documents this afternoon for the fun of it. And then I need to call my friend who is fully vested at Stripe and try to buy some shares off of him.

Two Merch Things
MerchWith: Stir randomly paired a bunch of visual artists together to design masks, created a pretty Shopify store for their collabs, and are promising to split the proceeds between everybody. The idea of collaborative merch between creators is somewhat interesting. I’m not convinced it’s worth paying 10% to Stir to facilitate (especially with Stripe Treasury soon just an API call away)… but let’s see where it goes.

Merch Table: from Hype Machine… very clever. Paste in the URL of “Your Top Songs of 2020” Spotify playlist, and their tool will show you which songs and albums you can buy on Bandcamp. Perfect timing for the final no-fee Friday of the year.

And who knew that you could buy the Despacito remix ft. Justin Bieber on Bandcamp?

Spotify Wrapped
Is it just me, or has the magic been mostly lost here? Maybe it’s because your Instagram feed is dead? Maybe it’s because the genesis of its virality was potentially stolen from an intern? Also, the “92 countries” thing feels like wasted real estate and left a lot of room for memes…

kelly @kellymoran

artists getting tagged in spotify wrapped lists after missing out an entire year’s income from no touring

Let’s end with this important chart on the state of things:

Ok, I’m off – but here are a few more reads for your weekend ahead:

• Twitter account I’m watching: @PolymarktWhales (read the quote tweets)

• The Cocky Prince of Quarantine

• How to Buy Gifts That People Actually Want

• BFCM (interesting look at Black Friday and Cyber Monday from someone on the inside at Shopify)

• Variety’s 2020 Hitmakers (would love to see y’all on this list next year)

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P.S. Holiday cheer is going out the end of next week… but I need your best mailing address here first!