Feels just like yesterday, doesn’t it? Credit: Rhiannon

I. Introduction

🗣️ Zuzalu, Zuzalu, now we’re in your inbox, too! 📢

Helloooo Zuzalians and welcome to the first ever edition of the Zuzalu newsletter!

Once a month, you can expect resident spotlights, event highlights, photos, reflections, and information on upcoming events you won’t want to miss. Be sure to respond to the form at the end of the email with any feedback for how you’d like to see this newsletter evolve.

Just over one month has passed since our little experiment in Montenegro came to a close, and it has been absolutely incredible seeing the Zuzalu network thrive through meet-ups all over the world and, of course, digital connections.

No matter where you are right now or how your days are filled, we hope this newsletter can give you a small dose of that ✨ Zuzalu magic ✨ and connect you with our still-evolving, co-created Zuzalu community.

Throwback to when the “cold plunge” became a morning swim… anyone else miss starting their day this way? Credit: Rhiannon

II. Last Month Highlights

Here are just a few things our community achieved in the past month 🙂

• The Zuzalu organizing team worked with the Hypercerts Foundation (big shout out to Holke Brammer and the Protocol Labs team) on a retroactive funding experiment. We raised ~$150K from 67 people that will go to all the organizers based on what Hypercerts funded. Vitalik, Janine, Laurence and Vincent are all putting their earnings into the Zuzalu future fund (which means we can cover small events until the next Zzualu like EthCC etc). We're still far from retro-funding covering Zuzalu's costs entirely, but the experiment has given us a lot of perspective.
• Janine, Nicole, Amber, Afra, and others did live IRL presentations on Zuzalu and their personal experience. David produced a detailed recap of what happened at Zuzalu, posted 18 interviews from Montenegro, and interviewed Vitalik on what he learned.
• Built a full-time community home in Costa Rica for MetaCartel following inspiring conversations at Zuzalu (Yalor)
• Successfully raised more funds, boosting investment volume for longevity startups to $33M (Mark)