PIN

A newsletter for communities, investors, angels, and founders

Author

Power in Numbers
July 12, 2024

Welcome to PIN’d - our weekly newsletter where we pin (lol, bear with us) the most important tech/startup news of the week for aspiring angels, vc’s, startup investors, founders, etc. Expect a new weekly roundup from us every Friday morning!

If you’re receiving this, it’s because you’ve signed up for our waitlist and/or for newsletter updates.

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📰 This week’s best news

Strategic Partnerships Lead Brooke Hartley Moy and Head of Product Engineering Ken Kocienda are leaving Humane to found Infactory, a fact-checking search engine. Aimed at enterprise customers rather than consumers, it will utilize subscription pricing. Potential clients for the service include newsrooms and research facilities.

Sequoia Capital’s former China unit raises new $2.5 billion startup fund

Sequoia Capital's former China unit, HongShan, has raised a $2.5 billion fund, marking the largest fundraising by a privately owned VC firm in China in the past year. The new fund is backed by the Hangzhou city government, as well as a number of private and state-owned insurance companies.

Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, and Arianna Huffington, founder of Thrive Global, have announced the launch of Thrive AI Health. The startup, which aims to provide a hyper-personalized health coach driven by AI, is designed to model healthy behavior for users based on their health data, with a specific focus on chronic conditions such as diabetes.

Index Ventures has unveiled $2.3 billion in fresh capital to finance emerging tech startups worldwide. The newly raised funds are allocated across various investment stages, with $800 million earmarked for early-stage venture investments and $1.5 billion designated for growth- and late-stage companies.

Andreessen Horowitz added a new tool to its arsenal for winning deals in hot AI startups by securing thousands of AI chips, including Nvidia H100 graphics processing units, and renting them to portfolio companies. The initiative is named Oxygen, highlighting the importance of these chips for AI companies.

💰 Funding announcement highlights

Command Zero, a startup developing investigative cybersecurity technology using large language models, raised a $21 million seed round. Andreessen Horowitz was the main investor.

Hebbia, the startup that built Matrix, a product that allows users to build AI agents that complete end-to-end tasks, has raised $130 million in Series B funding. Andreessen Horowitz led the deal with Index Ventures, Google Ventures, and Peter Thiel also participating. 

Enso, a startup that helps small and medium-sized businesses access a wide range of preprogrammed AI agents that can handle repetitive tasks, secured a $6 million seed funding round. NFX was the main lead, with Yossi Matias, the head of Google Research, and Shmil Levy, a former GP at Sequoia Capital, also contributing.

Volley, a startup developing AI-powered games that can be played by giving voice commands, raised a $55 million Series C. M12 Ventures and Lightspeed led the deal.

Captions, an AI video editing startup, raised a $60 million Series C. Index Ventures led the round. Previous investors Kleiner Perkins, Andreessen Horowitz, and Sequoia Capital also participated, as did new investors Adobe Ventures, HubSpot Ventures, and actor Jared Leto.

📚 Interesting reads of the week

In a series of emails from late 2019 to early 2020, Facebook executives, including Mark Zuckerberg, Peter Thiel, and Nick Clegg, discuss the company’s approach to millennials. While Thiel proposed a “Millennial tilt” in Facebook's messaging and policies, including board representation and investment strategies, Zuckerberg shared his vision for 2030, predicting a shift in power from Boomers to Millennials and Gen Z.

Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz make their case for defending and promoting Little Tech (tech startups as opposed to Big Tech incumbents) to ensure America's continued technological, economic, and military leadership in the 21st century.

Looking to party this summer? Gyan Kandhari, Head of Community at Venture House, goes through a list of 50+ VC events being held this month.

John Cowan argues that entrepreneurship cannot be taught. The combination of passion, will, and ambition forms a unique experiential DNA that is difficult to replicate through traditional educational methods and is impossible to reproduce in a laboratory setting.

Coatue’s Laffont on AI darlings and opportunities in today’s markets

Philippe Laffont, founder and portfolio manager of Coatue Management, shares his current investment outlooks and strategies for succeeding in today's fast-moving market at the Bloomberg Invest conference in New York.

💪 Tech mafia of the week

Highlights:

💰 Most money raised: Pager

🤑 Total money raised by the Atari Mafia: $2.5 billion

Weekly tech mafia leaderboard

The Atari alumni network has built some amazing companies, so we took a look at the top companies.

The Atari Mafia takes the 35th spot, with 60 companies founded and $2.5 billion raised.

PS: Are you an Atari employee/alum interested in getting your community together to invest in the community (and earn carry/other benefits along the way)? Or are you a member of another community that you think would make for an amazing startup investment community? 

Learn more about us and sign up for the waitlist here.

📌 PIN tweet of the week

💼 Who’s hiring in VC?

Looking to get into VC? Below are this week’s curated VC job openings.

Flyover is looking for a Venture Capital Associate.

Clocktower Group is looking for a Director of Fund Operations.

In-Q-Tel is looking for a VC Partner.

FanDuel is looking for a VC Director.

Omega Funds is looking for a VC Vice President.

📠 Fun fact of the week

Zoom, now widely known for its video conferencing platform, was originally called "Saasbee" when it was founded in 2011 by Eric Yuan. The company's first investors were three VCs from Qualcomm Ventures, who invested $500k into the company while it still has zero traction.

Want to learn more about investing in startups with your community through PIN’s platform? Simply reply to this email.

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