PIN

A newsletter for communities, investors, angels, and founders

Author

Power in Numbers
September 27, 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.

Got a friend that wants to learn more or stay up to date on angel investing/VC? Help us spread the word and forward this email to them ;)

Subscribe here.

📰 This week’s best news

Anthropic PBC reportedly aims to secure new funding with a valuation of up to $40 billion. The news comes after reports that Anthropic's main competitor, OpenAI, was also seeking to raise $6.5 billion with a valuation of $150 billion.

Telegram is implementing changes to minimize criminal activity on the platform following the arrest of CEO Pavel Durov. One of them is the updated terms of service and privacy policy, which now state that the platform will provide the IP addresses and phone numbers of users who violate its rules to authorities in response to "valid legal requests." Additionally, Telegram will disclose all user data shared with law enforcement officials in quarterly transparency reports.

Isabella Vincenza, an early employee at CloudKitchens, is suing the company after being fired in July 2023, just six months after returning from maternity leave. Other female employees have also sued the company for unfair labor practices and pay discrimination based on gender and race.

OpenAI's Chief Technology Officer Mira Murati is leaving the company after six and a half years. Research chief Bob McGrew and Barret Zoph, a research vice-president, are also departing the company.

How one female VC is teaching kids about startups and women in tech

Deena Shakir, an investor at Lux Capital, was having difficulties explaining her job to her three young kids. During the quarantine in 2020, she decided to create something that would explain the process of founding a startup in a way that would be engaging for children. Her first book, “Leena Mo, CEO,” will be released next Tuesday.

Caroline Ellison, a former cryptocurrency figure, was sentenced to jail on Tuesday for financial crimes committed with her ex-boyfriend, Sam Bankman-Fried. Despite cooperating extensively against Bankman-Fried, the former billionaire head of the $32 billion cryptocurrency exchange FTX, still received a jail sentence.

💰 Funding announcement highlights

Scribenote, a startup making AI-powered software to assist veterinarians with note-taking and administrative tasks, raised an $8.2 million seed round. Andreessen Horowitz led the deal, with Inovia Capital and the Velocity Fund also pitching in.

Ephos, a startup designing and manufacturing glass-based photonic chips, essential for applications like quantum computing, telecommunications, and high-speed data transfer, raised an $8.5 million seed. The round was led by Starlight Ventures, with Collaborative Fund, Exor Ventures, 2100 Ventures, and Unruly Capital also joining.

Jump, a French startup that helps freelancers access benefits typically reserved for full-time employees, such as health insurance, sick leave, and retirement plans, raised a $12.2 million Series A round. Breega was the main investor, with Index Ventures and Raise Ventures also taking part.

Distyl AI, a startup developing AI-powered tools to automate complex workflows for large enterprises across industries like retail, healthcare, and manufacturing, raised a $20 million Series A round. Previous investor Coatue was part of the deal.

Letta, a startup that helps AI models remember users and conversations, announced $10 million in seed money led by Felicis’ Astasia Myers. Letta is also backed by Google’s Jeff Dean, Hugging Face’s Clem Delangue, Runway’s Cristóbal Valenzuela, and Anyscale’s Robert Nishihara, among others.

🎙️ Something New Podcast

Season 2 is back! In case you missed it, PIN’s founder Steph Mui hosts a weekly podcast with Leeor Mushin, where you can hear about some of the craziest founder stories out there.

In this week’s episode, they chat to Zane Mountcastle from Picogrid. Take a listen and find out how to think about building in defense tech, why pure software companies won't win and Picogrid's middleware/hardware approach, and how “The Gundo” happened.

Not to be missed!

📚 Interesting reads of the week

Check out what the most important criteria are for venture LPs, collected from over 100 conversations.

In case you missed the main dialogue on Twitter/X this week, this is what was happening.

On that note, Richard Branson has some insights. In his recent essay, he discusses the potential of psychedelics in treating mental health conditions such as PTSD, depression, and drug addiction, as seen by medical researchers and psychotherapists.

One of the most important things for a VC is their investment thesis - it will be a guideline/set of principles that will drive decisions as an investor. Check out these useful resources on building a thesis plus a few additional helpful tips.

Unfortunate startup pivots (a short list)

General Partner at a16z, Andrew Chen, recently wrote an excellent piece on the most common and unfortunate pivots he has seen founders make, and why they didn’t work out.

Vinod Khosla’s latest essay on AI. In a nutshell: AI is a powerful tool that, like previous powerful technologies such as nuclear or biotechnology, can be used for good or bad. It is key that we choose carefully and use it to construct a 'possible' world guided by societal choices, not just technological ones.

Sam Altman was also inspired to drop an essay this week on AI. He believes the future is going to be so bright that no one can do it justice by trying to write about it now; a defining characteristic of the Intelligence Age will be massive prosperity. But he warns that if we want to put AI into the hands of as many people as possible, we need to drive down the cost of compute and make it abundant (which requires lots of energy and chips).

💪Tech mafia of the week

Since the Columbia Mafia is a massive group with so many successful founder and companies, we have split this group into a two-part series. This week we covered Part 2 of the top companies and founders.

Highlights:

💰 Most money raised: Compass

🤑 Total money raised by the Columbia University Mafia: $93 billion

Weekly tech mafia leaderboard

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

The Columbia University takes the 2nd spot, with 3,232 companies founded and $93 billion raised.

PS: Are you a Columbia University 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.

GetFresh Ventures is looking for a VC Scout.

MicroVentures is looking for a VC Specialist.

Forbion is looking for a VC Principal.

Starlight Ventures is looking for a VC Associate.

Wonder Ventures is looking for a VC Analyst.

📠 Fun fact of the week

The first company that could be considered an AI company is Symbolics, founded in 1980. Symbolics was focused on creating and selling LAI'smachines, which were specialized computers designed to run the Lisp programming language. Their computers were used in various AI applications in the 1980s. WhiPIN'st an AI company in the way we think of AI companies today, Symbolics played a significant role in AI's development by providing the hardware and software tools for early AI researchers.

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

0