PIN

A newsletter for communities, investors, angels, and founders

Author

Power in Numbers
May 30, 2025

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!

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📰 This week’s best news

General Catalyst's Hemant Taneja is trying to redefine venture capital — and baffling the industry

GC’s recent IRR performance has lagged far behind its peers, and high-profile missteps like the collapse of portfolio company Olive raise concerns about the risks of its aggressive scaling. Still, Taneja is building an ecosystem that could give GC more deal access and influence than any traditional VC. GC is positioning itself as a global asset manager and operator — not just an investor.

How the ‘Technology Brothers’ seized Silicon Valley

The ‘Technology Brothers’ have been able to seize Silicon Valley by storm with their unique combination of creativity, vision, and technical expertise. Their latest venture, a cutting-edge technology company, has been gaining traction in the industry and attracting a lot of attention from investors and tech enthusiasts alike.

Salesforce is making one of its biggest bets yet. The company is buying data management firm Informatica for $8 billion in cash and debt. The bold move will strengthen its AI and cloud offerings, though it raises questions about overlap with MuleSoft and what regulators might say.

Venture capital’s power players just got a shuffle. Big bets on OpenAI, SpaceX, and Databricks are pushing a fresh wave of investors into the spotlight. Solo operators and hedge funds are rising fast, while veterans like Alfred Lin and Peter Thiel hold their ground.

McKinsey is cutting deep to reset after years of aggressive growth. More than 10% of its workforce is gone, one of the biggest trims in its history. Slower revenue, legal fallout, and the rise of AI are putting pressure on the firm. Meanwhile, BCG is growing and pulling ahead.

Telegram has struck a partnership with Elon Musk’s AI company, xAI, to distribute the latter’s chatbot, Grok, via Telegram and integrate it into apps available on the chat app’s platform for one year. xAI will pay $300 million in cash and equity to the chat app as part of the deal, Telegram’s CEO Pavel Durov said on Tuesday.

Anthropic has appointed Netflix co-founder Reed Hastings to the board of directors, the artificial intelligence startup said on Wednesday. Hastings, 64, is also a board member at Bloomberg. He has previously held director positions at Microsoft and Facebook, and served as the CEO of Netflix for 25 years.

On Thursday, Anduril and Meta announced news that feels like a fairy tale ending for Anduril co-founder Palmer Luckey. The two companies are working together to build extended reality (XR) devices for the U.S. military, Anduril announced in a blog post. He was, of course, famously fired from Facebook in 2017, about three years after Facebook bought his startup Oculus for $2 billion.

💰 Funding announcement highlights

Superblocks, a New York startup helping engineering teams build internal business applications with minimal code and faster deployment, raised a $23 million Series A round. Kleiner Perkins, Spark Capital, Greenoaks, and Meritech Capital were part of the investors.

EnduroSat, a 10-year-old company in Bulgaria building satellites that can be reprogrammed after launch to handle different types of space missions, raised a $48.9 million round. Founders Fund led the deal, with previous investors CEECAT Capital and Morphosis Capital also joining.

Pallet, a San Francisco startup developing software to help transportation and logistics companies manage warehousing, fleet operations, and delivery coordination, raised a $27 million Series B round. General Catalyst was the main investor, with Bain Capital Ventures, Activant Capital, and Bessemer Venture Partners also contributing.

Parkade, a seven-year-old startup providing software for apartment buildings and offices to manage, rent out, and share parking spots more easily, raised a $10 million Series A. Navitas Capital, MassMutual Ventures, and 9Yards Capital co-led the deal, with previous investors CRV, Heartland, and Box Group also joining.

WellTheory, a four-year-old startup helping people with autoimmune conditions get easier access to care by using AI, raised a $5 million round. Samsung Next, Opal Ventures, Up2 Fund, Accel, OVO Fund, and BoxGroup were part of the investors.

📚 Interesting reads of the week

Marc Andreessen thinks AI is changing what it means to be a great founder. Although deep expertise still matters, knowing a little about a lot might be the new edge. The top entrepreneurs, he says, will blend product, legal, finance, and more.

Will Larson just wrapped up two years as CTO at Carta and shared some of its most valuable lessons. From going deep on engineering strategy to rolling out new org models, this article is a masterclass in scaling tech leadership. He also reflects on how Carta used LLMs to build real products, not just prototypes.

Finance teams are done settling for bloated all-in-one suites. The new move is picking best-of-breed tools that actually work together. Think Brex and Zip teaming up, not building everything from scratch. No more vendor sprawl. It’s time for smart stacking.

In this new episode of The Peel with Turner Novak, Michael Kim, founder of Cendana Capital, shares what he’s learned backing top early-stage VCs. He also talks about diligence, portfolio strategy, and why ownership matters more than size. Plus, a wild story from Fund I and his Call of Duty stats.

Indecision was killing Matthew Lerner’s momentum, so he built a toolkit to move faster. In this quick read, he breaks down six mental models from Bezos, Kahneman, Powell, and others that helped him cut through the noise. It’s practical, clear, and surprisingly relatable.

The Thiel Foundation just named its newest class of under-23 founders skipping college to build bold companies. This year’s fellows are working on everything, from rare disease treatments to neurostimulation, planetary defense, and programmable biology. Each gets $200K and direct access to a high-powered network of investors and technologists. It's a clear signal: the next wave of moonshots is already underway.

💪Tech mafia of the week

Highlights:

💰 Most money raised: Choco

🤑 Total money raised by the Cabify Mafia: $660 million

Weekly Tech Mafia Leaderboard

The Cabify alumni has built some amazing companies. This tech mafia group takes the 78th spot on our leaderboard, with 27 companies founded and $660 million raised.

PS: Are you a Cabify 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.

007 Ventures is looking for a VC Partner.

NextEquity Partners is looking for a Senior VC Associate.

GBETA is looking for a Managing VC Director.

ERA is looking for a VC Analyst.

SpringTide Ventures is looking for a VC Associate.

📌 Have you signed up? :)

PIN is launching an investor database. Currently in beta mode, but we’d love to give our community of subscribers early access to try it out. PIN’s investor database is the best way to find angel investors & VCs who are actively investing, relevant to your stage/industry, and recommended by top VC-backed founders.

📠 Fun fact of the week

The first formal venture capital firm was American Research and Development Corporation (ARDC), founded in 1946 by Georges Doriot. ARDC’s investment in Digital Equipment Corporation turned $70,000 into $355 million over 14 years, showcasing the power of VC returns

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