PIN

A newsletter for communities, investors, angels, and founders

Author

Power in Numbers
August 23, 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!

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📰This week’s best news

In a surprising turn of events, Bolt founder Ryan Breslow is returning as CEO two and a half years after he left. According to Bolt interim CEO Justin Grooms, the company is finalizing a $450 million Series F funding round from two investment firms based in the UK and United Arab Emirates.

Venture capital funds closed out the final quarter of 2023 on a positive note, marking their first quarterly gain since 2021. According to newly released data from PitchBook, the sector posted a modest 0.4% return. This slight uptick also bolstered the asset class's long-term performance, maintaining a 13% 10-year horizon IRR. Despite the short-term nature of quarterly returns, this glimmer of growth offers some optimism.

Cruise, General Motors’ self-driving subsidiary, said it has signed a multi-year partnership with ride-hailing giant Uber to bring its robotaxis to the ride-hailing platform in 2025.

According to Carta, the venture ecosystem showed modest signs of improvement in Q2 2024. Their companies completed 1,287 new funding rounds in the second quarter of 2024, up 4% from Q1 2024. VCs invested a total of $20.9 billion in Q2, up 12% from Q1. Both of these figures will increase as more Q2 data is reported.

According to an internal memo written by OpenAI CEO Roger Lync, magazine publisher Conde Nast has licensed some of its content to be used in OpenAI's products, under a new multi-year deal. The new agreement will have their publications available within OpenAI products, including ChatGPT.

Mike Lynch, an investor and high-profile founder of U.K. tech firm Autonomy, is currently missing at sea after his yacht, the Bayesian, capsized in a storm off the coast of Sicily early Monday. Among the 15 persons who have been rescued is Lynch's wife, Angela Bacares.

HighPost Capital, the private equity firm run by Mark Bezos and PE veteran David Moross, launched a new venture capital arm called HIPstr. The new entity just announced its first VC fund of $100 million. While HighPost Capital focuses on consumer companies, HIPstr will take advantage of dramatically lower startup valuations of the past couple of years.

💰 Funding announcement highlights

Waza, a startup offering businesses in Africa the ability to make and receive international payments in multiple currencies, raised a $3 million round. Investors included Y Combinator, Byld Ventures, Norrsken Africa, Heirloom VC, and Plug and Play Tech Center.

Mudstack, a startup helping game developers organize and share game assets like graphics and code, raised $4 million. The round was led by Anthos Capital, with Khosla Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz, Pioneer Square Labs, and Hyperplane also participating.

Consensus, a startup that developed an AI-powered search engine to help users find and understand scientific research quickly, raised an $11 million Series A round. The deal was led by Union Square Ventures and included previous investors Draper Associates, Path Ventures, and Alumni Ventures, as well as Nat Friedman and Daniel Gross.

Ema, a startup developing an AI tool that automates repetitive tasks for businesses, focusing on areas like customer service, human resources, and operations, raised a $36 million Series A extension. Accel and Section 32 co-led the round, with SCB 10X, Prosus Ventures, and Hitachi Ventures contributing.

Talus Bioscience, a startup developing drugs targeting proteins that control gene expression for the treatment of diseases like cancer and diabetes, raised an $11.2 million seed extension. Two Bear Capital was the lead investor, with WRF Capital, NFX, and Y Combinator also contributing.

📚 Interesting reads of the week

Samir Kaji, CEO of Allocate, highlights the main points from Carta’s latest VC report.

Former a16z VC Balaji Srinivasan obtained a private island for his new longevity ‘technocapitalist’ school

Balaji Srinivasan, former a16z investor, has reserved an island in Singapore to establish his own “Network School”, where he plans to conduct programs on crypto, longevity, and the essentials of creating “a techno capitalist college town”.

The recent announcement of Balderton Capital's fundraising round of $1.3 billion in London has sparked renewed discussions within the venture capital community about fund sizing strategies and evolving market dynamics. While larger funds can provide broader opportunities, VCs stress the significance of prioritizing returns and steering clear of the risks associated with excessive growth.

Noah Kagan, who spent 9 months working at Facebook before he got fired, shares 10 non-obvious lessons he learned from working directly under Mark Zuckerberg.

Lex Fridman shares his conversation with Pieter Levels aka levelsio on X/Twitter, self-taught developer and entrepreneur who designed, programmed, shipped, and ran over 40 startups, on X/Twitter.

Great podcast with Peter Thiel, PayPal co-founder and partner at Founders Fund, on the Joe Rogan Experience!

💪Tech mafia of the week

Highlights:

💰 Most money raised: GupShup

🤑 Total money raised by the Upwork Mafia: $390 million

Weekly tech mafia leaderboard

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

The Upwork Mafia takes the 69th spot, with 84 companies founded and $390 million raised.

PS: Are you an Upwork 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.

Samsung Ventures America is looking for a VC Manager.

Iron Key Capital is looking for a VC Investor.

B Capital is looking for a Senior VC Associate.

Blumberg Capital is looking for an Investment Associate.

Arixa Capital is looking for a VC Director.

📠Fun fact of the week

TechCrunch was originally founded by Michael Arrington in 2005 as a simple blog focused on profiling and reviewing new internet products and startups. The site quickly grew in popularity, becoming one of the most influential tech blogs in the world. In 2010, just five years after its launch, TechCrunch was acquired by AOL for approximately $25 million.

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