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A newsletter for communities, investors, angels, and founders
Power in Numbers
September 20, 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
The artificial intelligence boom has made Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison’s net worth beyond that of Jeff Bezos, making him the new second-richest person in the world. According to Forbes, the Oracle chairman’s real-time net worth surged to $206.1 billion, while Bezos is close behind at $203.1 billion.
Salesforce’s venture capital arm has launched a new $500 million AI fund, doubling the capital set for AI investments. The plan is to invest in what they call “ethical AI”. They have already invested in highly competitive rounds for AI startups such as Cohere, Hugging Face, and Mistral AI.
With overall M&A activity declining, an increasing number of startups are now looking to acquire other VC-backed companies in the US. This trend could result in startups acquiring the largest share of the M&A market in years. This shift is noteworthy given the current landscape, where venture capitalists and their limited partners are seeking liquidity amidst a stagnant IPO market and subdued M&A activity.
Sam Altman is stepping down from the internal commission at OpenAI established in May to oversee “critical” safety decisions related to the company’s projects and operations. The Safety and Security Committee is expected to transition into an “independent” board chaired by Carnegie Mellon professor Zico Kolter. It also includes Quora CEO Adam D’Angelo, retired U.S. Army General Paul Nakasone, and former Sony EVP Nicole Seligman, all of whom are current members of OpenAI’s board of directors.
Palmer Luckey, the Hawaiian-shirt wearing founder who sold Oculus VR for $2 billion before co-founding the military tech company Anduril, is back in the headset business — in a sense.
BlackRock is launching a $30 billion AI-focused fund in collaboration with Microsoft and MGX. The fund will support AI with data centers and energy infrastructure. Nvidia will also contribute its expertise in managing the energy demands of AI technologies.
VC firm Insight Partners is reportedly preparing to close a $10 billion-plus fund. Although it is around half the amount the company had initially planned, the fund is a sign that tech investors are returning to the VC market. According to sources, Insight won’t close its fund until early 2025 and at least $10 billion has already been committed, so the final figure would be closer to $12 billion.
💰 Funding announcement highlights
Howabout, a startup building a social calendar app that helps friends easily plan and share events in one place, raised an $8 million Series A round led by Goodwater Capital. FJ Labs, Sequel, Harry Maguire, Boost Capital, and Angel Invest also joined.
Supermaven, a newly founded startup providing an AI-powered coding assistant that helps developers write code faster by offering real-time suggestions, code completions, and error fixes, raised a $12 million round. Bessemer Venture Partners was the main investor, with OpenAI co-founder John Schulman and Perplexity co-founder Denis Yarats also taking part.
Smalt, a startup that installs solar systems for residential and commercial properties, raised an $8.9 million pre-seed round led by Noa. Previous investors General Catalyst, Owl Ventures, and Heartfelt also joined.
e6data, a startup providing a high-performance compute engine for data lakes with the aim of helping businesses run analytics and AI workloads faster and at a lower cost, raised a $10 million Series A round. Accel led the deal, with Beenext also participating.
Orb, a startup helping finance and engineering teams streamline revenue operations and adapt pricing strategies without needing a custom billing code, raised a $25 million Series B round. Mayfield was the main investor, with Uncorrelated Ventures and previous investors Menlo Ventures, Greylock Partners, South Park Commons, Basecase, and Scribble Ventures, also joining.
🎙️ 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, Niels Hoven, founder of Mentava Reading, shares how he turned a viral twitter post from a hater into enough waitlist sign-ups for his company to become cash flow positive.
Not to be missed!
📚 Interesting reads of the week
The All-In Summit, an event that gathers influential figures from the technology and investment sectors to discuss current trends, political landscapes, and future predictions, had Peter Thiel as one of its speakers. Some of the topics he discussed are the upcoming U.S. presidential election, geopolitical tensions, and the state AI.
Learn more about the tools and workflows that the Weekend Fund team uses to efficiently manage their deal flow, invest in early-stage companies, and communicate with founders and LPs.
General Catalyst has announced the launch of the General Catalyst Institute (GCI), an organization that aims to transform how venture capital partners with governments worldwide. Their mission is to promote global resilience by supporting transformative technologies and shaping public policy to advance societal impact.
Alexandr Wang dropped out of college at 19, and today, Nvidia, Meta, and the US government can't live without him.
Andrew Chen, partner at Andreessen Horowitz, shares his list of 20 best essays on the current generation of marketplace startups, such as Airbnb, Lime, Uber, Lyft, and Instacart.
💪Tech mafia of the week
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
Michael Tannenbaum, ex COO of @brexHQ, is a prominent leader in the fintech space.
Previously, he served as CFO and Chief Business Officer at Brex and played a crucial role at SoFi as Chief Revenue Officer.
He actively invests in early-stage startups, focusing on fintech… x.com/i/web/status/1…
— PIN (@getpinxyz)
1:58 AM • Sep 17, 2024
💼 Who’s hiring in VC?
Looking to get into VC? Below are this week’s curated VC job openings.
The Schmidt Family Foundation is looking for a VC Associate.
500 Global is looking for a Director of Operations.
Intuitive Ventures is looking for a Finance Manager.
Griffin Gaming Partners is looking for a VC Analyst.
1848 Ventures is looking for a VC Lead.
📠 Fun fact of the week
Gmail was originally called "Caribou" during its early development stages! The name was used internally by the development team before it officially became Gmail. It was part of Google’s tradition of using quirky and fun code names for their projects.
Want to learn more about investing in startups with your community through PIN’s platform? Simply reply to this email.
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