PIN

A newsletter for communities, investors, angels, and founders

Author

Power in Numbers
May 17, 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

Kyle Vogt, the former founder and CEO of the self-driving car company Cruise, has launched a new VC-backed robotics startup that focuses on household chores. The new startup, named the Bot Company, has secured $150 million in funding from former GitHub CEO and investor Nat Friedman, Pioneer founder and investor Daniel Gross, Spark Capital general partner Nabeel Hyatt, as well as Stripe CEO Patrick Collison, Stripe co-founder John Collison, and Quiet Capital.

Squarespace, the website-building platform, announced on Monday it would go private in a $6.9 billion all-cash deal with private-equity firm Permira, after nearly three turbulent years on the public market.

Accel, one of the largest firms in Europe, has announced a new fund of $650 million to support startups from seed to Series A across Europe and Israel. This fund marks the eighth of its kind for Accel since it first established its presence in London in 2000. To date, Accel has invested in over 200 startups in the region, establishing itself as one of the most active venture capital firms in this market.

Terri Burns, formerly a partner at Google Ventures, has launched Type Capital, an early-stage venture capital firm. The company aims to invest in trailblazing founders pushing the boundaries of social and technological innovation, providing funding for pre-seed and seed-stage investments.

Alison Stillman a founding partner at Serena Ventures, has left the early-stage venture firm founded by tennis champion Serena Williams. Beth Ferreira, a former partner at FirstMark Capital, is joining as a full-time general partner.

Mike Krieger, one of the co-founders of Instagram and, more recently, the co-founder of personalized news app Artifact (which TechCrunch corporate parent Yahoo recently acquired), is joining Anthropic as the company’s first chief product officer.

Stability AI, which has emerged as a poster child for investors’ rush to back unproven artificial intelligence startups, has talked to at least one potential buyer in recent weeks about a sale as its faces a cash crunch, according to a person involved in the conversations.

OpenAI has recently released a new AI model and a desktop version of ChatGPT, accompanied by an updated user interface. This is the company's latest push to broaden the usage of its popular chatbot. The new model, GPT-4o, boasts significant speed improvements and enhanced capabilities in text, video, and audio. Additionally, the update makes GPT-4 available to all users, including those using OpenAI's free version.

Circle's parent company recently filed required paperwork with the High Court of the Republic of Ireland to redomicile the firm. A potential initial public offering for Circle could be among the reasons, especially given the U.S.’s higher tax burden compared to Ireland’s relatively low corporate tax rates, which makes the move otherwise unattractive.

💰 Funding announcement highlights

Sona, a startup developing a platform to help companies in healthcare, retail, and hospitality manage frontline workers, including scheduling, timesheets, and shift coverage, raised a $27.5 million Series A. Felicis led the round, which also included Gradient Ventures, Antler, SpeedInvest, Northzone, and Bag Ventures.

ChainML, a startup building a decentralized framework for autonomous AI agents, raised a $6.2 million seed extension. Hack VC, Foresight Ventures, Inception Capital, HTX Ventures, Figment Capital, Hypersphere Ventures, and Alumni Ventures were all part of the round.

Butter, a startup that uses machine learning to help subscription-based businesses recover lost revenue due to failed transactions, raised $10 million at a $135 million valuation. Atomic and Norwest Venture Partners co-led the deal.

GoodDay Software, a startup that developed a retail operating system that integrates directly into Shopify, raised a $6 million seed round. FirstMark, Ridge Ventures, and Flex Capital all invested in the round.

Polymarket, a New York startup that runs a crypto-based prediction market, raised a $45 million Series B round. Founders Fund led the deal with Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin also opting in.

📚 Interesting reads of the week

Peter Thiel’s venture capital firm, Founders Fund, is investing in one of the largest crypto-based prediction markets despite increased regulatory efforts to restrict activity on such platforms in the US. Polymarket has raised $70 million across two rounds, with the most recent round led by Founders Fund, according to a spokesperson.

David Sacks and Evan Owen, formerly the VP of engineering at the collaboration app Zinc, teamed up to create Glue, an employee chat app. They claim that Glue will address what they refer to as “Slack channel fatigue.” Glue is centered around topic-based threads and incorporates GenAI.

Bain Capital Ventures, founded 20 years ago, underwent some major rebranding. However, BCV's fundamental mission remains unchanged: to support innovative B2B technology founders in the early stages and leverage our operational expertise, industry knowledge, and Bain Capital connections to help propel these ventures from inception to growth.

Sam Altman turned to his X account to reflect on Ilya Sutskever's departure from OpenAI, the company they co-founded. Jakub Pachocki will replace Ilya as Chief Scientist.

In late 2020, Chamath Palihapitiya — the dictator, as he is known on the All-In Podcast — bought a Bombardier Global 7500 private jet for $75 million just as he was was hawking SPACs on CNBC.

At the time, it looked like the man who had made a fortune on Facebook’s public offering, who built his own lucrative venture capital firm, and who co-hosts one of the most popular business podcasts in the world was only going to climb to greater heights.

But there are signs that Palihapitiya’s fortunes have dimmed since he served as the face of the SPAC debacle.

This update shows that LLM companies have decreased their long-term value due to models becoming commodities, while durable value has shifted towards surrounding software and services.

These US universities graduate the highest number of funded founders

According to Crunchbase data, founders with degrees from Stanford University, Harvard University, and MIT perennially outperform in attracting capital for their startups.

According to a recent study by JPMorgan, retail trading reached an all-time high in 2023, accounting for 23% of all trading volume. This proves that the power of the retail investor is more than just the meme stock frenzy. Despite fears of a recession, median net worth surged 37% in 2022, showing record growth. So, what does all of this mean? Here are some answers.

💪 Tech mafia of the week

Highlights:

💰 Most money raised: Media Math

🤑 Total money raised by the Accenture Mafia: $17 billion

Weekly tech mafia leaderboard

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

The Accenture Mafia takes the 15th spot, with 1,090 companies founded and $17 billion raised.

PS: Are you an Accenture 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.

Vectors Capital is looking for a VC Investor.

Autodesk is looking for a VC Principal.

Remus is looking for a Chief of Staff.

MicroVentures is looking for a VC Manager.

M12 is looking for a Managing VC Partner.

📠 Fun fact of the week

Known for his acting career, Ashton Kutcher is also a savvy angel investor. He co-founded A-Grade Investments and made early investments in companies like Airbnb, Spotify, and Uber, earning a reputation for having a keen eye for tech startups.

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