PIN

A newsletter for communities, investors, angels, and founders

Author

Power in Numbers
October 04, 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

ChatGPT maker OpenAI has closed the largest VC round of all time. The startup today announced that it raised $6.6 billion in a funding round that values OpenAI at $157 billion post-money. Led by previous investor Thrive Capital, the new cash brings OpenAI’s total raised to $17.9 billion, per Crunchbase.

The San Francisco-based venture capital firm, originally founded by Alexis Ohanian, Garry Tan, and Harjeet Taggar, announced yesterday that it let multiple people go and specifically named Jennifer Wolf, who had been with the firm since 2016 in various roles, including, most recently, as a managing partner.

Ali Rowghani, a former Y Combinator managing director and former Twitter executive, is launching a venture firm called Maxq. Maxq is targeting $250 million for its debut fund, Maxq Fund I, according to an SEC filing.

AI chipmaker Cerebras Systems has filed for an IPO, aiming to list on Nasdaq under the ticker symbol "CBRS." Cerebras competes with Nvidia, the industry leader in AI training and inference, and also provides cloud-based AI services powered by its own computing clusters. Despite a net loss of $66.6 million in the first half of 2024, Cerebras' revenue surged to $136.4 million from $8.7 million in the same period of 2023.

Washington is a bigger startup hub than Seattle or Austin

Washington D.C. has become the fifth-most developed venture capital ecosystem in the country. Since 2018, the city has outpaced both Seattle and Austin in attracting homegrown startup funding and LP capital.

A European technology talent brain drain is the biggest risk factor facing Klarna as the Swedish payments company gets closer to its upcoming initial public offering, according to CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski.

💰 Funding announcement highlights

Artisan, a San Francisco startup building AI-based employees designed for sales teams, raised a $7.3 million seed round. Oliver Jung led the round with Sequoia Scout, Y Combinator, Soma Capital, BOND Capital, Anu Hariharan, Paul Daversa, Fellow’s Fund, and Mento VC also showing up.

Loti AI, a startup building AI-powered tools to help businesses automate and optimize their customer interactions, raised a $6.65 million seed. FUSE and Bling Capital co-led the investment. Khosla Ventures, K5 Tokyo Black, Ensemble, and AlphaEdison provided additional funds.

Series Entertainment, a GenAI game entertainment platform, raised a $28 million Series A from Netflix, Dell Technologies Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, BITKRAFT, and F4 Fund.

Wispr, a startup whose AI-powered voice dictation tool helps users dictate text, make edits, and issue commands using their voice, raised a $12 million round. Matt Kraning led the deal, which also included previous investors NEA, 8VC, Tim Junio, and Alumni Ventures.

Future Trash, a startup that creates competitive party games featuring unique characters for Fortnite, raised a $5 million seed round. TIRTA and General Catalyst co-led the round.

🎙️ 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 Mike Rosenthal, co-founder of It’s Good, and learn about his unconventional journey from director and photographer in the film industry to founding a travel-tech startup. Mike’s story is full of twists and turns, from working on America’s Next Top Model to building a platform that curates personalized, trusted travel recommendations.

Not to be missed!

📚 Interesting reads of the week

Sam Lessin, partner at Slow Ventures, recently shared his thoughts on the future of SaaS in a one-pager. According to him, the once-promising SaaS model is facing significant challenges, including high churn, AI-driven commoditization, and increasing sales difficulties, which have shattered the illusion of it being a flawless business model. While software isn’t obsolete, its role has undeniably changed.

There’s only one thing you need to be an investor: capital. And there are two ways to do that: you can either join a fund with money or start one yourself. This article explains how to start your own fund and why you should be doing it. 

The blog post summarizes a reading list of 30 papers originally compiled by Ilya Sutskever, co-founder and chief scientist of OpenAI then, for John Carmack in 2020. This list, which was shared on X earlier this year, was reportedly part of onboarding at OpenAI.

Brex’s interactive guide to identifying active VCs across the country and in key cities.

Many factors contribute to a fund’s success, and geography is one of them. Past performance doesn’t guarantee future results, but it can be a good indicator. So which delivers better returns: Europe or the US?

💪Tech mafia of the week

Highlights:

💰 Most money raised: Gogoro

🤑 Total money raised by the University of Washington Mafia: $54 billion

Weekly tech mafia leaderboard

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

The University of Washington takes the 6th spot, with 2,064 companies founded and $54 billion raised.

PS: Are you a UW 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.

Kindred Ventures is looking for a VC Analyst.

Connecticut Innovations is looking for a VC Associate.

a16z is looking for a VC Partner.

645 Ventures is looking for a VC Principal.

First Round Capital is looking for a VC Investor.

📠 Fun fact of the week

The SoftBank Vision Fund was initially launched with an unprecedented $100 billion, making it the largest technology investment fund in history. The Vision Fund has backed many of today’s leading AI startups and tech companies, including Arm, ByteDance (the parent company of TikTok), and Nvidia.

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

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