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A newsletter for communities, investors, angels, and founders
Power in Numbers
November 08, 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
Sarah Guo, founder of new firm Conviction Partners, is reportedly raising around $200 million for her second fund. The firm was founded two years ago to back very young AI startups.
The chat.com domain name has changed hands for the third time in two years. OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT and perhaps the most ideal company to own the domain name, has acquired it.
HubSpot founder Dharmesh Shah kicked off the buying last year, plunking down over $15.5 million for the domain name. He turned around and sold the domain shortly thereafter for a profit. Now, OpenAI has paid what is undoubtedly an even higher price.
Printful and Printify, two startups with Latvian roots providing custom printing services, are coming together as a single company. The move is expected to unlock greater economies of scale, efficiencies, and profitability.
Physical Intelligence, a startup developing foundational software to apply AI to robotics, raised $400 million at a $2 billion pre-money valuation led by billionaire Jeff Bezos, Thrive and Lux Capital. The company is betting that the same generalist approach to AI that spawned ChatGPT can produce robots capable of learning complex tasks. The startup was co-founded earlier this year by ex-Stripe executive and investor Lachy Groom, ex-Google research scientist Karol Hausman and Berkeley associate professor Sergey Levine.
Chip-making giant Nvidia surpassed Apple on Tuesday to become the highest valued company in the world as the artificial intelligence boom continues to excite Wall Street. Nvidia’s market capitalization rose nearly 3% this week, closing at $3.43 trillion, ahead of Apple’s $3.4 trillion. The company saw explosive growth in 2023 when it emerged as the primary source of the graphics processing units, or GPUs, used in the computers that power AI operations.
Waymo, a startup delivering a robotaxi ride-hailing service, closed a $5.6 billion Series C funding round. The main investor was parent company Alphabet joined by many of the most important ventures firms in Silicon Valley.
Election Day proved hugely successful for the crypto industry. Nobody was a bigger winner than Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong. Coinbase shares soared 31% on Wednesday, their best day on record, as investors celebrated the company’s victorious efforts to get pro-crypto candidates into office.
💰 Funding announcement highlights
Dash0, a startup offering an observability platform designed to help software developers monitor and understand their applications' performance, raised a $9.5 million seed round. Accel was the main investor, with Dig Ventures also contributing.
Tola, a San Francisco startup helping SMBs manage their finances by streamlining bill payments, invoicing, and cash flow tracking, raised a $10.2 million seed round. The deal was led by Sequoia Capital, with Cherry Ventures, Creandum, RTP Global, Founders, Y Combinator, Zinal Growth, and Pathlight VC also joining.
Glow, a startup using blockchain technology to incentivize the development of solar energy projects, raised a $30 million round. The round was co-led by Framework Ventures and Union Square Ventures with Lattice Ventures, Protocol Labs, Hack VC, HF0, and Alliance DAO also showing up.
Vlayer raised a $10 million pre-seed to bring real-world data verification to Ethereum smart contracts, leveraging zero-knowledge proofs. Investors include Andreessen Horowitz, Credo Ventures, and BlockTower Capital.
Corgea raised a $2.5 million seed round to automate security vulnerability fixes in software code using AI. Shorooq Partners led the round, with participation from Y Combinator, Propeller, Decacorn Capital, and Unbound Ventures.
📌 Special PIN Announcement
Project Favorite Angels
As fellow founders, one of the most difficult things to do is to find truly value-add angel investors who make outsized impact aside from their checks. They are notoriously hard to find and seem to get outshined by VC's.
We wanted to help our fellow founders by creating a network of founders’ Favorite Angels, nominated by founders themselves. We would love to get nominations from you on who your favorite angels are and we can share the list with everyone.
Please if you can help a fellow founder out and submit a nomination here.
📚 Interesting reads of the week
According to VC Renata Quintini, co-founder of early-stage VC Renegade Partners, fundraising in 2025 will continue to be a “tale of two cities”, with some receiving a lot of funding while others will struggle to raise cash.
In this post, Halle Tecco outlines six common methods VCs use to value startups, from the Dilution Method to the “VC Method”.
A LinkedIn deep dive into the evolving liquidity landscape in VC, analyzing shifts in capital flow, distributions, and commitments from LPs through 2024.
Mario Gabriele shares 52 lessons, each no more than a few sentences long, gathered over the last four years since he decided to go full-time on The Generalist.
💪Tech mafia of the week
Highlights:
💰 Most money raised: Biospring Partners
🤑 Total money raised by Apple’s Female Tech Mafia: $245 million
Weekly tech mafia leaderboard
Did you know we have a live tech mafia leaderboard?
Check out the current top 10 alumni founder groups!
📌 PIN tweet of the week
Our team built the Startup Tamogotchi last week at our company offsite. 50 Schrute Bucks to whoever can keep their startup alive longest and get to the top of the leaderboard! startuptamagotchi.com
— PIN (@getpinxyz)
6:01 PM • Nov 7, 2024
💼 Who’s hiring in VC?
Looking to get into VC? Below are this week’s curated VC job openings.
Quona is looking for an Investment Officer.
Defines Connecting is looking for a VC Scout.
Cerberus is looking for a Technical Venture Fellow.
Energy Impact Partners is looking for a VC Analyst.
Slow Ventures is looking for a VC Controller.
📠 Fun fact of the week
Early on, OpenAI chose to release many of its AI advancements, including code and research papers, openly for anyone to use and learn from. This "open" approach helped build a community around AI research.
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