PIN'd

A newsletter for communities, investors, angels, and founders

Author

Power in Numbers
October 27, 2023

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

Known as WAV (pronounced “wave”), Wellington Access Ventures is looking to establish itself as such a go-to investor for early-stage founders from underrepresented backgrounds. A new dedicated fund and brand within $1.1 trillion-in-assets Wellington’s $8 billion private investing platform, WAV has raised $150 million for its debut, with the backing of limited partners including state pension plans and banks.

Cruise is in a bit of trouble again as The California Department of Motor Vehicles said earlier this week it has immediately suspended Cruise’s deployment and driverless testing permits, ending the GM self-driving car subsidiary’s robotaxi operations in San Francisco just months after receiving the last necessary permit to commercialize its operations.

The DMV’s order of suspension states that Cruise withheld video footage from an ongoing investigation, prompting the agency to suspend its permit.

Paradigm co-founder Fred Ehrsam is relinquishing his role as managing partner of the crypto-focused firm he co-founded five years ago. He also previously co-founded Coinbase with Brian Armstrong. Apparently he will now be shifting his focus to supporting and investing in biotech.

Ted Pick, 54, a three-decade company veteran who heads the institutional securities division, home to Morgan Stanley’s investment banking and trading unit, is the winner of a three-man race against insiders Andy Saperstein and Dan Simkowitz. Pick, who joined Morgan Stanley in 1990, will take over as CEO on Jan. 1 2024. He previously ran equity capital markets during the financial crisis and was appointed head of sales and trading in 2015.

OpenAI announced that it’s created a new team to assess, evaluate and probe AI models to protect against what it describes as “catastrophic risks.” The team, called Preparedness, will be led by Aleksander Madry, the director of MIT’s Center for Deployable Machine Learning.


💰 Funding announcement highlights

Tofu, a generative AI platform for creating hyper-personalized, omnichannel marketing campaigns at scale, announced $5 million in seed funding led by Index Ventures. Tofu was developed after the founding team experienced this pain-point first hand in diverse roles leading product, engineering, and marketing at Google, Facebook, Slack, Affirm and Twitter.

Cube Exchange, a hybrid trading platform that combines traditional finance with blockchain technology, raised $9 million in seed funding. Investors in the round include Foundation Capital, Asymmetry Technologies, WW Ventures, and others.

Twelve Labs, a two-year-old San Francisco startup raised a $10 million strategic round. Investors included Nvidia, Intel, and Samsung. The startup is building AI models to map natural language to what’s happening inside a video, including actions, objects and background sounds, allowing developers to create apps that can search through videos, classify scenes and extract topics from within those videos.

Blockaid, a Web3 security company, raised a $27 million Series A led by Ribbit Capital and Variant. The round also included participation from Cyberstarts, Sequoia Capital and Greylock Partners. The startup’s platform ingests vast amounts of data collected from scanning, simulating, and validating dApps and transactions across the web.

Zordi, an ag-tech startup, secured $20 million in funding from Khosla Ventures. The company specializes in autonomous greenhouses that use AI and robotics to optimize crop care.

📚 Interesting reads of the week

Not so much a read but more of a listen. A new episode on Patrick O'Shaughnessy’s podcast “Invest Like the Best” was just released with Patrick and John Collison, the founders of Stripe. A great episode on everything about entrepreneurship and of course, the success of Stripe.

Recognizing the right time to shift from bootstrapping to seeking venture capital is a pivotal decision that can significantly impact a startup’s growth. Bootstrapping often serves as the initial fuel for a business idea, allowing founders to maintain complete control and ownership while fostering a lean and resourceful mindset.

However, as a startup evolves and its ambitions grow, there may come a point when bootstrapping no longer provides the necessary financial resources to fuel business expansion.

Seems like it’s a podcast week. Another excellent podcast episode to listen to this week is the latest StrictlyVC chat with Keith Rabois. Keith shares his views on the future of venture capital, FoundersFund, plus some commentary on Ramp and Faire, and early stage investing.

A year ago, about 16% of Sequoia Capital’s new investments were in artificial intelligence startups. So far in 2023, that number has jumped to nearly 60%. Stephanie Zhan, a partner at the firm who invests in seed and early-stage companies, shares more on this with the Crunchbase crew as part of their weekly interviews with active AI investors from top VC firms.

A short but useful guide on how to write the perfect cold email to land a job or internship at a VC firm, plus tips on how to stand out.

💪 Tech Mafia of the week

Highlights:

💰 Most money raised: Citizen

⭐ Startup to keep an eye on: Adventr

🤑 Total money raised by the Vimeo Mafia: $166 million

Weekly tech mafia leaderboard

The Vimeo Mafia takes the 42nd spot on our leaderboard. Former employees have raised more than $166 million and founded 46 companies. The top three most successful companies founded are Citizen, BentoBox, and CUUP.

PS: Are you a Vimeo 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

🤝 Inside the Deal

For this week's Inside the Deal series, we're taking a look at the largest tech IPO in history - Alibaba. In 2014, Alibaba went public at a valuation of $167 billion, and it was one of the most hyped IPOs ever, with the stock finishing a full 38% above its initial listing price at the end of its first day.

In 2000, Japanese telecom giant SoftBank, led by Masayoshi Son, invested $20 million for a 34% stake in Alibaba. At that time, Alibaba was pre-revenue and didn't have a well-defined business model. Masayoshi Son became Japan’s richest man because of his early investment in Alibaba.

💼 Who’s hiring in VC?

Looking to get into VC? Below are this week’s curated VC job openings.

Commerce Ventures is looking for a VC Analyst.

OpenView is looking for an AI and Analytics Intern.

Advantage Capital is looking for an Associate.

Acumen is looking for a Principal.

Andreessen Horowitz is looking for a VC Partner.

📠 Fun fact of the week

The first modern VC firm was formed in 1946 – American Research and Development Corporation (ARDC) – by MIT president Karl Compton, Massachusetts Investors Trust chairman Merrill Griswold, Federal Reserve Bank of Boston president Ralph Flanders, and Harvard Business School professor General Georges F. Doriot. Doriot is often referred to as the “father of venture capital.”

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