Welcome to PIN’d - our brand new 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.

Got a friend that wants to learn more or stay up to date on angel investing/VC? Help us spread the word and forward this email to them ;)

Subscribe here.

📰 This week’s best news

Scooter company Bird delisted from NYSE after stock collapse

Bird, a provider of electric scooters that consumers can rent in cities, said the New York Stock Exchange will suspend trading of its stock after the company failed to keep its market capitalization above $15 million for 30 consecutive days.

OpenAI is reportedly raising funds at a valuation of $80 billion to $90 billion

OpenAI is in discussions to possibly sell shares in a move that would boost the company’s valuation from $29 billion to somewhere between $80 billion and $90 billion. Employees would be allowed to sell their existing shares rather than the company issuing new ones.

HSBC makes $1 billion available for climate tech companies

HSBC announced earlier this week that it plans to offer $1 billion of financing to early-stage climate tech companies around the world.

The capital is expected to support high-potential climate technology companies creating solutions including EV charging, battery storage, sustainable food and agriculture, and carbon removal technologies.

Amazon to invest $4 billion in Anthropic AI

Amazon said on Monday that it would invest up to $4 billion in the artificial intelligence start-up Anthropic, as the world’s biggest technology companies race to benefit from A.I. breakthroughs that could reshape parts of their businesses — and the economy as a whole.

You can now prompt ChatGPT with pictures and voice commands

OpenAI is rolling out a new version of ChatGPT that allows you to prompt the AI bot not just by typing sentences into a text box but by either speaking aloud or just uploading a picture. The new features are rolling out to those who pay for ChatGPT in the next two weeks, and everyone else will get it “soon after”.

💰 Funding announcement highlights

TeachMe.To, a sports coaching platform for beginner athletes, secured $2 million in seed funding. The round was led by 1984 Ventures, with participation angel investors such as OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.

Founder of Crediverso, Carlos “Charlie” Hernandez raised a pre-Series A funding round, securing $3.5 million from Torch Capital, Gaingels, Bessemer Venture Partners, and Act One Ventures. The company, which launched at TechCrunch Disrupt 2020, has helped thousands of users in the U.S. Latino community with financial products advice.

Nx, a startup developing tooling to make it simpler for software dev teams to work within a single code repository, closed a $16 million Series A round with participation from Nexus Venture Partners and a16z. The funding will be used to expand Nx’s fully managed product, Nx Cloud, to make it more of a replacement for existing continuous integration tools.

Pantera Capital, Founders Fund, and Coinbase’s Base Ecosystem Fund, invested in the $4 million seed round of Avantis Labs, a decentralized finance (DeFi) derivatives ecosystem. The protocol aims to provide institutional and retail investors the ability to trade crypto and RWAs with up to 100x leverage on its decentralized exchange.

PartyKit, which has built an open source platform for companies looking to integrate multiplayer functionality into their apps, raised $2.5 million from Sequoia Capital. PartyKit is perhaps something akin to Vercel or Netlify, but with a specific focus on collaboration — so developers bring all their own code, be it JavaScript or TypeScript, and they can then integrate PartyKit with their own tools and services.

📚 Interesting reads of the week

Where do unicorns come from? 

A study was recently released on the career journeys of the top $1 billion founders in the US and Middle East. Nearly all of the unicorns in this study have inspired their employees to start their own companies, and many of the unicorn founders are mentors and angel investors.

Other quick facts:

• 97% of the top unicorn founders completed a college diploma and 33% of those from an 'elite' college

• 55% of the top US unicorn founders are immigrants or second-generation immigrants

• 60% of top unicorn founders studied or worked abroad prior to starting their company

How to use AI to brainstorm a billion-dollar business idea

Could AI dream up the next billion-dollar business idea? Dan Kraemer, who’s worked at Nike, United Airlines, and FedEx, explores how to use AI for product ideation. After all, summoning the next category-creating business or blockbuster product is pretty hard.

How Miro grows: tactical lessons from the $17.5B whiteboard

A masterclass on how to drive SaaS growth and the four overarching pillars of Miro’s growth. The research piece takes a deep dive into each pillar, bringing you tons of insights into how Miro is growing, and actionable takeaways on how to use them to drive growth with your own product.

Fun fact: All 10 of Miro’s first 10 employees remain with Miro today. 😎

Recap of Sam Altman’s speech at Y Combinator’s alumni reunion weekend

This past weekend Y Combinator hosted a reunion for their alumni. Iba Masood put together a recap of the most important points that Sam Altman covered about the early days of building, including recruitment, failure, and having a long-term vision.

💪 Tech Mafia of the week

The Udemy Mafia

Highlights:

💰 Most money raised: Carbon Health

⭐ Favorite rising star: Maven

🤑 Total money raised by Udemy Mafia: $721 million

Weekly tech mafia leaderboard

The latest addition is the Udemy Mafia. Former employees of Udemy have raised a total of $721 million and founded 18 companies. According to Crunchbase data, most of the companies founded are in healthcare. The Udemy Mafia ranks on the #31st spot on our leaderboard.

PS: Are you a Udemy 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

This week we're taking a slightly different approach for our Inside the Deal series. We're highlighting six of the top investors from the 2023 Midas List, along with their most notable deals.

These investors have cemented their names over the years as some of the best VCs, negotiating the most profitable and impressive deals. To qualify for the Midas List, investors are ranked by their portfolio companies that have gone public or been acquired for at least $200 million over the past five years, or that have at least doubled their private valuation since initial investment to $400 million or more over the same period.

Get the full scoop. 

💼 Who’s hiring in VC?

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

Cybernetix Ventures is looking for an Investment Associate.

SCOR Ventures is looking for an Associate.

Seedrs is looking for a Venture Specialist.

OpenView is looking for a Finance Administrator.

Plug and Play is looking for an Accelerator Director.

📠 Fun fact of the week

🇺🇸 7/10 top US companies are VC-backed
🇫🇷 0/10 French companies are VC-backed

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