PIN'd

A newsletter for communities, investors, angels, and founders

Author

Power in Numbers
January 19, 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

Last call for Drizly: Uber plans to shutter its alcohol delivery service 3 years after buying it

Uber is shutting down Drizly, the alcohol delivery service it acquired for $1.1 billion in 2021. The shutdown comes as Uber looks to consolidate its food delivery services all under the Uber Eats brand, so that consumers can get almost anything — from food to groceries to alcohol — all on a single app.

Ripple, the company behind the XRP cryptocurrency, has decided to delay its initial public offering (IPO) plans in non-U.S. markets. The company cited a "hostile" regulator for this decision.

They plan to revisit the idea of a public listing once its legal battle with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is over. The lawsuit, which began in 2020, is still ongoing.

The Cyberspace Administration of China is investigating Shein’s data handling practices as they are currently seeking approval from Beijing for its initial public offering in the US.

The Chinese agency is examining whether Shein can effectively safeguard data related to its staff, suppliers, and partners based in China and prevent it from being leaked overseas. They are also trying to determine the data Shein needs to provide to US regulators as part of its preparations for a listing in New York.

Marc Benioff, the Salesforce Inc. chief executive officer who also owns Time magazine, has accused AI companies of stealing training data, including content from publications like Time and the New York Times. OpenAI is currently in talks with publications like Time to license their news content.

The New York Times has already taken legal action against OpenAI and Microsoft Corp. for using its articles without permission.

Circle Internet Financial (Circle), the company behind USDC, has announced that it has submitted a draft registration statement on Form S-1 to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for its proposed initial public offering of equity securities.

The number of shares to be offered and the price range for the proposed offering have not yet been decided. The offering is expected to take place after the SEC completes its review process, subject to market and other conditions.


💰 Funding announcement highlights

Weavix, a startup that sells radios and software to help companies manage and communicate with their frontline employees, has raised $23.6 million in a funding round led by Insight Partners.

Recraft, an AI graphic design generator aimed at professionals, raised a $12 million Series A round led by Khosla Ventures in Silicon Valley, together with former GitHub CEO, Nat Friedman. Also participating were RTP Global, Abstract VC, Basis Set Ventures, Elad Gil, and various other angel investors.

Sakana AI, a Tokyo-based startup that aims to build small generative AI models with limited data, has raised a $30 million seed round at a post-money valuation of $200 million. The deal was led by Lux Capital and included Khosla Ventures, Sony, and NTT. 

Quantinuum, a startup Honeywell spinout based in Colorado that makes quantum computers, has raised $300 million at a $5 billion valuation in a funding round led by JPMorgan, with Mitsui & Co., Amgen and Honeywell also participating.

Infield, a startup that aims to develop open source dependency management through AI, raised a $3 million seed round from Foundation Capital, Y Combinator and Firsthand Alliance.

📚 Interesting reads of the week

How to achieve Product/Market Fit for a growing, sustainable company with paying and loyal customers? WP Engine became a unicorn by following 8 steps. You may want to try one of these.

It’s been a decade since Aileen Lee coined the term “unicorn,” and this new report is packed with tons of nuggets and startup data on the past 10 years.

Parag Agrawal, the former CEO of Twitter (now X), is back with an artificial intelligence (AI) startup led by Khosla Ventures that has already raised $30 million in funding.

FedEx has recently announced the launch of a new e-commerce platform named fdx that aims to provide end-to-end solutions to online merchants. The platform is designed to assist businesses in managing their supply chain, selling their products to customers, and managing deliveries. The company plans to release the platform in the fall.

Revisit your automated email program to improve activation, conversion, and retention — with no incremental CAC.

💪 Tech Mafia of the week

Highlights:

💰 Most money raised: Just Works - $160M

🤑 Total money raised by the Nokia Mafia: $106 million in total

Weekly tech mafia leaderboard

Nokia’s alumni network has built some amazing companies, so we took a look at the top companies.

The Nokia Mafia takes the 55th spot, with 33 companies founded in total and $106 million raised.

PS: Are you a Nokia 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.

500 Global is looking for a Sr Manager, Global Marketing Ops.

Techstars is looking for a Senior Manager of Business Development.

Energy Impact Partners is looking for a VC Investor.

Struck Crypto is looking for a Venture Investor.

Foundation Capital is looking for a Director of Business Development.

📠 Fun fact of the week

These 10 mega successful companies all succeeded with bootstrapping:

1️⃣ Intuit Mailchimp
2️⃣ Basecamp
3️⃣ GitHub
4️⃣ craigslist
5️⃣ TechCrunch
6️⃣ Zoho
7️⃣ Hotjar
8️⃣ ClickFunnels
9️⃣ AWeber
🔟 Kayako

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