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A newsletter for communities, investors, angels, and founders
Power in Numbers
February 23, 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
Reddit will allocate IPO shares to its top 75,000 redditors, allowing them to purchase shares at the IPO price before the stock is made available to the public. This opportunity is typically only offered to larger investors, but Reddit hopes to build loyalty by extending it to its most active users.
Lydia Jett is leaving her managing partner position at SoftBank Investment Advisers. SoftBank hired Jett in 2015, and she joined Vision Fund as an Americas-based investor shortly after its launch. Jett was promoted to partner at SoftBank Investment Advisers in 2019.
Sequoia Capital has withdrawn its request to remove Michael Moritz as chairman of Klarna's board. Matthew Miller, the Sequoia partner who had asked Klarna shareholders to remove Moritz, is stepping down from the Klarna board.
Walmart has announced that it is acquiring Vizio, a well-known smart TV maker, for a whopping sum of $2.3 billion. This move aims to expand Walmart's advertising business and compete with Amazon. If the acquisition goes through as planned, Walmart will be able to access Vizio's SmartCast operating system, enabling the retail giant to offer its suppliers the ability to display ads on streaming devices.
Moonshot AI, a Chinese artificial intelligence startup, has recently secured over $1 billion in a new funding round. The round was led by two prominent investors, e-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding and venture capital firm HongShan. Moonshot AI's success reflects the high level of interest among investors in innovative mainland enterprises, similar to the popular creator of ChatGPT, OpenAI.
A new investment firm, Definition, has been launched in New York City. The firm aims to invest $1–10M in a few selected founders each year, often at the very beginning of their venture. Definition supports these teams in building successful companies by helping them create a talent-rich environment and accelerating important commercial relationships.
💰 Funding announcement highlights
Magic AI, a San Francisco-based startup that develops an AI “software engineer” to help with complicated coding tasks, has raised $117 million in a funding round. The investment round was led by Nat Friedman and Daniel Gross, with participation from earlier investors CapitalG and Elad Gil.
Northwood Space, a startup launched by Bridgit Mendler, a former Disney Channel star and singer, is attracting high-profile venture investors, with about $6 million in initial funding raised from Andreessen Horowitz, Founders Fund, and Also Capital. The company aims to build satellite ground stations that are designed with mass production and customer flexibility first in mind.
Freenome, a San Francisco-based biotech firm that develops blood tests for early detection of cancer, has raised $254 million in funding led by Roche. The funding round included participation from both new and existing investors, including Andreessen Horowitz, BrightEdge Ventures, ARK Investments, ArrowMark Partners, Quest Diagnostics, and Squarepoint Capital.
PermitFlow, a company that offers end-to-end workflow and automation software to take care of permitting, has raised $31 million in Series A funding, with Kleiner Perkins as the lead investor.
Clairity Technology, a startup founded in 2022 that aims to remove CO2 from the atmosphere, raised $6.75 million in a seed round led by Initialized Capital and Lowercarbon Capital.
📚 Interesting reads of the week
Nat Friedman, former CEO of GitHub, and Daniel Gross, former Y Combinator partner, have invested $100 million in a startup called Magic, which aims to replace engineers. This move has left, unsurprisingly, many prominent engineers concerned.
ChatGPT seems to be losing its charm as its web traffic has been declining for the past eight months. Currently, it is down by 11% from its highest peak in May 2023. The mobile app, meanwhile, has fewer total users than Snapchat added in the last quarter alone.
Sequoia Capital has unveiled its commitment to support up to three open-source software developers each year as part of an ongoing initiative introduced last year. The Sequoia Open Source Fellowship, initially launched on an invite-only basis is now opening its doors to developers, encouraging them to submit applications for a stipend that will sustain them for up to a year.
Eleven companies became a part of The Crunchbase Unicorn Board this past January, making it the first time in over a year that the monthly count has hit double digits. These 11 new unicorns have added a total value of $16 billion to the board. The companies belong to various sectors, including AI, clean energy, semiconductor, quantum computing, and AR.
Read the first extended interview with Figma CEO Dylan Field since regulators forced Adobe to abandon its $20 billion acquisition of his company — a deal that would have been one of the largest ever for a software company.
🚀 PIN product launches
We are excited to announce new features on PIN:
Chat (BETA)
Club leaders can now create group chats directly in the PIN portal, replacing the need for external channels like Slack and Discord so that your club operations can all stay in one place. Members, leaders, portfolio founders can stay connected, ask questions, celebrate milestones, and more via Chat.
Tax Center
PIN makes it easy to run your investment club by handling back office work like annual taxes. Club members can now access and download their tax documents from the Tax Center in the Settings tab. For clubs on PIN that have completed their raise, tax documents for 2023 will be available in early March.
💪 Tech mafia of the week
Highlights:
💰 Most money raised: Rippling
🤑 Total money raised by the Zenefits Mafia: $1.8 billion
Weekly tech mafia leaderboard
The Zenefits alumni network has built some amazing companies, so we took a look at the top companies.
The Zenefits Mafia takes the 35th spot, with 25 companies founded in total and $1.8 billion in total raised.
PS: Are you a Zenefits 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
.@mwseibel, co-founder of Twitch and now Managing Director at Y Combinator, boasts a net worth of $130 million.
He played a crucial role in the creation of Twitch, which was sold to Amazon for approximately $1 billion in 2014.
Here are some of his top startup investments:
🚀… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…
— PIN (@getpinxyz)
2:01 PM • Feb 20, 2024
💼 Who’s hiring in VC?
Looking to get into VC? Below are this week’s curated VC job openings.
Myriad Venture Partners is looking for a VC Associate.
AngelList is looking for an Investment Operations Specialist.
WndrCo is looking for an Investment Associate.
Lingotto is looking for a VC Associate.
📠 Fun fact of the week
One of the earliest and most notable angel investments was made by an angel investor group that funded Alexander Graham Bell's invention of the telephone in 1875. This investment is often cited as one of the first instances of angel investing in the modern sense.
Want to learn more about investing in startups with your community through PIN’s platform? Simply reply to this email.
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