PIN'd

A newsletter for communities, investors, angels, and founders

Author

Power in Numbers
April 05, 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

According to Bloomberg, Paradigm, a venture capital firm that operates in the cryptocurrency field, is planning to launch a new fund and aims to raise between $750 million and $850 million. The firm was founded by Fred Ehrsam, a co-founder of Coinbase, and Matt Huan, a former partner at Sequoia.

Yahoo has acquired Artifact, an AI-powered news app developed by Instagram co-founders Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger. The terms of the deal were not disclosed. Artifact will no longer function as a stand-alone app, and its AI-based personalization technology will be integrated throughout Yahoo, including the Yahoo News app, in the following months.

Tiger Global Management recently closed its latest venture capital fund, Private Investment Partners 16, with $2.2 billion raised. This amount fell short of the fund's initial target of $6 billion and is the smallest fundraising achieved by Tiger in almost a decade. This marks a significant change from previous years, where Tiger had successfully raised larger funds to support numerous startups.

GGV Capital is no more, as partners announce two separate brands

Two veteran investors of GGV Capital, Jenny Lee, and Jixun Foo, have renamed their Singapore-based operation to Granite Asia, while the US team is now known as Notable Capital. This comes six months after GGV Capital announced the separation of its US and Asia operations.

Slack’s Chief Product Officer steps down, leaving none of the messaging service’s top early executives remaining

Slack has confirmed that its Chief Product Officer, Noah Desai Weiss, is leaving the company. Weiss was the last remaining member of Slack's management team before Salesforce acquired it in 2020.


💰 Funding announcement highlights

Scrut Automation, a startup based in Milpitas, CA, raised a $10 million round. The company focuses on helping businesses monitor their digital security, manage risks, and ensure compliance with legal and industry regulations for data protection and security. The round was co-led by previous investors Lightspeed, MassMutual Ventures, and Endiya Partners.

Seso, a startup building software to fix farm workforces and solve agriculture’s HR issues, raised $26 million. The Series B round saw investments from Index Ventures, Bond Capital, NFX, and SV Angels.

Proxima AI, a startup that uses AI to analyze large amounts of commerce data and help businesses reduce customer acquisition costs, raised $12 million in a Series A funding round. Mucker Capital led the round, with participation from Aglae Ventures, Great Oaks Venture Partners, Data Point Capital, Broadway Venture Partners, FirstLook Partners, and Connexa Capital.

Higgsfield AI raised an $8 million seed round from Menlo Ventures, Charge Ventures, Bitkraft Ventures, K5 Tokyo Black, AI Capital Partners, and DVC. The startup’s app app enables users to create personalized video content with just a selfie.

Home From College raised $5.4 million in a seed round led by GV. The startup that has created a platform to support young professionals and college students in navigating their careers by providing resources, networking opportunities, and advice.

📚 Interesting reads of the week

This year, a record 14 people worldwide qualify for membership in the $100 Billion Club—the elite class of billionaires with 12-figure fortunes. That’s up from six last year and just one in 2020. Many of them struck it rich by starting tech companies. Check out the full list.

This handbook provides strategic advice straight from founders such as Dropbox's Drew Houston, Thumbtack's Marco Zappacosta, Vanta's Christina Cacioppo, and NerdWallet's Tim Chen. Despite their current success, they all began as novices in their respective fields, and clearly recall the challenges of scaling up.

According to Crunchbase, only seven companies founded by women in the United States became unicorns in 2023 and 2024. This is a significant drop from 2021 when numerous American companies founded by women met or surpassed the $1 billion valuation mark during a global surge in this category.

The popularization of safes have resulted in negative effects like founders bearing diluted costs, expensive legal errors and, paradoxically, higher legal expenses.

TechCrunch is launching a new series of interviews to highlight the work and achievements of women who have contributed to the AI revolution. In this edition, they speak to Kathi Vidal, an American intellectual property lawyer and former engineer currently serving as the Director of the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO).

💪 Tech mafia of the week

Highlights:

💰 Most money raised: Compound

🤑 Total money raised by the Carta Mafia: $403 million

Weekly tech mafia leaderboard

The Carta alumni network has built some amazing companies, so we took a look at the top companies.

The Carta Mafia takes the 55th spot, with 22 companies founded in total and $403 million in total raised.

PS: Are you a Carta 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.

Hercules Capital is looking for a VC Analyst.

Energy Impact Partners is looking for a VC Investor.

Flourish Ventures is looking for a VC Associate.

Spero Ventures is looking for a VC Associate.

Rockaway Capital is looking for an Investment Associate-Blockchain.

📠 Fun fact of the week

The first investors in Amazon were Jeff Bezos' parents, Jackie and Mike Bezos, who invested $245,573 in the company in 1995. Other early investors included Nick Hanauer, Tom Alburg, and John Doerr.

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