PIN'd

A newsletter for communities, investors, angels, and founders

Author

Power in Numbers
December 01, 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

Social media giant Reddit is once again reportedly testing the IPO waters. The San Francisco-based company, co-founded by Steve Huffman, Aaron Swartz and Alexis Ohanian in 2005, is considering going public as early as the first quarter, sources told Bloomberg.

Fast fashion giant Shein has reportedly lodged confidential paperwork with US securities regulators, informing them of an intention to go public in the US. The listing would likely be the largest initial public offering (IPO) in years.

Led by former Sequoia partner Michael Abramson, two-year-old Newlands already holds billions in equities like Alphabet, Amazon and Meta alongside a smattering of early-stage startup bets.

November filing by Newlands reported its public portfolio as holding $9.4 billion in assets to close the third quarter, flat from the previous quarter. The fund’s biggest positions: nearly $3 billion in shares of Meta, Koum’s former employer; a nearly $1 billion stake in Elon Musk’s Tesla; $800 million-plus positions in Alphabet and Amazon, and a $500 million-plus position in DoorDash.

Tola Capital, investing in AI-enabled enterprise software, is the latest venture capital firm to announce its new fund, securing $230 million in capital commitments for its third fund, raising the largest amount to date.

California Governor Gavin Newsom signed into law Senate Bill 54, titled Fair Investment Practices by Investment Advisers (the "New Diversity Reporting Law"), which requires "venture capital companies" with sufficient ties to California to collect, and annually report, the demographic information of the "founding team members" at the companies they invested in during the prior year.


💰 Funding announcement highlights

Expanso, a startup founded this year whose open source platform is designed to assist companies in processing data at the edge, raised a $7.5 million seed round co-led by General Catalyst and Hetz Ventures, with participation from Array Ventures.

CoordinateHQ, a Redwood City, CA-based project management system for client service organizations, raised $5.5 million in seed funding from Initialized and Webb Investment Network.

Wind, a startup whose crypto wallet is designed for the average consumer and lets users send and receive payments, store their crypto, and exchange crypto for regular money, raised a $3.8 million pre-seed round co-led by Global Founders Capital and Spartan Group, with Saison Capital, Alumni Ventures, and Tiny VC also joining in.

Revela, a Detroit, MI-based provider of a property management solution, raised $9 million in Series A funding from FirstMark Capital, Detroit Venture Partners, MetaProp, and Assurant Ventures.

Second Front Systems, a Wilmington, DE-based public-benefit software company accelerating the delivery of mission-critical software solutions to the government, raised $40 million in Series B funding. NEA led the round, with previous investors Moore Strategic Ventures and AE Industrial Partners HorizonX also contributing.

📚 Interesting reads of the week

A look into the current moment we find ourselves in as it relates to the startup funding environment.

The startup accelerator launched a generation of software companies. As the rate of new internet giants slows down, the next technological revolution will need to be sought elsewhere.

“Obviously, I really loved the company and had poured my life force into this for the last four and a half years full time, but really longer than that with most of my time. And we’re making such great progress on the mission that I care so much about, the mission of safe and beneficial AGI.” Check out the full interview with Sam the Man.

The story of this make-believe tech startup is well covered. And while WeWork’s founder/CEO Adam Neumann was deeply problematic, the story of WeWork’s failure is a different tale.

The name of the game in marketing and advertising technology right now is work that finds its ideal audience as quickly, creatively, and effectively as possible.

This peek into the future includes fighting digital advertising fraud; using AI to lower the cost of creative and effective ads; filling Disney’s entire media ecosystem with privacy-focused, personalized ads; and a new generative AI platform that makes content for enterprise brands in their own voice and tone at scale.

🚀 PIN product launches

We are excited to announce new features on PIN:

Custom carry & fees

Club leaders on PIN now have the option to set custom fees and carry for their members, and view the assigned fee/carry for each member from their dashboard. This gives club leaders greater transparency and flexibility on customizing the fee/carry schedule for their group.

Club documents signing re-design

All club members can now review, sign, and view their club agreements directly in the PIN portal for a more seamless onboarding experience. By moving away from a third-party e-signing provider, we can now quickly and smoothly apply changes that leaders want to make to their agreements, and reduce lags and downtimes in document generation.

💪 Tech Mafia of the week

Highlights:

💰 Most money raised: Accela

⭐ Startup to keep an eye on: Runway Health

🤑 Total money raised by the Adobe Mafia: $2.7 billion

Weekly tech mafia leaderboard

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

The Adobe Mafia takes the 23rd spot, with 257 companies founded in total and $2.7 billion raised.

PS: Are you an Adobe 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.

Plug and Play is looking for a Ventures Analyst.

M13 is looking for a VP of Finance.

Techstars is looking for an Investment Associate.

500 Global is looking for an Investment Relations Associate.

Adams Street is looking for a Investment Analyst.

📠 Fun fact of the week

The term decacorn is used to describe a private startup that has been valued at $10 billion or more. The top 3 decacorns are SpaceX, Stripe, and goPuff.

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