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A newsletter for communities, investors, angels, and founders
Power in Numbers
March 22, 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!
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
Saudi Arabia is reportedly planning to create a $40 billion investment fund for artificial intelligence. The country's Public Investment Fund is exploring a partnership with Andreessen Horowitz to oversee the AI investments, with other venture capitalists also participating. If the fund goes ahead, it would make Saudi Arabia the world's largest investor in AI.
Marc Andreessen, the renowned co-founder of Netscape and venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, and his wife are selling their Atherton residence for $33.37 million. The 12,200-square-foot estate includes a main residence, guesthouse, office, and studio. The couple is moving to Southern California after building a property portfolio worth over $250 million in Malibu.
Microsoft has appointed Mustafa Suleyman, the co-founder of DeepMind and the CEO of Inflection AI, to lead its consumer artificial intelligence division. Suleyman founded Inflection AI in 2022 alongside Silicon Valley investor Reid Hoffman and Karén Simonyan. Last June, the company raised $1.3 billion, valuing it at $4 billion.
Food delivery startup Wonder, based in NYC, completed a $700M funding round. The startup currently has 11 locations and serves fast-cooked meals by chefs such as Bobby Flay and Michael Symon. All of Wonder's "major" existing shareholders participated in the round: NEA, GV, Accel, Bain Capital Ventures, Forerunner, Alpine, and Harmony.
BeReal app has ten months of funds left, according to the information shared with employees at a February all-hands meeting. Despite having a head count of only 60, the server costs are high, forcing leadership to make the app more appealing to investors. BeReal has 40 million monthly active users and 25 million daily active users, up from 20 million in 2022. However, sources claim investors are not impressed, and funding is difficult to come by.
💰 Funding announcement highlights
Superlinked, a San Francisco-based startup that provides data engineers with a tool to convert diverse data types into vector embeddings for machine learning and AI applications, has raised $9.5 million in seed funding. Index Ventures led the round, which included other investors such as Theory Ventures, 20Sales, and Firestreak.
Mobly, a one-year-old startup that offers a mobile app to help businesses capture and manage leads during events, raised $2.5 million in seed funding. The round was led by Peterson Ventures, with VITALIZE Venture Capital, Peak Ventures, Tenzing Capital, Upstream Ventures, and Service Provider Capital participating.
Anima, a three-year-old startup based in London that offers a platform to automate different healthcare processes, including administrative tasks, patient engagement, and care coordination, raised a $12 million Series A round. Molten Ventures was the lead dealmaker. Previous investors, such as Hummingbird Ventures, Amino Collective, and Y Combinator, also participated in the funding.
TigerEye, a 3-year-old startup in San Francisco that offers AI-powered strategic planning and execution software that helps businesses with their go-to-market strategies, raised $35 million. Y Combinator, Initialized Capital, and Next47 were part of the investors.
Quilt, a startup that creates AI assistants for sales engineers, solutions architects, and consultants, has raised $2.5 million in a seed round led by Sequoia Capital.
📚 Interesting reads of the week
New post by Paul Graham about a talk to a group of 14 and 15-year-olds on what they can do now if they are interested in starting a startup in the future.
Transcript of the second episode of the Lex Fridman Podcast with Sam Altman.
In this live interview at SXSW, Dylan Field, Figma’s CEO, discusses software distribution, the future of the web, AI, and, of course, the failed Adobe deal.
All about the pros and cons of pre-IPO investing, which can provide growth opportunities in emerging companies, diversify your portfolio, and help you navigate the market confidently.
In this interview, Martin Mignot and Dominic Jacquesson from Index reflect on their new book “Scaling through chaos,” which offers guidance to startup founders on how to navigate the tumultuous early days of growing their businesses.
In this podcast interview with Amy Buechler for Y Combinator, she reviews founders’ psychological patterns, the pitfalls of starting a company, and the tools to fix those challenges. She also shared insights on how to enjoy the entrepreneurial ride despite the statistical likelihood of failure.
💪 Tech mafia of the week
Highlights:
💰 Most money raised: Sapphire Digital
🤑 Total money raised by the Plaid Mafia: $231 million
Weekly tech mafia leaderboard
The TIME alumni network has built some amazing companies, so we took a look at the top companies.
The TIME Mafia takes the 58th spot, with 39 companies founded in total and $231 million in total raised.
PS: Are you a TIME 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
.@lennysan is a former Product Lead at Airbnb.
He makes more than $2 million per year on his newsletter.
He is also one of the most active angel investors in the US.
These are his top angel investments:
🚀 @figma ($10 billion valuation)
🚀 @faire_wholesale ($12.59 billion… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…
— PIN (@getpinxyz)
2:47 PM • Mar 19, 2024
💼 Who’s hiring in VC?
Looking to get into VC? Below are this week’s curated VC job openings.
Endeavor is looking for a Senior VC Associate.
Morgan Health Ventures is looking for a VC Vice President.
M12 is looking for a Managing VC Partner.
xVentures is looking for a Global VC Head.
Seven Seven Six is looking for a VC Manager.
📠 Fun fact of the week
WhatsApp was founded by Brian Acton and Jan Koum, both former employees of Yahoo, in 2009, and by 2013, it had grown so significantly that it was processing 50 billion messages every day? At the time of this massive messaging volume, WhatsApp had only 55 employees.
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