What a week, everyone.
Two full days of Y Combinator demo day activity kept us busy, but the latest accelerator cohort’s launch was far from the only big story in startup-land.
Then to close out, we chatted through the impending Ibotta and Rubrik IPOs.
The latter deal could provide a fascinating heat-check for unprofitable unicorns that need to find some sort of exit, and quickly.
All told we chatted through startups from their very earliest form all the way through their most mature.
DCVC wanted to raise $500M for its first climate fund, but the market had other plansDCVC’s target for its first climate-focused fund, DCVC Climate Select, has been all over the place and highlights the roller coaster venture fundraising conditions of the last few years, and how LPs aren’t as quick to back new strategies from established managers.
The Silicon Valley VC firm launched the fund in December 2022 with a $500 million target, according to a SEC filing.
This climate fund is targeting climate startups at the mid-stages where the firm thinks the climate startup ecosystem is currently underfunded, according to materials from a recent New Mexico State Investment Council meeting where the GP presented.
Tiger Global’s latest fund raised $2.2 billion of its $6 billion target.
In the first half of 2023, firms including Founders Fund, Insight Partners and TCV all slashed their fund targets.
If anything, it was the VisionOS 1.1 update that showed me that I still have the capacity to grow.
I can tell you agree from the fact that you’re carrying on a normal FaceTime call without stopping every few seconds to tell me how weird my Apple Vision Pro Persona looks.
The headset made me re-enroll my face to get this new persona – and frankly, it’s for the best.
I’m not saying my new face definitely won’t frighten children, but I don’t think they’re going to lose much sleep over it.
I should mention that even in its 1.1 iteration, the Persona feature is still technically in beta – albeit a beta open to anyone with a Vision Pro.
The organization also secured more than $90 million from other donors to support its research efforts.
This is when disagreements started between Musk and other co-founders of Tesla, OpenAI wrote in the blog post, which includes five email exchanges between Musk and OpenAI executives.
“As we discussed a for-profit structure in order to further the mission, Elon wanted us to merge with Tesla or he wanted full control.
Elon left OpenAI, saying there needed to be a relevant competitor to Google/DeepMind and that he was going to do it himself.
As Ilya told Elon: ‘As we get closer to building AI, it will make sense to start being less open.
It’s 2021 for AI while the rest of the startup market is stuck in 2024Listen here or wherever you get your podcasts.
Hello, and welcome back to Equity, the podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines.
This is our Monday show, in which we take a look back at the weekend and the week ahead.
This time ’round, there was so much in the news that we had to greatly compress everything we wanted to talk about.
Here’s the rundown:Like I said, it’s a busy start to the week!
Hackers breached Microsoft to find out what Microsoft knows about themOn Friday, Microsoft disclosed that the hacking group it calls Midnight Blizzard, also known as APT29 — and widely believed to be sponsored by the Russian government — hacked some corporate email accounts, including those of the company’s “senior leadership team and employees in our cybersecurity, legal, and other functions.”Curiously, the hackers didn’t go after customer data or the traditional corporate information they may have normally gone after.
They wanted to know more about themselves, or more specifically, they wanted to know what Microsoft knows about them, according to the company.
“The investigation indicates they were initially targeting email accounts for information related to Midnight Blizzard itself,” the company wrote in a blog post and SEC disclosure.
According to Microsoft, the hackers used a “password spray attack” — essentially brute forcing — against a legacy account, then used that account’s permissions to “to access a very small percentage of Microsoft corporate email accounts.”Microsoft did not disclose how many email accounts were breached, nor exactly what information the hackers accessed or stole.
Microsoft took advantage of news of this hack to talk about how they are going to move forward to make itself more secure.
I really wanted to hate the $2,000 earbuds I tried at CES Instead, I need to hide my credit card away so Breggz won't bankrupt meLook, anyone who is saying they’re going to start selling a pair of $2,000 studio monitor-quality in-ear headphones had better show up with the receipts.
I spoke with Breggz Audio‘s CFO, Jeroen van Els, to figure out what it was about these in-ear headphones that was so special.
From there, the company fell into a rabbit hole of creating the best possible in-ear headphones.
After the (admittedly brief) demo, van Els showed me the “transparency” mode, which meant he was able to talk to me while I was still wearing the earphones.
For professional artists needing lower latency, we’re working on solutions to be introduced later,” van Els shares.
Most tech startups are born from a few early engineers building the company’s initial product.
As those first builders work together, they begin to establish a developer culture — sometimes deliberately, sometimes not.
At Web Summit in Lisbon in November, two founders discussed the importance of building a developer culture that’s distinct from a company’s overall culture.
And we really wanted to instill that in the developer culture early on,” she said.
Ludmila Pontremolez, CTO and co-founder at Zippi, a Brazilian fintech startup, spent time as an engineer at Square prior to launching Zippi.
Hello, and welcome back to Equity, a podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines.
And that means it’s time to brush the dust off of an Equity tradition that stretches back many years: Our predictions episode!
As we try to every year, we brought in a number of voices to ensure that we covered enough ground.
This time around, we have Alex Wilhelm, Mary Ann Azevedo, Kirsten Korosec and Becca Szkutak — the people you heard the most on the podcast this year!
We had other themes mixed in as well, so find your headphones and get ready for some Hot Takes, yeah?
