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WHERE FUNDED FOUNDERS WENT TO SCHOOL

Top-tier universities like Stanford, Harvard, MIT, and UC Berkeley consistently produce the most venture-backed startup founders.

HOW AI REDEFINES USER EXPERIENCE

AI now enables apps to understand and respond in English, shifting how we interact with software by letting users delegate tasks through voice commands.

META PLANS $15B INVESTMENT IN SCALE AI TO BUILD 'SUPERINTELLIGENCE' LAB

The deal would give Meta a 49% stake in the data-labeling startup and bring over co-founder Alexandr Wang to lead a new "superintelligence" lab aimed at outperforming OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google. The massive investment follows Llama 4's underwhelming launch, but it's unclear if the investment also includes greater access to Scale's training data created for other AI labs in addition to highly sought-after AI research talent.

MISTRAL MAGISTRAL

Mistral AI's Magistral is a multilingual reasoning model designed for domain-specific tasks, offering enhanced interpretability and traceability. Available in two versions, Magistral Small and Magistral Medium, the model excels in multilingual reasoning and speeds up responses with its Flash Answers feature. It is ideal for diverse applications, from legal research to creative writing, providing transparent reasoning crucial for compliance in regulated industries.

DIVERGING AI BETS DETAIL TWO-LANE FUTURE

Tech is spending $80 billion on AI infrastructure while skeptics say we're building another dot-com bubble. Who's winning? OpenAI doubled to $10 billion ARR in a year. Anthropic tripled to $3 billion. Random startups are hitting $100 million ARR in months. The median AI startup hits $2 million revenue in year one - that used to take years. Yes, Apple says LLMs still suck at reasoning. Yes, we might overbuild data centers. However, when the richest companies on Earth are footing the bill, their losses mean cheaper compute for everyone else.

THE ENDOWED PROGRESS EFFECT

A car wash tested two punch cards: one needed 10 stamps for a free wash, the other needed 12 but started with 2 stamps already filled. Same math, but the pre-stamped card got 2X more completions. That's the Endowed Progress Effect - we chase goals harder when we feel we've already started. Notion uses this by giving new users pre-filled templates instead of blank workspaces. Give users artificial progress and they'll finish what they think they've started.

SCALING AN AI NATIVE COMPANY

Scaling AI-native companies requires rethinking job descriptions for AI agents. An Agent Job Description (AJD) should define the desired outcomes, necessary context, security, and budget for an AI agent. The development of AI agents ranges from simple chat platforms to complex custom codes, requiring careful trade-offs between capability, complexity, and context based on the task's specificity and scale.

THE IPO DOOR IS SWINGING OPEN

Recent IPOs from CoreWeave and Circle signal an open IPO market, with both companies displaying significant investor interest and high valuations. CoreWeave achieved a $20 billion valuation, while Circle's shares jumped 168% on its first trading day. This trend indicates strong investor appetite for high-growth, category-defining companies despite economic uncertainties.

Secure your AI agents today with WorkOS.

INCONVO

Conversational analytics for developers.

BILANC

Bilanc is an AI-powered platform that tracks and measures the impact of AI tools on developer productivity using insights from merged pull requests.

AGENT STIMULATE

Agent Simulate is a testing platform that allows developers to simulate AI agents with thousands of digital humans, enabling faster debugging and safer deployment.

VENTURE CAPITAL FINANCING ROLL-UP M&A, HOPING FOR AI SYNERGIES

VCs are starting to buy up traditional businesses and juice them with AI. It's the old private equity roll-up strategy - buy lots of small companies, merge them, cut costs - but with a Silicon Valley twist. Instead of using debt like PE firms do (which is expensive at 5% rates), VCs are using their massive cash piles to acquire service businesses and transform them.

DANGERS OF ARR VS GAAP REVENUE

There's "revenue" and then there's revenue - and they can be wildly different numbers. ARR is whatever companies want it to be, while GAAP revenue follows actual accounting rules. Example: a company showing 50% ARR growth might report 67% GAAP revenue growth - a 17-point gap. Why? GAAP lags because it recognizes money as delivered, not when signed. With AI scrambling pricing models, these gaps are getting dangerous. Less than 1/3 of public companies even disclose ARR anymore.

ROY BAHAT TALKS BLOOMBERG BETA'S NEW $75M FUND

Bloomberg Beta has announced its fifth $75M fund to invest in early-stage startups. The firm maintains its consistent strategy of supporting founders with innovative ideas without seeking to reinvent VC. Under partners Roy Bahat, James Cham, and Karin Klein, Bloomberg Beta has helped create 93 millionaire founders, focusing on meaningful startup collaborations.

PRE-TRACTION

The most successful raises from pre-seed founders build leverage with "pre-traction" - waitlists, design partners, or domain expertise proving demand exists before revenue does.

ON THE ABSURDITY OF "DEFINING" A DESIRED CULTURE

PATRICK COLLISON RECOUNTS STRIPE'S DARKEST MOMENT

Patrick Collison's darkest moment came six months in when a data center switch failed at 4 am and took down Stripe's entire payments API for 8 hours.

THE IPO DOOR IS SWINGING OPEN

The IPO market just cracked open with two unlikely heroes: a GPU infrastructure company and a stablecoin issuer. CoreWeave went public in March and shot up 300% on $1 billion quarterly revenue, while Circle jumped 168% on its first trading day to an $18 billion market cap.

HOW TO SPOT ERR

Many SaaS companies think they have stable recurring revenue when they actually have experimental revenue that could vanish overnight. McDonald's canceling its AI drive-thru instantly killed vendor revenue - a perfect example of ERR (Experimental Run Rate) vs real ARR. The warning signs are everywhere and mistaking ERR for ARR leads to overhiring, burning cash, and fundraising at valuations you can't grow into.

NAIL YOUR RAISE: LURING VCS (60 MINUTE VIDEO)

Vinod Khosla offers a masterclass on pitching to VCs that focuses on investor expectations and crafting a compelling narrative.

HOW PLAID FOUND PULL

Plaid wasted months building finance apps nobody wanted until Venmo suffered through a painful purchasing process to buy its bank connection backend. That pain proved the demand was real. While Venmo was still buying, Plaid pitched 15 other fintechs with a simple question: "Venmo doesn't want to manage bank integrations themselves - how are you different?" Turns out nobody was different - they all bought Plaid's janky automations because building connections to thousands of banks themselves was impossible.

SHOULD YOU "RENT" AN EXEC FOR YOUR STARTUP?

A wave of senior execs are ditching full-time work to become "fractional" leaders - part-time operators who embed in startups to solve specific problems. You can tap them to close enterprise deals when you have no sales leader and build financial models before you can afford a CFO. The real unlock though is that watching them do the job teaches you exactly what to look for when you finally hire full-time.

HOW I'D RUN A SAAS PRICING PROJECT FROM SCRATCH

Most startup SaaS companies think about pricing by raising prices 20% and crossing their fingers. However, there are actually different strategies depending on your company stage – the 20% approach can work for new companies that need simple pricing that works, but as you grow, your pricing needs to adapt in this specific order: how many plans you offer, when customers hit usage limits, what features cost extra, and only then the actual prices.

VENN IN ACTION

UNUSUAL AI

Drives pipeline by delivering personalized content to each website visitor.

EXTROVERT

Extrovert helps you engage prospects on LinkedIn by tracking posts, identifying key conversations with AI, and enabling your team to comment thoughtfully at scale.

POTPIE AI

Potpie AI lets you create custom AI agents that handle engineering tasks like debugging, system design, and onboarding with precision, using context from your own codebase.

THE COMPLEXITY CRISIS

AI makes building apps so easy that companies will soon juggle thousands of them - but they all require connecting to legacy systems nobody can replace. This creates a massive mess that someone has to fix. Accenture is already winning by helping companies deal with this chaos. The big money may not be in building another app - it's in being the middleman who connects everything.

CONTEXT, COLLABORATION, INTENT, AND INVESTMENT

Most companies waste incredible energy chasing quarterly goals while ignoring the foundational models that actually drive success. One company discovered that 20 teams had built business cases to move the same metric - if all succeeded, it would have increased 500%, which was physically impossible. The fix isn't better planning but understanding four basics: Context (customer journeys and capability maps), Intent (what you're trying to achieve), Collaboration (how teams work together), and Investment (where you put resources).

HOW BLOCKCHAIN COULD REVOLUTIONIZE VENTURE CAPITAL AND PRIVATE EQUITY

Blockchain could revolutionize venture capital by using tokenization, smart contracts, and DeFi to increase transparency, efficiency, and accessibility. Tokenization allows fractional ownership and liquidity, while smart contracts automate transactions and compliance. However, challenges such as regulatory ambiguity and technical risks remain significant hurdles.

HOW TO STOP HOLDING YOURSELF BACK

Power isn't negative - it impacts and influences, yet people often hand it away with "free passes" that hold them back.

HOW STARTUPS CAN TREND-JACK THE TIMELINE WITH MEMES

Trend-jacking with memes offers startups a fast and effective way to gain attention by integrating into trending topics.

MATCHING FUNDING WITH ENTREPRENEUR AMBITIONS

A company with over 1,000 customers and solid growth is contemplating its next financing round.

WHAT IT TAKES TO IPO IN 2025

Monday.com's CFO joined just 4 months before its 2021 IPO with zero public company experience, yet helped guide it to become one of only 9 cloud companies still above their IPO price. With IPO markets reopening but demanding $500M+ ARR for $5B valuations, today's bar is higher than ever. Success means telling your story well to build credibility, being a strategic partner rather than a budget gatekeeper, and using data to plan 24-48 months ahead.

DEFENSE TECH UNICORN ANDURIL POWERS UP WITH $2.5B AT $30.5B VALUATION

Anduril Industries raised $2.5 billion in Series G funding, doubling its valuation to $30.5 billion. Founders Fund led the round, contributing $1 billion. The funding positions Anduril to address manufacturing and production challenges as it continues to expand.

LEADERS, STOP ACCIDENTALLY SCARING YOUR TEAM

When you say something negative won't happen, people still picture the negative thing. A CEO tried to reassure employees by saying no one would get laid off that day - and everyone immediately got worried. Leaders often create fear by accident when trying to address concerns. Instead of saying what won't go wrong, focus on what's going right.

YEARS OF EVIDENCE

"Years of experience" is a terrible hiring standard. Someone can do something for years and have nothing to show for it. Look for "years of evidence" instead - people with deep examples of work, piles of stuff they've made, collections of output they're proud to share. Someone new to their career might have little formal experience, but if they've been loving this work for a long time, they likely have hobby projects or examples they can't wait to show off. Titles and tenure don't matter. The work does.

DOES AI THREATEN VERTICAL SAAS?

The "AI will kill vertical software" prediction started with David Friedberg on the All In podcast. He saw an engineer at his company replicate a $50k supply chain tool and figured this would happen everywhere. However, this misses the point - it's easy to build simple tools in a vacuum, but real products have way more defensibility. Maybe this just shows which types of SaaS are actually at risk: narrow tools that are easy to copy, services AI can do better, and old companies that don't adapt.

Read the Delve case study.

SYNTHETIQ

Synthetiq is a social media simulation tool that lets creators A/B test and optimize content before publishing.

COGNEE

cognee is an open-source memory layer for AI agents that builds knowledge graphs for accurate, context-aware responses.

PIPPIT AI

Pippit AI is a creative agent that generates marketing videos and images to streamline content production.

AI IS HERE FOR PLUMBERS AND ELECTRICIANS. WILL IT TRANSFORM HOME SERVICES?

San Francisco startup Netic raised $20M to bring AI appointment booking, customer outreach, and sales optimization to home-services businesses. Its generative AI platform predicts service needs, prioritizes incoming jobs, and integrates with trade management software to boost technician efficiency. While adoption is rising, human technicians remain essential, with AI handling about 20% of calls at firms like Hoffmann Brothers.

FOUNDER COMMUNITIES

Building a company can be extremely lonely, which is why finding founder communities you align with can make all the difference. Many of these communities will also offer founder retreats, which are a great way to unplug and reset from the day-to-day grind.

WHY RACING TO $100M ARR DOESN'T ACTUALLY PREDICT GENERATIONAL OUTCOMES FROM SCALE VENTURE PARTNERS

Scale Venture Partners' data shows no significant correlation between rapid achievement of $100M ARR and eventual enterprise value. Companies that take longer to reach this milestone often achieve higher valuations, emphasizing the importance of sustainable growth. Founders and investors should prioritize fundamentals, durable growth, and strategic fit over mere speed.