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☆ 'The music stopped': 6 founders tell how they survived this year's bursting VC funding bubble, customers unwilling to spend, and a graveyard of fallen startup peers
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-27 | by ( April Joyner | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +11 min

This year's economic caution marked a huge contrast to 2021's exuberance and record VC funding. Insider spoke with six founders about how they've handled the abrupt switch from market exuberance to economic caution. But at the same time, they said, they've sought to pounce on new opportunities created by the economic downturn. ElektraShifting landscapes, changing prioritiesAfter a year of record venture capital funding, the abrupt shift in investor sentiment hit hard in 2022, founders told Insider. Artificial intelligence startups are the latest beneficiary of VC hype, buoyed by breakthrough software tools such as DALL-E and ChatGPT.

☆ Silicon Valley is coming for your gut biome
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-23 | by ( David Ingram | David Ingram Covers Tech For Nbc News. | ) www.nbcnews.com time to read: +8 min

SAN FRANCISCO — Cryptocurrency hasn’t worked out so well for tech investors. As a consumer product, supplements are associated more with the Kardashians or Joe Rogan than with Silicon Valley. Roelof Botha, the managing partner of Sequoia Capital, one of the largest venture capital firms in the world, is among those buying in. He said there’s a “societal reawakening” about the complex biome of the human gut where hundreds of species of bacteria live. She co-wrote a review of the science this year, and said future probiotic supplements have promise compared to supplements that have been available for decades.

☆ Google's management has reportedly issued a 'code red' amid the rising popularity of the ChatGPT AI
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-21 | by ( Aaron Mok | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

Google issued a "code red" in response to the rise of AI bot ChatGPT, NYT reports. CEO Sundar Pichai redirected some teams to focus on building out AI products, per the report. The move comes as talks abound over whether ChatGPT could one day replace Google's search engine. ChatGPT "is not something that people can use reliably on a daily basis," Zoubin Ghahramani, who leads the Google's A.I. Instead, Google may focus on improving its search engine over time rather than taking it down, experts told the Times.

For startup founders and venture capitalists, the office holiday party is a December tradition. For many venture capitalists and the startup founders they invest in, December is synonymous with two things: end-of-year paperwork and office holiday parties. But this year, holiday parties in startup-land look a little different. "Align those goals with your holiday party, and you can do something powerful and cost-effective," she said. "You should maybe cut some travel, maybe you don't have a big holiday party, but that's all drop in the bucket compared to head count," he said.

He lost a Twitter poll asking whether he should remain as CEO. Musk reinstated a handful of banned journalists Saturday after he conducted a Twitter poll asking users whether he should uphold the ban. Following backlash, Twitter also quickly rolled back its decision to ban users’ promotion of links to Facebook, Instagram, Mastodon, Truth Social, Tribel, Nostr and Post accounts. Won’t happen again.”But after all that, some users are skeptical that Twitter is a platform they want to remain on. “Should I run Twitter ?” Snoop Dogg wrote in a Twitter poll Sunday.

☆ Substack is having a moment, again. But can the startup live up to its massive $650 million valuation?
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-19 | by ( Samantha Stokes | Steven Perlberg | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +17 min

He provided a place where readers could find him "in case the bird app spirals into oblivion": his Substack newsletter. The epidemiologist Eric Feigl-Ding began promoting his Substack newsletter to his 722,000 Twitter followers in early November. They have been a welcome addition, Substack writers say. Substack has also recently rolled out mentions and cross-reporting functions, where writers can mention other Substack writers and share existing posts with their audiences. The irony, of course, is that many Substack writers rely on their Twitter audiences to promote their posts.

An image of new Twitter owner Elon Musk is seen surrounded by Twitter logos in this photo illustration in Warsaw, Poland on 08 November, 2022. On Sunday, Twitter's new owner and CEO Elon Musk posted an informal poll of users of the social media platform asking if he should step down as head of the company. In court in November, Musk said, "I expect to reduce my time at Twitter and find somebody else to run Twitter over time." "The question is not finding a CEO, the question is finding a CEO who can keep Twitter alive," he wrote. Tesla's largest retail shareholder, Leo Koguan, wrote in a tweet on Dec. 14, that "Elon abandoned Tesla and Tesla has no working CEO."

☆ ChatGPT Creator OpenAI Pushes New Strategy to Gain Artificial Intelligence Edge
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-18 | by ( Berber Jin | Miles Kruppa | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

Sam Altman, as CEO of OpenAI, has led its fundraising in the race to build software that fully mirrors human intelligence and capabilities. ChatGPT, the artificial-intelligence program captivating Silicon Valley with its sophisticated prose, had its origin three years ago, when technology investor Sam Altman became chief executive of the chatbot’s developer, OpenAI. Mr. Altman decided at that time to move the OpenAI research lab away from its nonprofit roots and turn to a new strategy, as it raced to build software that could fully mirror the intelligence and capabilities of humans—what AI researchers call “artificial general intelligence.” Mr. Altman, who had built a name as president of famed startup accelerator Y Combinator, would oversee the creation of a new for-profit arm, believing OpenAI needed to become an aggressive fundraiser to meet its founding mission.

☆ The Backstory of ChatGPT Creator OpenAI
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-18 | by ( Berber Jin | Miles Kruppa | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

☆ A Y Combinator-backed startup just raised $39 million to develop new psychedelic treatments for depression
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-15 | by ( Yeji Jesse Lee | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

The company is creating psychedelic drugs that work faster and may not have hallucinogenic effects. The company just raised $39 million from investors and plans to start clinical trials next year. One of the treatments in development is called GM-1020 and is similar to ketamine, a dissociative anesthetic with hallucinogenic effects that has shown promise in treating depression. GM-2505 will have psychedelic effects, though they're expected to last just an hour. By comparison, some other psychedelic drugs in development — like psilocybin and MDMA — have hallucinatory effects that are expected to last up to 8 hours in the clinic.

☆ Check out the pitch deck the Y Combinator alum SilkChart used to raise $5.2 million from investors like SoftBank
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-07 | by ( Madeline Renbarger | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

The marketing startup SilkChart seeks to help businesses better understand their advertising data. It was in Y Combinator's spring 2022 class and says it was able to grow revenue during the program. Now, SilkChart has raised $5.2 million in funding to scale its data-analytics business. Investors include Y Combinator, SoftBank, the ad agency Dentsu, Harlem Capital, and Global Founders Capital. Check out the 12-slide pitch deck that the founders of SilkChart used to raise $5.2 million in funding:

☆ How 2 friends at Bain spotted a big compliance risk in the crypto industry — and raised $2.8 million from CRV and Y Combinator to help fix it
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-06 | by ( Stephanie Palazzolo | April Joyner | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

Argus, which makes compliance software for crypto funds and trading firms, has raised $2.8 million. After FTX's fall, crypto firms are focused on compliance but worried about costs, Argus' CEO said. To prevent insider trading, Argus checks employee trades against a list of restricted assets, looking for overlap. Although other startups, such as ComplySci, also offer financial compliance software, Rapaport says that Argus distinguishes itself through its focus on crypto, where compliance procedures are relatively new terrain. "And so they're probably not thinking, 'Can we bring on a new compliance software?'

☆ Why Silicon Valley is so hot on nuclear energy and what it means for the industry
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-02 | by ( Catherine Clifford | In Catclifford | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +13 min

Pallava Bagla | Corbis News | Getty ImagesVenture capitalists in Silicon Valley and other tech hubs are investing money in nuclear energy for the first time in history. This surge of private investment will be a positive for the industry, agrees John Parsons, an economist and lecturer at MIT. Nuclear energy is "a very complex science, and it's been supported by the federal government and at these national labs. In the 1960s and 1970s, large conglomerates constructed big nuclear power plants, and those projects often ran over budget. New generations of nuclear reactors will have different sizes, different coolants and different fuels, explained Matt Crozat, senior director of policy development at the Nuclear Energy Institute.

☆ 4 college friends turned $1 million into a New York venture-capital empire backing tech's hottest unicorns. Here's how they did it.
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-29 | by ( Darius Rafieyan | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +8 min

Founded as the side project of four college friends, Eniac Ventures has become a major player in VC. They named the firm Eniac Ventures, after the first electronic computer, developed at the University of Pennsylvania's engineering school, where the four had met. What started as the side hustle of four college buddies has become a powerhouse of the venture-capital industry, backing some of tech's hottest unicorns. And Eniac has invested alongside some of the biggest names in venture, including Y Combinator, Lightspeed Venture Partners, and New Enterprise Associates. Vasen met the Eniac partners at an event they hosted for prospective founders at a Chinese restaurant in San Francisco.

☆ Y Combinator-backed e-learning startup Female Invest acquires trading platform Gaia as it plots investing offering
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-24 | by ( Callum Burroughs | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Danish startup Female Invest has acquired trading platform Gaia as part of a push into investing. Female Invest claims to have 26,000 paying users for its platform in 89 countries. Female Invest, a Danish startup that provides educational content around investing for women, has acquired trading company Gaia. Now, the company is expanding its platform to include trading after it acquired fellow Danish startup Gaia, which focused on sustainable investments. The Y Combinator-backed startup considered building the product itself but instead opted to acquire Gaia, a company Female Invest had been tracking for a while, Hartvigsen said.

☆ VC firm IVP warns startups to 'surgically pare down expenses' with a looming recession. Here's the deck it shared with execs.
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-24 | by ( Melia Russell | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

In a new presentation, the VC firm IVP tells startup leaders to batten down the hatches. Insider has exclusive access to the firm's deck, titled, "Thriving in a Bear Market: A CFO's Guide." That has ripple effects for venture-backed, private companies that rely on outside investment to operate and grow. In the first half of 2022, venture firms raised $83 billion in new funds — the highest amount over a six-month period for the industry, according to a recent report by Silicon Valley Bank. "The market environment is definitely going to favor companies with real market differentiation," Vashee said.

☆ 100-hour workweeks and a bit of luck: How a 25-year-old CEO raised $50 million for his new drug discovery startup
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-22 | by ( Andrew Dunn | Sarah Braner | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +10 min

In June, Charm said it raised $50 million, valuing the firm at $100 million to $150 million. Charm has raised $50 million from top investorsDemis Hassabis, the CEO and a cofounder of DeepMind Technologies. In the spring, Aithani raised the $37 million million round that was announced in June, with investors like Khosla Ventures and General Catalyst joining OrbiMed and F-Prime Capital. The raise values Charm at between $100 million and $150 million, Aithani said, and brings the company's total funding to $50 million. This article was corrected on August 19 to show that Charm has raised two rounds of funding totaling $50 million.

☆ Startups trying to turn cities into carbon sinks to fight climate change have raised a record $2.2 billion this year, new report shows
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-22 | by ( Tasmin Lockwood | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +6 min

Green construction startups have raised a record $2.2 billion in 2022, per VC firm A/O PropTech. The construction and operation of buildings account for 37% of global CO2 emissions from energy use, according to the UN. The adoption of bio-based materials, such as wood, and a circular approach to construction can help cities become carbon sinks, the report stated. A carbon sink is when something can store more carbon emissions than it produces. Most building materials are currently "down-cycled" and used for things like filling potholes, she added.

☆ How OneSchema, a Y Combinator-backed data-importing startup, raised $6.3 million from Sequoia and General Catalyst without a pitch deck
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-16 | by ( Stephanie Palazzolo | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Here's how OneSchema raised $6.3 million from General Catalyst and Sequoia without a pitch deck. Luo's experience inspired him to start OneSchema alongside his cofounder, Christina Gilbert, to try to streamline the data-importing process for companies. The startup recently raised a $6.3 million seed round led by General Catalyst with participation from Sequoia Capital, Y Combinator, Elad Gil, and Contrary Capital. Because of inbound investor interest, OneSchema was able to raise its seed round without a pitch deck, Gilbert told Insider. A decade ago, many might have argued that OneSchema's focus would someday become obsolete because of the development of automated methods to transfer data, Gilbert told Insider.

☆ The rise of Snowflake created a hole in Salesforce's long-dominant ecosystem, and now startups are rushing in to seize the opportunity
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-14 | by ( Matthew Lynley | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +6 min

A new category called "reverse ETL" is emerging as startups race to fill a gap created by Snowflake. But in recent years, a substantial shift has emerged in the way companies manage their data, dovetailing with the rise of cloud providers like Snowflake and Databricks. How reverse ETL was born to fill a hole that Salesforce left wide openThe notion of a reverse-ETL pipeline isn't necessarily new. The future of reverse ETL might not be where it startedMany investors who did not invest in reverse ETL who spoke with Insider said they were surprised the friction was so large that it was able to support a single company, much less three. "We partner with great tools like Hightouch and Census for reverse ETL to SaaS applications."

☆ How the same mistake led to thousands of layoffs across the Tech industry
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-11 | by ( Matt Weinberger | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

Tech CEOs all made the same dumb mistake, and it's cost thousands of jobs. In his first remarks to Twitter employees, Musk said that the service's success is far from guaranteed and that bankruptcy is an option. Meta insiders say they have little to no visibility into who, exactly, got let go in the culling of 11,000 jobs. Shopping on social media is the wave of the future; just ask Elon Musk. Keep updated with the latest tech news throughout your day by checking out The Refresh from Insider, a dynamic audio news brief from the Insider newsroom.

☆ FTX's blowup is a turning point for Wall Street's crypto adoption journey
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-11 | by ( Dan Defrancesco | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +6 min

But first, where does Wall Street go from here? A warning sign for Wall Street to get out now before it's in too deep. Insider's Rebecca Ungarino and Danielle Walker examined what the knock-on effects of FTX's blowup mean for Wall Street's crypto plans. A key part of Wall Street's adoption of crypto was working with intermediaries bridging the gap between the two worlds. Read more on how FTX's blow up might impact Wall Street' long-term crypto plans.

☆ Meet the 19 Y Combinator group partners and visiting advisors coaching the famed incubator's Winter 2023 startup class
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-10 | by ( Madeline Renbarger | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Y Combinator assigns a group partner or visiting group partner to founders in its cohorts. YC group partners are expert advisors from many fields like biotech, fintech, and data analytics. Here are 19 group partners and visiting group partners coaching founders in the Winter '23 lineup. Visiting group partners, who work with Y Combinator on a temporary basis, also advise the startups. Many group partners and visiting group partners have gone through the accelerator themselves in past years as startup founders.

☆ Burger King's owner just opened a delivery-focused food hall where customers can order from Popeyes, Firehouse Subs, and other chains. The company is one of many expanding the ghost kitchen model to r
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-08 | by ( Nancy Luna | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +13 min

Burger King's owner recently opened its first ghost kitchen, or digital food hall, in Miami. And recently, the parent of Burger King, Restaurant Brands International, opened its first ghost kitchen in Miami. Wonder is part ghost kitchen, part food delivery van, part meal-kit provider. These ghost kitchens on wheels, outfitted with cooking equipment and chefs, can be hailed through an app. The company, which ended its partnership with Miami-based Reef Technology this year, is not labeling the facility as a ghost kitchen.

☆ When he's not starring on Love is Blind, Berkeley Haas' Sikiru 'SK' Alagbada likes to invest in startups. Here's what he looks for.
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-07 | by ( Madeline Renbarger | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +6 min

"Love Is Blind" contestant Sikiru "SK" Alagbada got into UC Berkeley's MBA program in 2021. Alagbada worked as a data engineer and is now the co-chair of LAUNCH, the UC startup accelerator. "It's almost like a mini-YC," he said, referring to the famous Silicon Valley startup accelerator, Y Combinator. He looks for startups that have a clear "founder-market fit," whether it's in terms of technical expertise or a strong network, Alagbada told Insider. When it comes to his personal investing, Alagbada prioritizes startups based in Africa.

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