📶 Trillion-dollar HODL

Say “hey” 👋 | Apply 👥 | Upgrade 📶 | Affiliate 💸 | Sponsor 📣

Good morning 👋

And happy Friday - lots of headlines to break down today.

One of the largest asset managers is getting into crypto.

Nvidia is somehow more valuable than Apple.

One of the largest ag tech companies is shutting down.

Let’s get into it all.

TL;DR:

• 📰 News

• 🔗 Links

• 🐥 Tweet

• 💰 Funds

• ™️ Startups

• 📶 Recs

• 🗳 Poll

HEADLINES
Franklin Templeton wants to HODL 👀

• Trillion-Dollar Asset Manager Franklin Templeton Explores New Crypto Fund (The Information)

• Ag insights platform Gro Intelligence is closing down (AFN)

• Nvidia Passes Apple to Become Second Most Valuable Company (The Information)

• Eyebot raised $6M for AI-powered kiosks that provide 90-second eye exams without an optometrist (TechCrunch)

• Greptile raises $4M to build an AI-fueled code base expert (TechCrunch)

• Cerberus’ inaugural venture fund targets hardware, defense bets (Pitchbook)

• Appeals court scuttles SEC’s private fund rules (Venture Capital Journal)

• The CEO of Zoom wants AI clones in meetings (The Verge)

• Katzenberg’s dream come true: $460m for new venture funds (Venture Capital Journal)

• Gizmodo has been sold for the third time in 8 years as Swiss publisher Keleops looks to expand its coverage of the tech scene (Fortune)

• ByteDance Seeks to Raise up to $800 Million for Car Marketplace Unit (The Information)

LINKS

💔 Seed Funding Is Broken: Here’s how Moonfire wants to fix it

♾️ Timeless Lessons from Great Investors: 10 habits of some of venture capital’s most successful firms

✍️ Writing a Job Description: Job description template and best practices

🗣️ Storytelling as a Craft: How to tell a compelling business story

📚 The Need to Read: You can’t think well without writing well, and you can’t write well without reading well

💡 Ideas Are the New Oil: All the new fortunes are created with ideas

📵 One Simple Way to Eliminate Distractions in a Board Meeting: It’s easier to deal with than you would think

🎓 The Class Missing from Business School: Why delegation needs to be studied more

🎟️ Are Startup Stock Options Like “Lottery Tickets”? Hunter Walk from Homebrew give his two cents

🛒 Delivering Instacart’s Next Chapter: Tackling the grocery shopping ecosystem

💰 Thousands in software savings: Our perk board for premium community members

TWEET

REFER
Earn free stuff 🎁

You can get free gifts by telling your friends and family to sign up 👇

You currently have 0 referrals, only 1 away from receiving 77 Tools That Make Up the VC Tech Stack .

Copy & paste this link: https://confluencevcweekly.beehiiv.com/subscribe?ref=PLACEHOLDER

FUNDS

P.S. 👉 If you’re looking to get a new VC job … 

We’ve found the best way to do that is to find the jobs before they become available. In our opinion, the best way to do that is to a) find who is raising funds and b) find who is the right person to contact at each of those funds.

Lucky for you, we’ve already collected all of that information for you.

Here’s how to see all the information we have on funds (plus contact info)

STARTUPS (Together with Harmonic)
Pre-seed companies from tier-one portfolios ⭐️

We use Harmonic to get thousands of data points on companies like these.

Here’s how you can do the same.

RECS

• The Early: One of our new favorites for junior VC advice

• Creator Spotlight: Where we go to learn from other creators

• Newsletter Operator: The best resource we’ve found on growing and monetizing a newsletter

Thanks for reading this far and giving us a little bit of your attention this week.

Feel free to unsubscribe whenever this stops becoming valuable to you.

- Clay

RESULTS

Here are the results from our poll question in yesterday’s piece:

Do you still pay attention to the Midas List? 

🟨🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️ Yep - it's a good proxy for who the best investors / firms are ✅ (9)

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 Nope - how are they keeping score? ❌ (13)

🟨🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️ What's the Midas List? 🤷‍♂️ (9)

31 Votes