Good morning 👋
Slow news day for venture capital, so the biggest story of the day is Trump’s new VP pick, J.D. Vance.
He’s a protégé of Peter Thiel, a former marine, a former VC, and he is a rare politician with real views on the current state of technology.
We have a few pieces below on his stance on open AI along with his rationale for crypto support and adoption.
P.S. We have a deal flow report going out to premium subs this Sunday.
TL;DR:
HEADLINES
Trump’s VP pick is pro-tech 📈
Trump V.P. pick J.D. Vance praised for comments seemingly in support of open source AI (Venturebeat)
Trump’s VP pick is the first ever ‘bitcoiner’ on a presidential ticket (The Independent)
Musk plans to give $45m a month to new pro-Trump PAC (Reuters)
Marc Andreessen, Ben Horowitz Say They Plan to Donate to Trump PAC (The Information)
Pro rata rights: The overlooked superpower of VCs and their LPs (Venture Capital Journal)
Exa raises $17M from Lightspeed, Nvidia, Y Combinator to build a Google for AIs (TechCrunch)\
Microsoft’s new AI system ‘SpreadsheetLLM’ unlocks insights from spreadsheets, boosting enterprise productivity (VentureBeat)
Docyt AI Unveils GARY, the World’s First AI Bookkeeper (VentureBeat)
LINKS
🤖 No SaaS! How AI Agents Will Change Software Pricing: Tomas Tunguz gives his two cents
⑃ Crucible Moments: The Pivotal Decisions That Define Us: Roelof Brotha gives his perspective on how small things make massive impacts
🎾 It’s Only a Point: Alfred Lin + Roger Federer gives perspective
🔎 Traits I look for in founders: Good list
📶 Do Startup Valuations Matter for Investment Returns? Backed by some AngelList data
✍️ Writing Well: Julian Shapiro breaks down his writing process
⛔️ The Dangerous Seduction of the Lifetime Value (LTV) Formula: LTV isn’t always what you think it is
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FUNDS
Name | Fund Size | Fund Number |
|---|---|---|
$1b | V | |
$98.217m | I | |
$160m | V | |
$185.521m | I | |
$18.552m | I | |
$65m | III |
P.S. 👉 If you’re looking to get a new VC job …
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Lucky for you, we’ve already collected all of that information for you.
STARTUPS (Together with Harmonic)
a16z companies that have raised <$2m and were started after 2022 🔎
Name | Description |
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Track and unlock the resale value of your stuff | |
Reverse your diabetes with a game | |
Authenticating products across |
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RECS
The Early: A new place for junior VC resources and content
High Yield Harry: Where we get our favorite finance memes
Mainstreet Memos: Democratizing venture, one newsletter at a time
POLL
How do you think AI agents will change software pricing?
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:
Which statement is the MOST believable?
🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️ "AGI is going to change everything, and none of us are going to have jobs." (7)
🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ "AI is WAY too overhyped, and most of the dollars spent today will be wasted." (5)
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 "Nobody knows what will happen, but the only predictable way to make money is to invest in infrastructure (chips, GPUs, etc.)." (15)
27 Votes
