AI Mania🔥, 5 Learnings from Figma at $1B ARR🚀, 4-Step Framework for Building Delightful Products ✨
If you're building, investing, or just trying to stay ahead of the curve, you're in the right place. Every week, we break down the latest insights, funding news, and founder-friendly gems. Just what matters. Plus, we track the freshest VC funds deploying capital so you know where the money’s moving.
Let’s get into it 👇
In-Depth Insights 🔍
AI Mania Outpaces Every Past Hype Cycle🔥
AI startups now carry $2.3T in post-money valuation, far beyond crypto or mobility peaks. With 63% of VC dollars flowing to AI, late-stage exits face unprecedented strain. [Wolf Street]
Why Retention Defines Startup Survival 📊
Andrew Chen’s 15 years of data show bad retention is nearly impossible to fix. Only products with strong early cohorts, real demand, and “a little magic” scale to breakout. [Andrew Chen]
Startup Location Strategy in 2025: Does It Still Matter? 🌍
Geography has shifted from moat to lever, with capital now flowing borderlessly. Founders win by knowing when proximity matters and by treating flexibility as a strength.
Robert Herjavec on Escaping Poverty & Building Startups 💸
From broke immigrant to Shark Tank billionaire, Herjavec shares lessons on grit and leverage. Branding, adaptability, and infrastructure-first bets define his founder playbook
Delve’s $32M Raise with Scrappy GTM Tactics 📢
Delve skipped automation and went physical with donuts, doormats, and a plane stunt. The real win was turning those moves into viral content that fueled a $32M Series A
Elon Musk’s 5-Step Algorithm for Building Anything 🚀
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Musk’s rulebook starts with questioning and deleting before simplifying and automating. The core insight: leverage comes from ruthless removal, not premature optimization. [Stop Losing the Room: The Pitch Deck Investors Can’t Ignore 💡
Chris Tottman reframes the deck as a belief system that earns a second meeting. Start with urgent problems, prove demand, highlight moats, and end with a precise ask [Chris Tottman]
5 Learnings from Figma at $1B ARR 🚀
Figma reached $1B ARR with 41% growth, 129% NDR, and $100M+ net income. The playbook: enterprise ACVs, elite NDR, strong margins, and a mid-market runway to scale.
Handling Multiple ICPs as a Solo Founder 🎯
Arvid Kahl manages 4–5 customer types by time-boxing focus and tailoring onboarding. The key: sequence ICPs, personalize messaging, and speak each segment’s language. [Bootstrapped Founder]A 4-Step Framework for Building Delightful Products ✨
Nesrine Changuel shows delight as a growth strategy, not a gimmick. Her model ties emotional motivators to product design, illustrated by Spotify and Chrome’s wins. [Lenny Rachitsky]
Trending News ⚡
Blue Origin Bets New Glenn Reuse on Moon Mission Path 🛰️
Blue Origin’s second New Glenn will carry NASA’s Mars probes, but the key test is booster recovery. A successful reuse would unlock national security payloads and power its Blue Moon lander ambitions against SpaceX and China. [ars Technicia]
OpenAI’s Sora Becomes No. 1 App in the U.S. 📲
Sora hit 56k downloads on day one and 164k in two days despite being invite-only in North America. The viral AI video app outpaced Claude, Copilot, and rivaled Grok to top the App Store. [TechCrunch]
OpenAI Finalizes $6.6B Share Sale at $500B Valuation 📈
Employees sold $6.6B in stock, cementing OpenAI as the world’s most valuable private company. Investor demand stayed strong, with tender offers used to retain talent while avoiding an IPO. [CNBC]
Vercel Raises $300M Series F at $9.3B Valuation 💰
Vercel’s $300M round, led by Accel and GIC, includes a secondary tender planned for November. The funding expands its AI Cloud, scaling v0 adoption, enterprise traction, and security-first infrastructure. [BusinessWire]Periodic Labs Raises $300M Seed to Build AI Scientists 🧪
Founded by ex-OpenAI and DeepMind leaders, Periodic Labs secured a record $300M seed. The startup is building autonomous labs where AI-driven robots run experiments, starting with new superconductors. [TechCrunch]Perplexity Launches Comet: A Browser Rebuilt Around Curiosity 🔍
Perplexity’s new Comet browser debuts free after a record-breaking waitlist. With in-browser assistants and publisher partnerships, it aims to reinvent browsing around curiosity instead of ads and funnels. [perplexity]Google Launches Gemini 2.5 Flash Image, Now GA ⚡
Gemini 2.5 Flash Image is now available via API, AI Studio, and Vertex AI. It supports multi-aspect ratios, blending, and edits at $0.039 per image, positioning Google against OpenAI and Stability in visual AI. [TestingCatalog]Hackers Claim Theft of 1B Records from Salesforce-Hosted Databases ⚠️
Hackers tied to Lapsus$, Scattered Spider, and ShinyHunters claim theft of 1B records from Salesforce-hosted data. Victims include Allianz, Google, and Stellantis, though Salesforce denies a platform breach.
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Social Media Gems 💎
Throwback: The Dotcom Bubble in Song Form 🔥
Ruben Domínguez shares a viral parody from the dotcom era that mocks startup hype. With AI at peak frenzy, he suggests a 2025 remix capturing today’s funding mania and overinflated promises.Marc Andreessen: Venture Capital is a Game of Outliers 📊
Andreessen highlights that VC returns follow a power law where one breakout startup can return an entire fund. The challenge is spotting the truly transformative idea versus one that is merely crazy.The Paradox of Venture Capital: Harder Problems, Less Funding 💥
Frontier tech in energy, biotech, and manufacturing struggles while SaaS thrives on clean benchmarks. Venture capital often avoids the hardest problems even though these could drive the biggest breakthroughs.Global Founders Powering U.S. Unicorns 🌍
Stanford research shows nearly half of U.S. unicorn founders were born abroad, spanning 65 countries. India leads with 90 founders, followed by Israel, Canada, and the U.K., proving global talent fuels American innovation.
Are Top VCs Truly Contrarian or Just Following Each Other? 📊
PitchBook finds 2 in 5 deals by top 20 firms are syndicated, raising questions about conviction versus consensus. Syndication spreads risk but may dilute alpha and blur true contrarian insight.
Speed Is the First Moat Then Comes Power ⚡
AI startups gain early advantage through speed before building lasting moats in data, distribution, and networks. Hamilton Helmer’s Seven Powers framework shows how these advantages compound over time. [Y Combinator]Venture Math 101 🧮
Andreessen emphasizes the real risk in VC is missing the breakout, not backing failures. Venture is asymmetric: you lose 1x if wrong but can gain 1000x if right, making fear of missing out costlier than failure itself. [Michael Jackson]
New Funds 💰
Touring Capital, closed $330M debut fund to back AI-driven SaaS at Series B and C.
Yu Galaxy, raised $90M to invest in startups tackling major global challenges.
55 North, held €134M first close of its inaugural quantum technology fund.
Creator Fund, raised $41M for its first European fund supporting scientific founders.
Hamilton Lane, launched a global venture capital and growth evergreen fund.
Cyberstarts, closed its second opportunity fund at $380M.
Boost VC, closed Fund 4 at $87M to back frontier tech startups.
Toyota / Woven Capital Fund II, toyota launched a strategic investment arm and unveiled Woven Capital Fund II.
European Investment Fund, invested €260M in Jolt Capital V.
Notion Capital, closed $130M growth fund to support scaling SaaS companies.
Breachway Capital, launched to back B2B software, AI, and data companies.
Presight & Shorooq, jointly launched a $100M global fund.
BECO Capital, raised $370M across two new funds.
Expeditions, raised over €100M for Fund II.
Quantum Exponential Partners, Ex-corporate investor Matt Lozman launches $350M fund for quantum tech startups.
That’s a wrap for this week.
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Your newsletter is fast-becoming my favourite read - keep up the good work!
Awesome article. I love Elon's system... MOST people are always adding new solutions, when the actual solution is almost always to remove the obstacles.