Monetization Models for AI💰, The Great Decoupling🔍, VC Fund Scorecard 📊

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Jun 21, 2025

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—no fluff, just what matters. Plus, we track the freshest VC funds deploying capital so you know where the money’s moving.

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In-Depth Insights 🔍

Monetization Models for AI, Demystified💰
Hybrid pricing is taking over. Here's how to design subscription + usage models that don’t just look good on paper - but scale with your users. Choose the right metric. Bake it into your stack. Monetize like a pro. [m3ter Blog]
Different Kinds of Smart 🧠
Morgan Housel goes beyond IQ. Think storytelling, survival instincts, and the kind of wisdom you only get from losing a billion dollars. [Collab Fund]
Microsoft’s Code Whisperer 💻
Meet Code Researcher: an autonomous agent that reads commit histories like bedtime stories and debugs complex systems with surgical memory. Think GPT meets Git. [Mark Tech Post]
The Half-Life of AI Agents ⏳
Toby Ord says agents don’t fail suddenly - they decay. Each task compounds risk like radioactive waste. Your AI's reliability? It might just have a timer on it. [arXiv]
The Great Decoupling (or Why Your Clicks Are Down and Impressions Up) 🔍
AI Overviews are eating your traffic. Google’s showing more - but sending less. Here’s how to spot it and what to do next. [ahrefsblog]
Expert Generalists Are Having a Moment 🧑‍💻🧠📚🔄
Deep skill. Broad curiosity. Zero ego. Thoughtworks explains why hybrid minds - “expert generalists” - are the backbone of modern AI teams. [MartinFowler.com]

Q1 Public Cloud Earnings in 3 Charts 📊
ARR is cooling. Guidance is mid. But the strongest players? Still expanding. Jamin Ball breaks down what private SaaS founders should actually care about. [Jamin Ball]
Micromanagement Done Right 🧩
Startups that scale don’t avoid details - they obsess over the right ones. Leaders from Stripe, Apple, and Rippling explain how to micromanage without being that guy. [First Post]
Why Buyers Don’t Buy (and How to Nudge Them) 🛒
Blame it on fear. Or regret. Or both. This breakdown of buyer psychology shows how to break hesitation loops with micro-conversions and confidence cues. [CK Archive]
The Exit-Ready Org 🧾
PE buyers don’t want stability. They want scalability. CJ Gustafson shows how to build a company that’s always ready to sell - without actually selling your soul. [CJ Gustafson]

Social Media Gems 💎

OpenAI CEO Just Torched Meta 🔥
Zero filters. OpenAI’s chief calls out Meta for chasing clout over craft - slamming its culture, innovation pipeline, and aggressive talent poaching. Brutal.
Carta Drops Q1 VC Fund Scorecard 📊
TVPI, DPI, and fund velocity across 2,500+ U.S. firms. If you breathe venture, this is your new bedtime reading.
Seed 100: Early-Stage Avengers Assembled 🎯
The boldest seed investors of 2025 are here - and they’re backing what you’ll wish you thought of first.

YC Fumbled the GenAI Bag ❌
They backed hundreds. Not one GenAI unicorn. This teardown breaks down what went wrong - and what they missed.

Private Equity = GTM Cheat Code 📞
Smart SaaS GTM teams are skipping the line - leveraging PE networks for warm intros, co-selling power, and unfair distribution edges.

SaaS Growth Is Getting Expensive… and Dangerous 🚨
New data says it loud: most SaaS firms are renting growth, not earning it. CAC is up. Margins are down. Time to tighten the GTM belt.

New Funds 💰

Parkwalk and Northern Gritstone launch the £215M Northern Universities Venture Fund to support spinouts across northern UK universities.
Altitude Accelerator unveils a new investor fund to back early-stage tech ventures in Canada.
Lioncrest Ventures rolls out a $100M multi-strategy platform focusing on both equity and credit investments.
Med Fine Capital closes a new USD-denominated fund aimed at growth-stage healthcare startups.
JETRO and Coolwater Capital launch the second edition of their Emerging VC Fund Accelerator program to boost Japan’s startup ecosystem.
Realyze Ventures announces €50M first close for its debut healthtech-focused venture fund.
Biotope Ventures secures $5M in the first close of its second fund, targeting climate and biodiversity tech.
Orbit Capital launches €100M venture debt fund to power tech scaleups across Central and Eastern Europe.

That’s a wrap for this week.

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