Venture Capital

🦄 Top unicorns by revenue multiple 7x is the standard SaaS multiple — but AI startups are way above that. Second place goes to Bolt (the fintech, not the taxi app). They raised at a $11B valuation in 2021–22. That number never moved — but the revenue didn’t grow either.

Still looks like a unicorn. Just don’t check the denominator.

🚀How Notion went from failure to 30M+ users In 2015, Notion was nearly shut down.

The first version was clunky, confusing — and funds were running out. Only a few months left to fix it.

What they changed: 🔥Moved to Kyoto to rethink from scratch 🔥Rebuilt the product around flexible “building blocks” 🔥 Made the interface clean, visual, self-explanatory Growth playbook: 🔄 Relaunched in 2018 with a simple freemium model 🔄 Community shared templates that showcased use cases 🔄 Viral growth through teams and professionals 🔄 Remote work boom in 2020+ accelerated adoption 🔄 Today: 30M+ users, hundreds of integrations, and a "must-have" label What worked: 1) Design as a language: the product explains itself 2) Community-led growth: templates, guides, and real workflows 3) Easy to start, clear reason to pay Notion didn’t get lucky. It focused, rebuilt, and let users drive the momentum.

📈 Cognition acquires Windsurf’s core team and product After Google took Windsurf’s CEO and top researchers in a $2.4B deal, Cognition moves fast to buy the rest — including IP, product, and ~250 employees. 🟡 Cognition is integrating Windsurf’s AI IDE into its own AI engineer, Devin 🟡 Windsurf had 350+ enterprise clients, hundreds of thousands of users 🟡 ARR reached $82M before the breakup 🟡 OpenAI’s $3B offer expired prior to Google’s acquisition 🟡 The remaining Windsurf team joins Cognition for continued product development

A rare split-acquisition in AI: Google got the researchers, but Cognition walked away with the engine and the builders.

💵SoftBank's $200B Lesson in Patience In 2019, SoftBank sold its entire 4.9% stake in Nvidia for $6B.

That same stake today would be worth $200B.

Sometimes the only strategy you need is patience, conviction — and no seppuku.

💎 Hidden Gems in Claude Code: How to unlock 125x more context Almost no one knows this — Claude Code responds differently depending on how you phrase your prompt. Say “think” and it uses 1K tokens. Say “ultrathink” or “megathink” — and it loads 128K tokens. That’s 125x deeper reasoning for the same question. ⚙️ Prompt triggers that actually work: • “think” or “think about” — for fast ideas • “think hard” — for complex problems • “think deeply” — for system design • “ultrathink” — for full-stack deep dives This isn’t magic — it’s engineered behavior. Claude Code is wired to allocate different compute depending on trigger words. Example:

❌ Bad: “Can you check what I can improve in my app?” ✅ Good: “ultrathink about JavaScript optimization in frontend component X”

This only works in Claude Code, not in regular Claude. Bonus 👇 Here’s a great Claude Code guide that saves hours of trial and error. Who’s already tested prompt triggers in Claude Code? What worked best for you?

✍️ Sequoia and the silent playbook Sequoia’s go-to crisis move? Say nothing and wait. After partner Shaun Maguire’s July 4 tweet calling a NYC candidate an “Islamist” from “a culture that lies,” backlash followed — 5M+ views, 1K+ petition signatures. What did Sequoia do? Nothing. No comment. No apology. Why? 🖱Maguire is tight with Stripe’s Patrick Collison 🖱 Helped close a $20M Stripe deal at GV 🖱 Led Sequoia’s $1.1B Bridge deal (acquired by Stripe) 🖱 Rumored link to Elon Musk 🖱 Sequoia has $500M+ in Stripe 🎥Maguire apologized, then doubled down:

→ Threatened critics → Claimed it was just “1% power”

Sequoia ignores political heat but acted fast on legal issues (e.g., Goguen case). 🧭 Their line is clear — and silence still works.

🧠 AI and critical thinking: most people don’t read past the headline A viral article claimed devs using AI felt 20% more productive — but actually saw a 20% drop. Everyone reposted. Almost no one checked the details. The study used Claude 3.5, while real coding today happens on Sonnet 4 or Opus. That’s like benchmarking an iPhone 6 and judging the iPhone 15. ❕The real edge isn’t prompting — it’s thinking MIPT-style logic applies here: when the program is too big to cover, extract what matters and deliver. That’s what AI work requires now — clarity, structure, and prioritization. Any brain — human or LLM — has limits. If the task fits, things work. If not — hallucinations. The fix: break it down. Systematize. Apply judgment. ♨️ In practice? Structured thinking wins One of our team’s current builds is ~500K lines of code. Mostly JavaScript, written entirely via Claude Code. The model slips? It’s caught, corrected, refined. No whining. Just progress. Total AI spend: $200/month. Result: clean UX, working product, real value. ⚙️ It’s not about the tools — it’s about how you use them People want to write one prompt:

Make me a startup, build it, market it, send dividends.

That’s fantasy. But those who can think, decompose, and iterate already have everything they need. Don’t trust every headline. Check the details. The tech is ready — are you?

💰Microsoft commits $4B to AI workforce training Microsoft is investing over $4 billion to teach 20 million people how to work with AI — from schools to nonprofits, across 10+ countries. 🟡Includes grants, cloud credits, and free AI tools 🟡Launching Elevate Academy to upskill adults 🟡Supporting “Hour of AI” with Code.org 🟡Building a national AI teacher center with OpenAI & Anthropic

One of the biggest education pushes in AI history — and a clear signal: the AI labor gap is now a global priority.

When a VC decides to invest in a startup... Then Google, Anthropic, or OpenAI drops a new model that instantly wipes it out.

📈 When you explain to an investor that it's not a crash — it's just a "market cycle"

A market cycle is a natural process where economies and financial markets move through recurring phases of growth and decline. These shifts reflect changes in demand and supply, investor sentiment, tech breakthroughs, and macro forces.

Venture isn’t for those who jump out at the first drop — the key is staying in the right cart. 🤝 Send this to a fellow investor who’s also riding the venture rollercoaster.

📈 China’s LLMs are catching up fast Spotted an interesting chart in The Wall Street Journal — Chinese language models are gaining traction globally and narrowing the gap with U.S. giants.

DeepSeek is already not far behind Gemini and GPT in usage trends.

For more on the U.S.–China AI rivalry, check out Artificial Intelligence Revolution by Baidu founder Robin Li. The tone leans nationalistic, so take it with a filter — but it’s a solid read for anyone curious about the rise of different AI schools.

🔥Best Newsletters on Venture & Startups Want to stay on top of deals, trends, and investor insights? These 5 newsletters are must-haves 👇 1️⃣StrictlyVC Fast daily updates on deals, funds, and investor interviews. Great for tracking what’s happening week-to-week. 2️⃣Term Sheet (Fortune) One of the most widely read in the industry. Covers major rounds, LP moves, and strategy shifts. 3️⃣Not Boring (by Packy McCormick) In-depth essays on companies and trends with a venture twist. Ideal for sharp insights and big-picture thinking. 4️⃣a16z Tech Newsletter Content from Andreessen Horowitz — from AI infra to biotech and fintech. Best for understanding where entire sectors are heading. 5️⃣The Diff (by Byrne Hobart) Deep dives into companies, markets, and capital structure. For those who look at venture through macro + finance lenses.

The venture world is too big to track everything. But with the right sources, you’ll always be one step ahead.

🤝 Save this post — perfect for building your own research stack.

🇬🇧UK unveils £500M plan to back diverse founders and fund managers The British government will deploy a £500 million ($674M) package to close the venture gap for women, minority founders, and underrepresented fund managers. 🔥£50M earmarked for women-led VC funds, bringing total support for female ventures to £100M 🔥£400M to back diverse GPs, early-stage startups, and expand access for those from disadvantaged backgrounds 🔥At least 50% of funding will target female fund managers 🔥Deployment begins in 2026 under the “Plan for Change” economic strategy 🔥Less than 2% of UK VC funding currently goes to Black founders — and only 3p per £1 to women

The UK is betting that inclusion isn’t just fairness — it’s fuel for long-term venture growth.

📊 Crypto Venture Weekly: July 7–11, 2025 Messari’s latest breakdown highlights $109M raised across 15 projects last week — with a sharp focus on real products in AI, stablecoins, and DeFi infra. Here’s what the top 6 are building👇 ⚪️Agora ($50M, led by Paradigm) Full-stack platform for launching white-labeled stablecoins (like AUSD) across 13 chains. Shared liquidity, instant compliance, and stablecoin infra-as-a-service. ⚪️DigitalX ($13.5M, Animoca, ParaFi) Australia-based digital asset manager offering tokenized funds and crypto treasury strategies. Publicly traded on the ASX. ⚪️Kuru ($11.6M, Paradigm, Electric) On-chain CLOB built natively on Monad. Targets ultra-low latency and full decentralization for pro-level DeFi trading. ⚪️Remix ($6.75M, Archetype, Coinbase, Variant) TikTok-style mobile platform for creating and playing short-form games. 800+ games live, 600K users, Telegram and wallet integrations. ⚪️Velvet Capital ($3.7M, DWF, YZi) DeFAI OS for portfolio management across chains. Used by 25K+ users, managing $100M+ with non-custodial, AI-driven flows. ⚪️BridgePort ($3.2M, Further Ventures) Institutional middleware for off-exchange settlement. Connects custodians and exchanges to automate collateral and clearing.

💡Capital is flowing toward core infrastructure for crypto-native UX and regulated, composable finance.

🧠 SiPearl Tapes Out Rhea1 to Power Europe’s Supercomputing Future France-based SiPearl has secured €130M in Series A funding to accelerate its Rhea1 processor—Europe’s answer to U.S. chip dominance in AI and HPC. ✅ Driving European Tech Sovereignty • Builds secure, backdoor-free chips for critical infrastructure • Rhea1 features 80 Arm Neoverse V1 cores for exascale systems • Partners with TSMC while ensuring EU control over chip design ⚙️ Energy-Efficient, High-Performance Design • Tape-out complete; samples expected in early 2026 • Uses 61B+ transistors, HBM2E memory, and DDR5 interfaces • Targets 50% less power than traditional chips—optimized for AI & HPC 📈 Scaling for Impact • Rhea1 to power Germany’s Jupiter exascale supercomputer • Team expanding across France, Germany, Spain, and Italy • Preparing for a Series B to fund large-scale production SiPearl is building Europe’s first sovereign HPC chip—efficient, powerful, and ready to challenge Nvidia on its home turf. ✔️Powered by V3V Ventures

🚀 SpaceX Eyes $400B Valuation in New Tender Offer Elon Musk’s SpaceX is launching a new share sale that would peg its valuation at $400 billion, reinforcing its lead as the most valuable private company in the U.S. ✅ Offering Liquidity, Staying Private • $1B+ tender offer lets employees and investors cash out • Shares priced at $212, matching prior round • Strategy allows funding without going public ⚙️ Starlink and Starship Fuel Momentum • Starlink now generates over half of company revenue • Starship progressing with long-duration test flights • Strong demand from global governments and enterprises 📈 No IPO—Yet • IPO timeline remains uncertain despite high valuation • Musk signals intent to stay private until Starship is ready • Focused on scaling operations, not public listing SpaceX continues building the future of space and satellite internet—on its own terms. ✔️Powered by V3V Ventures

🧠 Mistral AI Prepares $1B+ Round to Boost Europe’s Open-Source AI Ambitions Mistral AI is gearing up for a $1 billion+ funding round to strengthen its role as Europe’s open-source answer to U.S. AI giants like OpenAI and Anthropic. ✅ Building AI for European Sovereignty • Partnering with Abu Dhabi’s MGX and NVIDIA on a major data center near Paris • Positioned as a homegrown alternative to U.S.-led models • Aligned with France’s €109B national AI strategy ⚙️ High-Performance, Open-Source Models • Offers leading models like Mistral 7B, Mixtral 8x7B, and Magistral • Apache 2.0 licensing allows free commercial use • Growing traction with major firms like AXA, BNP Paribas, and CMA CGM 📈 Rapid Growth and Global Ambitions • Tripled business in 100 days amid demand for sovereign AI • Forecasting $100M+ in revenue and scaling to a 100MW GPU facility • Funding to scale compute, expand team, and deepen model development Mistral AI is fueling Europe’s open-source AI future—combining scale, performance, and sovereignty in one ecosystem. ✔️Powered by V3V Ventures

💼 wefox Raises €151M to Reshape Digital Insurance in Europe Berlin-based wefox has secured €151 million (€76M equity, €75M credit) in a round led by Searchlight Capital to scale its digital insurance platform and reach profitability. ✅ Expanding in Core Markets • Strengthens operations in Austria, the Netherlands, and Switzerland • Offers broker-friendly digital tools and life insurance products • Focused on strategic, profitable growth ⚙️ Lean, Tech-Driven Insurance Model • Asset-light MGA model with simplified structure • Divested non-core operations in Italy and Liechtenstein • Combines digital distribution with flexible financing 📈 On Track for Profitability • Targets breakeven by end of 2025 • Adds Searchlight partner Prateek Puri to the board • Backed by strong executive leadership wefox is redesigning how insurance works—blending tech, distribution, and capital efficiency to lead in Europe. ✔️Powered by V3V Ventures

💻 Amazon Expands Anthropic Partnership to Lead in AI Infrastructure Amazon is considering a fresh multibillion-dollar investment in Anthropic to solidify its position as the company’s largest backer and strengthen its AI ecosystem. ✅ Key details • Follows an initial $8B commitment to Anthropic • Aims to surpass Google’s $3B stake • Deep integration with AWS and Trainium 2 chips • Anthropic powering Alexa+, Prime Video, and AWS tools 🌐 What sets this apart • Anthropic uses AWS as primary cloud and AI chip provider • Amazon gains deeper infrastructure and product alignment • Partnership rivals Microsoft–OpenAI and Google–DeepMind 🚀 Why it matters • Puts Amazon at the center of next-gen AI development • Strengthens AWS as a leader in model training and deployment • Reflects a long-term shift toward strategic AI alliances Amazon’s growing stake in Anthropic signals a deeper bet on owning the future of generative AI. ✔️Powered by V3V Ventures