everything you need to read this week by @stephthefounder (July 7)

The goal is to be the best weekly newsletter to be the most succinct + fun way to learn about all the best things you need to know across tech, startups, VC, etc, sent out every Monday. (and at the minimum, it will include the links I post about every week on instagram!). Feedback (and a better/more creative newsletter name than the boring one I have now) always welcome!

Hope everyone had a lovely July 4 ❤️🇺🇸 I’ll skip including a photo of fireworks not because I’m super thoughtful or not basic, but because beehiiv is bugging and won’t let me add images rn 🫠 so you’re welcome and can thank them for sparing you.

I’m increasingly surprised with how top of mind AI is (and particularly how AI will affect one’s career) for seemingly everyone I talk to regardless of profession. This is/was expected for my tech friends, but the topic of AI (and particularly the existential questions that come with it) come up just as frequently if not more with my non-tech friends like:

• Producers/videographers have mentioned that budgets for art (podcasts, high production video/ads, etc) of all sorts has gone way down. This is perhaps from competition (“anyone can be a creator now with AI”), but also because of unrealistic expectations of customers who hear about how AI is making everything cheaper and therefore are expecting cheaper prices

• My doctor friends facing increased pushback from patients (who now not only WebMD things, but are getting life-saving diagnoses from ChatGPT) and questioning what their future will look like

• Content creator / artist friends spending increasing amounts of time fighting deepfakes / copycats with little to no luck (and therefore wondering if even being yourself can be a defense against AI if it can so easily adopt your identity 🤪 )

I’m curious to read and learn more (and hopefully create more content) on this topic - if you have any thoughts from your own career and/or have read anything interesting, please do send!

💰 Companies that will make you a millionaire

This week’s companies:

1. Portola: the startup behind the AI companion app Tolan raised a $20M Series A fro Khosla, NFDG, and others. Tolan has positioned itself as a “healthier” AI companion: it discourages users from seeing the AI as human and avoids any romantic or sexual interactions, and instead encourages emotional well-being through real-life activities and relationships. (This article is interesting!) The app already has over 100,000 MAUs and is projecting $12M ARR this year. Experienced founding team (Quinten Farmer who sold his company Even to Walmart) as well.

   • Job openings can be found here

2. Genesis AI: raised a very causal $105 million seed round led by Eclipse Ventures and Khosla Ventures to build AI models for robots. TechCrunch has a good article on what makes them particularly unique (tldr: instead of relying on costly real-world data, they use a proprietary physics engine to generate synthetic data that helps train robots faster and more accurately)

   • Job openings can be found here

3. Ambrook: a startup building accounting software tailored for farmers and ranchers that just raised a $26.1 million Series A led by Thrive and Figma’s Dylan Field. They’re smart to focus on this vertical and its hyper specific needs (like managing livestock lifecycles which the average SaaS startup doesn’t have to deal with, to say the least). With over 2,500 farms using its platform nationwide, Ambrook helps cut bookkeeping time, improve loan access, and provide clearer financial insights.

   • Job openings can be found here

Some bonus companies that were also funded last week:

• Wonderful (non-English AI chatbots) 💬 → $34M seed (Job openings here)

• Savvy Wealth (advisor CRM + ops tools) 📊 → $72M Series B (Job openings here)

• Circulate Health (longevity blood tech) 🩸 → $12M seed (Job openings here)

🤓 Best things to read instead of doomscrolling

The best things I’ve read every week, listed and summarized here:

people ask me where i find my weekly reads and many of them are through thoughtful friends who send me interesting things! this week’s list is all books that were introduced to me through my dear friend @kehindaay (who you should follow on X -- he finally got enough peer pressure to start posting his recs publicly 🙃). he's one of the most avid readers i know (and whose recommendations are so amazing i read anything he tells me about blindly, even if those recommendations require hours because they’re 100’s of pages long 🤪). the theme of all of these is “helps me understand how the world works a lot more”:

1. Prisoners of Geography by Tim Marshall: one of the most interesting books i’ve ever read (and love to discuss with friends). geography impacts the world, the dynamic between countries, power within countries, etc way more than i ever appreciated before i read this book.

2. A Liberated Mind by Steven C. Hayes: i get lots of dm’s asking for advice re navigating uncertainty about career paths, shutting down companies, how to get out of your own way (procrastination, self doubt, etc) and i have a feeling many will resonate with this read! all about embracing difficult thoughts and feelings, getting around avoidance, and living life more purposefully and aligned with your values

3. Who Is Michael Ovitz? by Michael Ovitz: one of the most underrated memoirs that deserves way more mass recognition than it already has, and is recommended to me constantly by founders/investors/operators i deeply respect. about how power works behind the scenes.

4. The World for Sale by Javier Blas & Jack Farchy: i almost didn’t read this book because the title almost put me to sleep (sorry but it’s the truth 🤓) but don’t let that dissuade you like it almost did me. it’s always very special to come across books that teach you something while also entertain/captivate so needed to make sure this made it on the list

📱 Everything you may have missed in tech/startup news

1. Soham Parekh may have single handedly been responsible for tech’s rising unemployment (jk, but he was an engineer outed for somehow interviewing at and juggling engineering roles at what seems like every startup 💀): all started from this viral tweet that quickly it escalated into the West Elm Caleb of tech. 🤪 

2. Figma files for IPO (tldr: profitable, 75% of Fortune 2000 companies are customers, $1.5B of cash on hand): you can see my summary video of the S-1 here but on a high level - Figma is crushing it!

3. Meta announced its new AI lab (MSL, Meta Superintelligence Lab) & Zuck continues to poach top talent from OpenAI with lots of $$$ 🧠: led by Alexandr Wang (founder of Scale AI that Zuck purchased weeks ago for $14B+) now as Chief AI Officer. Zuck is on a spree and it doesn’t seem to be slowing down.

🤪 Just because / for fun

aka random things that I found interesting enough to screenshot or take a picture of last week

i was going to include a screenshotted playbook on how to make $10M in 60 seconds, a picture of the world’s best pizza place, and an AI-generated image of your soul mate, but nvm because beehiiv images aren’t working for some reason 🫠 oh well

Until next week! <3