everything you need to read this week by @stephthefounder (June 23)

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!

Happy Monday!

Last week I mentioned how the theme of the week was ✨exits / liquidity for equity holders in startups✨ and this week had news that ✨doubled down✨ (lol)

• Meta was rumored to have tried to buy Perplexity / Ilya Sutskevar’s startup Safe Superintelligence (or its CEO Daniel Gross)

• Meta is apparently giving $100M+ comp packages to top talent from companies like OpenAI

As mentioned I suspect this is just the beginning 🙃

💰 Companies that will make you a millionaire

Every week I highlight a few of my favorite startups that I personally think are really promising. They’ve typically received funding that week + are hiring, and occasionally I’ll include some special bonus ones.

This week’s companies:

1. Browserbase: just raised a $40 million Series B and launched something pretty cool: Director, a no-code tool that lets anyone automate web tasks just by typing what they want in plain English. Already used by over 1,000 customers and powering millions of browser sessions, Browserbase is now making it possible for non-developers to tap into AI-powered web automation with no coding required

   • Job openings can be found here

2. Crosby: a new legal startup backed by Sequoia that just came out of stealth with $5.8 million in seed funding to launch an AI-first law firm (focused on contract review for startups initially). The company’s already reviewed over 1,000+ contracts with turnaround time of less than an hour (with a goal of getting it down to just a few minutes). Intriguing because this idea has been tried before (i.e. Atrium - lead by Twitch co-founder Justin Kan - founded in 2017) but the development of AI technology now really makes this “why now” an entirely different opportunity

   •  Job openings can be found here

3. Polar: excited about this company because it enables a trend I’ve also been seeing/excited about (i.e. solo builders and small teams building large, cash-flowing companies like never before possible). Polar allows these teams to implement modern billing quickly / easily through their open-source payments infrastructure. (They’ve helped thousands of developers grow revenue over 120% month-over-month since launching in September 2024!) The team just closed a $10 million seed round led by Accel and includes great angels like Guillermo Rauch (Vercel) and Tobi Lütke (Shopify)

   • Job openings can be found here

Some bonus companies that were also funded last week:

• Cluely (AI that helps you cheat) 🤖💀 → $15M Series A (Job openings here)

• Eigen Labs (ETH restaking infra) 🔗 → $70M Token Sale (Job openings here)

• Bigger Games (mobile puzzle games) 🎮 → $25M Series A (Job openings here)

• Sword Health (AI + remote rehab) 🏥 → $40M at $4B (Job openings here)

• Ramp (finance ops stack) 💳 → raising $200M at $16B (Job openings here)

• Tennr (doctor referral ops) 🩺 → $101M Series C (Job openings here)

• Alta (AI stylist) 👗 → $11M Seed (Job openings here)**

• Traversal (AI-era site reliability) 🚀 → $48M Stealth (Job openings here)

• Digger (infra automation via Terraform) ⛏️ → $3.6M Seed(Job openings here)

🤓 Best things to read instead of doomscrolling

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

1. Nothing Drains You Like Mixed Emotions by Arthur C Brooks (The Atlantic) - a lot of you resonated with one of my previous posts about a concept called ‘drift’ (i.e. not making any decisions out of fear of making the wrong one or being unsure), a feeling I’ve been very familiar with in the past and goes hand in hand with this article. interesting look at how in American culture, the state of having two conflicting feelings/ambivalence (dialectical thinking) is so uncomfortable vs. having more “black and white” feeling (dichotomous thinking).

2. Ruled By Clocks by Boozy Lectures on Substack - if you’ve been following me for a while you know I love 2 books by Oliver Burkeman (Time Management for Mortals + Meditations for Mortals) — both of which provide interesting perspective on time (and particularly how our relationship with it as individuals and as a society can cause unhappiness + stress). This was reminiscent in theme, contrasting our modern experience with time vs a Fijian man’s perspective in 1932 — He “has never seen so many clocks or slaves to clocks.”

3. Taste by Sarah Guo on X (h/t Rustom!) - I sometimes cringe when I see dialogue about taste on X because it’s abused (and commonly misinterpreted IMO). Loved this take from Sarah Guo, especially on what taste means as it relates to companies, startup culture, product design, founders, etc.

4. My First Million Podcast with Chris Koerner (@thekoerneroffice) - I listen to MFM because it’s both entertaining/inspirational and practical, and I’d say this episode is a good example of that! A lot of interviews are with VC backed founders or about “change the world” ideas, but this episode talks about “everyday” ideas that Chris has built to millions of dollars in cash flow (serving as great evidence of something I feel super strongly, which is that entrepreneurial opportunities are everywhere and more accessible than we are lead to believe). Well worth the listen!

And my favorite meme from last week:

📱 Everything you may have missed in tech/startup news

1. Meta is on an aquisition / hiring spree!! See 1) Meta tried to buy Perplexity & Ilya’s SSI startup before betting big on Scale AI and 2) Meta offering $100M+ comp to top AI talent in Zuck’s superintelligence push. It seems like new news came out every day on this topic last week — Sam Altman claiming Zuck was offering $100M+ comp packages to top OpenAI employees, Meta attempting and failing to buy Ilya Sutskevar’s startup (and therefore now trying to poach its founder/CEO Daniel Gross). This really is just the beginning 😅

2. Base44 sold for $80M after 6 months — just 8 employees: and no money raised!! An exciting trend I can’t wait to see continue in the world of AI. Founded by Israeli developer Maor Shlomo, Base44 was acquired by Wix in an $80 million all-cash deal (+ $25M retention bonuses for the team). Base44 is an AI-powered no-code platform that lets users build apps through natural language prompts — the company grew quickly to 250,000 users and $189K profit.

3. Waymo self-driving cars coming to NYC soon?: given how much hype this got you would’ve thought Waymo was actually coming to NYC 🤪 but it sounds like they have an amazing PR team because all these news stories say that they basically just re-applied for a permit to have potential permission to start a trial here (lol). Regardless, as a Waymo stan + NYC resident, I’m super super excited about this prospect and hope we’ll see Waymos here soon!

🤪 Just because / for fun

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

• one of my closest friends from college got married this weekend 🥺 the best part about getting older is that you have more close friends you’ve known for a decade+ and have seen true transformations and growth together over such a formative time. milestones like this are always great forced reminders to reflect and appreciate this xo

• one of my favorite touches from her wedding -- her & her husband had special photos for every guest printed out at their seat. this one was so spot on (context: julia & i, after 0 prep and complete clowning around for days at this trading competition, somehow got 1st place in one of the 5 challenges. i was so shocked i burst out into wild laughter and honestly i don’t think i’ve laughed so hard even since 💀💀💀💀💀)

• this story about reading “my brilliant friend” got a lot of replies! mostly from people saying this was indeed the best book (and best series) + recommendations to watch the show. i started reading it (1/3 the way through maybe) and i’m really enjoying it so far! it’s interesting that this theme of female friendship comes up a lot more in culture/film/media than i realized -- i re-watched an episode of girls this weekend (this scene in particular, see below, was a reminder of this theme) + i also reflected a bit on the book yellowface (where a central theme is 2 friends/frenemies who are both writers where one is massively more successful than the other). someone also sent me an article this morning from NPR about how women are forgoing marriages (and doubling down on their friendships??) so maybe a more important/interesting dynamic to examine than ever before

• if you have a sweet tooth like i do (and/or love cafe du monde), there is a super super cute beignet cart near union square (but only on wednesdays, fridays, and saturdays)

❤️ until next week!