everything you need to read this week by @stephthefounder (November 17th)

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!

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this is not a unique thought but i’ve never been convinced more that one of my biggest goals for this new year has to be to reduce my screen time (and particularly my social media time) by a LOT

scary stat 1:

scary stat 2:

scary stat 3: i’m convinced my memory and attention span has declined at least 20% this year and am now running experiments on myself to see if anything i do is helping reverse it (i’ll report back)

happy monday!!!! xo

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💰 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.

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And now you can easily earn some cold hard cash 💰: you can now use PINpoint (a fun product my company has been building) to earn $$ (anywhere from $5K to $30K) for successfully referring people to top startups. The brilliant part about this is:

1. you don’t even need to know the person who’s ultimately hired - if you post a link on LinkedIn and the algorithm shows it to someone who ultimately clicks the link and is hired, you get the $$$ 😏

2. all of these companies are great and highly respected, so your friend (or random person who saw your post) will also thank you 😉 win win

(PS are you a founder or do you work at a cool startup that’s hiring? reply back with the name so we can give you guys a shout!)

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This week’s featured companies:

• FOMO: A social-focused crypto-trading app that lets users trade across chains without gas-fee friction. Benchmark just made a rare bet on crypto, leading a $17M Series A to fuel Fomo’s growth.

  • Job openings can be found here

• Gamma: The AI-powered visual storytelling platform that replaces PowerPoint for presentations, websites, and posts — and it’s doing it profitably. They just raised $68M in a Series B at a $2.1B valuation, after hitting $100M ARR.

  • Job openings can be found here

• Beside: Building an AI “receptionist” for small businesses — answering calls, booking appointments, following up, and remembering context. The voice-AI startup just raised $32M Series A to scale its app, which already handles millions of calls every month.

  • Job openings can be found here

Some bonus companies that were also funded last week:

• Clio (legal software for firms) ⚖️ → $500M Series G (Job openings here)

• Wonderful (enterprise AI agents) 🤖 → $100M Series A (Job openings here)

• Neros (low-cost military drones) 🛩️ → $75M raise (Job openings here)

• Scribe (workflow intelligence) 📊 → $75M Series C (Job openings here)

• House Rx (clinic pharmacy platform) 💊 → $55M Series B (Job openings here)

• AirOps (AI search engineering platform) 🔍 → $40M Series B (Job openings here)

• Tavus (agentic AI humans) 🧬 → $40M Series B (Job openings here)

(will be testing new series format on IG this week 👀 would love your feedback)

🤓 Best things to read instead of doomscrolling

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

1. The Problem with Wanting Less by What Ever Happened: on the emotional whiplash of trying to simplify life while living inside a culture that turns every choice into aesthetic branding. And how building life and appreciating the messes along the way is a joy in itself (not just the perfectly curated end result)

2. Playing a Career Game You Actually Want to Win by Simone Stolzoff: something I’ve referenced a lot with friends lately and a common mistake I’ve seen people make (and have certainly made). a reminder to sanity-check the career game you’re playing — are you chasing what matters to you, or just collecting points (or prestige, money, or something else) because they’re easy to measure?

3. The New Economics of Aspiration by Mufaro Mutowembwa (h/t @besidone): how aspiration is no longer about driving scarcity (aka the Hermes / legacy luxury playbook), but now about scale and capturing cultural attention (aka the SKIMS/Rhode/Mejuri playbooks of aspiration for mass adoption). Interesting read for anyone thinking about status, taste, or consumer behavior

4. Secret History#18: The Trump Show by Predictive History: my most recent favorite “creator” discovery (a professor whose content I mostly consume in video - I recommend his YT channel by the same name! particularly his popular video you may have seen viral clips of called “How Evil Triumphs”). an interesting breakdown of the Epstein-file chaos and commentary on how power actually gets wielded. I don’t agree with every take, but part of the reason I’m such a fan of his videos/writing is 1) exceptional storytelling, 2) non-obvious POVs I rarely read elsewhere. Highly recommend.

5. The Missing Kayaker by Jamie Thompson, The Atlantic: a ‘fun’, beautifully written long form read I really enjoyed about a dad who vanishes during a meteor shower and the subsequent ~mystery~. If you like true crime and/or beautifully written narrative you’ll love this one

📱 Everything you may have missed in tech/startup news

(a new format i’m trying inspired by NY Mag’s approval matrix where i showcase all the top tech news story ranging from serious to fun to visionary to delulu. feedback? news stories to add? lmk)

SIGNAL x CRINGE:

1. Chinese state sponsored group used anthropic ai to automate hacks on major firms & govts - yiiiikes

2. More tech layoffs at Synopsys, Verizon, and more 🫠

3. AI/agents are expected to be involved in $73B (22%) at Black Friday shopping — the shopping wars are here (not between Black Friday shoppers, but between all the big tech companies and AI browser / agent companies: case and point)

4. Softbank sells $5.8B NVIDIA stake to invest in the “AI revolution” (….??) including OpenAI — makes sense because what even is NVIDIA if it doesn’t have AI in the name??

SIGNAL x BASED:

1. Ex Twitter CEO (Parag Agrawal) raises $100M to build web for AI agents

2. Elad Gil (backer of Airbnb, Stripe, and more) set to raise $3B VC fund, largest as a solo GP — wildly impressive

3. OpenAI rolls out GPT-5.1 (better… but not game-changing)

4. Mira Murati (ex OpenAI CTO)’s Thinking Machines rumored to be raising at $50B valuation

5. Apple launches “Mini Apps” program so apps can be within apps; drops fee from 30% to 15% — apps on apps. I recently talked about Wabi that falls right into this trend

NOISE x CRINGE:

1. Bryan Johnson does 5g of mushrooms and documents the whole thing on X — amazing, AMAZING twitter follow 💀

2. Billboard’s Top Country Song was by AI “artist” Breaking Rust — the merging and tension between AI and art is an interesting one that is just beginning

3. Apple launches a $230 iPhone sock

4. Wikipedia (co)founder? storms out of interview after 1 question — another data point for “women are too emotional to be leaders” /s

5. Bill Ackman solves male loneliness: approach women & ask “May I meet you?” — the memes and videos from this have made my entire weekend

NOISE x BASED:

1. ChatGPT is piloting Group Chats — another data point for ‘OpenAI kills several dozens of startups overnight…’

2. Waymo expands to Bay Area peninsula + freeways (NYC when??)

3. Vine is coming back!!! (reincarnated as new anti-AI content app, DiVine) — Jack Dorsey is involved

4. MrBeast opens “Beast Land” theme park in Saudi Arabia

5. Cursor’s founders become billionaires in recent $2.3B raise — and they’re all like 23

6. PSA: we will all soon be able to generate Matthew McConaughey’s voice with AI via ElevenLabs

🤪 Just because / for fun

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

• if you’re feeling down, I HAVE THE SOLUTION. i have never been so filled with cute aggression in my entire LIFE than when i came across this adorable tiktok account featuring a ✨four year old✨ adorable little girl who can solve rubik’s cubes in less than 15s (her smile, her little hops, her ponytail - i can’t)

@cuber_xi4岁小汐汐翻车现场！裁判笑的好开心呀，哈哈太有爱了！

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(… and the COMMENTS 💀💀💀 tiktok comments will never cease to have a chokehold on me)

• a cool graphic illustrating how every AI company is seemingly intertwined (especially OpenAI and NVIDIA - making the news around Masa/Softbank selling NVIDIA to invest in OpenAI all the more peculiar/amusing)

• something I wish weren’t true: cigarette companies are thriving (because despite a declining population of smokers, cigarette companies keep upping prices and it’s working)

• warren buffett’s farewell letter 🥺 gotta love when billionaires are human (which is why the bill ackman ‘may i meet you?’ advice is both hilarious yet endearing)

• i rarely take a lunch “break” (not bc i’m too busy or cool, but because i don’t think i’ve ever had a job where that’s culturally normal and the habit has stuck, lol) but i’m home home (with my parents in my childhood home) and we had a little ~hot pot lunch~ today
  
  it’s time like these i remember this brilliant but sad article (graphic below) about how after leaving for college, the average person has spent 90% of all the time they ever will with their parents 😭 i’m not crying you’re crying

  
  CALL YOUR DAD TODAY

<3 until next week!

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