EverythingStartups Weekly

Welcome to all the new visionaries here who signed up last week! And hello from Europe this week.

Let’s get into this week’s edition on what’s happening in startup & VC world & the main highlights.

But first, check out these resources:

• 120+ Active Pre-Seed - Series A investors

• 48 pre-seed accelerators

• Latest VC funds announced

• 350+ SaaS investors

• LPs investing in VC funds

• Understanding founder vs VC investment memos

Partnership & collaboration opportunities. 

Cheers,
Ivelina

PS: Liking this? Share this newsletter with your inner circle.

 
Important News 🟣

• LinkedIn’s AI writing assistant flops with users wary of posting polished but generic content, says CEO Ryan Roslansky, who admits even he uses Copilot before emailing Microsoft’s Satya Nadella.

• Aaron Sorkin will write and direct The Social Network Part II, a sequel exploring Facebook’s societal impact, inspired by The Facebook Files and Sony’s push to spotlight the platform’s controversial legacy.

• Databricks and Perplexity co-founder Andy Konwinski pledges $100 million to launch Laude, a nonprofit AI institute backing moonshot research at UC Berkeley and beyond. He’s backed by tech luminaries like Jeff Dean and Joelle Pineau.

• Sam Altman hints at future ads in ChatGPT, calling Instagram ads “kinda cool” but warning that monetization must balance trust as hallucinations remain a core flaw in AI models.

• Seed investors are rethinking hold periods as LPs demand faster returns, with Precursor Ventures’ Charles Hudson revealing that selling at Series B could outperform long-term bets. This shift is pushing early-stage VCs to act more like private equity managers.

• Silicon Valley’s new badge of honor isn’t unicorn status but revenue per employee, as the AI boom ends the blitzscaling era and rewards lean, high-output teams.

Interesting Links 🟣

• No demo days, no equity games. Sridhar A, general partner at 16VC, just launched LDN Mode to back 50 early-stage London founders with $400K each.

• Gokul Mohanty is back in deal mode. The angel investor will be writing 3 new pre-seed checks this month, $25K to $50K each, for edge tech startups taking big swings. If you're building something bold, this is your shot.

• Only 0.5% of seed-stage startups hit unicorn status. Stanford’s latest research on 1,200+ unicorns shows who spotted them first. Andreessen Horowitz leads the pack, but nearly 330 have already fallen below $1B.

• Sam Altman sits down with his brother Jack to talk about what’s next in AI. From scientific discovery to the risks of superintelligence, here’s a candid take on OpenAI, Meta, and why humans still matter.

• From club bangers to cap tables. The Chainsmokers open up on Invest Like The Best about their pivot from DJs to VCs, the hustle behind their breakout success, and why building a hit isn’t so different from backing a startup.

• Vintage wars revealed. Carta’s Q1 2025 report analyzes over 2,500 VC funds. DPI remains scarce, TVPI is inching back up, and IRR gaps between top and bottom quartiles are yawning. The big shift? Smaller funds are rising fast while exits stay frozen.

• Can family offices fund your startup? Not so fast. Despite the hype, most avoid early-stage bets. But as DC Palter explains, with the right pitch and research, one outlier might just cut the check that VCs won’t.

• Big Tech’s AI poker game just got real. In his latest update, Ben Thompson breaks down how Apple bets on hardware, Google leans on data, Meta scrambles for relevance, Microsoft hedges with OpenAI, and Amazon plays the long game with Anthropic. The AI epoch is already reorganizing the board.

• From perk to prerequisite. The Great AI Reshuffle is here, and companies like Shopify and Duolingo are quietly rewriting the rules of work. If you’re not proving how AI makes you better, faster, and sharper, then sorry, you’re replaceable. The winners? Humans with taste, ethics, and contrarian brains.

🎙️ How to Divide Startup Equity

Dividing equity seems like a purely financial decision, but it’s also more of a psychological one than most founders realize. 

A fair split builds trust, prevents founder drama, and sets the tone for everything from hiring to fundraising.

Startup Equity Distribution Table

This week's breakdown is inspired by Chore, a startup operations partner that helps early-stage founders manage cap tables, compliance, financial modeling, and more, so you don’t have to figure it all out in Google Sheets.

We pulled insights from their team to help you get equity right from the start (it can truly make or break a startup).

Below is a simple breakdown of who typically gets what and how different methods work 👇

Read the full guide here: How to Divide Equity in a Startup - A Founder’s Guide

 5 Ways to Divide Equity

 
New VC Fund Highlight: Laude by co-founder of Databricks & Perplexity 🟣

Ok, so technically not a traditional VC fund, but a fascinating hybrid that combines elements of both a fund and an institute, so worth covering.

Laude, a new AI research institute, just launched with a $100M personal pledge from Andy Konwinski, co-founder of Databricks and Perplexity, and it’s shaking up the AI research scene.

Unveiled in 2025 by Konwinski, the Laude Institute, based in the Bay Area, isn’t your typical research lab. It’s structured like a fund, dishing out grants to fuel groundbreaking AI work. With a powerhouse board featuring UC Berkeley’s Dave Patterson, Google’s Jeff Dean, and Meta’s Joelle Pineau, it’s got serious cred.

The institute’s first big move? A flagship $3M annual grant for five years to kickstart the AI Systems Lab at UC Berkeley, opening in 2027. Led by rockstar researcher Ion Stoica (co-founder of Anyscale and Databricks), this lab’s set to redefine AI systems with a team of top-tier talent.

Brownie points for:

🍪 Researcher-first mission: Konwinski’s blog screams passion for pure computer science, aiming to steer AI toward “beneficial outcomes” with grants and hands-on support.

🍪 Elite connections: With ties to Berkeley, Google, Meta, and Stanford, Laude’s network opens doors to world-class researchers and benchmarks like terminal-bench.

🍪 Dual-track vision: “Slingshots” back early-stage ideas, while “Moonshots” tackle epic challenges like AI for science, healthcare, and civic discourse.

🍪 Indie spirit: Structured as a nonprofit with a public benefit corp arm, Laude’s dodging the commercial traps that snagged OpenAI and others.

But… Can Laude deliver the goods?

Newbie vibes: Launched in 2025, Laude’s untested. Can it churn out game-changing research without a track record?

Crowded field: AI research is a zoo, will Laude’s grants cut through the noise of me-too benchmarks and hype?

Laude’s not just grants. Konwinski’s 2024 for-profit fund with Pete Sonsini (ex-NEA) has backed AI startups like Arcade ($12M). With 50+ researchers as LPs and Konwinski’s Databricks ($62B valuation) and Perplexity ($14B) fortune, he’s open to more technologist investors.

PS: Track new VC funds raised here.

Top Pre-Seed to Series A Funding Rounds This Week 🟣

• Chatlyn, a three-year-old startup based in Vienna, Austria, that helps hotel staff manage guest communication across channels like WhatsApp, email, and SMS, raised a $9.3 million Series A round. Smedvig Ventures was the lead investor.

• Movemint, a two-year-old Oakland startup that offers software for fitness coaches to manage client engagement, programming, and payments on a single platform, raised a $5 million seed round. Underscore VC led the deal.

• COVR Global, a one-year-old London startup that builds software to help insurance companies make decisions through automated data analysis and rule-based workflows, raised a $2.5 million seed round led by MTech Capital, with B Capital also participating.

• Tensec, a two-year-old Palo Alto startup that helps businesses manage cross-border payments by automatically calculating tariffs, taxes, and compliance requirements in real-time, raised a $12 million seed round. Costanoa Ventures led the round, with Quiet Capital, WillowTree Investments, Cambrian VC, Ignia Partners, Montage Ventures, Renegade Partners, and Endeavor Scale Up Ventures also joining.

• Mercanis, a five-year-old Berlin startup that uses AI-powered agents to handle procurement tasks such as sourcing suppliers, collecting bids, and managing vendor relationships for large companies, raised a $20.4 million Series A round co-led by Partech and AVP. Signals.VC, Capmont Technology, and Speedinvest also participated.