EverythingStartups Weekly

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

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Important News 🟣

What people are talking about…

• Chamath Palihapitiya returns with his 11th SPAC, aiming to raise $250 million for deals in energy, AI, DeFi, and defense. Founder shares vest only if the stock price rises 50%.

• Databricks raises $1 billion at a $100 billion valuation to scale its Lakebase AI database and Agent Bricks platform, targeting AI agents as the new primary users of enterprise data tools.

• OpenAI logs its first $1 billion revenue month, but CFO Sarah Friar says compute remains a bottleneck as demand for ChatGPT-5 and enterprise AI services surges.

• TIME and Statista name Accel, General Catalyst, and Andreessen Horowitz as America’s top VC firms of 2025, spotlighting their early bets on AI giants like Scale, Mistral, and Perplexity.

• Eight Sleep raises $100 million from HSG, Valor, Founders Fund, and Y Combinator to expand AI-powered sleep tech, launch new health features, and expand into China’s consumer wellness market.

Interesting Links 🟣

These caught my eye this week…

• From eBay to empire to implosion. On the Sourcery podcast, Sophia Amoruso shares how she built Nasty Gal, launched GirlBoss, and returned with Trust Fund, her VC firm backed by Marc Andreessen and Paris Hilton. A masterclass in brand, resilience, and reinvention.

• Vibe marketing is having its breakout moment. With searches up 686% and nearly half of Fortune 500 brands on board, this AI-fueled strategy is cutting costs by up to 80% and building brands that feel instead of just sell.

• Two Harvard dropouts are launching AI glasses that remember everything. Halo X records and transcribes every conversation in real time, offering prompts on the fly. Without privacy indicators, they are raising serious concerns about surveillance and consent.

• Carta drops 50 slides of startup equity data. From co-founder splits to SAFE terms and AI valuation caps, Peter Walker’s latest breakdown maps how 45,000+ cap tables are shaping early-stage ownership in 2025.

• Peter Thiel says world-class founders are polymaths, not specialists. Zuckerberg’s range, from product to psychology to tech history, shows why broad thinking builds bigger companies than narrow expertise ever could.

• Why AI’s moat is capital. Kevin Zhang argues that the race to superintelligence is no longer about talent or algorithms, but balance sheets. Big Tech and frontier labs are raising capital at nation-state scale to compete in a winner-take-all game.

• The seed fund shakeout is coming. Dallas Price explains why 75% of traditional seed funds could vanish in the next decade and why accelerators, venture studios, and non-traditional models are best positioned to survive the new game.

🎙️ VC's Great Concentration: 41% of All Dollars Went to Just 10 Companies

A striking new stat reveals venture capital has reached unprecedented concentration levels. This year, just 10 companies captured 41% of all US VC dollars. CRAZY.

• 8 of the top 10 are AI startups

• those 10 raised $81.3B out of $197.2B total

• xAI + Anthropic: $20B combined

The upside: These AI companies could genuinely reshape industries.

The downside: This creates the most concentrated bet in VC history. LPs face dangerous exposure if a "winner" stumbles, VCs risk chasing consensus over contrarian bets, and founders may receive FOMO-driven term sheets rather than conviction-based investments.

As M13's Anna Barber notes: "Where there's massive agreement, it's much harder to invest in a good position." When everyone's buying the same lottery ticket, the math gets risky.

This concentration might deliver both the biggest winners and biggest losers venture has ever seen.

Are we witnessing market evolution or setting up for a spectacular correction?

 
New VC Fund Highlight: Yonder Fund I 🟣

And the best part - highlighting my favorite fund of the week!

Marketplace veteran Colin Campbell whom I’ve been following on Twitter forever (yes, to me it will always be Twitter), has launched Yonder Fund I after serving as CPO/CRO at Outdoorsy, the RV rental marketplace he helped scale to $3B+ in gross revenue.

He is focusing exclusively on pre-seed marketplaces with $50-200K first checks and his "Marketplace+" thesis - backing marketplaces that integrate additional products or services deeply within their ecosystem.

Why it's notable: Campbell's operator-led approach fills a massive gap - there was no first-check/pre-seed fund built by marketplace operators, for marketplace operators. His early results show promise with 2/3 of companies graduating to their next round and top decile trajectory according to Carta.

Market context: Yonder Fund I launches during a marketplace renaissance where 50% of top VC IPOs since 2010 have been marketplaces, and AI is enabling a new model where aggregation and matching shifts from human-driven to agent-led. Campbell points to AI-native marketplaces like Mercor (6,400% revenue growth year-over-year) as proof that "The Cambrian explosion is happening" for the next generation of marketplaces.

PS: Track new VC funds raised here.

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

Watch out for these…

• Zipline AI, a San Mateo-based startup developing open-source infrastructure for AI data pipelines, raised a $7 million seed round. The deal was backed by Wing VC, Stripe, Box Group, and Exceptional Capital.

• BetterPic, a startup that creates AI tools for generating professional headshots and fashion photoshoots, raised a $2.5 million seed round. MOC Capital and Shilling VC were part of the investors.

• VibeCode, a San Francisco startup with an iOS app that lets users create mobile apps by describing their idea in plain language, raised a $9.4 million round. Seven Seven Six, Long Journey Ventures, Neo, First Harmonic, and Afore Capital joined the deal.

• Better Medicine, an Estonian startup developing AI software to help radiologists detect and analyze kidney cancer in CT scans, raised a $1.2 million pre-seed round. Soulmates Ventures, Specialist VC, and UT Ventures were part of the investors.

• Spike AI, a San Francisco startup that automates testing and adjustment of online marketing strategies across websites, ads, SEO, and email, raised a $1.9 million pre-seed round. Sorin Investments led the deal, with Principal Ventures Partners and GSI also contributing.