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The official channel of V3V Ventures. We share updates on our investments, portfolio companies, and fund activities. Buy Ads: @strategy (this is our only account).
🤖 Robots in the Metro: China’s New Delivery Frontier
China's robotics game isn’t just about humanoids.
In Shenzhen, a new kind of delivery robot is being tested — not for streets, but for underground metro tunnels.
🖱 The goal: solve a growing logistics issue for 7-Eleven stores inside metro stations (over 100 locations).
🖱 Traditional delivery vans are failing — traffic jams and no parking near stations slow down restocking.
🖱 New autonomous robots now deliver goods directly inside the metro system.
🖱 These rover-like bots navigate the underground routes, bringing stock right to store doors.
The tests are going well so far. And they might just redefine last-mile delivery — one tunnel at a time.
📊 Crypto Venture Weekly: July 14–18, 2025
$202M raised across 19 projects last week — with capital pouring into stablecoins, crypto banking, DeFi infra, and tokenized finance.
Here’s what the top 10 are building 👇
⚪️KUN ($50M, GSR Ventures, BAI Capital)
Asia-based embedded finance and stablecoin platform. Licensed in Hong Kong and Singapore, offering cross-border payments, card issuing, and on-chain B2B finance tools.
⚪️ Spiko ($22M, Index Ventures, Bpifrance)
Tokenized money market fund platform with €400M AUM. On-chain T-Bill exposure for startups and SMEs, fully compliant and integrated with European custodians.
⚪️ XMTP ($20M, a16z, USV, Coinbase)
Cross-chain messaging protocol powering wallet-to-wallet DMs, notifications, and announcements. Already used by apps like Lens and Farcaster.
⚪️ Blockskye ($15.8M, United Airlines Ventures, Lightspeed)
Building blockchain infra for corporate travel. Used by major airlines and agencies to automate settlement, invoicing, and policy enforcement.
⚪️ Dakota ($12.5M, CoinFund, DCG)
Crypto-native B2B banking layer offering fiat rails, treasury tools, and compliance for Web3 startups and DAOs.
⚪️ AI Cross Matrix ($12M, Avalon Wealth Club)
Privacy-focused protocol enabling cross-chain, untraceable crypto transfers. Uses zk tech to anonymize flows between chains.
⚪️ ƒBTC ($10M, Galaxy Ventures, Mantle)
DeFi platform unlocking Bitcoin for staking, lending, and liquidity provisioning. Aims to create native yield products for BTC holders.
⚪️ W3 ($7M, Framework Ventures, Blockchange)
Decentralized compute protocol powering AI agents. Offchain workflows, verifiable compute, and token incentives for distributed AI infra.
⚪️ Football.Fun ($2M, 6th Man Ventures, Zee Prime)
Onchain football betting and prediction markets. Focused on gamified speculation around global matches.
⚪️ MoneyBadger ($400K, P1 Ventures)
South African QR-based crypto payments app for retail and e-commerce. Live with 60+ merchants in pilot phase.
💡Real-world utility and crypto infra are in focus — from stablecoin rails to tokenized yield and offchain compute.
📝Every Y Combinator startup tip on one screen
Since 2005, Y Combinator has invested in over 4,000 companies that have a combined valuation of over $600B.
Here's what they consider their most important, most transformative advice for startups:
🖱 Launch now
🖱 Build something people want
🖱 Do things that don't scale
🖱 Find the 90 / 10 solution
🖱 Find 10-100 customers who love your product
🖱 All startups are badly broken at some point
🖱 Write code - talk to users
🖱 "It’s not your money"
🖱 Growth is the result of a great product not the precursor
🖱 Don’t scale your team/product until you have built something people want
🖱 Valuation is not equal to success or even probability of success
🖱 Avoid long negotiated deals with big customers if you can
🖱 Avoid big company corporate development queries - they will only waste time
🖱 Avoid conferences unless they are the best way to get customers
🖱 Pre-product market fit - do things that don’t scale: remain small/nimble
🖱 Startups can only solve one problem well at any given time
🖱 Founder relationships matter more than you think
🖱 Sometimes you need to fire your customers (they might be killing you)
🖱 Ignore your competitors, you will more likely die of suicide than murder
🖱 Most companies don't die because they run out of money
🖱 Be nice! Or at least don’t be a jerk
🖱 Get sleep and exercise - take care of yourself
Something every early-stage startup should have on the wall.
🤖OpenAI launches ChatGPT Agent — AI that acts, not just chats
OpenAI has quietly rolled out a powerful new feature: ChatGPT Agent, a universal assistant that goes beyond answers to take action across apps and services.
Think of it as Operator + Deep Research + coding copilot — now in one seamless chat interface.
🖱 Clicks through websites and navigates UIs
🖱 Connects to Gmail, GitHub, Calendar, and more
🖱 Uses terminal and APIs to run real commands
🖱 Scrapes and organizes data across the web
🖱 Writes and executes code on the fly
Agent Mode is available now via the ChatGPT app (Pro, Plus, and Team tiers).
On benchmarks, it doubles the previous models on Humanity’s Last Exam (41.6% vs ~20%) and hits 4x the score on complex math (FrontierMath 27.4% vs 6.3%).
This is no longer chat — it’s execution.
📝 Top Books to Level Up Your Venture Mindset
Venture capital isn’t just about deals.
It’s about strategy, analysis, and spotting trends before others do.
Here’s a list of books to help you understand how startup investing really works 👇
🟡 Venture Deals — Brad Feld & Jason Mendelson
How term sheets, deal structures, and negotiations really work.
🟡 Secrets of Sand Hill Road — Scott Kupor
How VCs make decisions and what founders need to know about the system.
🟡 Super Founders — Ali Tamaseb
A data-driven breakdown of unicorns and what made them stand out.
🟡 The Power Law — Sebastian Mallaby
The history and logic behind power law outcomes in venture.
🟡 High Growth Handbook — Elad Gil
Scaling after PMF: hiring, fundraising, and managing hypergrowth.
🟡 Creative Capital — Spencer Ante
The story of Georges Doriot, one of the fathers of modern venture.
🟡 The Art of Startup Fundraising — Alejandro Cremades
A practical guide to raising money and building investor relationships.
🟡 Blitzscaling — Reid Hoffman & Chris Yeh
Why VCs back aggressive scale and how to build for massive growth.
🟡 The Power of Unreasonable People — John Elkington & Pamela Hartigan
Spotting game-changing entrepreneurs, with a focus on social impact.
🦄 Top unicorns by revenue multiple
7x is the standard SaaS multiple — but AI startups are way above that.
Second place goes to Bolt (the fintech, not the taxi app).
They raised at a $11B valuation in 2021–22.
That number never moved — but the revenue didn’t grow either.
Still looks like a unicorn.Читать полностью…
Just don’t check the denominator.
📈 Cognition acquires Windsurf’s core team and product
After Google took Windsurf’s CEO and top researchers in a $2.4B deal, Cognition moves fast to buy the rest — including IP, product, and ~250 employees.
🟡 Cognition is integrating Windsurf’s AI IDE into its own AI engineer, Devin
🟡 Windsurf had 350+ enterprise clients, hundreds of thousands of users
🟡 ARR reached $82M before the breakup
🟡 OpenAI’s $3B offer expired prior to Google’s acquisition
🟡 The remaining Windsurf team joins Cognition for continued product development
A rare split-acquisition in AI: Google got the researchers, but Cognition walked away with the engine and the builders.Читать полностью…
💎 Hidden Gems in Claude Code: How to unlock 125x more context
Almost no one knows this — Claude Code responds differently depending on how you phrase your prompt.
Say “think” and it uses 1K tokens.
Say “ultrathink” or “megathink” — and it loads 128K tokens.
That’s 125x deeper reasoning for the same question.
⚙️ Prompt triggers that actually work:
• “think” or “think about” — for fast ideas
• “think hard” — for complex problems
• “think deeply” — for system design
• “ultrathink” — for full-stack deep dives
This isn’t magic — it’s engineered behavior. Claude Code is wired to allocate different compute depending on trigger words.
Example:
❌ Bad: “Can you check what I can improve in my app?”
✅ Good: “ultrathink about JavaScript optimization in frontend component X”
💰Microsoft commits $4B to AI workforce training
Microsoft is investing over $4 billion to teach 20 million people how to work with AI — from schools to nonprofits, across 10+ countries.
🟡Includes grants, cloud credits, and free AI tools
🟡Launching Elevate Academy to upskill adults
🟡Supporting “Hour of AI” with Code.org
🟡Building a national AI teacher center with OpenAI & Anthropic
One of the biggest education pushes in AI history — and a clear signal: the AI labor gap is now a global priority.Читать полностью…
📈 When you explain to an investor that it's not a crash — it's just a "market cycle"
A market cycle is a natural process where economies and financial markets move through recurring phases of growth and decline. These shifts reflect changes in demand and supply, investor sentiment, tech breakthroughs, and macro forces.
🔥Best Newsletters on Venture & Startups
Want to stay on top of deals, trends, and investor insights?
These 5 newsletters are must-haves 👇
1️⃣StrictlyVC
Fast daily updates on deals, funds, and investor interviews.
Great for tracking what’s happening week-to-week.
2️⃣Term Sheet (Fortune)
One of the most widely read in the industry.
Covers major rounds, LP moves, and strategy shifts.
3️⃣Not Boring (by Packy McCormick)
In-depth essays on companies and trends with a venture twist.
Ideal for sharp insights and big-picture thinking.
4️⃣a16z Tech Newsletter
Content from Andreessen Horowitz — from AI infra to biotech and fintech.
Best for understanding where entire sectors are heading.
5️⃣The Diff (by Byrne Hobart)
Deep dives into companies, markets, and capital structure.
For those who look at venture through macro + finance lenses.
The venture world is too big to track everything. But with the right sources, you’ll always be one step ahead.
📊 Crypto Venture Weekly: July 7–11, 2025
Messari’s latest breakdown highlights $109M raised across 15 projects last week — with a sharp focus on real products in AI, stablecoins, and DeFi infra.
Here’s what the top 6 are building👇
⚪️Agora ($50M, led by Paradigm)
Full-stack platform for launching white-labeled stablecoins (like AUSD) across 13 chains. Shared liquidity, instant compliance, and stablecoin infra-as-a-service.
⚪️DigitalX ($13.5M, Animoca, ParaFi)
Australia-based digital asset manager offering tokenized funds and crypto treasury strategies. Publicly traded on the ASX.
⚪️Kuru ($11.6M, Paradigm, Electric)
On-chain CLOB built natively on Monad. Targets ultra-low latency and full decentralization for pro-level DeFi trading.
⚪️Remix ($6.75M, Archetype, Coinbase, Variant)
TikTok-style mobile platform for creating and playing short-form games. 800+ games live, 600K users, Telegram and wallet integrations.
⚪️Velvet Capital ($3.7M, DWF, YZi)
DeFAI OS for portfolio management across chains. Used by 25K+ users, managing $100M+ with non-custodial, AI-driven flows.
⚪️BridgePort ($3.2M, Further Ventures)
Institutional middleware for off-exchange settlement. Connects custodians and exchanges to automate collateral and clearing.
💡Capital is flowing toward core infrastructure for crypto-native UX and regulated, composable finance.Читать полностью…
🚀 SpaceX Eyes $400B Valuation in New Tender Offer
Elon Musk’s SpaceX is launching a new share sale that would peg its valuation at $400 billion, reinforcing its lead as the most valuable private company in the U.S.
✅ Offering Liquidity, Staying Private
• $1B+ tender offer lets employees and investors cash out
• Shares priced at $212, matching prior round
• Strategy allows funding without going public
⚙️ Starlink and Starship Fuel Momentum
• Starlink now generates over half of company revenue
• Starship progressing with long-duration test flights
• Strong demand from global governments and enterprises
📈 No IPO—Yet
• IPO timeline remains uncertain despite high valuation
• Musk signals intent to stay private until Starship is ready
• Focused on scaling operations, not public listing
SpaceX continues building the future of space and satellite internet—on its own terms.
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💼 wefox Raises €151M to Reshape Digital Insurance in Europe
Berlin-based wefox has secured €151 million (€76M equity, €75M credit) in a round led by Searchlight Capital to scale its digital insurance platform and reach profitability.
✅ Expanding in Core Markets
• Strengthens operations in Austria, the Netherlands, and Switzerland
• Offers broker-friendly digital tools and life insurance products
• Focused on strategic, profitable growth
⚙️ Lean, Tech-Driven Insurance Model
• Asset-light MGA model with simplified structure
• Divested non-core operations in Italy and Liechtenstein
• Combines digital distribution with flexible financing
📈 On Track for Profitability
• Targets breakeven by end of 2025
• Adds Searchlight partner Prateek Puri to the board
• Backed by strong executive leadership
wefox is redesigning how insurance works—blending tech, distribution, and capital efficiency to lead in Europe.
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🎬 4 documentaries that show how venture capital really works
Venture isn’t just term sheets and growth charts — it’s founders, mistakes, ambition, and billion-dollar bets.
These four documentaries reveal the human side of the game — no lectures, no YouTube shorts.
⚪️Something Ventured
How venture capital began in the U.S.
The early days of Apple, Intel, Genentech, and Cisco — and the investors who backed them before the market even existed. A deep dive into risk, vision, and the birth of Silicon Valley.
⚪️ Startup.com
The rise and fall of govWorks during the dotcom era
Part startup doc, part emotional drama — this one captures how fast things collapse when ego, friendship, and execution fall out of sync.
⚪️ The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley
The Theranos disaster
Elizabeth Holmes convinced the world — and top VCs — without a working product. A $900M cautionary tale about blind faith, charisma, and due diligence.
⚪️ The Social Dilemma
The dark side of viral platforms
Not strictly about VC, but essential for product-focused investors. Ex-employees from Facebook, Twitter, and Google break down how design choices shape addiction — and what that means for startup due diligence.
🤖 Kimi-K2 tops LMArena as best open-source model
Moonshot’s Kimi-K2 has become the highest-ranked open-source model on LMArena, surpassing DeepSeek and claiming the #5 spot overall.
🖱 Strongest in code generation and agent-style tasks
🖱 Outperforms other open models on multiple benchmarks
🖱 Upcoming features: multimodal support and advanced reasoning mode
China continues to push the frontier in open AI — and Kimi is now leading the pack.
📊 How founder ownership changes after each funding round
Carta data shows how equity is distributed after each round — with a clear difference between software and Deep Tech startups.
🖱 Deep Tech founders retain less ownership at every stage
🖱 In SaaS, founders often keep 30–40% after Series A
🖱 In Deep Tech, it drops to 15–25% by Series B
🖱 Statistically, founders are more likely to be replaced after Series B, though it’s not the norm
🧠 The more capital you need, the more ownership you give up — especially in hard tech.
💡 Most popular chatbot apps
Microsoft is spending billions on Copilot — but it’s hopelessly behind OpenAI, the company it invested $13 billion into.
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🎶 Mantis VC closes $100M fund to double down on B2B
Founded by The Chainsmokers, Mantis has raised a $100M third fund — up 25% from their previous $80M, defying the broader VC slowdown.
🟡 Fund III comes in at $100M, 25% bigger than Fund II
🟡 Portfolio includes B2B bets like Chainguard and Rogo
🟡 Unlike most celeb VCs, they avoid consumer plays
🟡 Use access to Fortune 500 (via private shows) to help with intros
🟡 Still lean team, but deep enterprise network leverage
Not just another celebrity fund — Mantis is turning concerts into go-to-market strategy.Читать полностью…
🚀How Notion went from failure to 30M+ users
In 2015, Notion was nearly shut down.
The first version was clunky, confusing — and funds were running out. Only a few months left to fix it.
💵SoftBank's $200B Lesson in Patience
In 2019, SoftBank sold its entire 4.9% stake in Nvidia for $6B.
That same stake today would be worth $200B.
✍️ Sequoia and the silent playbook
Sequoia’s go-to crisis move?
Say nothing and wait.
After partner Shaun Maguire’s July 4 tweet calling a NYC candidate an “Islamist” from “a culture that lies,” backlash followed — 5M+ views, 1K+ petition signatures.
What did Sequoia do?
Nothing. No comment. No apology.
Why?
🖱 Maguire is tight with Stripe’s Patrick Collison
🖱 Helped close a $20M Stripe deal at GV
🖱 Led Sequoia’s $1.1B Bridge deal (acquired by Stripe)
🖱 Rumored link to Elon Musk
🖱 Sequoia has $500M+ in Stripe
🎥Maguire apologized, then doubled down:
→ Threatened critics
→ Claimed it was just “1% power”
🧠 AI and critical thinking: most people don’t read past the headline
A viral article claimed devs using AI felt 20% more productive — but actually saw a 20% drop.
Everyone reposted.
Almost no one checked the details.
The study used Claude 3.5, while real coding today happens on Sonnet 4 or Opus.
That’s like benchmarking an iPhone 6 and judging the iPhone 15.
❕The real edge isn’t prompting — it’s thinking
MIPT-style logic applies here: when the program is too big to cover, extract what matters and deliver.
That’s what AI work requires now — clarity, structure, and prioritization.
Any brain — human or LLM — has limits.
If the task fits, things work. If not — hallucinations.
The fix: break it down. Systematize. Apply judgment.
♨️ In practice? Structured thinking wins
One of our team’s current builds is ~500K lines of code.
Mostly JavaScript, written entirely via Claude Code.
The model slips? It’s caught, corrected, refined.
No whining. Just progress.
Total AI spend: $200/month.
Result: clean UX, working product, real value.
⚙️ It’s not about the tools — it’s about how you use them
People want to write one prompt:
Make me a startup, build it, market it, send dividends.
When a VC decides to invest in a startup...
Then Google, Anthropic, or OpenAI drops a new model that instantly wipes it out.
📈 China’s LLMs are catching up fast
Spotted an interesting chart in The Wall Street Journal — Chinese language models are gaining traction globally and narrowing the gap with U.S. giants.
DeepSeek is already not far behind Gemini and GPT in usage trends.
🇬🇧UK unveils £500M plan to back diverse founders and fund managers
The British government will deploy a £500 million ($674M) package to close the venture gap for women, minority founders, and underrepresented fund managers.
🔥£50M earmarked for women-led VC funds, bringing total support for female ventures to £100M
🔥£400M to back diverse GPs, early-stage startups, and expand access for those from disadvantaged backgrounds
🔥At least 50% of funding will target female fund managers
🔥Deployment begins in 2026 under the “Plan for Change” economic strategy
🔥Less than 2% of UK VC funding currently goes to Black founders — and only 3p per £1 to women
The UK is betting that inclusion isn’t just fairness — it’s fuel for long-term venture growth.Читать полностью…
🧠 SiPearl Tapes Out Rhea1 to Power Europe’s Supercomputing Future
France-based SiPearl has secured €130M in Series A funding to accelerate its Rhea1 processor—Europe’s answer to U.S. chip dominance in AI and HPC.
✅ Driving European Tech Sovereignty
• Builds secure, backdoor-free chips for critical infrastructure
• Rhea1 features 80 Arm Neoverse V1 cores for exascale systems
• Partners with TSMC while ensuring EU control over chip design
⚙️ Energy-Efficient, High-Performance Design
• Tape-out complete; samples expected in early 2026
• Uses 61B+ transistors, HBM2E memory, and DDR5 interfaces
• Targets 50% less power than traditional chips—optimized for AI & HPC
📈 Scaling for Impact
• Rhea1 to power Germany’s Jupiter exascale supercomputer
• Team expanding across France, Germany, Spain, and Italy
• Preparing for a Series B to fund large-scale production
SiPearl is building Europe’s first sovereign HPC chip—efficient, powerful, and ready to challenge Nvidia on its home turf.
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🧠 Mistral AI Prepares $1B+ Round to Boost Europe’s Open-Source AI Ambitions
Mistral AI is gearing up for a $1 billion+ funding round to strengthen its role as Europe’s open-source answer to U.S. AI giants like OpenAI and Anthropic.
✅ Building AI for European Sovereignty
• Partnering with Abu Dhabi’s MGX and NVIDIA on a major data center near Paris
• Positioned as a homegrown alternative to U.S.-led models
• Aligned with France’s €109B national AI strategy
⚙️ High-Performance, Open-Source Models
• Offers leading models like Mistral 7B, Mixtral 8x7B, and Magistral
• Apache 2.0 licensing allows free commercial use
• Growing traction with major firms like AXA, BNP Paribas, and CMA CGM
📈 Rapid Growth and Global Ambitions
• Tripled business in 100 days amid demand for sovereign AI
• Forecasting $100M+ in revenue and scaling to a 100MW GPU facility
• Funding to scale compute, expand team, and deepen model development
Mistral AI is fueling Europe’s open-source AI future—combining scale, performance, and sovereignty in one ecosystem.
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💻 Amazon Expands Anthropic Partnership to Lead in AI Infrastructure
Amazon is considering a fresh multibillion-dollar investment in Anthropic to solidify its position as the company’s largest backer and strengthen its AI ecosystem.
✅ Key details
• Follows an initial $8B commitment to Anthropic
• Aims to surpass Google’s $3B stake
• Deep integration with AWS and Trainium 2 chips
• Anthropic powering Alexa+, Prime Video, and AWS tools
🌐 What sets this apart
• Anthropic uses AWS as primary cloud and AI chip provider
• Amazon gains deeper infrastructure and product alignment
• Partnership rivals Microsoft–OpenAI and Google–DeepMind
🚀 Why it matters
• Puts Amazon at the center of next-gen AI development
• Strengthens AWS as a leader in model training and deployment
• Reflects a long-term shift toward strategic AI alliances
Amazon’s growing stake in Anthropic signals a deeper bet on owning the future of generative AI.
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