📅 New year, new announcements!
ft. recognition for our DRF founders and partners, news around AI hype, and lots of internships & jobs
Welcome back, DRF fam! After taking a break, we hope you all are feeling recharged, refreshed, and ready for another year in tech. We can't wait to share all the exciting DRF news and tech content we have in store in 2023. Let’s kick off this new chapter with a new round of community updates! 🚀
🎊 congratulations are in order!
Shield AI, a DRF portfolio company that builds AI pilots for aircraft, closed their $225m Series E round
Quantbase, a DRF portfolio company that allows financial companies and individuals turn their investment research into an investing strategy, joined the W23 batch of Y Combinator
Gander, a DRF portfolio company that collects and embeds user-generated video content into retail sites, was named one of the most disruptive MBA startups in 2022 by Poets&Quants
Riley Soward, former Boston managing partner and co-founder of Orbital, a B2B SaaS startup, raised his seed round
Michael Truell, former Boston investment partner, launched Cursor, an AI source editor for developers
Tori Orr, Philly managing partner, joined Harlem Capital’s Winter 2023 intern class
Lan Jiang, former SF managing partner, joined Lux Capital
Nicole Ripka, NYC managing partner, co-led the first Female Founders Lunch of the semester at NYU Entrepreneurial Institute
DRF partners and/or founders featured in Forbes 30 Under 30
Pelkins Ajanoh, CEO & Co-Founder of CassVita Inc.
Alice Deng, CPO & Co-Founder of Slope
Sara Du, CEO & Co-Founder of Alloy Automation
Christine Esserman, Partner at Accel
Kimiloluwa Fafowora, CEO & Founder of Gander (fka Meet Klara)
Kashish Gupta, Co-Founder of Hightouch
Neeka Mashouf, CEO & Co-Founder of Rubi Laboratories
Toni Oloko, Co-Founder of Dandy
Olamide Olowe, CEO & Co-Founder of Tropicals
Amélie-Sophie Vavrovsky, CEO & Founder of Formally
Samuel Spitz, CEO & Co-Founder of Gently
DRF partners featured in BostInno’s 25 under 25:
Ganesh Kolli, Boston investment partner
Melissa Li, HQ managing partner & Head of Community
Alex Marley, Boston managing partner
📱 tech news
🚀 Generative AI race heats up. Google announced the test launch of Bard, their own chatbot in response to ChatGPT. The launch comes after reports that OpenAI's launch of ChatGPT prompted a "code red" response at Google. Earlier in the month, Google also invested $300 million in Anthropic, an AI safety and research startup founded by a team that includes former OpenAI researchers. Reportedly valued at $5 billion post-money, Anthropic is the maker of Claude, an AI chatbot not yet publicly available. This comes off the heels of reports that Microsoft has extended its partnership with OpenAI through an additional investment valued at $10 billion. OpenAI’s chatbot, ChatGPT, was released at the end of November 2022 and has since become the fastest growing app in the world, with over 100 million active monthly users in January 2023. Recently, OpenAI announced ChatGPT Plus, a $20 per month premium version of its chatbot geared toward the enterprise. Training existing foundation models is incredibly compute-intensive, and Google's investment in Anthropic follows a broader trend in generative AI of foundation models forming partnerships with a Big Tech company and their computing services.
Further reading:
How ChatGPT Kicked Off an A.I. Arms Race (The New York Times)
💸 Another check for the fintech darling? Stripe has informed employees that the company would either go public or allow employees to sell stock within the next 12 months. To this end, Stripe has hired Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan to explore the option of going public later this year. Stripe has also been in talks with investors to raise $2.5 billion at a valuation of up to $60 billion, a significant drop from a 2021 funding round that valued the company at $95 billion. This new round of capital, reportedly led by Thrive Capital, would cover tax liabilities associated with some of Stripe’s long-time employee whose stock grants expire in the next year. As the overall funding environment slows and COVID-era valuations plummet, down rounds will be the name of the game in 2023.
Further reading:
What’s Stripe’s deal? (TechCrunch)
Why a Stripe down round would be a ‘good lesson’ for startups, according to one VC (Fortune)
Inside Stripe’s $55 Billion Pitch to Investors (The Information)
🏛️ TikTok, transparency, and troubles. In the past few months, TikTok has been restricted or banned from public universities in Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Iowa, Maryland, Montana, Oklahoma, South Dakota and now Texas. More than half of all US states have partially or fully banned TikTok from government devices. At the federal level, Congress banned TikTok from federal government devices as part of the $1.7 trillion spending bill passed at the end of 2022. Recently, TikTok invited journalists to tour the company's "Transparency and Accountability Center," where regulators, academics, and auditors can learn about the app's inner workings and security practices. This comes as part of a multi-week press campaign by TikTok to push Project Texas, the company's proposal to the US government that would partition off American user data instead of a complete ban. The general consensus of the Transparency Center amongst the journalists invited? Not enough.
Further reading:
Auburn Banned TikTok, and Students Can’t Stop Talking About It (The New York Times)
A Visit to TikTok's Transparency Center (Platformer)
The U.S. Government Banned TikTok From Federal Devices. What’s Next? (Council on Foreign Relations)
TikTok is a New Kind of Superweapon (The Prism)
📣 new startup + VC jobs
internships
General Atlantic: Summer 2024 Summer Analyst Program (NYC)
General Atlantic: Summer 2024 Growth Acceleration Summer Analyst Program (NYC)
Discord: Summer 2023 Product Engineering Intern (SF)
Roblox: Summer 2023 Data Science Intern (Bay Area)
Robinhood: Treasury Risk & Analytics Intern (Bay Area)
Emerson Collective: MBA Summer 2023 Venture Investing Program (Bay Area)
Anthos Capital: Summer 2023 Sourcing Intern (LA)
TCG: Summer 2023 Intern (LA)
Lux Capital: Summer 2023 Intern (Remote)
Atomic: Summer 2023 Design Intern (Remote)
Harlem Capital: Summer 2023 Intern (Remote)
Lyft: Summer 2023 Product Design Intern (Remote)
Hey Jane: Spring 2023 Campus Ambassador (Remote)
full-time
General Atlantic: Digital Marketing Analyst (NYC)
Letterdrop: Founding Account Executive (Bay Area or NYC)
Omers: Financial Analyst (Bay Area)
Nextdoor: Finance & Strategy Growth Associate (SF)
Pillar VC: Tech Investor (Boston)
Little Otter: Manager, Accounting and Finance (Remote)
Clipboard Health: Associate Product Manager (Remote)
📖 new essays we’re reading
Nan Ransohoff, head of climate at Stripe, provides a framework for finding a job in climate tech
Isabelle Zhou, investor at Floodgate, outlines startup opportunities in the unbundling of Facebook services
Anna-Sofia Lesiv, writer at Contrary, describes the past, present, and future of fusion technology
Kyla Scanlon, a professional vibe, reflects on the state of the economy, venture capital, crypto, etc. in 2022
This issue was written by: Andrew Xu (andrew.xu@dormroomfund.com).
Thumbnail designed by: Kia Uusitalo (kia@dormroomfund.com)
More DRF fun: Twitter + website + company application. Send job opportunities, feedback, requests, and hot takes to info@dormroomfund.com 🚀