Tech and startups: 15th April 2025

• [Base Power raised $200M]({40, 74, 45}) for home backup batteries and grid-balancing operations, leading a relatively quiet week for funding rounds.

• [OpenAI co-founder Ilya Sutskever's startup Safe Superintelligence]({34, 36}) is valued at $32B, partnering with Google Cloud and focusing on creating a singular product for safe superintelligent AI.

• [Former OpenAI CTO Mira Murati's Thinking Machines Lab]({41, 106}) is reportedly seeking a historic $2B seed funding round at a $10B+ valuation.

• Fintech startup Rain raised $75M Series B to expand its employer-integrated earned wage access app with features like credit cards and financial education.

• Solid, which claimed to be the 'AWS of fintech,' has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy after raising nearly $81M in funding.

• Peter Thiel's Founders Fund closed a $4.6B growth fund focusing on sectors like defense tech and fintech amid a challenging IPO and M&A climate.

• Europe's VC funding remained stable at $12.6B in Q1, with healthcare capturing 32% of investments and the UK leading with $4.4B.

• Networking startup Tailscale raised $160M at a $1.5B valuation for its VPN platform that enhances performance with direct device connections.

Tradeoff costs in communication (surfingcomplexity.blog, 2025-04-12). Ambiguity in technical terms like 'server', 'service', and 'client' complicates communication in software. Precision comes at a cost to speakers, challenging collaboration across teams, particularly during incidents

Post-Corona disconnects (thefoggiest.dev, 2025-04-14). The article explores the post-Corona work culture, highlighting the disconnect from team dynamics and responsibilities, with the use of tools like Slack and Teams, and the impact of part-time work on collaboration

🔥 Sure, Nate's CEO hired Filipinos to "be the AI",… (justin.searls.co, 2025-04-11). Nate's CEO controversially labeled LLM as 'Large Labor Model', exposing the use of Filipino workers as the brain behind an AI shopping app, leading to fraud charges against the fintech founder

🔥 Good post for engineering leaders struggling to… (justin.searls.co, 2025-04-08). Resource for engineering leaders on balancing business needs and technical delivery, featuring a unique 2x2 matrix to help strategize effective tactics beyond minimal viable products

Vibe Maintainer (davidsj.substack.com, 2025-04-14). David Jayatillake discusses open-source project maintenance, integrating LLMs with features like tagging and summarizing content, and collaboration through community contributions, like the recent merge of a PR for configurable URLs

A technique for getting team alignment (benjystanton.co.uk, 2025-04-13). Benjy Stanton explores a technique for team alignment using Microsoft Word or Confluence, emphasizing upfront input from the entire team to balance user-centered design with stakeholder perspectives and competing organizational requests

On promotion and growth beyond senior (efekarakus.com, 2025-04-12). Efe discusses the evolution of promotion criteria in software engineering, highlighting the importance of strategic work and visibility alongside wisdom for career growth at Amazon

A project to smooth relations with devs (birchtree.me, 2025-04-10). Matt Birchler discusses ways companies can positively engage developers, highlighting the importance of building relationships rather than adopting an attitude of entitlement over platforms like Visual Studio Code

Ask HN: Has anyone quit their startup (VC-backed) over cofounder disagreements? (news.ycombinator.com, 2025-04-11). A startup founder shares struggles over cofounder disagreements, highlighting a lack of vision and constant pivots, while considering quitting their VC-backed startup for new opportunities or to find a compatible cofounder

Tips from a solopreneur (jacobfilipp.com, 2025-04-09). Jacob Filipp shares insights on solo entrepreneurship, emphasizing that great products don't ensure customer arrival, the unpredictability of sales and marketing, and the value of Eric Ries' Lean Startup methodology

Part 4: Finding pride in shipping real features (danielsada.tech, 2025-04-09). Daniel Sada Caraveo shares his journey through internships at Microsoft, focusing on tools like Microsoft Project, SQL Server, C++, and OneNote Services, highlighting the pride in shipping impactful software features

Part 5: Many Bosses, The Reality of Running Your Own Company (danielsada.tech, 2025-04-13). Running a company entails managing multiple clients, each with unique demands. Lessons learned include the challenges of outsourcing, setting clear expectations, and alternative approaches like manual operations and pre-selling to validate ideas before app development

🎧🍌 Inside Verkada, the $4.5B Physical Security Company | Filip Kaliszan, Founder and CEO (thespl.it, 2025-04-11). Filip Kaliszan, CEO of Verkada, discusses building hardware for physical security, using AI in cameras, customer collaboration, and launching new product lines, while growing to nearly $1B in revenue since 2016

Dug Song: Values over valuation—reflections on building Duo Security and leading with purpose (ventureinsecurity.net, 2025-04-12). Dug Song discusses Duo Security's rise, emphasizing values over valuation, the importance of culture, and how the company successfully made Multi-Factor Authentication usable, learning from past security failures

Goodbye JourneyInbox - Building SaaS #218 (mattlayman.com, 2025-04-11). Matt Layman announces the end of JourneyInbox as a SaaS product, pivoting it for personal use and shifting the core logic to Go for server simplification after recognizing a lack of market adoption

Bottom of the first: A veteran VC’s take on the AI landscape (stackoverflow.blog, 2025-04-08). Tomasz Tunguz discusses AI and venture capital, covering topics like AI model optimization, parallelization, the importance of emerging standards, and the influence of open-source AI on the technology landscape

What Investing at 100x ARR Really Means (mostlymetrics.com, 2025-04-13). Exploring the implications of investing at 100x ARR, this analysis discusses growth expectations, pricing shifts amidst AI advancements, efficiency benchmarks, and challenges for operators in achieving the projected scale

This Black Woman Secured $26M To Invest In “Dangerous Founders” (peopleofcolorintech.com, 2025-04-10). Growth Warrior Capital secures $26M to invest in underrepresented founders, focusing on AI-driven solutions for industrial sectors and launching tools like Elevo to streamline fundraising processes

A Few Themes from Explosive Growth AI Startups (tanayj.com, 2025-04-13). AI startups like Cursor and Midjourney are outperforming traditional SaaS growth with innovative tools for software creation, prosumer tools, enterprise applications, and model deployment infrastructure, fueling unprecedented market acceleration

Enforcing the use of AI in engineering teams - good or bad thing? (newsletter.eng-leadership.com, 2025-04-13). AI adoption in engineering teams presents challenges and opportunities, with tools like Model Context Protocol (MCP) enhancing productivity but requiring a culture-first approach to avoid negative consequences

The Dynamic Between Domain Experts & Developers Has Shifted (dbreunig.com, 2025-04-10). OpenAI's Pioneers Program highlights a shift where domain experts like lawyers, doctors, and educators become crucial in developing tailored AI product prompts and evaluations

What Does It Mean to Be a Venture Capitalist Today? (chudson.substack.com, 2025-04-09). Venture capital's evolution highlights a shift from diverse, revolutionary funding toward algorithmic approaches focusing on metrics like CAC and LTV, risking the loss of innovation and unique investment taste in favor of conformity

OpenAI’s CPO on how AI changes must-have skills, moats, coding, startup playbooks, more | Kevin Weil (CPO at OpenAI, ex-Instagram, Twitter) (lennysnewsletter.com, 2025-04-10). Kevin Weil discusses AI's impact on product management, emphasizing skills like effective evaluation, the benefits of model ensembles, and innovations like 'vibe coding' for rapid prototyping in AI development

Everyone’s an engineer now: Inside v0’s mission to create a hundred million builders | Guillermo Rauch (founder & CEO of Vercel, creators of v0 and Next.js) (lennysnewsletter.com, 2025-04-13). Vercel's v0 AI tool democratizes app development, enabling non-engineers to build high-quality web applications through prompt-driven design and AI-powered coding techniques

Why change role to AI Engineering (blog.lawrencejones.dev, 2025-04-10). Exploring a transition to AI Engineering reveals opportunities and challenges, emphasizing the importance of internal tooling, the unpredictable nature of progress, and the potential for building impactful AI products

Designing for emotional residue over functional outcomes (uxdesign.cc, 2025-04-14). Embracing emotional residue as a strategic design element is crucial, especially with AI tools reshaping product development, emphasizing user feelings over pure functionality to foster trust and engagement

The industrialization of IT (benn.substack.com, 2025-04-11). The impact of AI on software engineering is explored through the costs of hiring engineers versus using models like Gemini 2.5 Pro, predicting a shift towards the industrialization of code writing

Waterfall in 15 Minutes or Your Money Back (harper.blog, 2025-04-10). AI tools like large language models are transforming software development workflows into rapid 15-minute waterfall cycles, challenging code quality standards, and shifting team dynamics towards strategic orchestration and streamlined productivity

Week 15, 2025 - Kung Fu (peterszasz.com, 2025-04-11). In Week 15 of 2025, Péter Szász explores the use of Model Context Protocols (MCP) with Claude, focusing on coding, deployment, and developer productivity metrics amid AI integration in engineering teams

The Truth About AI Coding Agents (blog.codonomics.com, 2025-04-09). AI coding agents like GitHub Copilot and Amazon's Q Developer promise productivity gains but cannot replace human developers, emphasizing collaboration in solving complex problems over cost-cutting measures by companies

The Problem with “Vibe Coding” (dylanbeattie.net, 2025-04-11). Dylan Beattie discusses the distinction between 'vibe coding' and product development, emphasizing the challenges of transforming working code into viable products while highlighting tools like Copilot and ChatGPT that assist novice programmers

The functional equivalent of microservices? (rubenerd.com, 2025-04-11). Ruben Schade reflects on the drawbacks of microservices, valuing SQL joins over independently scalable data stores, and likens microservices to object-oriented programming in architecture

OKRs, docs, and high-quality code 💡 (refactoring.fm, 2025-04-14). Exploring the impact of knowledge gaps, the effective use of OKRs, continuous documentation during the SDLC, and defining high-quality code focused on changeability and maintainability through clear structure and good tests

Consistent Infrastructure (eric.mann.blog, 2025-04-09). Eric Mann discusses the importance of consistent development environments, highlighting tools like Vagrant and Varying Vagrant Vagrants (VVV) to mitigate issues caused by differing production and local setups

Four Builds: A Balance Between Quality and Joy (yegor256.com, 2025-04-12). Four builds categorize software testing by speed and complexity: Fast, Cheap, Preflight, and Proper builds, utilizing tools like GitHub Actions for CI/CD and AWS for extensive testing including unit, integration, and performance assessments

How to Build a Scaled Experimentation Engine (news.aakashg.com, 2025-04-09). Leading companies like OpenAI and Notion adopt scaled experimentation systems that prioritize trustworthy results, utilizing techniques such as stratified sampling and CUPED, to ensure data-driven product development

I am Uncluttered (Yellow): doom-prepping web dev through disdain, disrespect, and doing the right thing (baldurbjarnason.com, 2025-04-11). Exploring doom-prepping web development, the article critiques tech management's detachment from practical solutions, highlighting the significance of tools like Import Maps and test-driven development amidst an industry in turmoil

I am Uncluttered (Yellow): last excerpt and last chance to get the early adopter discount (baldurbjarnason.com, 2025-04-14). Today is the last chance for a €5 discount on 'I am Uncluttered (Yellow)' or a four-book bundle. The author reflects on fear in software development, prioritizing awareness over extremes of fearlessness or paranoia

189 / Your elusive creative genius (arne.me, 2025-04-13). Arne Bahlo shares insights on creativity, the evolution of engineers into generalists, and the impact of AI through web frameworks, while emphasizing the importance of sleep and the interconnectedness of strengths and weaknesses

Reflections on my Cardano-Haskell Experience (lambdabytes.io, 2025-04-11). A contractor's experience developing Axo, a decentralized trading protocol on Cardano, utilizing Haskell and Rust, addressing software engineering challenges, mental load, and the advantages and drawbacks of Haskell in industry

Touched a nerve (paulrobertlloyd.com, 2025-04-11). The post explores the disconnection of technology from societal needs, the impact of automated creativity, and the author's experience in sharing personal insights via a blog, RSS, and social media interactions

We learn software engineering through esoteric transmission (deadsimpletech.com, 2025-04-10). Exploring the importance of teachers in mastering software engineering, the author shares personal experiences with mentors and discusses the relevance of concepts like non-alignment and tools such as Terraform in approaching complex issues