Tech and startups: 6th May 2025

• Sam Altman's World and Tools for Humanity launched Worldcoin in the US market with the Orb Mini, a mobile verification device featuring eyeball scanning technology to distinguish humans from AI.

• Anysphere secured $900 million in funding led by Thrive Capital, reaching a $9 billion valuation for its AI-powered code editor Cursor, highlighting continued strong investment in developer tools.

• Defense tech startup Chaos Industries raised $275 million, achieving a $2 billion valuation, while space startups True Anomaly raised $260 million and Apex secured $200 million for satellite production, showing robust investor interest in defense and space sectors.

• Astronomer raised $93 million in Series D funding to enhance its data orchestration platform, addressing the AI implementation gap and highlighting orchestration's critical role in AI infrastructure.

• IXI secured $36.5 million to develop the world's first autofocus glasses with dynamic vision correction, utilizing advanced eye-tracking technology to transform eyewear into tech-enhanced accessories.

• Rework's AI model 'red_panda' beat DALL-E and Midjourney on popular benchmarks, helping the company raise $30 million in Series B funding for brand-specific image generation capabilities.

• Global venture funding reached $23 billion in April, showing a significant drop from March despite AI attracting $7 billion, with mega-rounds consuming a growing share of total startup funding.

Why I stopped angel investing after 15 years (and what I'm doing instead) (halletecco.substack.com, 2025-05-03). After 15 years of angel investing, Halle Tecco paused due to insufficient transparency and shallow relationships. She now focuses on board roles, teaching, and being a Limited Partner in VC funds

State of the Private Markets (mostlymetrics.com, 2025-05-02). Insights on private tech markets reveal the disappearance of alpha, the rise of AI tools, and noteworthy valuations of firms like OpenAI and xAI. Hiring trends signal future revenue growth amidst market volatility

How Venture Capital Warps the World (techpolicy.press, 2025-05-04). Catherine Bracy discusses her book 'World Eaters', highlighting how venture capital, supported by the power law, distorts innovation and imposes risks on startups, ultimately affecting economic equity and societal growth

Lessons from 20 Years of Venture Capital: Roelof Botha (Managing Partner and Steward at Sequoia Capital) (thegeneralist.substack.com, 2025-04-29). Roelof Botha discusses Sequoia Capital's innovative frameworks, biases that affect investors, and the importance of long-term vision, detailing methods for identifying enduring companies and navigating market cycles

Exclusive Q&A: Nagraj Kashyap, General Partner at Touring Capital (businessofsandiego.substack.com, 2025-05-01). Nagraj Kashyap, co-founder of Touring Capital, reflects on his venture capital journey, discussing notable investments, startup ecosystems, and the evolving landscape in San Diego's tech scene focusing on software and AI

I created Perfect Wiki and reached $250k in annual revenue without investors (habr.com, 2025-04-30). Ilia Pirozhenko developed Perfect Wiki, a Microsoft Teams-integrated SaaS knowledge base using Node.js, Express, and React, achieving $250k annual revenue with a two-person team and no outside investment

🎧🍌 How Amplitude Scaled to $300M ARR | Spenser Skates, Co-founder and CEO (thespl.it, 2025-05-02). Spenser Skates discusses Amplitude's $300M ARR scale, emphasizing data's role in product design, AI impact, board composition, executive hiring, and insights from early mistakes and acquisitions

How the pay-once business model saved my *aaS (kyrylo.org, 2025-05-01). Kyrylo Silin launched Telebugs, a pay-once error tracking solution built on Rails, leveraging tools like PostgreSQL and ClickHouse, after shifting away from a complex subscription-based model tied to Telegram

Does Your Startup Really Need Complex Cloud Infrastructure? (hadijaveed.me, 2025-05-05). Explores the benefits of simple infrastructure for startups, emphasizing single-server setups and tools like Docker Compose over complex solutions like Kubernetes, while prioritizing product-market fit over unnecessary complexity

How to work better with Product, as an Engineer with Ebi Atawodi (newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com, 2025-04-30). Ebi Atawodi shares insights on fostering strong product-engineering partnerships and building trust using strategies like business scorecards, and emphasizes developing product-minded engineers for improved collaboration and innovation

By: Lessons from Apple, Palantir and Slack - Pitchndeal (randsinrepose.com, 2025-05-02). Explores the dynamics between product managers, designers, and engineers, emphasizing accountability and the need for collaborative decision-making in product development, while introducing the concept of 'Product Engineer' and discussing the pitfalls of misaligned roles

INSPIRED in the Generative AI Era (svpg.com, 2025-05-05). Marty Cagan's book 'INSPIRED' now available in all audio formats discusses the impact of generative AI on product teams and the transition to remote work, highlighting the importance of an empowered product operating model

Do THIS to Build a $1M+ Product Team (ex Google, Bitly PM) (news.aakashg.com, 2025-04-29). Matt LeMay discusses building high-impact product teams that deliver ROI. Key topics include addressing low-impact work, aligning team goals with business milestones, and the importance of clarity in product management

Sunsetting Analytics & The Road Ahead (kermankohli.substack.com, 2025-05-05). 0xArc is sunsetting its Analytics product to focus on building a more efficient tech stack, integrating web2 and web3 data with RPC aggregation, data pipelines, and chain indexing for future growth and AI utilization

Checklist for software engineers who think there’s no growth without working at scale (bhupesh.me, 2025-05-03). Challenging the idea that growth for software engineers only exists in large-scale organizations, emphasizing respect for craftsmanship and highlighting that growth can occur at any scale

How I Grew From Engineer to CTO (newsletter.eng-leadership.com, 2025-05-04). Gregor Ojstersek narrates his journey from a disenchanted Java programmer to a successful CTO, emphasizing the role of freelance work, perseverance, and key mistakes that shaped his career in engineering leadership

Don’t waste years in the wrong engineering management role. (medium.com/swlh, 2025-05-02). Engineering managers can assess their career paths with 10 critical questions focusing on roles, growth opportunities, product mindset, work environments, and readiness for change, ensuring alignment with long-term goals and values

The Code is the Easy Part (avivbenyosef.com, 2025-04-30). Effective leadership in software engineering hinges on managing people, not just code. The human side is less elastic than technology, making it crucial to implement deliberate management strategies and avoid premature structuring

You can’t Git clone a team (virtualize.sh, 2025-05-05). Mastering the full software stack is a human challenge, requiring not only technical expertise in systems like hypervisors and orchestration but also a pipeline of new talent to prevent burnout and knowledge loss

How Multitasking Affects Capitalization and What You Can Try Instead (jrothman.com, 2025-04-29). Exploring the link between multitasking and capitalization, this piece outlines a methodology to improve project management using visualization, root cause analysis, and effective workflow management techniques like Cost of Delay and team-focused strategies

+ Impressions of that secret product I'm not talking about yet (birchtree.me, 2025-04-30). Matt Birchler shares over 2,000 words of insights on a secret tech product, emphasizing legal aspects rather than AI solutions, along with paid subscription access to exclusive content

i will cheerlead the fuck out of your project for a 0.1% equity stake (blog.greg.technology, 2025-04-29). Offering emotional support for a 0.1% equity stake, Greg provides cheerleading for project completion, highlighting the potential of ideas and encouraging success in shipping products and overcoming obstacles

How to not break up with your cofounder (newsletter.posthog.com, 2025-05-04). James Hawkins discusses his partnership with Tim Glaser at PostHog, emphasizing equal equity, intentional communication, shared values, and a focus on opportunities to maintain a healthy cofounder relationship

Why I’m getting off US tech (disconnect.blog, 2025-05-01). The author explores alternatives to US tech platforms amidst concerns over the influence of Silicon Valley, highlighting transitions to services like Proton Mail and the challenges of leaving the Apple ecosystem

My year in Amazon (wrongsideofmemphis.com, 2025-05-04). A software developer shares experiences from his 11 months at Amazon, focusing on team communication, unique cultural practices, and challenges such as on-call responsibilities and internal tools like APIs and access request systems

Why I ever wrote Clojure (thesoftwarephilosopher.com, 2025-05-03). Clojure was created out of boredom, offering a fun escape for engineers tired of generic enterprise code, with its appeal evident in fintech as intelligent engineers seek stimulating challenges

You Wouldn't Download a Hacker News (jasonthorsness.com, 2025-04-30). Jason Thorsness discusses how he downloaded all of Hacker News data, analyzed it using DuckDB, and extracted trends about programming languages like Python and Java over time

Public company comparables. (lethain.com, 2025-05-03). Effective representation of an R&D organization can be achieved using scatterplots of R&D spend versus revenue growth, utilizing data from Meritech Analytics for public company comparables to assess performance against peers

On-Premise Before Cloud As API Virtue Signal (apievangelist.com, 2025-05-02). A discussion on the shift from cloud-based API solutions to on-premise deployments, emphasizing customer demand and the value of offering on-premise, VPN, and FedRamp approved options as critical signals in the API space

Why I Built a Web App With HTMX, Go & Postgres (haseebmajid.dev, 2025-05-05). Haseeb Majid shares insights on building a web app with HTMX, Go, and PostgreSQL, utilizing tools like TailwindCSS, DaisyUI, and AlpineJS, focusing on simplicity and avoiding complex JavaScript frameworks

Inside Devin: The world’s first autonomous AI engineer that's set to write 50% of its company’s code by end of year | Scott Wu (CEO and co-founder of Cognition) (lennysnewsletter.com, 2025-05-04). Cognition's Devin, the first autonomous AI engineer, is set to write 50% of the company's code, working through tools like Slack, Linear, and GitHub, transforming engineering roles from implementation to design

First, They Came for the Software Engineers… (amistrongeryet.substack.com, 2025-04-29). Interviews reveal AI's transformative potential on tech jobs: with 90% of code predicted to be AI-generated and entry-level roles diminishing, industry insights suggest a looming crisis for software engineers

A Farewell to APMs — The Future of Observability is MCP tools (towardsdatascience.com, 2025-05-02). The emergence of Model Context Protocols (MCP) signifies a shift from Application Performance Monitoring (APM) to AI-driven observability tools, enabling intelligent agents to autonomously analyze and improve software systems

Now is The Best Time to Be a Software Engineer (ML for SWEs 9) (societysbackend.com, 2025-05-05). Software engineers are in demand as AI tools enhance development velocity, enabling faster prototyping. Emphasis is placed on learning coding principles and adapting to machine learning systems for future job security

What Will Software Engineering Look Like in 2027? (aviator.co, 2025-04-29). By 2027, software engineering will involve AI pair programming as a necessity, the rise of software architects, vibe coding, and a shift to continuous verification, altering the landscape of coding and development tools

AI coding tools for prototyping – a primer (jeremybelcher.co, 2025-05-02). AI coding tools like Replit, V0, and Cursor empower non-coders to create apps and prototypes. They lower barriers to product development but have limitations depending on complexity and framework requirements

Vibe Coding is Hard (taner-dev.com, 2025-05-02). Exploring vibe coding, Taner shares experiences using AI tools like Claude 3.7 and Cursor to develop a motion-controlled game prototype, highlighting the advantages and challenges of giving up coding control