Tech and startups: 22nd July 2025

• Startup M&A surged to over $100 billion in H1 2025, led by major deals including Google's acquisition of Wiz for $32 billion.

• Cybersecurity funding reached $9.4 billion in H1 2025, with AI applications driving investment growth, while security pioneer John Watters launched iCOUNTER with $30 million funding to tackle AI-enabled cyberattacks.

• Major funding rounds included Exodigo raising $96M for underground mapping AI tools, Substack securing $100M at $1.1bn valuation, and Firestorm Labs closing $47M for mobile drone manufacturing.

• OpenAI's culture was revealed as chaotic with speed and secrecy prioritized, while Anthropic launched finance-specific Claude with enhanced capabilities and ChatGPT now operates as agentic AI with novel risks.

• Mexico surpassed Brazil in venture funding for the first time in over a decade, focusing on AI and fintech sectors, while fintech startups see modest funding recovery amid high investor optimism.

• Meta plans to invest hundreds of billions in AI data centers, including new facilities in Ohio and Louisiana to expand superintelligence capabilities.

• Venture-backed startups secured billions for battery recycling and rare earth mining amid geopolitical supply chain concerns.

• Jack Dorsey invested $10M in nonprofit focused on open-source social media tools, while founders are advised to consider skipping VCs for direct LP engagement.

Building Strong Teams: Lessons from Beavers for Tech Leads (engineering​.gusto​.com). Tech leads are encouraged to foster autonomy in engineers while avoiding micromanagement, drawing parallels between beavers and octopuses for effective team management

How Amazon Bedrock CMI Cut AI Model Onboarding Time by 75% (engineering​.salesforce​.com). Salesforce's integration of Amazon Bedrock CMI streamlined AI model onboarding, reducing time by 75% while enhancing developer productivity and addressing GPU resource challenges

Debugging the One-in-a-Million Failure: Migrating Pinterest’s Search Infrastructure to Kubernetes (medium​.com/pinterest-engineering). Pinterest's search infrastructure migration to Kubernetes faced latency spikes due to cAdvisor's memory management, impacting performance for millions of users

The AI Engineering Shift (medium​.com/thumbtack-engineering). AI-native development at Thumbtack shifts focus from data-first to product-first using LLMs, fostering rapid prototyping and user feedback integration

Guilds (catskull​.net). Implementing a guild system in corporate environments, modern mutual-aid societies inspired by Franklin's Junto, and fostering collaboration through technology

Rock Star (thomas-huehn​.com). Explores the concept of 'rock star' developers as stabilizing team members contrasting with ambition-driven 'super stars' for healthy workplace culture

The Rise of Fluid Teams (blog​.pwkf​.org). Fluid teams combine Ephemeral Feature Teams for innovation and Stable Technology Teams for robust code, fostering rapid, high-quality software development

Know What Your Goals Are and Why (dontbreakprod​.com). Understanding personal motivations and goals is essential for career satisfaction in software engineering, aiding mentorship and goal achievement

Building Stronger Engineering Teams with Aligned Autonomy (cosmicmeta​.io). Aligned autonomy fosters innovation in engineering teams by balancing freedom and focus, enhancing collaboration and trust while ensuring strategic alignment towards organizational goals

About Brian Graham (kb​.buildingbetterteams​.de). Brian Graham discusses team dynamics, organizational design, and productivity solutions for software engineers, applying methods like Theory of Constraints in diverse contexts

My Conversation with Substack Co-Founders Chris Best & Hamish McKenzie Fresh Off Their $100 Million Funding Round (newcomer​.co). Substack co-founders discuss their $100M funding, app strategy, advertising, AI perspectives, and political trends during a live conversation with Eric Newcomer

RevenueCat Rejects $500M Acquisition and Raises Series C (onlycfo​.io). RevenueCat's CEO declines a $500M acquisition offer, raises $50M in Series C funding, and reveals insights on growth and profitability amid the AI boom

Clouded Judgement 7.18.25 - The Return of the Point Solution (cloudedjudgement​.substack​.com). Exploration of point solutions in cloud software investing; how early niche companies like Datadog disrupt incumbents and the emerging AI investment landscape

Deep Dive on Thinky's Seed Round (Part II) (ai-supremacy​.com). Thinky, led by former OpenAI CTO Mira Murati, closes $2B seed round, aiming for multimodal AI systems with open-source offerings and groundbreaking talent

Benchmark in Talks to Lead Series A for Greptile, Valuing AI-Code Reviewer at $180M, Sources Say (cosmicmeta​.io). Benchmark seeks to lead a $180M Series A for Greptile, an AI-code reviewer startup aiming to transform coding practices with precision and efficiency

Money Moves Podcast with Neil Devani @ Necessary VC (alsoblogposts​.com). Neil Devani interviews Mike Annunziata on Hard Tech, venture capital insights, raising capital challenges, and building founder-investor relationships

Sequoia Wants It Hard (paragraph​.com). Jared Hecht recounts a fundraising mishap involving GroupMe and Sequoia Capital, highlighting lessons learned in startup culture and venture capital dynamics

Entrepreneurship As Recursive Price Discovery (optimaloutliers​.com). Explores entrepreneurship as recursive price discovery, emphasizing belief segmentation, prioritization, testing architecture, and the role of intuition in decision-making

The Remarkable Incompetence At The Heart Of Tech (wheresyoured​.at). Key issues in enterprise software purchases, highlighted through Snowflake's inefficiency, systemic incompetence among engineers, and the mismanagement prevalent in tech leadership

Reflections on OpenAI (calv​.info). Reflections on OpenAI's rapid growth, collaborative culture, technology innovations, safety considerations, and the evolving internal dynamics post-AGI and ChatGPT

Assets. (alis​.me). Tech industry's shift from valuing engineers to prioritizing ML services reflects a new asset paradigm in AI-driven environments

A Pro-Human Future or Evil AI Empires? It's All in the Architecture (mishadavinci​.substack​.com). Pro-human tech architecture versus big tech's consolidation; insights on AI, stablecoins, and reclaiming personal agency in the digital landscape

CARL, tech capital, and microservices 💡 (refactoring​.fm). Explore Convex for AI backends, the CARL method for interviews, creating tech capital, and the monolith-to-microservices debate in software development

Building a product feedback loop with Tinybird MCP, Plain and one LLM prompt (tinybird​.co). Automate product feedback using Tinybird MCP, Plain webhooks, and LLM prompts for streamlined support and reporting

Building GoReleaser: from shell script to paid product (carlosbecker​.com). GoReleaser evolves from a simple shell script for release automation to a full-fledged tool with community support and a paid version offering advanced features

30-day Micro-SaaS challenge: week two (stonesoup​.vision). Key learnings from the second week of a 30-day Micro-SaaS challenge, emphasizing effective use of Claude AI and operational best practices

How and where will agents ship software? (instantdb​.com). Agents, a multi-tenant sync engine, built-in abstractions, cost-efficient hosting, and a dinosaur-themed habit tracker integrated with a practical database application

Five Boring Things That Have A Bigger Impact Than “A.I.” Coding Assistants On Dev Team Productivity (notes​.jim-nielsen​.com). Explore five productivity strategies for dev teams: smaller team dynamics, frequent releases, limited work in progress, cross-functional collaboration, and empowered self-organizing teams

Critical Path - Your North Star for Predictable Project Delivery (lewandowski​.io). Explore the Critical Path Method to enhance project predictability, optimize task management, and empower engineering teams with effective planning tools like Jira

Nobody knows how to build with AI yet (worksonmymachine​.substack​.com). Exploration of AI-driven software development reflecting improvisation, documentation methods, and the evolving nature of programming processes without established expertise

Amazon, Google and Vibe Coding with Steve Yegge (newsletter​.pragmaticengineer​.com). Steve Yegge discusses platform challenges at Google, AI coding complexities, and the emerging 'AI Fixer' role while promoting his book on Vibe Coding

Mentoring junior engineers in the age of coding agents (blog​.marcua​.net). Mentorship for junior engineers must adapt to coding agents, focusing on task definition and code review skills from day one, not after years of experience

Code was the least interesting part of my multi-agent app, and here’s what that means to me (seroter​.com). Richard Seroter explores the importance of architectural decisions over code in multi-agent apps, leveraging AI frameworks like ADK for agent-driven solutions

The AI Engineering Shift (medium​.com/thumbtack-engineering). AI-native development at Thumbtack shifts focus from data-first to product-first using LLMs, fostering rapid prototyping and user feedback integration

Claude Code Is a Game Changer (probably​.co​.uk). Non-programmer builds a haiku-based social network using Claude Code, Go, HTMx, and TailwindCSS, emphasizing simplicity and constraints in coding

From Idea to Launch in 2 Weeks (yusufaytas​.com). Exploration of leveraging LLMs in software development, project speed, tool stacks (Next.js, Supabase, TypeScript), and the significance of clear specifications

Is Cursor having their Docker moment? (thecloudcast​.net). Exploration of Cursor's potential impact in the tech industry resembling Docker's revolutionary moment, discussing coding assistants, acquisitions, and major technology players

Unlocking high software engineering pace: Build less, ship frequently, learn faster (dev​.jimgrey​.net). Rapid software development through small, frequent releases enhances learning, customer feedback, and business value, minimizing wasted engineering time and resources

Finding a job as a product engineer (newsletter​.posthog​.com). Explore tactics for securing product engineer roles, focusing on company selection, job boards, and understanding job descriptions

Your Engineering Team Should be Looking to Solve Customer Problems (newsletter​.eng-leadership​.com). Shift engineering focus from code to customer problems, leveraging DevStats for delivery clarity and emphasizing product-driven approaches advocated by leader Matt Watson

Letters to a Young Founder: Immad Akhund of Mercury (generalist​.com). Immad Akhund discusses product design at Mercury, maintaining quality during rapid growth, and the strategic expansion into consumer offerings

How Linear Built a $1.25B Unicorn with Just 2 PMs (news​.aakashg​.com). Nan Yu discusses the Linear Method, emphasizing clarity, sustainable work cycles, and user-centric strategies to build impactful products with only two PMs

Vantage on management: Points of view on a product (tiendil​.org). Explore the evolving nature of products in SaaS, the importance of emotional aspects, team dynamics, and adaptive management systems for successful product strategies

I Made Over $56K A Month Working 4 Tech Jobs – Then I Walked Away (peopleofcolorintech​.com). Michael Westbrooks II shares his journey from self-taught iOS engineer to earning $56K/month while managing multiple jobs and eventually pivoting to entrepreneurship

Welcome to Ghost (randsinrepose​.com). Discussion on analytics and dashboard creation for Rands-related properties using tools like Substack and Ghost, highlighting newsletter growth and user engagement metrics

How Khaled Yusuf used the power of risk to build LavaLoon (frappe​.io). Khaled Yusuf discusses his journey, risks in entrepreneurship, ERPNext adoption, and LavaLoon's growth through innovative solutions and team empowerment

Being Piledriven: Thoughts after Contracting with Hermit Tech (mirawelner​.com). Insights on pair programming with Nikhil Suresh at Hermit Tech, including management practices, technical skills, and unique consultancy culture

Numbers from my recent job hunt (shanebarry​.com). Shane Barry shares insights from his 6-month job hunt as a Senior Software Engineer, emphasizing the effectiveness of referrals over direct applications

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