As you may have noticed, there’s a lot going on in the world of early stage tech and startups right now. 👀 This has made it difficult to keep up with putting Accelerated together every weekend to the standard we’d like.

After a lot of discussion and reflection, we decided that instead of producing a lower quality product, we’d rather put the newsletter on temporary hiatus. Accelerated has been a hugely important and fulfilling part of our lives and careers, so we’re hoping to come back if / when things calm down a bit.

We could not be more grateful for the support of the Accelerated community over the past six years, and are excited to keep in touch with you all. We’ll still be sharing new VC career opportunities at @vcrecruiting - and you can also keep up with everything going on with us @venturetwins and @omooretweets.

We hope to see you very soon - in the meantime, feel free to DM us on Twitter or shoot us an email (jmoore and omoore @ a16z.com) with any questions! 👋

🏢 WeWork hits a bump. WeWork issued a warning to investors this week about its financial health. The company posted a $700M net loss for the first half of 2023, and said in an SEC filing that they may have to pursue asset sales, downsizing, or declaring bankruptcy if their cash situation does not improve. While overall sales were up 4% YoY for Q2, WeWork revenue in the U.S. has declined as economic conditions (including a tougher startup funding environment) have increased customer churn.

😭 Superconductor update. An update to last week’s superconductor saga - it’s unfortunately not looking good. Other scientists have been unable to replicate the results of the supposed room temperature superconductor (known as LK-99) that emerged from a South Korean research team in late July. There are lots of technical threads to read if you want to learn more on this (this is a good one), but the TL;DR is that levitation is not proof of superconductivity.

🇺🇸 Biden seeks to block China investments. President Biden issued a long-awaited executive order this week that restricts U.S. investments in semiconductor, quantum computing, and AI companies in China. This initiative is primarily led by the Treasury, which is seeking comment from U.S. investors before solidifying the regulation (expected to take effect next year). As written, the order will not apply to consumer AI companies - it targets those with government / military applications.

🧵 Meta iterates on Threads. Last month, we wrote about the rocky rollout of Facebook’s new Twitter competitor - Threads. The app saw a massive influx of users at launch (100M downloads in a week!) but low retention. What’s happened since then? The company has added new features, including the ability to share Threads to Instagram DMs, a new chronological feed, and a Follows tab. Mark Zuckerberg posted that he was “excited about [the] team’s pace of shipping,” and feels Threads is “on the trajectory I expect to build a vibrant long term app.”

From a data perspective, external provider SensorTower shows that Threads did see an uptick in downloads (and the active user base) at the beginning of August. The app is currently sitting at 9.5M daily active users, down from a peak of 45M.

In an ongoing news item we will absolutely be following, it appears Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg may actually be moving towards an MMA fight - though Zuckerberg has since responded (on Threads) that they have not agreed on a date or location.

what we’re following 👀

Why Amazon is shuttering most of its in-house fashion brands.

What happened after a group of teens hacked Boston’s MTA system.

Fizz raised $25M to scale its anonymous social platform across college campuses.

It was a monumental week for self-driving cars, as “robotaxi” operators Waymo and Cruise were given permission to expand in San Francisco. Each company can now offer paid rides to any passenger, at all hours. This comes after months of passenger-less tests, and a beta period where Cruise charged for driverless rides only between 10 p.m. - 6 a.m., and Waymo charged for rides accompanied by a human driver.

The decision was not without controversy. The final call by the California Public Utilities Commission this week came after a seven hour hearing, culminating in a 3-1 vote in favor of the expansion - which itself came after months of debate, protests, and campaigns (on both sides!) What’s the controversy?

On the “pro” side (in favor of self-driving cars), the main argument is safety. Human drivers are fallible. Data from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration estimates that of the 42,000 traffic fatalities last year, 94% were due to human error, which self-driving cars could eliminate. A self-driving car is always paying full attention to the road, and may also be able to better navigate situations that are difficult for human drivers - such as limited visibility in the rain, fog, etc.

Other arguments in favor include: convenience and time saved for riders, reduction in traffic (check out a Science video on this here!), positive environmental impacts from fewer car purchases, and reduced cost of transport for consumers. A Pew study from 2021 found that consumers were particularly excited about reducing travel stress and allowing older adults to live more independently.

On the con side - consumers have concerns about the safety of cars controlled by software, which may be “hackable” or may not know how to respond to every situation (and how to prioritize their passengers, other passengers, and pedestrians). SF police and fire first responders reported that robotaxis have gotten in the way of rescue operations 55 times over the past six months.

Other concerns include the economic impact on rideshare and delivery drivers, who could be replaced by autonomous vehicles (though this would likely come at lower cost to consumers). Overall, 63% of consumers say they would not want to ride in a driverless vehicle, with a McKinsey study published in earlier this year showing that trust in autonomous cars has decreased rather than increased over time. Willingness to ride is higher among younger consumers, men, and people with college degrees.

Even with the lift in restrictions, we likely won’t see a flood in self-driving cars immediately in SF. Waymo operates 250 cars in the city currently, while Cruise operates 300 at night and 100 during the day. Both companies said after this week’s ruling that they are expecting an “incremental” ramp up.

jobs 🎓

Vannevar Labs - Chief of Staff (Remote)

Hearth - Product Manager (Remote)

Etsy - Product Manager, Fulfillment ML (SF, NYC)

Character AI - Research Engineer (Palo Alto)

In-Q-Tel - Senior Associate, Biotech (Menlo Park)

Adams Street Partners - Associate, Growth Equity (Menlo Park)

Samsung Next - Investor, AI / Robotics (Mountain View)

Upfront Ventures - Analyst, Data and Venture Operations (LA)

Torch Dental - Software Engineer (NYC)

Quizlet - Strategic Finance Analyst (NYC)

internships 📝

A.Team - Financial Analyst Intern (Remote)

Fivetran - Marketing Specialist Intern (Remote)

Faire - Customer Marketing Intern (Remote)

Gold House - Venture Fellow (Remote)

Salesforce - Summer 2024 APM Intern (SF)

Roblox - Summer 2024 SWE Intern (San Mateo)

Pinecone - SWE Intern (NYC)

puppy of the week 🐶

Meet Momofuku, a French Bulldog who lives in Osaka, Japan.

His hobbies include going on walks, napping, and resting his head on things.

Follow him on Instagram @momofuku_baifu.

All views are our own. None of the above should be taken as investment advice. See this page for important information.

Subscribe now

📊 Earnings updates. Tech earnings season is in full swing! Here’s what you need to know from this week:

• Apple beat analysts’ revenue expectations, but reported declining iPhone sales for the third straight quarter. Overall quarterly revenue was down 1% YoY, but the company saw an 8% jump in services revenue - more on this here.

• Amazon had a strong quarter across the board, with 11% YoY revenue growth and improving margins. Investors were particularly excited about AWS (Amazon Web Services), the company’s cloud business, which had a couple of rough quarters but seems to be stabilizing.

• Airbnb reported 18% YoY revenue growth and strong net income. The company also published some early thoughts on the results of 50 new features and upgrades unveiled earlier in the summer - the TL;DR is that prices are coming down thanks to clearer pricing tools and more discounts for longer stays.

• Block (the company formerly known as Square) saw a 27% YoY jump in gross profit - largely due to strength in Cash App. Peer-to-peer transaction volume hit an all-time high, with 54M people making Cash App transactions monthly.

📱 Triller files for direct listing. TikTok competitor Triller has officially filed to go public on the NYSE. The company is best known for its short form video app, but it also offers pre-recorded shows (Triller TV), tools for creators and brands to promote and monetize their content, and live events (including a PPV fight club). Triller made $48M in revenue last year, the majority of which came from brands (taking a cut of their ads / sales on the platform or service fees). The company has raised $380M and has 550M registered users - the filing didn’t disclose engagement metrics.

👩🏻‍⚖️ TikTok adapts in the EU. In other TikTok-related news, the company announced new features to align with the EU’s new Digital Services Act. This law aims to protect user rights and prevent the spread of illegal content, and it will apply to most of the large social media apps, marketplaces, and search engines. TikTok’s major updates are removing targeted ads for users age 13-17, making it easier to report illegal content, and allowing all users to turn off personalized recommendations for videos (which is basically the entire point of the app?).

🔉 Meta doubles down on open source AI. Two weeks after the release of LLaMA 2 (open source language model), Meta released AudioCraft - a tool that generates realistic audio and music from text. It’s comprised of three models trained on music and sound (think sirens or an engine), but importantly doesn’t generate human voice. You can test it out on Replicate.

what we’re following 👀

“Date me” docs - the new alternative to dating apps?

A deep dive on the GPU shortage (with accompanying music video).

The economic case for generative AI.

The aftermath of the YouTuber giveaway turned riot in NYC on Friday.

The biggest news in the tech world this week? Floating rocks.

A team of researchers in South Korea claim to have created the first-ever room temperature superconductor, called LK-99. This is a chemical compound made from lead, phosphorus, and copper that can supposedly conduct electricity with almost no resistance, a feat previously only achieved at extremely low temperature or high pressure (today, superconductors are used in things like MRI machines).

One of the known qualities of a true superconductor is the Meissner effect - it expels magnetic fields. So if you put it near a magnet, you’ll see it float. The authors of the LK-99 paper provided a video to the New York Times that purports to show a small piece of the material levitating as proof of superconductivity.

The best way to describe this development? “Huge if true.” Room temperature superconductors would be a massive scientific breakthrough. This thread has some good examples of what could be enabled by this - it allows highly efficient energy transmission and storage, which has implications for everything from quantum computers to iPhone batteries to the global energy grid.

The big question now is whether this development is real. Some scientists are skeptical - there have been several past incidents (since the 1990s!) of labs claiming to have created a room temperature superconductor and later retracting it. The Korean papers haven’t yet been peer-reviewed or published in an official journal, though scientists worldwide are racing to replicate the results.

There are some promising early experiments - see Varda Space’s video from this Friday - but it’s still too early to call if this is the major breakthrough it appears to be. It’s possible that there are other factors causing the levitation that aren’t related to superconductivity. More to come here!

Note: If you’d like to read the pre-print papers, you can find them here and here.

jobs 🎓

Scale AI - Ops Associate (SF, NYC)

Dropbox - Chief of Staff, BD* (SF)

Adverb - Early Career Investor (SF)

Bain Capital Ventures - Associate (SF)

DoorDash - Strategy & Ops Manager (SF)

OpenAI - Product Manager, API Experience* (SF)

Zip - Growth Strategy Associate (SF)

Primary Ventures - Senior Associate, Fintech (NYC)

Elemy - Biz Ops, New Ventures Associate (NYC)

internships 📝

Faire - Customer Marketing Intern (Remote)

Remoov - Sales & Social Media Marketing Intern (SF)

Creatify AI - Video Editor / Designer Intern (SF)

MosaicML - Research Scientist Intern (SF)

Eight Sleep - Mechanical Engineering Intern (SF)

Snowflake - Industry Go-to-Market Intern (San Mateo)

Choose - Business Developer Intern (NYC)

Palantir - Engineering Intern (NYC)

puppy of the week 🐶

This weekend, we attended the World Dog Surfing Championships in Pacifica!

Pictured above are contestants Rosie, Derby, and Faith - who all did an incredible job riding the waves.

Follow them on Instagram @rippinrosiedog, @derbycalifornia, and @faithsurfs.

All views are our own. None of the above should be taken as investment advice. See this page for important information.

Subscribe now

✖️ Twitter rebrands to X. The app formerly known as Twitter has a new name! Owner Elon Musk rebranded the company to X (with a new logo and everything). The rebrand is part of Musk’s broader vision to build an “everything app,” similar to WeChat in China - where users can send payments, buy physical and digital goods, and book services as well as communicate with friends. Twitter’s legal name had already been changed from Twitter Inc. to X Corp back in March.

🌎 Worldcoin goes live. Sam Altman isn’t just the CEO of OpenAI - he’s also the co-founder of Worldcoin, a crypto protocol that gives users a verified digital identity to serve as “proof of personhood” in online posts and transactions. Worldcoin went live in a global, 35-city rollout this week, with users lining up for an iris scan that registers them in the system. The Worldcoin team says they onboarded 2M users in a beta phase, and plans to deploy 1,500 scanning orbs worldwide in the coming months.

📈 Meta reports earnings. Facebook’s parent company reported an 11% YoY increase in revenue, with earnings per share coming in above analyst estimates. This was largely due to a rebound in the ad market, as well as the company’s “year of efficiency” - Meta has 14% less employees now than at the same time last year. CEO Mark Zuckerberg said the company has the “most exciting roadmap I’ve seen in a while,” with products like Llama 2 (which we wrote about last week), Threads, IG Reels, the Oculus Quest 3, and other AI products in development.

🎨 SDXL goes live. Stability AI released a new text-to-image model, Stable Diffusion XL 1.0 (SDXL). The company’s first model publicly launched in August 2022, and the new model provides more detailed and high-resolution images - as well as features like outpainting (extend an image), inpainting (add to an existing image), and transforming an image into another image using text prompts. You can try out the model on Clipdrop and DreamStudio.

what we’re following 👀

The newest entrant in the streaming wars? NASA! Yes, really.

In an ~imitation~ of Twitter, TikTok has launched text-only posts.

Can AI put a personal, always-on wealth manager in your pocket? (we think yes!).

A deep dive on Netflix’s algorithm.

The newest craze in mobile games is actually…a sleep app. Last week, The Pokemon Company launched Pokemon Sleep, which has surged to 3.2M global downloads and an estimated $130k in daily revenue, per SensorTower. As of Saturday, the app ranked in the top 5 in the U.S. Games charts. It’s even more popular in Japan (The Pokemon Company’s home country), where it ranks #1 across the entire App Store!

How does it work? During onboarding, you tell the app what time you normally go to sleep, and it notifies you when it’s bedtime. You keep it open next to you as you sleep and it tracks your breathing patterns to detect whether you’re sleeping lightly (dozing), normally (snoozing), or heavily (slumbering). As you sleep, you find and “befriend” Pokemon with the same sleep patterns - which creates an element of surprise as you wake up to see which Pokemon you found. Users also earn berries to feed and level up these Pokemon.

Pokemon Sleep has another unique feature compared to sleep tracking apps - a friend graph! You can add up to 50 friends on the app to see their “research data” (the narrative of the game surrounds helping Professor Neroli with sleep research). You can toggle your privacy settings to decide what to allow your friends to see - sleep score, sleep type, time slept, etc. But, some users are posting their in-game QR codes publicly on Twitter or other platforms to allow anyone to add them.

From a usage perspective, it’s a little early to call where Pokemon Sleep will trend longer term. Often, when a massive company like Pokemon launches a new app, there is a big spike in downloads at launch that dies down very quickly if the app isn’t sticky (remember Threads?). In this case, the app has seen a slight drop-off over the past week, but looks to have stabilized in the 200k-300k new user per day range - and has even been climbing back up over the last few days.

SensorTower data estimates that almost 50% of new users are coming back on the second day - with a total base of 350k daily active users, which has been climbing every day this week. An early base of “addicted” power users seems to be emerging. So much so that several gaming publications have had to publish articles warning users not to take sleeping pills to unlock more or deeper sleep on the app! Some users are also paying for a PokemonGO+ device (which retails for $55 USD), which can be used to more accurately sleep track - and get a Pikachu companion in the app.

It’s too soon to tell how the app trends longer term - but it could follow the path of another Pokemon title, PokemonGO! After a massively viral start, 80% of the app’s users churned in the coming months. However, users who retained stayed for the very long term, and drove revenue far above the normal gaming app. In the gaming world, these users are called “whales” - app data platform Amplitude estimates they represent ~3% of gamers, but almost 70% of market revenue! Will Pokemon Sleep have the powerful game mechanics to retain the whales? Time will tell 🤔

jobs 🎓

Inworld AI - Product Lead, Creators (Remote)

DripShop - Chief of Staff (Remote)

Faire - Product Strategy & Analytics Senior Associate (Remote)

Bain Capital Ventures - Associate (SF)

Heretic Ventures - Data Producer (SF)

OpenAI - Software Engineer, Product Development (SF)

Lando - Founding Strategy & Ops Lead (Palo Alto)

Bessemer Venture Partners - Analyst, 2024 (NYC)

Nyca Partners - Associate (NYC)

internships 📝

Firework - Infrastructure / DevOps Intern (Remote)

Keeper - ML Intern (SF)

LTK - Creator Success Intern (SF)

Skydio - Product Partnerships Intern (San Mateo)

Snap - Software Engineering Intern (Palo Alto)

Kangaroo Health - Marketing Intern (Palo Alto)

Point72 - Quantitative Research Intern, Summer 2024 (NYC)

Thesis - Growth Marketing Intern (NYC)

puppy of the week 🐶

Meet Tato, a three-year-old corgi mix who lives in Oahu, Hawaii.

Tato’s hobbies include hanging out at the beach, balancing things on her head, and wearing cool outfits.

Find her on Instagram @thecorgitato!

All views are our own. None of the above should be taken as investment advice. See this page for important information.

Subscribe now

🦙 LLaMA 2 is here. Meta debuted LLaMA 2, the second generation of its large language model, in partnership with Microsoft. If you’re not familiar with LLMs, think of LLaMA 2 as similar to GPT-4, the OpenAI model behind products like ChatGPT. However, LLaMA 2 is open source. This means developers can freely iterate on the model and publish modifications for others to use, creating an ecosystem of fine-tuned versions for particular use cases (check out r/LocalLLaMA for more on this).

If you’re interested in trying out LLaMA 2, the infra team at a16z built a chatbot demo.

📺 Netflix earnings update. Netflix reported Q2 earnings this week - and it was a bit of a mixed bag. The password crackdown resulted in a substantial increase in subscribers, with nearly 6M net new accounts (vs. -1M in Q2 ‘22). However, revenue climbed only 2.7% YoY, as revenue per user has fallen with expansion to lower-paying countries and new, cheaper plans. CEO Ted Sarandos also confirmed that Netflix’s first expansion into live sports will be a celebrity golf tournament in November.

📱 Remini takes off. Remember Lensa, the AI avatar app that went viral in December 2022? A successor has emerged - Remini, an AI-powered photo enhancer that has climbed up the charts with features like auto-generated professional headshots, and the “baby filter” (predicts your future child’s face). Remini is the product of Italian startup studio Bending Spoons, which recently acquired Evernote. Third-party data shows that Remini’s weekly downloads are just about reaching Lensa’s weekly downloads at peak - we’re curious to see how this trends!

🤖 Other AI updates. There was no shortage of AI news this week. A few more stories we followed:

• ChatGPT launched custom instructions, a feature that essentially pre-prompts the bot with context on you and your preferences before it responds (you can finally eliminate the “as a large language model…”).

• Runway now allows you to turn an image into a video with no prompt - essentially giving the AI free rein to animate and create a dynamic scene. You can see some cool examples here.

• Fable Studio released a paper on “showrunner agents,” which can create interactive stories (like a personal TV show) from a prompt. The team unveiled several mini South Park episodes created with their AI tool.

what we’re following 👀

A performance update on Meta’s new app Threads, which we covered last week.

a16z’s Jon Lai on how AI will enable new games that can engage players…forever!

After recent controversies, Shein’s Gen Z favorability rating has dropped significantly.

If you’re building a consumer AI or infrastructure product and live in SF - we’re holding a mixer in early August! Sign up here and we’ll send you more info.

TikTok has massively disrupted the music industry. It’s shaped how artists construct songs (for maximum virality), who gets discovered, and which albums get streams.

Now, it looks like TikTok may be headed into battle with the world’s biggest streaming service - Spotify. This month, TikTok launched a test version of TikTok Music, live in Brazil, Indonesia, Australia, Mexico, and Singapore. Thanks to an eSIM, VPN, and several burner phone numbers/email accounts (😂), we were able to get an early look.

TikTok Music is a standalone app, but to get started, you can sign in via your TikTok account. After selecting a few of your favorite artists, you’re dropped into a feed of songs to scroll through vertically (similar to browsing TikTok itself). TikTok Music also transfers over songs that you’ve favorited on TikTok into a special playlist, and automatically links your TikTok friends to share and discuss music with.

You can like, comment on, or share each song, and read other comments - creating a social element that Spotify lacks. TikTok Music also features curated and personalized playlists, which lean heavily towards songs and artists trending on TikTok. There’s also a playlist of “remixes” - user-generated tracks that mash up different songs, which often go viral as TikTok audios but are typically unavailable on Spotify.

It’s still very early days for TikTok Music, but parent company ByteDance has executed this playbook before. In 2020, the company launched a Spotify challenger called Resso in India, which has scaled to an estimated 30M monthly active users (per SensorTower data). ByteDance also debuted streaming app Qishui Yinyue (“Soda Music”) in China, where Spotify doesn’t operate.

We’re waiting to see how a potential U.S. rollout goes before making any big predictions. 👀 But longer-term, where might TikTok Music be headed? There’s a few things we’d love to see:

• Artist development. TikTok just launched “Elevate,” a program for next gen artists to receive creator resources and support from TikTok’s official handles. With a streaming service, TikTok could move further into artist discovery + promotion. So many artists have been “discovered” via TikTok - why shouldn’t the company eventually run its own record label to invest in the app’s rising stars?

• Capcut-like sync. Similar to how some TikTok filters send you to ByteDance’s video editing app Capcut to use them, TikTok should send you directly to TikTok Music to listen to a full song! We suspect this may be coming sooner rather than later. The Brazilian version of TikTok now displays a banner on each audio linking to the TikTok “Music Charts” - a natural potential tie-in to the Music app.

• Song and artist pre-saves. As artists move more of their music promotion to TikTok, we’ve started seeing more “teaser” videos of songs that aren’t released yet. Right now, we have to track these down on Spotify to pre-save - TikTok Music could let you do this in one click. Similarly, we’d love to get notifications about new songs from artists we’ve followed or liked content from on TikTok!

jobs 🎓

Tribe Capital - Analyst (Remote)

Stripe - Data Analyst (Remote)

Anthropic - Prompt Engineer, Software Engineer, Biz Ops (SF)

Medra - Chief of Staff (SF)

Sendoso - Business Operations & Analytics (SF)

Thunkable - Chief of Staff (SF)

Glean - Software Engineer, Product Manager (Palo Alto)

UTA - Venture Fund Associate (LA)

Tinder - Strategy Associate (LA)

Techstars - Investment Associate (NYC)

internships 📝

Rough Draft Ventures - Fellow (Various)

Garmentory - Marketing Intern (Seattle)

Velt - Brand and Content Marketing Intern (SF)

Instabase - Software Engineering Intern (Menlo Park, NYC)

Plug and Play Tech Center - Operations Intern (LA)

TikTok - Project Management Intern (San Jose), Creative Specialist Intern (NYC)

Apple - Finance Development Program Interns (Cupertino)

Tesla - Supply Chain Planning Intern (Austin)

EasyKnock - Corporate Development Intern (NYC)

puppy of the week 🐶

Meet Lincoln, a goldendoodle who lives in SoCal with his sister London.

We’re pretty sure we’ve featured him before, but we couldn’t resist a repeat this week - he’s bringing real Kenergy.

Follow him on Instagram @the_life_of_lincoln.

All views are our own. None of the above should be taken as investment advice. See this page for important information.

Subscribe now

trending 📈

🧵 Instagram goes in on Threads. Instagram went all-in on the launch of Threads, a new Twitter-esque standalone product. While Meta often launches test apps via their New Product Experimentation division, Threads is a much more dedicated effort. Each user’s Threads number (marking when they joined) is now displayed on their IG profile, and to deactivate Threads, you have to deactivate IG as well. Plus, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been very personally active on Threads.

Threads reached 100M downloads in its first week, but external data is indicating a slowdown. More on Threads in the “What We’re Following” section below!

🤑 Twitter shares ad revenue. Some of Twitter’s most active creators got a financial boost, as the platform started sharing revenue from ads placed among replies to their tweets. Elon Musk had tweeted in June that Twitter would release a payment block totaling $5M, but the timing and process wasn’t announced - causing many shocked creators to post screenshots of payouts that arrived this week. To be eligible, creators have to be Blue subscribers with 5M+ impressions/month for the last three months.

🚴‍♀️ VanMoof hits a bump. E-bike startup VanMoof has halted operations and filed for payment deferment in its home country of Holland, after running out of funds. VanMoof was ordered by Dutch courts into a two month “cooling off” period, in which they will not be required to pay bills and court-appointed administrators will assess options including a bankruptcy or sale. VanMoof had raised $182M in funding, but reportedly operated at a significant loss as quality issues caused expensive repairs.

what we’re following 👀

The team at a16z (including Justine!) published an open source toolkit for building your own personal chatbot - check it out here.

Chipotle is testing the “Autocado,” a robot that can make guacamole.

Elon Musk announced his new AI company, x.ai, with the goal of “understanding the true nature of the universe.”

Code Interpreter is now available for ChatGPT Plus users (here’s a handy guide).

Threads: let’s talk about it. It was undoubtedly one of the buzziest social app launches we’ve seen in the past few years, largely due to Meta’s massive distribution and the fact that it was positioned as a “Twitter killer.”

100M users signed up for the app in the first five days, breaking ChatGPT’s record for the fastest-growing consumer product ever. And thanks to Meta’s reach, high profile people (both celebrities and brands) were on Threads immediately - it felt like a sea of blue checks when you opened the product.

Daily downloads of Threads have fallen off significantly post-the initial launch. An estimated ~40M users joined in the first 24 hours, but this fairly quickly dropped to 3-4M per day, which is holding steady a week after launch. This alone isn’t surprising - it’s incredibly rare to “deposit” 100M users into an app. We would imagine that most users who were at all interested in Threads would join in the first few days, especially given the nudges towards Threads within Instagram itself. You’re probably not getting dozens of notifications a day anymore of friends getting on the app!

But as with any consumer product, the real question is around retention and engagement. Are people returning to Threads over time? Are Twitter users moving over, or are non-Twitter users starting to post on Threads consistently? The answer - at least for now - seems to be “not at scale.” Data from app and website tracking firms SensorTower and SimilarWeb suggests that time spent has dropped by ~50% and daily users have declined 20-25% from the peak last week. Though a huge number of users gave Threads a shot, most of them aren’t staying active on it.

Meta essentially cloned a successful product (Twitter) with huge distribution and an existing social graph - you sign up for Threads with your Instagram account, and are prompted to follow the people that you’re connected with on IG. The result is that most people don’t start with zero followers or an empty feed, a big advantage in overcoming the “cold start problem.”

So why isn’t it working? We have a few theories:

1. IG and Twitter’s social graphs are not the same. Are your followers on Twitter the same as your followers on Instagram? Probably not. For us, IG is where we’re connected with friends from high school and college, relatives, and random acquaintances. If they started seeing our tweets (which tend to be startup/tech oriented), they’d probably be confused. We'’d get significantly less engagement on my content than we do on Twitter, and would need to make a concerted effort to build a Threads audience there - which is a lot of work.

2. It’s too tied to your real identity. There’s another set of Twitter users who are unlikely to move to Threads for a different reason: their “posting” profile isn’t connected to their IRL identity, and they want to keep it that way. Twitter is fueled by anonymous memers, shitposters, fan accounts, parodies - these people don’t want their posts associated with their IG! Making a finsta is an option, but feels like unnecessary work and creates the vibe that anon accounts aren’t welcome.

3. IG users struggle with text posts. If it’s unlikely that Twitter’s power users switch to Threads for the reasons described above, then Meta will want to convert Instagram users who aren’t on Twitter today. Which begs the question: are there enough IG users who can create engaging text content that aren’t already using Twitter? Thus far, it’s not looking great - the posts from our IG friends on Threads are fairly bland and not compelling to a broader audience. Twitter has been around for a while, so it’s likely that if you wanted to create Twitter-style content, you would have…joined Twitter already!

We’re very curious to hear what you think about Threads - please weigh in:

jobs 🎓

Conviction - Investment Analyst / Associate (SF)

Atomic - Product Associate (SF)

Glacier - Product Manager (SF)

Kira Learning - AI Engineer (SF)

Initialized Capital - Partner (SF, NYC)

a16z - Deal Analyst / Chief of Staff, American Dynamism (NYC)

Point72 Ventures - Analyst, Deep Tech (NYC)

Lerer Hippeau - Analyst (NYC)

Redesign Health - New Ventures Associate (NYC)

MongoDB - Business Operations & Strategy Associate (NYC)

AI Fund - Senior Associate / Principal (Remote)

internships 📝

Kindred - Social Media Intern (Remote)

Workato - Strategic Alliances Intern (Remote)

Misfit Markets - Packaging Engineer Intern (Remote)

Harness - Community Management & Ops Intern (Mountain View)

Skydio - Product Partnerships Intern (San Mateo)

Snowflake - MBA GTM Intern (San Mateo)

Chewie Labs - Product Design Eng Intern (San Bruno)

TikTok - Monetization Intern (LA)

Delta Airlines - Ventures Intern (Atlanta)

BoldVoice - Growth Marketing Intern (NYC)

puppy of the week 🐶

We spent the first week of July at an alpaca and sheep farm in Sonoma, and had an amazing time!

The farm is home to many sweet animals who we got to interact with - including Pedro, who is a film star from his role in HBO's Holiday Harmony movie.

Follow them on Instagram at @lavenderbnbfarmco!

All views are our own. None of the above should be taken as investment advice. See this page for important information.

Subscribe now

For the first time ever, Accelerated is available as a podcast! Check out our first, 100% AI-generated issue below, powered by Wondercraft - and using the magic of Eleven Labs to render the show in Olivia’s voice. Let us know what you think!

trending 📈

⚫ Reddit blackout continues. If you’re a Reddit user, you’ve noticed that thousands of subreddits have gone dark in the past few weeks. This “blackout” is in response to the company’s decision to charge for access to Reddit data via API. The Reddit team explained this as largely a result of the need to monetize from AI companies using Reddit training data - CEO Steve Huffman said it’s time for the platform to “grow up.”

However, this has resulted in some popular non-AI apps built on top of Reddit, like Apollo, to shut down as they can’t afford to pay. In response, Reddit moderators have voluntarily closed down their communities in protest, or changed their communities to the not safe for work (NSFW) so they aren’t generating ad revenue for the company. Reddit has ramped up the pressure for moderators to reverse these changes.

We’ll be keeping a close eye on this story - it feels like a pivotal moment for one of the Internet’s largest community platforms 🤔

🥗 Cava goes public. The IPO window has opened - for an unexpected entrant! After a quiet market over the last few years, Mediterranean fast casual restaurant chain Cava debuted on the NYSE last week, and closed its first day of trading at $40 per share after pricing at $22. Cava’s annual net sales grew 13% in 2022 to $564M, surpassing Sweetgreen at $470M (though growing 38% YoY). The company plans to use the IPO proceeds to expand locations, currently at 263 (all in the U.S.).

🤖 Mistral raises mega-round. In the largest seed round we’ve seen in a while, French AI startup Mistral announced a $113M fundraise led by Lightspeed, with the goal of competing against OpenAI. Mistral’s co-founders said in an interview that their goal is to build models using only publicly available data - and will open source all of their own models and data sets. Mistral is still pre-product, but plans on building AI platforms for enterprise use cases.

👋 TikTok leadership shakeup. TikTok has had a reprieve from the front page of every newspaper as AI has exploded - but things are still happening! This week, COO V. Pappas, who has been the face of TikTok in the U.S., announced they were stepping down to “pursue entrepreneurial passions.” The company elevated chief of staff Adam Presser to the head of ops role, and is also bringing onboard Disney’s chief communications officer, Zenia Mucha, to run brand and communications.

what we’re following 👀

It was a big week for a16z x AI - check out all the content the team published, from an LLM app stack to a glossary of terms.

Image generator Midjourney released v5.2, with a cool “Zoom out” feature that allows you to create broader scenes.

In an incredibly strange turn of events, Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg have jokingly (?) agreed to fight in a cage match.

Justine co-authored a post this week on an interesting new consumer behavior: treating AI (mostly chatbots) as companions. As you may have seen with products like Replika, Character AI, and Chai, people are spending countless hours - and real money - to chat with bots. 

What are they talking about? There are so many different use cases for these bots: friends, therapists, coaches, or just pure entertainment (you can now talk to your favorite movie or game characters). But one of the true killer use cases is romance - AI girlfriends / boyfriends are blowing up.

We previously covered Caryn Marjorie, a Snapchat influencer who charges $1/minute to chat with her voice bot (she made $72k in the first week!). Caryn AI is one of the more consumer-friendly products - you join a Telegram channel and start typing. But there’s also an immense amount of developer activity happening behind the scenes, with people piecing together various tools to customize their perfect AI partner. 

There are thriving subreddits and Discord servers dedicated to AI companionship, with tens of thousands of users sharing “how to” guides, lessons learned, and screenshots of interactions with their AI partners. This feels like more of a fringe behavior today, but we expect it will become increasingly mainstream - you might not have a romantic AI partner, but you’ll likely have at least one AI friend!

Check out the full post (and Justine’s recap thread) for more fascinating examples of AI companionship. And please reach out if you’re building something in this space, we’d love to chat.

jobs 🎓

AtoB - Business Operations Analyst (Remote)

Prime Movers Lab - Chief of Staff (Remote)

Index Ventures - Investor (SF, NYC)

Obvious Ventures - Principal, Climate (SF)

M12 - Investment Partner (SF)

B Capital - Pre-MBA Associate (SF), Principal (NYC)

Primary Venture Partners - Analyst (NYC)

Northzone - Associate (NYC)

Fuel Ventures - Investment Analyst (London)

internships 📝

Faire - Data Science Intern (U.S.)

thredUP - Web Producer Intern (Oakland)

Outdoor Voices - Marketing Intern (Austin)

Tovala - Marketplace Intern (Chicago)

HomeShef - MBA Product Development Intern (Chicago)

Trala - Marketing Intern (Chicago)

Motional - Corporate Strategy Intern (Boston)

Slice - Sales Ops Intern (NYC)

20VC - Investment Intern (London)

puppy of the week 🐶

Meet Riften, a 1.5-year-old cattle dog who lives in Washington.

He enjoys hopping around in the water, howling, and going on hikes.

Follow him on Instagram @riften_the_wild!

All views are our own. None of the above should be taken as investment advice. See this page for important information.

Subscribe now

 Apple updates. Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference brought a slew of launches. On the software side, Apple announced new features for iOS 17 (launching in September) - you’ll now be able to leave video voicemails on FaceTime, share your contact info with someone by bringing your phones together, and get automatic transcriptions of voice messages. On the hardware side, the Macbook Air and desktop both got upgraded and Apple announced a new M2 chip. And one more thing…keep reading to “What We’re Following” below!

⚖️ SEC targets crypto. The Securities and Exchange Commission charged two crypto exchanges, Coinbase and Binance, with securities laws violations. Coinbase was charged with operating as an unregistered securities exchange, broker, and clearing agency, while Binance was additionally charged with lying to regulators. Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong responded via Twitter that Coinbase had been allowed by the SEC to become a public company in 2021, and has repeatedly attempted to work with regulators but given no path to registration.

👋 Sequoia makes a split. Venture firm Sequoia Capital will divide into three regional firms - Sequoia Capital (U.S. / Europe), HongShan (China), and Peak XV Partners (India / SE Asia) - with their own limited partners and operations. The separation will be complete no later than March 2024. In interviews with Forbes, the firm’s leaders said the move is due to increasing conflict risk between portfolio companies across funds, brand confusion, and geopolitical / regulatory uncertainty.

🤖 Meta doubles down on AI. While Meta has released some impactful AI research and models, the company has yet to incorporate generative AI into its core products - until now. CEO Mark Zuckerberg told employees this week that Meta will be adding AI-powered experiences to Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp. He mentioned a few features at various stages of development, from using prompts to edit your IG Stories to AI bots that you can chat with on Messenger (more on this here).

what we’re following 👀

Marc Andreessen on “why AI will save the world.”

Netflix’s crackdown on password sharing has resulted in new subscribers.

How Khan Academy’s new tutoring bot works.

Olivia appeared on the Aarthi & Sriram Show to talk getting into VC!

We would be remiss in not spending some serious time on the big news of the week, the debut of the Apple Vision Pro! It was a launch that divided the internet.

Some took aim at the hefty $3,500 price tag - more than 3x the cost of Facebook’s most expensive headset - especially given that AR (augmented reality) hasn’t yet reached widespread adoption. But others, especially those that have tried the device, call it a breakthrough that could bring AR to the masses, praising the high resolution, realistic immersiveness, and “passthrough” ability (being able to see the real world and even use your phone while in the Vision Pro).

Headset devices have had a famously tough path to consumer adoption, starting with Google Glasses back in 2012 - which were widely mocked and died a slow death, even after pivoting to enterprise. Then came Snapchat Spectacles (not quite a headset, but close), which had similarly disappointing sales despite launching four separate iterations.

The biggest success from a commercial perspective is Oculus, acquired by Facebook - which owns the top-selling headset of all time. However, a Meta executive recently shared in an internal presentation that while the company has sold 20M VR headsets, they’re struggling with retention and engagement beyond the initial sale.

Meta Quest downloads have historically peaked during the holidays as people buy new devices, but struggle to maintain momentum during the rest of the year. And Meta’s Vice President for VR, Mark Rabkin, told employees that these more recent holiday customers are seeing declining data versus early adopters of the headset: “the newer cohorts that are coming in, the people who bought it this last Christmas, they’re just not as into it.”

What does Meta, which famously has gone all-in on the metaverse, think of Apple’s big swing? Mark Zuckerberg spoke to the launch at an employee meeting this week. He called attention to the fact that Apple’s keynote footage was largely focused on solo, stationary usage instead of people interacting with each other: “I mean, that could be the vision of the future of computing, but like, it’s not the one that I want.”

We’ll be (excitedly!) trying out the Vision Pro as soon as it’s available. But the question that most reviewers have, which still feels unanswered, is whether this will unlock new, more engaging behaviors in augmented reality - or whether it will simply be a slightly better version of what we already have?

jobs 🎓

Homebound - Strategic Finance Associate (Remote)

Voyager Ventures - Investor (SF)

AngelList - Venture Associate (SF)

Vista Equity Partners - 2024 Analyst (SF)

Lyft - Chief of Staff to the President* (SF)

Modern Health - Business Operations & Strategy Manager* (SF)

Tesla - Associate Product Manager (Fremont)

Perchwell - Product Manager (NYC)

Axle - Product Engineer (NYC)

*Expects 5+ years of experience.

internships 📝

Cohere - Fall 2023 Software Eng Intern (Various)

Thera - Growth Marketing Intern (Remote)

BeGolden - Healthcare Ops Intern (Remote)

Google X - Public Policy Intern (Mountain View)

TikTok - E-Comm Experience Program Mgmt Intern (San Jose)

Arc - Marketing Intern (LA)

Bloom - Ops / Marketing Intern (NYC)

Reposite - Ops Intern (NYC)

puppy of the week 🐶

Meet Rocket, a four-year-old Saluki who lives in Austria.

Rocket is an athlete - in addition to being an avid hiker, he participates in races (both foot and bike!) with his parents.

Follow him on Instagram @rocketthesaluki.

All views are our own. None of the above should be taken as investment advice. See this page for important information.

Subscribe now

No full newsletter this week, unfortunately! We were busy with SF Tech Week and the upcoming LA Tech Week (which starts tomorrow). In SF, we hosted a fun prompting event where attendees could use Midjourney and other image models to generate their own art - see a few of our favorites below.

You can check out a recap of the SF events on the Tech Week Twitter, and the upcoming LA calendar is available here. We’re hoping to see some of you there!

jobs 🎓

Alto - Product Analyst (Remote)

Clipboard Health - Strategy & Ops (Remote)

Windfall - Product Ops Analyst (SF)

Forward - Strategy & Analytics (SF)

Goodwater - Director, Seed Investments (Burlingame)

TikTok - Strategy & Analytics Associate, Commerce (San Jose)

CAA - Strategic Development Associate (LA)

Jetty - Data & Analytics Engineer (NYC)

Torch - Business Strategy & Operations (NYC)

Middesk - Software Engineer (NYC)

internships 📝

Haul - MBA Financial Ops Intern (Remote)

Air - MBA GTM Intern (NYC, Remote)

thredUP - Product Engineering Intern (Oakland)

Roo - Roo University Summer Intern (SF)

Snowflake - Fall Demand Gen Intern (San Mateo)

Tesla - Fall Biz Planning / Insights Intern (Dallas)

Compass - Data & Analytics Intern (Utah)

puppy of the week 🐶

This week, we’re featuring our own puppy Tilly, who is getting to reunite with her pals Kai and Moka while we’re at LA Tech Week. (First photo of them on the right, most recent on the left!)

Tilly is a two-year-old labradoodle, while Moka is a three-year-old sheepadoodle and Kai is an eight-year-old bernedoodle.

You can follow them on Instagram @matiladoodlebear, @mokathesheepadoodle, and @kaithebernedoodle!

All views are our own. None of the above should be taken as investment advice. See this page for important information.

Subscribe now

📉 Meta takes a loss on Giphy. Meta announced it’s selling GIF platform Giphy to Shutterstock for $53M. This is a meaningful drop from the ~$315M that Meta paid for Giphy in late 2021. So why sell? The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), a UK regulator, ordered Meta to divest due to antitrust concerns. Shutterstock’s CEO noted that Giphy will help the company expand from pro marketing / advertising use cases to become a broader creative platform for everyday consumers.

🧠 Neuralink preps for human trials. Brain implant company Neuralink, which was co-founded by Elon Musk, announced that it has received FDA approval to conduct its first in-human clinical study. The company’s implant aims to help people with paralysis control technology with their minds (e.g. typing on a keyboard, clicking a mouse). Eventually, it will expand to other use cases like treating brain injuries or memory loss. Until now, the device has only been tested in animals.

💸 Nvidia crushes earnings. Nvidia stock hit an all-time high this week after a strong Q1 earnings report, beating expectations for both revenue and earnings per share. The company designs and manufactures graphics processing units (GPUs) that power more intensive workloads on your computer - like gaming, editing video, or… training machine learning models (hello, AI boom!). This last application is unsurprisingly driving significant demand for Nvidia’s products.

🖌️ Photoshop gets an AI upgrade. Adobe unveiled a cool new Photoshop feature this week - Generative Fill, which enables users to edit or extend their images using text prompts. The feature is currently available in the beta version of the Photoshop app, but you can see demo videos on Twitter to get a sense of the capabilities. It feels like a potential game-changer for many creative workflows!

what we’re following 👀

The continuing battle between iMessage and Snapchat for dominance among teens.

JP Morgan is building a ChatGPT-like service to recommend securities to customers.

YouTube becomes the latest social platform to shut down its Stories product.

How much is Temu spending to challenge Amazon in the e-comm game?

Over the last few weeks, TikTok has been quietly rolling out beta testing for what could be two new features: (1) in-app storefronts, where merchants list products that consumers can buy; and (2) creator affiliate commerce.

Brands can now set up stores within TikTok where users browse items, see reviews, and fully complete checkout and payment without leaving the app. And creators can make a commission through recommending products in their videos! These features have been live in the UK and Indonesia for months (and are a staple of Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok) - but are now making their way to the U.S..

Why does this matter? TikTok videos have been a major driver of sales for many products and brands, but until now, TikTok hasn’t captured this value - and neither have creators. Users see a viral video, Google the product, and buy it elsewhere (we certainly are guilty of this). Now, TikTok is bringing this “commerce loop” fully in-house, with end to end tools from discovery to purchase. And, they’re also providing tools for creators and brands to find each other and work together.

This move isn’t entirely unprecedented for a social platform. Instagram launched storefronts in 2020, and affiliate marketing in 2021 - but discontinued the affiliate program in 2022 based on “feedback from brands and creators.” The product was rumored to be too challenging/inflexible for creators to use, and wasn’t driving significant enough sales to be a priority. Instagram decided to re-focus instead on their Creator Marketplace, which helps match creators and brands for broader deals.

Our take? In-app shopping feels like it has a better shot on TikTok than Instagram, and not just because Instagram has been losing steam among younger users. Video is a much more compelling medium for showcasing a product (perhaps Instagram’s affiliate program would have succeeded on Reels 🤔). And, the fact that TikTok creators have been increasingly “pushed” into niches is actually a positive for their ability to credibly recommend products in their area(s) of expertise.

TikTok’s new shopping features are still in beta, so the next few weeks and months will be crucial in determining whether the company is able to capitalize on this commerce vision. TikTok does seem to be heavily pushing new storefronts, both in terms of “boosting” videos with products tagged on the FYP, and in aggressive discounting that TikTok pays for (e.g. 30% off your first purchase, no minimum).

We signed up for access to the TikTok Shop seller portal - a few unique features we’ve noticed:

• Sample tracking - brands can send samples to creators via TikTok, and then automatically track whether or not they actually made a video about it 👀

• Custom commissions - brands can allow any creator to earn a set commission for advertising an item, or assign a unique commission for each creator

• Easy returns - similar to Amazon, consumers will be able to return items purchased via TikTok without a box (just a QR code) at UPS locations!

🚨 Venture studio Science, which is behind companies like Liquid Death, Dollar Shave Club, and Famebit, is hosting an “Impact Week” for aspiring college entrepreneurs from August 7 - 11 in Santa Monica. Learn more and apply here.

jobs 🎓

Village Global - Investor (Remote)

Grain - Chief of Staff (Remote)

Onfleet - PM (SF, Remote)

Pioneer Fund - VC Associate (SF)

Snap - Snap Lab Product Designer (LA)

Fanatics - Strategy & Biz Ops Associate (LA)

Pepper - Biz Ops Manager, Distributor Ops Manager (LA)

Hitch - Data Analyst (Austin)

Ramp - Rewards & Ecosystem PM (NYC)

Forum Brands - eCommerce Growth Associate (NYC)

internships 📝

Atomic - Organic Social / Marketing Intern (Remote)

Starburst Data - Open Source Developer Relations Intern (Remote, Boston)

Walt Disney Company - Disney Accelerator Intern (Glendale)

FreshCut - Roblox Community Intern (LA)

Crossover VC - Summer Intern (LA)

100 Thieves - Community Manager, Producer / Editor Interns (Culver City)

Bubble - User Research Intern (NYC)

BLADE - Marketing Intern (NYC)

B Capital - MBA Capital Advisory Intern (NYC)

Ori Living - Marketing Intern (Brooklyn)

puppy of the week 🐶

Meet Lucy, a Basset Hound who lives in England.

She enjoys taking naps on the couch, eating biscuits, and snuggling her family members.

Follow her on Instagram @lucythelovelybasset!

All views are our own. None of the above should be taken as investment advice. See this page for important information.

Subscribe now

📱 ChatGPT launches app. Big news from OpenAI this week - the company launched the official ChatGPT mobile app (currently only available on iOS and in the U.S.). The app is similar to the Web version of ChatGPT, but there are a few new features like voice-to-text and searching your message history. It immediately shot to #1 in the U.S. App Store, displacing hundreds of unofficial ChatGPT apps from third-party developers that OpenAI is reportedly sending cease and desists to.

🚫 Montana bans TikTok. Montana became the first state to ban TikTok after Governor Greg Gianforte signed a bill that accuses the app of gathering U.S. users’ information to share with the Chinese government. The new law, which effectively fines App Stores for offering TikTok to Montana residents, is set to take effect in January 2024. It’s already facing legal challenges from people who claim that the ban infringes upon their First Amendment rights.

⚖️ Congress weighs AI regulation. A Senate subcommittee hosted a hearing this week on AI, featuring testimony from OpenAI CEO Sam Altman alongside other industry operators as well as known AI critics. Altman encouraged senators to regulate AI, suggesting a new federal agency to license and test powerful models. A full (and funny) recap can be found here.

🤫 Meta preps new social app. Instagram is reportedly onboarding creators to a new text-based app, codenamed Project 92. It’s set to be released in the summer, and being pitched as a Twitter competitor that allows you to log in with your IG handle and transfers your followers. In March, Meta confirmed the initial reports that it was working on the app - but we haven’t seen what it might look like until now.

what we’re following 👀

ChatGPT is back in NYC public schools - but out at Apple.

TikTok creators are using AI images to “rewrite history.”

One of the cooler AI demos we’ve seen recently.

You can now upload two-hour videos to Twitter (great news for everyone watching “Young Sheldon” in three-minute increments on TikTok).

It’s almost here! 🎉 Next week is SF Tech Week - six days of events hosted by dozens of VCs and startups across the industry, designed to bring the ecosystem together. After that, we’re headed down to Southern California for LA Tech Week. There are already a combined 400+ events being hosted by founders, investors, and operators during these two weeks.

Check out more here, and you can see the full calendar for SF and LA here - more to come soon on NY Tech Week, which will be held from October 16 - 22 👀

Some of the events we’re particularly excited about, which are open for registration:

• 🌉 SF - How to Hire Your First Engineer with Pear VC

• 🌉 SF - Fundraising for Series B with Andrew Chen @ a16z

• 🌉 SF - a16z & Stonks Generative AI Demo Day

• 🌉 SF - Sandbox VR Game Session

• 🌴 LA - Paths to Product Market Fit with First Round and GOAT

• 🌴 LA - Future of DTC with 444 Capital, UTA Ventures, Pentas VC, and BUENA

• 🌴 LA - From Seed to Series C - What are Founders Facing in 2023? with Mucker Capital

• 🌴 LA - a16z & Stonks Gaming & Entertainment Demo Day

Special note: a16z is hosting a cocktail reception for AI builders on June 1st during SF Tech Week. If you’re building in AI and interested in attendance, please fill out this quick form - we’ll have good people/conversation/vibes and generative image prompting!

jobs 🎓

Anthropic - Strategic Finance & Investor Relations (SF)

Marqo - Product Manager (SF)

Bain Capital Ventures - Investment Associate, Infra (SF)

Notion - AI Product Engineer (SF)

LaunchDarkly - Chief of Staff (Oakland)

Boost VC - Associate (San Mateo, Remote)

Chicago Ventures - Associate (Chicago, Austin)

MongoDB Ventures - Analyst/Associate (NYC)

Morgan Stanley Inclusive Ventures Lab - Associate (NYC)

internships 📝

Zuora - Global Partner Ecosystems Intern (Remote)

MosaicML - Software Engineering Intern (SF)

Anyscale - Software Engineering Intern (SF)

Flexport Research - Editorial Summer Intern (SF)

Amplitude - Revenue Ops Intern (Bay Area)

Night Ventures - MBA Intern (LA)

100 Thieves - Community Manager Intern, Social Producer Intern (LA)

Greenlight - Product Management Intern (Atlanta)

Ramp - Software Engineering Intern (NYC)

Multiverse - Strategic Projects Intern (NYC)

puppy of the week 🐶

Meet Aksel, a ten-week-old Great Dane who lives in Indiana.

He just arrived at his new home a few days ago, so he doesn’t have too many hobbies yet - but we have a feeling he’s going to be growing a lot!

Find him on Instagram @aksel.eri.w!

All views are our own. None of the above should be taken as investment advice. See this page for important information.

Subscribe now

🐦 Twitter gets a new CEO. Big news at Twitter! Elon Musk announced that he hired a CEO - Linda Yaccarino - who will be starting in six weeks. Yaccarino was previously chair of global ads and partnerships at NBCUniversal, where she spent more than 11 years and oversaw a 2,000-person team that generated $100B+ in ad revenue. When she joins, Musk will transition to being Twitter’s executive chair and CTO.

🤖 Google bets big on AI. One theme reigned supreme at Google’s annual developer conference - AI. CEO Sundar Pichai said that Google is repositioning itself as an “AI-first” company, and announced a number of new products / features:

• Help Me Write - AI-generated emails and docs that expand on Gmail’s existing “smart reply” feature.

• PaLM 2, a new language model trained on multilingual text that is better at mathematical reasoning and coding.

• A generative search feature that will summarize results and allow users to ask follow-up questions.

• Three new foundation models in Vertex AI, the company’s ML platform - Cody (text-to-code), Chirp (speech-to-text), and Imagen (text-to-image).

• Chatbot Bard is now publicly available, with some cool improvements around visuals and code.

➕ Anthropic expands Claude. The battle of the language models is heating up! Growth-stage startup Anthropic announced that its AI assistant Claude now has a 100K context window - it can digest, analyze, and discuss ~75k words at a time (hundreds of pages of material). This is particularly helpful for business or research use cases where lengthy documents are standard. As a point of comparison, the standard GPT-4 has an 8K context window, though there’s an extended 32K version.

📱Niantic launches Peridot. Pokemon GO creator Niantic released its newest title - Peridot, an AR pet simulation game that has been described as a next-gen Tamagotchi. Peridot is Niantic’s second game with original IP, as the company has been focused on adaptations of Pokemon, Harry Potter, and the NBA, among other franchises. The game is more limited in its free functionality than prior Niantic titles, so we’ll be curious to see how this impacts user growth!

what we’re following 👀

TikTok is delaying its live commerce launch in the U.S. after tepid early tests.

Fashion school now involves creating outfits in the metaverse.

A deep dive on the weird phenomenon of streaming movies / TV on TikTok.

The economic impact of Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour.

Perhaps the wildest AI news we saw this week: influencer Caryn Marjorie worked with a company called Forever Voices to train GPT-4 on 2,000 hours of her YouTube videos. The result is a voice chatbot CarynAI that’s available on Telegram for $1 per minute of conversation. It generated $72,000 in revenue in just one week, though it is still in early beta testing (with a waitlist of 41 hours, the last time we checked!).

Marjorie branded the bot as "your virtual girlfriend," and told Fortune that 99% of users have been male. Forever Voices has also launched pay-per-use bots of Taylor Swift, Donald Trump, Steve Jobs, and other public figures. Caryn AI appears to be their first bot built to form romantic connections - and also the company’s first bot built in collaboration with the original human.

Within a day of the public launch, users realized that CarynAI could be prompted to participate in sexually explicit conversations. Marjorie said it was "not programmed to do this," and her team was working to fix it. However, she is in favor of AI romances, and said the purpose of Caryn AI was to allow her fans to "get to know a version of me that will be their closest friend in a safe and encrypted environment."

While Caryn AI may be the first influencer AI, we expect it won't be anywhere near the last. Creators benefit from fostering close relationships with their audiences - enabling them to have personalized "always on" conversations could add value to both sides. And given how much content is out there to train an AI, influencers may worry that if they don't build their bot, someone else might.

We predict this will spread first to creators who already make money directly from fans via subscriptions and tips, which may be OnlyFans or Patreon creators, or Twitch streamers. This could come in the form of influencers developing bots themselves, as Marjorie did with Forever Voices - or licensing their image and voice to companies that build AI likenesses independently.

And this likely won't stop at influencers. You might remember the controversy last fall when Bruce Willis (reportedly) sold his image rights to a Russian AI company called Deepcake. Willis later denied the sale - but other celebrities are leaning in to this. Darth Vader actor James Earl Jones sold his voice rights to AI company Respeecher, which used the voice in Disney's The Book of Boba Fett.

Ultimately, this leaves us with a big question - does a celebrity appearance or influencer interaction mean less when it could be AI-generated? Imagine getting a personalized voice memo from your favorite celebrity - even if it was made with AI, you'll still likely have a visceral reaction to hearing them say your name. But when a realistic voice or video likeness of anyone can be instantly generated, does the "magic" eventually disappear?

jobs 🎓

Coinbase - Biz Ops & Strategy Associate (Remote)

Anduril - Software Engineer (Seattle)

First Round Capital - Chief of Staff (SF), Chief of Staff (NYC)

Munich Re Ventures - Investment Associate (SF)

A* Capital - Chief of Staff (SF)

M12 - Investment Partner (SF)

Cohere - Product Manager (NYC)

Transfix - Strategic Marketing Associate (NYC)

HSBC - Venture Investment Associate (NYC)

MassMutual Ventures - Investment Analyst (Boston)

internships 📝

Vial - Marketing Intern (Remote)

Simple Habit - Marketing Creative, PR Marketing, Content Marketing Interns (Remote)

Securly - Revenue Ops Intern (Remote)

Workrise - Product Design Intern (Remote)

Pixelberry Studios - Product Growth Intern (Remote)

Uber Freight - MBA Product Marketing Intern (SF)

Zipline - Fall 2023 Engineering PM Intern (South SF)

Multiverse - Strategic Projects Intern (NYC)

Popchew - Ops Intern (NYC)

Kayak - Commercial Partnerships Intern (Cambridge, MA)

puppy of the week 🐶

Meet Churro, a three-year-old English Bulldog who lives in Michigan.

He enjoys chewing on bones in the grass, getting his beauty sleep, and hanging out at the office.

Follow him on Instagram @churro.thebulldog!

All views are our own. None of the above should be taken as investment advice. See this page for important information.

Subscribe now

🤝 AI CEOs visit the White House. VP Kamala Harris and other Biden administration officials met with the CEOs of Google, Microsoft, OpenAI and Anthropic to discuss the future of AI. Biden himself made a brief appearance, asking the group to help educate the government on the topic - he wants to ensure “responsible, trustworthy, and ethical innovation.” The White House also announced a $140 million investment in AI research, a new committee to publicly evaluate AI models, and a policy plan for federal agencies that shapes how they procure and utilize AI tools.

🏠 Airbnb makes product moves. It was a big week for Airbnb - the company announced 53 (!) product updates to improve the guest and host experience. CEO Brian Chesky said this was the result of his six months of living in Airbnbs + customer feedback. Updates include total price display, transparent checkout instructions, and the ability to pay over time. The company also launched Airbnb Rooms, which allows users to book a stay in a spare room with verified hosts and guests.

🛒 Shopify sells fulfillment business. Shopify is getting out of physical services. The company announced this week that it is refocusing on its core e-commerce platform, and selling its logistics and fulfillment business to Flexport. The deal includes the sale of shipping service company Deliverr - which Shopify acquired just last year for $2.1B - and warehouse automation startup 6 River Systems. Shopify will lay off 20% of its workforce as part of the transaction.

📣 Earnings updates. It was another eventful week for tech earnings:

• Apple reported better-than-forecast earnings and revenue, driven by strong iPhone sales and growth in its services segment.

• Uber posted a narrower-than-expected loss and a 29% YoY increase in revenue, with rideshare continuing to make a comeback post-COVID. Lyft saw a 14% YoY increase in revenue - but the stock fell on a weak Q2 forecast.

• DoorDash beat expectations for both earnings and revenue (up 40% YoY) as it grew in new markets overseas and new categories in the U.S.

• Coinbase also beat expectations for Q1, but warned of lower subscription and services revenue and bank disruptions that could create crypto volatility.

If you’re a user of ChatGPT, you might have noticed there’s one key thing missing - it can’t (yet!) search the Internet, or access data or information post-2021. This limits use cases that require real-time info or “scraping” websites.

ChatGPT’s Browsing plug-in, which is in beta testing now, should fix this. But in the meantime…Bing Chat opened up to the public on the Microsoft Edge browser, and can tackle this functionality! You can check it out here.

what we’re following 👀

Amazon launched a TikTok-like shopping feed, Inspire, for all U.S. customers.

Lululemon hosted its first-ever “dupe swap.”

The new private airline services catering to pet owners. 👀

Inside Slack’s pivot towards generative AI.

It was a tough week for Chegg - the company’s stock tumbled 48% after CEO Dan Rosensweig said that ChatGPT was starting to impact customer growth.

What does ChatGPT have to do with a textbook rental business? As it turns out, Chegg is now mostly a digital subscription company - 90% of net revenue comes from subscriptions like StudyPack, which costs $19.95/month and gives you access to textbook answers, essay proofreading, breakdowns of math Qs, and more.

Now, ChatGPT can do many of these tasks - and it’s free! While Chegg says it’s still seeing high retention, it’s not surprising to imagine a world where existing subscribers figure this out and churn from Chegg. Because it’s “too early to tell how this will play out,” the company stopped providing earnings guidance beyond the current quarter.

Is this the end for Chegg? Maybe in its current form - but according to Rosensweig, the company is pivoting to focus on incorporating AI. The first product here is CheggMate, a conversational study assistant powered by GPT-4 that will launch in beta later this month and tap into Chegg’s unique content and expert network.

Chegg is not the only company to feel the impact of ChatGPT. Language learning app Duolingo and educational media company Pearson both saw their shares drop this week over fears that they might see similar disruptions - though Duolingo also launched a GPT-4 powered product two months ago. And Khan Academy announced an AI assistant for both teachers and students (called Khanmigo).

Edtech has been one of the hottest categories for AI, with apps like Cramly, Caktus, and PicSolve surging in popularity - along with ChatGPT itself. And even before this current wave of generative AI apps, Photomath (scan a math problem, get an answer) was one of the top-downloaded global edtech products of the last decade! But whether this interest can support massive, revenue-generating companies, or whether the value will accrue to the generalist chatbots like ChatGPT feels TBD…

jobs 🎓

Divvy Homes - Capital Markets Associate (Remote)

Forward - Business Strategy Specialist, Software Engineer (SF)

Asana - Biz Ops & Strategy Lead (SF)

Selby Jennings - VC Analyst (LA)

Lazard - Venture and Growth Associate (LA)

Snap - PM, Lenses (LA)

Flatiron Health - Associate, Network Ops (NYC)

Warby Parker - E-Commerce Product Manager (NYC)

Vimeo - Associate Product Manager (NYC)

BackMarket - Product Designer (Brooklyn)

internships 📝

Real - Research Intern (Remote)

Beautiful.ai - Content Marketing / Social Media Intern (Remote)

MasterClass - Influencer & Affiliate Marketing Intern (SF)

Noah Medical - MBA Summer Intern (San Carlos)

Neighbor - Growth Intern (Lehi)

Coco - Data Analyst Intern (Santa Monica)

Anduril - Marketing Comms Intern (Costa Mesa)

Stavvy - Biz Ops MBS Intern (Boston)

Multiverse - Learning Product Intern (NYC)

puppy of the week 🐶

Meet Bodhi, a one-year-old Golden Retriever x Australian Shepherd who lives in Maryland. 

His hobbies include eating dog-friendly ice cream, going to the beach, and napping. 

Check him out on Instagram @mypup_bodhi.

All views are our own. None of the above should be taken as investment advice. See this page for important information.

Subscribe now

💸 Banks bid for First Republic. Six weeks after SVB failed, another bank popular with Silicon Valley startups - First Republic Bank (FRB) - faced a crisis of confidence that sent its share price tumbling 50%. What happened? FRB released a quarterly report which revealed that withdrawals were greater than expected, raising questions about the bank’s long-term viability. Federal regulators stepped in over the weekend to run an auction for FRB, and JPMorgan was announced as the buyer this morning.

🎶 AI music goes mainstream. Remember the AI-generated Drake cover that popped up on TikTok, racked up millions of streams, and was swiftly taken down by UMG? That was just the beginning for AI music. In the past week, we’ve seen hundreds (if not thousands) of AI tracks pop up - you can find some of them here, or join the AI Hub Discord. The space is rife with potential legal issues, as labels are raising the red flag about copyright violations and invalid uses of an artist’s likeness.

However, a few artists are beginning to embrace AI. Grimes have taken the strongest stance - she promised to split royalties with any creator who produced a successful AI-generated song using her voice (and even made a website to make this easy).

🗣️ Bluesky builds buzz. Last week marked a breakthrough moment for Bluesky, a new social app that combines a decentralized protocol with a Twitter-esque social feed. The app launched in February, and it’s in closed beta for now - but celebrities are beginning to join and other users are jostling for invites. Bluesky has an interesting history, as the product was originally incubated at Twitter under Jack Dorsey and is now a standalone public benefit company that has raised external funding.

📊 Earnings updates. It’s officially tech earnings season. Here’s the major updates from last week:

• Meta had an unexpectedly positive outing, beating expectations with an increase in revenue for the first time in a year. The company also announced that time spent on Instagram has increased 24% since the launch of Reels.

• Alphabet also exceeded expectations for both revenue and EPS. In a conference call with analysts, company executives highlighted their commitment to cutting costs while doubling down on progress in AI.

• Snap had a tougher earnings report, with a 7% YoY decline in revenue and a drop in free cash flow. However, daily active users (DAUs) increased 15% YoY and short-form video feed Spotlight continues to scale - it’s now at 350M MAUs.

what we’re following 👀

An entirely AI-generated episode of MasterChef, but with Marvel superheroes!

How AI startups can navigate the high cost of compute.

Reddit is headed into Discord territory with tests of community chat channels.

Hospitals are piloting GPT-3 to draft responses to patient messages faster.

While TikTok dominates consumer social, parent company Bytedance has another app climbing the charts - Capcut! Capcut is a mobile video editor that powers features like animation, AI effects, slow motion, and auto-captions.

Capcut had a slower rise to “fame,” but it recently passed TikTok in number of monthly U.S. downloads. Capcut is now the #1 app in the Photo and Video category on iOS, and the #2 downloaded app across all categories in the U.S., with an estimated 1M downloads per day according to SensorTower.

Capcut recently turned on monetization via a premium subscription to unlock new features - and per AppFigures data, the company has more than quadrupled daily net revenue since January. This past week, it reached $82k in daily revenue, which annualizes to $30M in yearly revenue (though this is continuing to grow every day).

Capcut’s growth is, in large part, due to TikTok itself. TikTok trends like the blonde filter, which has been used more than 188M times, require a Capcut download to participate. When users click to try the effect within TikTok, they are directed to a Capcut portal, where they can create the video and post it back to TikTok - with the hopes that they’ll return to Capcut to make other videos in the future.

Bytedance is also the developer of Lemon8, a new Pinterest / Instagram hybrid, that launched in March at #1 on the U.S. Lifestyle charts, and #10 overall. Lemon8’s ascent was fueled by…TikTok ads, as well as Bytedance paying TikTok creators to migrate over. And Bytedance is also the maker of Hypic, an AI photo editing app that launched in the U.S. this year, and hit the top 30 of the Photo and Video category.

This kind of cross-app promotion isn’t new. We’ve seen companies like Meta (Facebook, Messenger, Instagram, WhatsApp) and Alphabet (Gmail, Chrome, Maps, YouTube) build “dynasties” in the App Store. Of the top 24 apps in the U.S. App Store as of 4/28, almost half belong to Bytedance, Alphabet, or Meta.

Can Bytedance expand its dynasty? Last year, we probably would have said yes - especially with the ascent of Capcut and early success of Lemon8. But the potential impending ban due to the company’s ties to China opens up a lot more questions. If there is a ban, will it impact TikTok alone, or also Bytedance’s other products? 🤔

jobs 🎓

Headway - Senior Associate, Strategy & Ops (Remote)

Inflow - Strategic Initiatives Associate (Remote)

Gametime - Data Engineer (Remote)

Generally Intelligent - Chief of Staff (SF)

Reach Capital - Investment Associate (SF)

Notion - Business Systems Analyst (SF)

X - Chief of Staff (Mountain View)

Eli Health - Ops & Finance Manager (Austin, Remote)

Primary Venture Partners - Analyst (NYC)

internships 📝

Be Golden - Healthcare Ops Intern (Remote)

Rain - MBA ML Fellow (Remote)

Jane - Product Manager Intern (Remote)

Beautiful.ai - Content Marketing & Social Media Intern (SF)

Prologis - Ventures Intern (SF)

Instawork - Comms & PR Intern (SF)

Applied Materials - Ventures Summer Intern (Santa Clara)

Canal - Talent Commerce Intern (LA)

Techstars - Techstars Sports Intern (Indianapolis)

Domain Money - Marketing Intern (NYC)

puppies of the week 🐶

Meet Louis and Lance, two brothers who live in New South Wales, Australia! Lance (first picture on the left) is a new arrival who came home with his family in April.

They are both mini-dachshunds - Lance enjoys biting the bars of his cage during naps, and Louis enjoys running around on the beach.

Follow them on Instagram @louie.minidachshund!

All views are our own. None of the above should be taken as investment advice. See this page for important information.

Subscribe now

💰 Social apps charge $ for data. If you’ve used AI-powered products like ChatGPT or Bard, you’ve probably noticed that they have a lot of data. Where do they get it? Often from scraping platforms where content is created. This week, several of those platforms - including Reddit, Twitter, and StackOverflow - announce they will start charging for access to these APIs, in an attempt to get paid for the training data. Which companies and how much they’ll charge is TBD - Reddit’s new terms of service say that rates will be “determined at Reddit’s sole discretion.”

🕹️ Sega buys Angry Birds. Gaming giant Sega (maker of Sonic the Hedgehog) will acquire Angry Birds creator Rovio in a $775M deal, as part of Sega’s continued expansion into mobile gaming. If you haven’t played Angry Birds, you’re in the minority - the studio announced in 2022 that it passed 5B global downloads 🤯 , and Angry Birds itself was the first game to reach 1B downloads. We’ll be watching closely to see if this new combo creates an Angry Birds-level hit.

👻 Snap makes product moves. Snap’s Partner Summit brought a host of announcements. Last month, the company rolled out a new AR tool, allowing brands like Princess Polly to offer product try-ons on their own websites. Snap is now bringing this to the real world, producing physical mirrors with AR effects for retail stores like Nike. On the content side, Snap continues its fight against TikTok and IG Reels - lowering the requirements for creators to make ad revenue on Stories, and allowing any user over 18 to make publicly discoverable Stories for the first time.

🗞️ BuzzFeed shuts down News. BuzzFeed will cut 15% of its workforce and shut down its News division, which was launched in 2012. BuzzFeed News focused on original content for younger audiences, and won a Pulitzer Prize in 2021. CEO Jonah Peretti said in a memo that the decision was due to a variety of factors including a tough digital ad market and platform shifts. Thee company will instead lean in to “creators, AI and cultural moments” - BuzzFeed started using ChatGPT to create quizzes and other content in January.

what we’re following 👀

The voice of Spotify DJ on what it’s like to become an AI.

Pokemon Go creator Niantic is building a Monster Hunter game - beta sign-ups here!

A new game called “Human or Not?” tests your ability to distinguish humans vs. bots.

Twitter has officially started removing legacy blue checkmarks.

Snapchat released its AI chatbot, called “My AI,” to the full user base (of 750M MAUs) this week - it was previously only available to paid subscribers. Unsurprisingly, it quickly went viral on both Twitter and TikTok, with users sharing the funny or weird conversations they had with their bot. 

The tweet above illustrates an early “bug” that many users found. Ask the bot if it knows your location, and it will say it doesn’t. But ask for nearby restaurants, and it will generate a full list (inferring that it does know your location). If you confront the bot about this discrepancy, it gaslights you, resulting in some very funny memes. 

Some people are troubled by the fact that the bot can “lie” to you - or that bots sometimes provide misleading or inaccurate information. We take a more optimistic view. Accuracy or “factfulness” feels like a solvable problem, one which many smart people are already working on. Today’s AI chatbots are doing something that we previously would have considered unsolvable: giving computers a personality! 

This has unlocked many fascinating use cases - teaching your bot slang, making it write songs, or even trying to get it to fall in love with you. People are treating their Snap AI like a best friend, a therapist, or just someone who will listen. It’s undeniably entertaining; it’s not hard to imagine people spending hours chatting with it. 

Perhaps this is the root of the more fundamental objection to these types of chatbots. Some people are uncomfortable with the fact that bots can now sound like humans - and that people are treating them as such. We expect this is just the beginning: soon, humans and bots will be indistinguishable online (or maybe they already are…)

jobs 🎓

Renegade - Investment Associate (Bay Area)

Otter - General Manager (Bay Area)

DoorDash - Growth Specialist (SF)

M12 - Investment Partner (SF)

Adams Street Partners - Growth Equity Associate (Menlo Park)

Bessemer Venture Partners - Senior Associate (Redwood City)

Datadog - Data Analyst (NYC)

B Capital - Senior Associate, Early Stage (NYC)

internships 📝

Truepill - Technical Project Manager Intern (Remote)

C3.ai - Comms and Content Marketing Intern (Redwood City)

TikTok - Music Creation Research Intern (Mountain View)

Snap - Program Manager Intern (LA)

RepairSmith - PM Intern (El Segundo)

Whoop - Office of the CEO Intern (Boston)

Etsy - Brand Design Intern (Brooklyn)

Mighty - MBA Intern (NYC)

puppies of the week 🐶

Meet Sharon and Mogu, a golden retriever / corgi duo who live in Japan! Sharon (the golden retriever) is seven years old, and Mogu (the corgi) is one year old.

They enjoy going on walks together, wrestling over toys, and patrolling the neighborhood from their balcony.

Follow them on Instagram @mocosmile935!

All views are our own. None of the above should be taken as investment advice. See this page for important information.

Subscribe now

🛑 OpenAI denies GPT-5 rumors. Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, confirmed that the company is not currently training the next version of its large language model and won’t be doing so for “quite some time.” He said that GPT-4, which was released in mid-March, went through six months of training from a red team before it was unveiled to the public. However, he noted there are still “safety issues” to address. 

💸 FTX update. The new leadership of collapsed crypto exchange FTX has recovered $7.3B in client assets, an increase of $800M since January - though the true shortfall remains unknown. The company’s attorney told a bankruptcy court that it is negotiating with stakeholders about potentially reopening the exchange. CEO and co-founder Sam Bankman-Fried is still out on bail, awaiting trial - though he’s only allowed a flip phone and laptop with limited functionality.

🤖 Amazon launches AI initiative. Amazon is making moves in AI! The company launched Bedrock for generative AI, which lets customers customize and use LLMs and image generation models from a variety of providers. Amazon also announced its own AI models through an initiative called Titan - which includes both an LLM (text generation, classification, summarization, etc.) and a search personalization model.

📱 Twitter product updates. It was another big week in the Twitter-sphere. Through a new partnership with eToro, Twitter users can now get more real-time “cashtags” on financial assets and click to buy or sell them. The company also relaunched its creator subscription product, previously called Super Follows - creators can now apply to sell any type of content (from exclusive tweets to video). And finally, Twitter is officially now merged with X Corp to fulfill Elon Musk’s vision of building an “everything app.”

what we’re following 👀

The rise (and survival) of Amazon alternative Bookshop.org.

Spotify is shutting down its Wordle-inspired music guessing game.

How human-grade dog food has exploded among a new generation of pet parents.

The new platform that is allowing consumers to bid for exclusive reservations.

We've covered a lot of AI news in Accelerated! But this week brought a major leap forward in terms of AI's impact on the "real world” - agents that can IRL tasks for you.

How does this work? You might use a platform like ChatGPT to generate a list of, for example, the top five vegetarian restaurants in Santa Monica. But an AI agent could take the extra step of finding which restaurant has availability tonight, and then actually making a booking for you 🤯.

This isn't just hypothetical - there are live apps with this functionality, most of which are built on top of models like AutoGPT and BabyAGI. These agents allow large language models (LLMs) like GPT-4 to prompt themselves, meaning they can complete a more complicated series of tasks and move through obstacles without human instruction at every step.

These AI agents are very new - they started popping up in the last two weeks. BabyAGI was built by Yohei Nakajima, a GP at Untapped Ventures, as a side project, while Auto-GPT is an open source project from freelance developer and game designer Toran Bruce Richards. Other developers are now building on top of their work, with applications that allow users to interact with BabyAPI, Auto-GPT, and similar agents directly in your web browser (with no additional downloads).

These AI agents still have some significant limitations (and errors!). A common one is getting stuck in a “loop” with one step or task that they have a hard time completing, stopping them from moving on to the next one. But if we’ve come this far with very small, largely self-funded teams building for less than a month - where will be a few months from now? As people in desperate need of a self-completing to-do list, we’re very excited to find out 😂

Tasks they’ve reportedly been able to complete successfully include generating market research reports, building a digital ping-pong game, and even placing an order at Starbucks! You can try out AI agents here: 

• AgentGPT 

• Godmode 

• Nando AI

• Hyperwrite Personal Assistant (have to apply for access)

jobs 🎓

Felicis - Investor (TBD)

Scratch Financial - Biz Ops Associate (Remote)

Figma - Product Manager, FigJam (SF, Remote)

Renegade - Associate (SF)

Bloomberg Beta - Platform Associate (SF)

Lacework - Partner Ops Analyst, Software Engineer (SF)

Zip - Product GTM Strategy Manager, Software Engineer (SF)

Snap - Business Intelligence Engineer (LA)

Primary Venture Partners - Senior Associate (NYC)

Trunk Tools - Chief of Staff (NYC)

Traba - Product Designer (NYC)

internships 📝

Paper - Engineering Intern (Remote)

Brave - UX Research Intern (Remote)

Therma - PM Intern (Remote), Ops Intern (SF)

Verkada - MBA Interns (San Mateo)

Disney - Accelerator Intern (LA)

RepairSmith - Biz Ops Intern (Tempe, AZ)

Ramp - Revenue Ops Extern (NYC)

Atom Finance - Finance Intern, Engineering Intern (NYC)

Patreon - Software Engineering Intern (NYC, SF)

WHOOP - PM Intern, Software Engineering Intern (Boston)

puppy of the week 🐶

Meet Tsuki, a one-year-old Australian Shepherd who lives in France.

She loves chilling at home, hanging out with her brothers, and going on long walks.

Follow her on Instagram @tsuki.aussie!

All views are our own. None of the above should be taken as investment advice. See this page for important information.

Subscribe now

🎮 Scopely levels up. Mobile games studio Scopely - which makes Yahtzee with Buddies and Scrabble Go, among other titles - is being acquired for $4.9B. If the deal goes through, this will be the sixth-largest acquisition in video games history. The acquirer is Savvy Games Group, part of the Saudi Arabian government’s Public Investment Fund. The PIF is betting big on gaming - it has invested $38B in a portfolio of gaming + esports companies in a bid to become the next global games hub.

👋 YC hosts W23 Demo Day. This week, 250 new companies made their public debuts as part of YCombinator’s 36th Demo Day! The cohort, which totaled 282 companies (some didn’t pitch), had two major themes - more than 60 are building AI-related products, and 86% of the cohort lived in the Bay Area. Also of note: the past two YC classes have dipped below 300 companies for the first time in years, after the class sizes ramped dramatically with an entirely-remote program during COVID.

⚖️ Frank founder charged by SEC. The Securities and Exchange Commission filed a fraud charge against Charlie Javice, CEO of fintech startup Frank. They alleged that she perpetrated “numerous misrepresentations” during the sale of her startup to JP Morgan for $175M. The charge follows JPM’s lawsuit against Javice in December, in which the bank claimed that Javice fabricated millions of users and then bought a list of student names and email addresses to cover her tracks.

💻 Anthropic challenges OpenAI. AI research firm Anthropic is expanding access to chatbot Claude, a ChatGPT rival that reportedly has a waitlist of “tens of thousands.” Claude also powers tools like Notion AI, Quora’s Poe, and DuckDuckGo’s DuckAssist - so you may have already used the product without knowing it! According to the Anthropic team, Claude has been specifically trained to “avoid sexist, racist, and toxic outputs” via a constitutional AI approach (read more about this here).

In other news, Apple received a patent for a device that might look familiar to our millennial readers. It’s an interactive AirPods case with a touchscreen display that can play media like music + podcasts and access basic apps like Maps and Weather. Still no word on when this might come out!

As a side note, is anyone getting a surprisingly high % of their news from Pop Crave and Pop Base? They’re really popping off on Twitter recently…

what we’re following 👀

Is the next big dating app a physical ring that signals you’re single?

thredUP released its annual report on the state of resale.

Stanford shared some interesting data on trends in AI - from the race between industry and academia to which countries are leading the charge.

Why aren’t there more consumer healthcare marketplaces?

You’ve heard of BookTok, WitchTok, and FitTok. Introducing the hottest new TikTok subculture: WaterTok! These creators are serious about hydration - and they’re going to great lengths to make water interesting. Surprisingly, it’s gotten very controversial, with debate about WaterTok spilling over to Twitter and Reddit. Let’s dive in ⬇️

@takingmylifebackat42PINK WEDDING CAKE WATER #water #weightloss #healthyrecipes #drinkwater #flavoredwater #sugarfree #weightlosscheck #weightlosstransformation #weightlosstips #vsg #wls #gastricsleeve #fitness #fit #health #h2o

Tiktok failed to load.

Enable 3rd party cookies or use another browser

Tonya (@takingmylifebackat42) is the queen of WaterTok - she has 750k+ followers and gets millions of views on her “water of the day” videos. Her recipes are illustrative of what you typically see on WaterTok: a lot of water and ice (typically in a Stanley bottle) mixed with sugar-free syrups and zero-calorie powder mixes.

The flavor combinations push the boundaries of what you expect to see in water - “Grandma’s Salad” combines pistachio and cherry syrups with pineapple powder, while “Pink Wedding Cake” is vanilla almond and coconut syrups with a Starburst powder. WaterTok influencers construct “water bars” to store all of their flavorings, and are always on the hunt for new syrups or powders to add to their collections. 

These videos get tons of comments, many of which reflect confusion - who wants to drink birthday cake water? Does this even still qualify as water? Is it healthy to drink so much sugar free flavoring / chemicals every day?

And of course, there’s backlash to the backlash. The main argument is this: there’s no need to be up-in-arms about women on TikTok adding flavoring to their water. If you don’t like it, move on with your day and drink normal water. Why do you care if people are calling normal water “redundant”? (ngl, I find this hilarious)

IMO, WaterTok is likely a passing trend. It’s expensive and probably unhealthy to consume this much sugar-free flavoring. But it’s a case study on how the TikTok algorithm can push a niche interest into primetime - WaterTok is all over the Internet.

It’s hard to stop watching these videos (you want to see the end result!) and they drive tons of hate comments - the algo sees this level of engagement and pushes the content. Watch one WaterTok video, and you’ll have trouble escaping them on your FYP. Soon, it might feel like everyone is mixing stuff into their water, and you just might be inspired to try it 👀

jobs 🎓

Rutter - Software Engineer, Integrations (Remote)

Zeal - Strategic Finance Associate (Remote, SF)

Anthropic - Chief of Staff (SF)

Bain Capital Ventures - Investment Associate, Infra (SF)

Scale AI - Sales Strategy & Ops (SF)

Rippling - Data Scientist (SF)

Patreon - Creator Partnerships Associate (SF)

Snapchat - Data Engineer (Palo Alto)

Podium - GTM Strategy & Ops Associate, Finance Ops Analyst (NYC)

Uber - Strategy & Ops Manager, Marketplace (NYC), Strategic Ops Associate (DC)

internships 📝

Anyscale - Software Engineering Intern (SF)

Bluedot - Marketing Intern (SF)

Asana - Content Design Intern (SF)

C3 AI - MBA Intern, UX Intern (Redwood City)

Chegg - Associate PM Intern (Santa Clara)

Coco - Investor Relations Intern (Santa Monica)

Passthrough - MBA Strategic Partnerships Intern (NYC)

Microsoft - Research Intern, AI / Systems (NYC)

Clear - Strategic Ops Intern (NYC)

Immuta - Product Analyst Intern (Boston)

puppy of the week 🐶

Meet Mia, a three-year-old mini goldendoodle.

She enjoys running around on the beach, snuggling, and looking at herself in mirrors.

Follow her on Instagram @summerofmiaa!

All views are our own. None of the above should be taken as investment advice. See this page for important information.

Subscribe now

📱Twitter updates Blue. Twitter users, take note: CEO Elon Musk announced some product changes! As of April 15, only verified subscribers will be eligible to have their tweets recommended in the "For You" algorithm. Musk noted that this change is an attempt to fight “advanced AI bot swarms” taking over the feed. The company is also ending legacy blue checks, meaning that verified users who don't pay to subscribe will lose their status. And finally, Twitter released its recommendation source code on GitHub - here’s a summary of learnings from the algorithm.

🍋 Lemon8 gains steam. Amidst continuing controversy over TikTok, ByteDance has a new app in the U.S. called Lemon8. Think of it as a mix of Instagram x Pinterest - users make “carousel” posts that are a blend of photos, videos, and text. Olivia wrote more about it here: use cases include tutorials, routines, and product recs. Lemon8 quietly launched in the U.S. in late February, but has climbed the charts in the past week (likely due to paid ad spend) - it hit #1 in Lifestyle and the top 10 overall.

🖊️ AI letter sparks controversy. This week, a non-profit called the Future of Life Institute published an open letter urging AI labs to pause research (for six months) on any systems more advanced than GPT-4. It argues that the field of AI needs to develop shared safety protocols and an independent auditing process due to “profound risks to society and humanity.” The letter has been signed by 2,000+ people - notable signatories include Elon Musk, Andrew Yang, and Steve Wozniak.

The publication sparked a firestorm online. Some of the signatories turned out to be fake (and have been removed), others walked back their support. The criticism has come from a variety of places - some people don’t think the letter addresses the real risks of AI, while others believe that it’s counterproductive to halt technological progress due to extreme fears.

🤖 Other AI news. Letter-related controversy aside, it was another busy week in the AI ecosystem! Here’s a recap:

• Image generator Midjourney (where the viral pope photo originated) temporarily paused free trials after a surge of new accounts degraded service for paid plans.

• Zoom added more AI-powered features, including a meeting summarizer and auto-generator of comments and emails based on your conversation.

• Italy blocked ChatGPT due to data protection concerns, and asked OpenAI to prove that it’s not violating GDPR.

• Microsoft has started monetizing Bing Chat (the new conversational search interface) via ads - which look like this.

The new iOS brought a crop of fresh emojis! Tag yourself, I’m the weirdly shaking head (usually) and maracas (on occasion).

what we’re following 👀

This week saw a new App Store #1 - Apple Classical Music. Here’s what it is.

Netflix may be doubling down on games, with plans to launch titles on TV.

Apple is launching an AR/VR headset in June, but some employees are skeptical.

How the Gwyneth Paltrow ski trial took over TikTok.

The dialogue around a TikTok ban is heating up, after last week’s Congressional hearing revealed concerns from both sides of the political aisle. A Pew Research study this week suggests that the majority of Americans now favor of a ban - consumers under 30 are the only age group that supports the app.

TikTok has an estimated 90M MAUs in the U.S., per SensorTower data, which is almost 30% of the U.S. population. What would happen if the app got banned? India provides an interesting case study - TikTok was banned in June 2020 when it was the country’s #1 social app, with 400M downloads. (Huge shoutout to Adam Blacker of Apptopia for doing this analysis - check out his piece.)

The most immediate impact in India was a group of smaller, copycat products taking off. Some of these were existing social platforms that pivoted to add short form video, while others were “TikTok clones” launched shortly after the ban. These apps saw downloads explode in the year post-ban - notably Chingari and Roposo.

In the longer term, there was one winner: Instagram. IG launched Reels in India in June 2021, a year after the ban. Since then, IG’s “market share” of social downloads has expanded substantially, while other incumbents like Snapchat and Facebook have largely maintained share. This has come at the expense of the newer entrants that spiked immediately post-ban, and have since largely died down on a download basis.

What does this mean for the U.S.? If TikTok is banned (still a big “if”), we would expect to see a similar dynamic of new entrants flooding the space. In fact, we’ve already seen companies like Clapper pick up significant steam in recent weeks.

However - in India, it took a year for the dust to settle and IG to emerge as the winner. Our hunch is this would happen faster in the U.S.! Both IG Reels and YouTube Shorts have much more usage than they did at the time of India’s TikTok ban, as they’ve been integrated into each company’s core product. Whether one of these two players would “win” or another company would emerge is TBD 👀

jobs 🎓

Checkmate - Growth Partnerships Lead, Product Lead (Remote)

Caffeinated Capital - Investors (SF, NYC)

Notion - Product Manager, Growth (SF)

OpenAI - Software Engineer, ChatGPT (SF)

Kapor Capital - Associate / Principal (Oakland)

Uber - Strategic Ops Associate (Chicago)

K Health - Project Manager (NYC)

MongoDB - Venture Analyst / Associate, Biz Ops & Strategy Associate (NYC)

Raine Ventures - Investment Analyst (NYC)

internships 📝

Faire - Data Scientist Intern - Master’s Student (Remote)

Headspace Health - PM, Community Product Interns (Remote)

Northstar - MBA Biz Ops Intern (Remote)

Openly - Finance Intern (Remote)

Voyager Ventures - Summer Associate (SF, Remote)

Patreon - Software Engineering Intern (SF)

Chime - OMX Intern (SF)

Summersalt - Customer Happiness, Sourcing & Product Dev Interns (St. Louis)

puppy of the week 🐶

Meet Saffron, a four-year-old Cavapoo who lives in the U.K.

Saffron has a fiery personality, and the credentials to match - he was featured in a book on Britain’s “Top Dogs,” as well as Vogue and the Financial Times.

Check him out on Instagram @saffron.bysaffron!

All views are our own. None of the above should be taken as investment advice. See this page for important information.

Subscribe now

🔌 ChatGPT adds plugins. OpenAI announced that it is expanding ChatGPT’s capabilities by adding plugins that let the chatbot browse the web and interact with specific websites. This makes ChatGPT an interface for all sorts of services and sites, such as booking flights, ordering food, or shopping online. Early plugins include Instacart, OpenTable, Expedia, and Zapier. This feature is waitlist-only for now, but you can see what it looks like here 👀

⌛ Google opens waitlist for Bard. Google Bard, the company’s new AI chatbot, is getting ready for a wider release - anyone with a Gmail account can join the waitlist. Early beta users of Bard are reporting that the chatbot is more dry than Bing’s chatbot and ChatGPT, which seems to be intentional. Bard was subject to heavy adversarial testing to “address and reduce risks” - but has still had some funny moments.

For the first month ever, Bumble beat Tinder in terms of monthly new U.S. downloads (per Apptopia data above). This is likely a result of Bumble’s new ad campaigns around Valentine’s Day, including a partnership with Pamela Anderson to support victims of domestic violence - which boosted monthly downloads by 30%.

We’ll be interested to see if this sticks! Bumble has gained some ground on Tinder over the past year - but so far, Tinder is on track to slightly edge out Bumble in March once again. Overall, the dating app space still feels “up for grabs” for the Gen Z demographic. If you see something interesting here, let us know!

what we’re following 👀

Justine (+ our colleague Bryan) published a tweetstorm and blog post this week about the opportunities in AI x travel. Let us know if you’re building in this space!

Midjourney-generated photos of fake historical events are going viral.

The Wall Street Journal investigates corporate controversy over AI-generated work.

Fortnite now lets players build their own games.

The impact of tech layoffs on “Zoom towns” of remote workers.

This week, our team at a16z published the Marketplace 100 - our annual report of the top 100 private consumer marketplace companies, ranked by gross merchandise value (GMV). The list utilizes credit card panel data from Consumer Edge, which indexes U.S. transactions for 12,000 companies to provide revenue estimates.

This is our fourth year publishing the list. Because marketplaces account for so much of consumer spend, each year the report surfaces fascinating insights into where people are allocating their time and money!

The top companies on the list have been relatively stable - with Instacart taking the 👑 for the third year, and Valve, Viagogo, SeatGeek, Turo, StockX, and GOAT maintaining spots. However - live shopping marketplace Whatnot also joined the top 10, just two years after debuting at #99 and then jumping to #26 last year (the largest jump in list history) This year also saw 34 companies make the list for the first time. Here were some of the themes that emerged from the data:

• Consumers opted to repair their cars, rather than buy new ones, a fallout from supply chain disruptions and inflation. This shift had big implications for parts marketplaces - three of which made the list (RockAuto, PartsGeek, CarID).

• There's big money in mental health, particularly for companies that help consumers navigate insurance policies governing many therapy practices. Four companies on this year’s list help patients find in-network providers (Headway, Alma, Path Mental Health, Osmind).

• Nearly every ticketing company on the Marketplace 100—a noteworthy eight—outperformed already impressive 2022 numbers as the post-COVID rebound continues. But there’s reason to think this trend may level off in 2023.

• Marketplaces are getting opinionated, with platforms that curate supply popping up across categories like food, clothing, and even pets. This is a stark departure from the wave of “anyone can list” marketplaces that dominated 2010 to 2020.

For more on the Marketplace 100, check out the full report here - or you can watch Olivia break it down on the a16z podcast!

jobs 🎓

Compound - Deep Tech Investor (SF, NYC)

645 Ventures - Senior Associate (SF)

Pave - Product Manager (SF)

Uber - Strategic Ops Manager, Eats (SF)

Vial - Business Operations Associate (SF)

Point72 - Enterprise Associate (SF), Deep Tech Associate (NYC)

Tesla - Associate Product Manager (Fremont)

Revolut - Product Owner, Technical (NYC)

Runway - AI Content Specialist (NYC)

WHOOP - Deputy Chief of Staff (Boston)

HarbourVest - Investment Associate, Direct (Boston)

internships 📝

Devoted Health - MBA Corporate Finance Intern (Remote)

Gametime - Data Scientist, Marketing Intern (Remote)

Microsoft - Research Intern, AI & Society or Efficient AI (Redmond)

Chime - Content Strategy Intern, Data Analytics Intern, MBA Biz Ops Intern (SF)

WeaveGrid - MBA Strategy Intern (SF)

Roblox - Community Manager Intern (San Mateo)

Google X - MBA Climate Intern (Mountain View)

Cloudflare - Design Ops Intern (LA)

Outrider - Software Platform Intern (Denver)

Fanatics - MBA M&A Intern (NYC)

puppy of the week 🐶

Meet William (big brother) and Yuni (little sister), Weimaraners who live in Sweden.

Their hobbies include swimming, hiking, and taking dramatic photos that make them look like protagonists in a dark crime series.

Check them out on Instagram @williamtheweimaraner!

All views are our own. None of the above should be taken as investment advice. See this page for important information.

Subscribe now

💰 Startups handle SVB fallout. You may have noticed Accelerated’s absence last week - it was a busy time in the startup world, to say the least! Silicon Valley Bank, which banked thousands of startups and venture funds, was put under receivership by the FDIC after a run on the bank. Accounts were (temporarily) frozen - causing many companies to scramble to cover payroll, and creating mass concern around the 96% of SVB’s deposits held above the $250k federal insurance guarantee.

Last Sunday, the government announced they would make all depositors whole, which lessened but didn’t fully end the panic. Signature Bank was also put into receivership, while trading was halted on First Republic and dozens of other regional banks. SVB formally filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on Friday, which will allow them to resume operations outside of the FDIC while looking for asset buyers.

More to come on this story - and a huge shoutout to all the startup founders and employees who were put through so much chaos over the past few weeks and persevered!

💻 OpenAI, Midjourney, and Microsoft launch major upgrades. It was a big week for AI. Here’s what got released:

• OpenAI released GPT-4, the newest version of its large language model that generates text. GPT-4 is available to use via OpenAI’s own ChatGPT interface, but has also been integrated via API into apps like Duolingo (practice conversations with an AI avatar) and Joy (generate your wedding vows).

• AI image generator Midjourney released V5, which allows users to create more photorealistic images - including, finally, accurate hands! Midjourney’s last iteration (V4) came in November - and V5 represents a significant step up in image quality and accuracy.

• Microsoft unveiled Copilot, a new AI assistant for Office users to help with everyday tasks. Copilot has been described as an “omniscient version of Clippy” - it can generate proposals from spreadsheet data, slide decks based on design criteria, and summarize Microsoft Teams meetings, among other features.

🛑 TikTok faces government pushback. The last few months have brought increasing regulatory scrutiny for TikTok due to national security concerns. The app faced bans by U.S. state governments, publicly-funded schools, and eventually the federal government (on work devices) in late 2022. Since then, the UK government, Canadian government, and European Union have followed suit.

This week, the pressure ratcheted up after the Biden administration threatened to ban the app nationwide unless Chinese parent company Bytedance spins off its ownership. CEO Shou Zi Chew will testify in front of Congress next week.

what we’re following 👀

Google Glass is shutting down - for the second time.

A new dating product is using AI to automate swiping and messaging.

TikTok is letting users reset their “For You” feeds.

In January, we wrote about Temu - a new discount-oriented shopping app that was taking the U.S. App Store by storm. At the time, Temu had been #1 on the charts for 12 of 15 days in 2023. The app has since extended this lead - holding the top spot for 69 of the last 75 days!

Temu is a marketplace that offers ultra-discounted items across categories, from patio chairs to lipstick to power drills. They use aggressive promo codes (e.g. $30 off $60) to get users on the app, and items ship from mostly Chinese manufacturers. This is similar to apps like Wish, which is now a public company. But unlike Wish, Temu aggregates all the items in your order, does a quality control check, and sends them in one package. And the app has an AI-powered, hyper-personalized feed that surfaces products based on your interest, similar to TikTok.

Temu is the U.S. subsidiary of publicly traded Chinese shopping company Pinduoduo (currently at a $116B market cap). This explains why they’ve been able to spend so aggressively on customer acquisition - on the App Store, via creator partnerships, and through two Super Bowl ads, at $7M each. Within seven months, Temu has reached 50M U.S. downloads, a milestone that SHEIN and Wish took 3 years to accomplish!

There’s been a lot of skepticism around Temu, and much of it is valid. Of course you can acquire new users with “dirt cheap” products, which are discounted even further for new users signing up with promo codes. The company has also been accused of paying for positive App Store reviews, to try to mask real negative reviews from users who have complained about product quality of shipping times.

But is the experience good enough to get users to come back? What happens when Pinduoduo stops pouring on the marketing and discount dollars? To get to the bottom of this, we pulled anonymous credit card data from ConsumerEdge, which tracks not only spend but also user retention. Per ConsumerEdge’s data, Temu sees significantly higher spend retention than similar apps like Wish, AliExpress, and SHEIN.

This means users are coming back more frequently - and spending more over time. The average Temu new user cohort is spending 60% of their original purchase value in their second month on the app, compared to 15-25% for the competitor apps we mapped above. This data is still early (the oldest cohorts have only been on the app for 5-6 months), but we’re curious to see how this trends, especially in an uncertain macro environment that has caused an overall slowdown in consumer spend.

jobs 🎓

Whatnot - Strategic Finance Analyst / Associate (Remote)

Niantic - Pokemon Go PM (Bellevue, WA)

Coinbase - Associate PM (SF)

Munich Re Ventures - Investment Associate (SF)

Hadrian - Product Manager (LA)

Point72 Ventures - Deep Tech Associate (NYC)

Datadog - GTM Strategy & Ops Associate (NYC)

Forum Ventures - Investment Associate (NYC)

Charlie Health - Growth Strategy Analyst (NYC)

Harry’s - Associate Brand Manager, Innovation (NYC)

internships 📝

Roo - Digital Marketing Intern (Remote)

Zuora - Global Partner Ecosystems Intern (Remote)

Plaid - New Business Associate Intern (Remote)

thredUP - Product Eng Intern (Oakland)

Descript - Influencer Marketing Intern (SF, Remote)

Vial - Product Manager, Biz Ops Interns (SF, Remote)

Roblox - MBA Marketing Manager Intern (San Mateo)

a16z - Growth Business Strategy & Operations Intern (Menlo Park)

Coco - Consumer Growth & Marketing Intern (Santa Monica)

Casper - Strategy & Innovation Intern (NYC)

puppy of the week 🐶

Meet Mika and Sofia, a cat and dog sibling duo! Mika is a six-year-old Shiba Inu, and Sofia is a three-year-old British shorthair / golden chinchilla.

They enjoy staring out the window together, basking in the sun, and playing on the carpet.

Follow them on Instagram @mikushka2017!

All views are our own. None of the above should be taken as investment advice. See this page for important information.

Subscribe now