Hacker News with Generative AI: Venture Capital

YC is wrong about LLMs for chip design (zach.be)
YC recently released their latest Request for Startups, and one specific item has already been getting some buzz in chip design communities. It’s exciting that an organization as high-profile as YC is taking chip design more seriously… or at least it’s exciting until you actually start reading what their proposal is.
Chip Design, Startups, Venture Capital
317 points by laserduck 5 days ago | 269 comments
Marc Andreessen Demands Criminal Charges for Advertisers' Free Market Decisions (techdirt.com)
Marc Andreessen, the influential venture capitalist, is exhibiting a startling disconnect between his stated beliefs in free markets and free speech, and his recent authoritarian threats against those who disagree with him.
Free Speech, Venture Capital, Censorship
11 points by hn_acker 6 days ago | 5 comments
How AI is beating VCs in their own game (arxiv.org)
Traditional decision tree algorithms are explainable but struggle with non-linear, high-dimensional data, limiting its applicability in complex decision-making.
Artificial Intelligence, Venture Capital, Machine Learning
10 points by yihlamur 7 days ago | 12 comments
Does anyone know how much VC firms contributes to wealth inequality? (ycombinator.com)
Does anyone know how much VC firms contributes to wealth inequality?
Venture Capital, Wealth Inequality, Economics, Finance
8 points by user90131313 8 days ago | 16 comments
Ben Horowitz's Cozy Relationship with the Las Vegas Police Department (techcrunch.com)
When Skydio, a young maker of drones in San Mateo, California, sent a customer proposal in 2023 to the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department, its chief of staff, Mike Gennaro, forwarded the email to VC Ben Horowitz.
Tech, Law Enforcement, Venture Capital
47 points by acjohnson55 10 days ago | 5 comments
The $3T AI Opportunity Everyone Missed (chrisbora.substack.com)
Everyone's talking about the AI infrastructure bubble. The numbers are staggering - $600B in GPU investments that supposedly dwarf the actual revenue potential. Analysts are sounding alarms about over-investment. VCs are getting nervous. The narrative of "too much, too fast" is everywhere.
Artificial Intelligence, Venture Capital, Technology, Business
9 points by ivanvanderbyl 10 days ago | 8 comments
Age-Normalized Testosterone Peaks at Series B for Male Startup Founders (twitter.com)
Startup Funding, Startups, Gender, Biology, Venture Capital
7 points by Mdubrov 13 days ago | 0 comments
Ask HN: Are there VC funds that focus on profitability with minimal rounds? (ycombinator.com)
I’m exploring venture capital funds that prioritise sustainability and profitability over continuous fundraising.
Venture Capital, Startups, Profitability, Funding Rounds
9 points by petrusnonius 15 days ago | 3 comments
Silicon Valley's Andreessen, Horowitz Give Millions to Trump (bloomberg.com)
Venture capitalists Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz each donated $2.5 million to a pro-Donald Trump super political action committee, according to the latest filings with the Federal Election Commission.
Politics, Venture Capital, Donald Trump
4 points by michaelrkn 21 days ago | 0 comments
VC Built an Empire in Cybersecurity, Then Came the Conflicts of Interest (forbes.com)
For years, security executives at some of America’s largest corporations — Kraft Heinz, Colgate-Palmolive and Fidelity, to name a few — were happy to hear from Gili Raanan, the founder of a boutique Israeli venture capital firm called Cyberstarts.
Venture Capital, Cybersecurity, Business
8 points by equalitech 23 days ago | 0 comments
Silicon Valley's Elite Pour Money into Blotting Out the Sun (bloomberg.com)
Venture capitalists, startup founders and tech executives are funding studies, experiments and small deployments of controversial technology that could cool the planet.
Climate Change, Technology, Venture Capital, Silicon Valley
11 points by viewtransform 24 days ago | 6 comments
A high-profile geneticist is launching Pacific Fusion (wired.com)
Early last year, when we started exploring the climate and energy space as part of our Global Resilience strategy, fusion was one of the first areas we closely examined.
Venture Capital, Energy, Fusion
14 points by sudohalt 27 days ago | 9 comments
Silicon Valley's Elite Pour Money into Blotting Out the Sun (bloomberg.com)
Venture capitalists, startup founders and tech executives are funding studies, experiments and small deployments of controversial technology that could cool the planet.
Climate Change, Technology, Venture Capital
6 points by memkit 27 days ago | 0 comments
Show HN: Semantic search engine for finding relevant VCs and angels (graph.one)
Semantic Search, Venture Capital, Startups, Funding
11 points by macieklaskus 29 days ago | 6 comments
Marc Andreessen says AI model makers are in 'a race to the bottom' (techcrunch.com)
Marc Andreessen, general partner at VC firm Andreessen Horowitz, was onstage at the Ray Summit conference earlier this month, talking about AI. CFO.com has pulled out the best quotes so you don’t have to watch the full interview.
Artificial Intelligence, Venture Capital, Business
5 points by elmar 30 days ago | 1 comments
What's with All the Trumpy VCs? (theatlantic.com)
The venture capitalist Shaun Maguire is a particularly prolific poster. And lately, his takes have become almost unavoidable.
Venture Capital, Politics, Social Media
11 points by peutetre 36 days ago | 1 comments
I Hate VC's (ycombinator.com)
I have started a number of companies. All self-funded. Some were successful and others were "experiences". My last company was almost acquired for tens of millions of dollars when the economy imploded in 2008 and the world froze.
Entrepreneurship, Venture Capital, Personal Finance, Startups, Economy
16 points by robomartin 38 days ago | 11 comments
Scale Ruins Everything (coldwaters.substack.com)
During the Product Bubble, venture capital investments grew from $45 billion to $620 billion. How did speculation in companies that might exist nearly catch up to $1.1 trillion of private equity speculation in companies that do exist? And why did that torrent of money ruin so much?
Venture Capital, Business, Finance, Technology, Startups
175 points by drc500free 38 days ago | 240 comments
Understanding Venture Math (ehandbook.com)
You have a great product that customers are clamoring for. The business plan looks fantastic. Now you just need funding to get the product to market.
Venture Capital, Startups, Business, Finance
3 points by healthypunk 42 days ago | 0 comments
Source-available is meaningless (keygen.sh)
We've seen it play out a hundred times: a VC-backed company launches a new "open source" project, and perhaps right away, or maybe later on, they license their project under what's known as a "source-available" license. Yet they still call it "open source" — a phenomenon known as "open washing."
Open Source, Software Licenses, Venture Capital
5 points by ezekg 49 days ago | 3 comments
VC Fund gives money back, says the market for mature startups is too weak (nytimes.com)
Venture capital firms raise money — lots of it — and invest it in start-ups in hopes of generating big returns. One thing they rarely do is give the money back.
Venture Capital, Startups, Economy, Finance
170 points by nytesky 50 days ago | 253 comments
Pydantic wants to cash its open-source credibility – but not in the usual way (techcrunch.com)
A U.K.-based, open-source startup is launching its first commercial product with the backing of one of Silicon Valley’s most renowned venture capital firms.
Open Source, Startups, Venture Capital, Business Models
7 points by gemanor 50 days ago | 2 comments
Liquid debuts non-transformer AI models and they're already state-of-the-art (venturebeat.com)
Liquid AI, a startup co-founded by former researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL), has announced the debut of its first multimodal AI models: the “Liquid Foundation Models (LFMs).”
Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Startups, MIT, Venture Capital
6 points by elsewhen 51 days ago | 0 comments
Brutal Startup Failure (ycombinator.com)
My first (vc backed) startep failed after three years.
Startup Failure, Venture Capital, Personal Experience
49 points by theHolyTrynity 52 days ago | 28 comments
How the Product Bubble Burst (coldwaters.substack.com)
For nearly two decades, investors looking for somewhere to park trillions of freshly printed dollars funded the Product Management bubble. Now it’s bursting.
Product Management, Venture Capital, Economics
20 points by drc500free 52 days ago | 0 comments
Y Combinator Traded Prestige for Growth (unfashionable.blog)
Y Combinator is arguably the most successful early-stage VC fund or accelerator ever. The issue, however, is that they never truly grasped the factors behind their success, which is why YC's peak is already behind them—it’s likely all downhill from here.
Venture Capital, Startups, Y Combinator, Growth, Business
546 points by SvenSchnieders 52 days ago | 248 comments
Sam Altman invested $180M into a company trying to delay death (technologyreview.com)
Can anti-aging breakthroughs add 10 healthy years to the human life span? The CEO of OpenAI is paying to find out.
Biotechnology, Longevity, Investments, Venture Capital
5 points by olalonde 56 days ago | 0 comments
Andreessen Horowitz's SB 1047 campaign is as misleading as it gets (transformernews.ai)
In the fight against SB 1047, California’s effort to regulate the potential catastrophic risks of AI, one voice has been louder than all others: Andreessen Horowitz.
Artificial Intelligence, Politics, Venture Capital
20 points by apsec112 65 days ago | 6 comments
Y Combinator is predicated on startups that require low capitalization (twitter.com)
Startup Funding, Venture Capital, Y Combinator
177 points by Apocryphon 65 days ago | 114 comments
China's startup scene is dead as investors pull out (fortune.com)
The number of new companies that are started in China annually has collapsed as fundraising by Chinese venture capital firms has similarly imploded.
China, Startups, Venture Capital, Economy
6 points by paulpauper 66 days ago | 1 comments