Hacker News with Generative AI: Venture Capital

A Postmortem of a Startup (buildwithtract.com)
Between May 2023 and March 2025, Tract attempted to build a venture-backed company to address Britain’s housing crisis by improving the planning permission process.
Startup Postmortems, Housing, UK, Entrepreneurship, Venture Capital
167 points by jamierumbelow 10 days ago | 128 comments
UK founders grow frustrated over dearth of funding: 'problem is getting worse' (techcrunch.com)
According to Dealroom data cited by the Financial Times, British startups raised just £16.2 billion last year, far less than the more than £65 billion raised by their counterparts in Silicon Valley during the same period.
Startup Funding, United Kingdom, Venture Capital, Technology
14 points by nradov 12 days ago | 1 comments
A Postmortem of the startup Tract (buildwithtract.com)
Between May 2023 and March 2025, Tract attempted to build a venture-backed company to address Britain’s housing crisis by improving the planning permission process.
Startup Postmortem, Housing, UK, Venture Capital
11 points by Ozarkian 12 days ago | 2 comments
Rescale (YC W12) raises $115M for 1,000x faster physics – Bezos, Altman, Nvidia (venturebeat.com)
Rescale, a digital engineering platform that helps companies run complex simulations and calculations in the cloud, announced today that it has raised $115 million in Series D funding to accelerate the development of AI-powered engineering tools that can dramatically speed up product design and testing.
Artificial Intelligence, Cloud Computing, Venture Capital, Engineering, Startups
5 points by gpoort 17 days ago | 0 comments
Senior partners are leaving their big venture capital firms in droves (cnbc.com)
Venture Capital, Finance, Business, Personnel
13 points by kjhughes 19 days ago | 3 comments
How to Think About Raising Venture Capital for Your Startup (sillymoney.com)
Startup Funding, Venture Capital, Business
6 points by baxtr 20 days ago | 6 comments
Big VC Tech Money Has Greatly Misunderstood Real Estate (medium.com)
Let’s cut through the mythology: Silicon Valley’s or Big Tech’s decade-long attempt to disrupt real estate represents one of the most fascinating case studies in digital transformation failure of our time. After pouring north of $30 billion into “revolutionizing” how the world buys and sells homes, the tech industry has accomplished remarkably little in fundamentally changing how transactions actually happen.
Venture Capital, Real Estate, Technology, Business
10 points by simondodson 22 days ago | 0 comments
Andreessen Horowitz in talks to help buy out TikTok's Chinese owners (ft.com)
Venture Capital, Social Media, China, Acquisitions
6 points by doom2 24 days ago | 2 comments
Things No One Tells You About Raising from LPs (taghash.io)
Raising from LPs is easily one of the murkiest parts of starting a fund. There’s no playbook, no cold email template that magically works, and no YC-style demo day to get you momentum. The process is slow, nuanced, and entirely relationship-driven.
Venture Capital, Fundraising, Startups, LPs
3 points by koolhead17 24 days ago | 1 comments
OpenAI Close to Finalizing Its $40B SoftBank-Led Funding (bloomberg.com)
OpenAI is close to finalizing a $40 billion funding round led by SoftBank Group Corp. — with investors including Magnetar Capital, Coatue Management, Founders Fund and Altimeter Capital Management in talks to participate, according to people familiar with the matter.
OpenAI, Funding, Investment, Venture Capital, Technology
17 points by saeedjabbar 30 days ago | 16 comments
Did A16Z get it wrong about stablecoins? (ycombinator.com)
Here is the article from a16z about how stablecoins will change daily payments:
Cryptocurrency, Finance, Stablecoins, Venture Capital
23 points by axelwang 30 days ago | 28 comments
20 Years of YC / HN (vickiboykis.com)
I saw recently that YCombinator celebrated its 20th anniversary.
Y Combinator, Startups, Anniversaries, Venture Capital
175 points by mooreds 39 days ago | 42 comments
Y Combinator founders raising less money signals a 'vibe shift,' VC says (techcrunch.com)
Silicon Valley has been captivated by the prospect of AI, not only as a productivity enhancer but also as a catalyst for creating successful companies with much leaner teams than in the past.
Venture Capital, Artificial Intelligence, Startups
6 points by crones 42 days ago | 0 comments
The End of YC (benn.substack.com)
If chefs start to come from anywhere, we might find out that current ones aren’t as talented as we thought they were.
Startups, Venture Capital, Talent Acquisition
26 points by matthewsinclair 43 days ago | 18 comments
5% in EU innovation funding yields a 4,300% ROI (karlsnotes.com)
While only 5% of the EU innovation funding (about €12B) goes directly to startups, these same startups have raised an additional €70B in private capital and created €520B in combined enterprise value, representing a 4,300% return on investment.
Startups, Venture Capital, European Union, Innovation, ROI
6 points by valkrieco 46 days ago | 0 comments
Happy 20th birthday, Y Combinator (twitter.com)
Something went wrong, but don’t fret — let’s give it another shot.
Anniversaries, Venture Capital, Startups
1421 points by btilly 46 days ago | 276 comments
The Hottest AI Companies Are "Apps" (bloomberg.com)
Forget LLMs. Silicon Valley investors have a new favorite AI play.
Artificial Intelligence, Startups, Silicon Valley, Venture Capital
3 points by zuhayeer 50 days ago | 0 comments
GDP shock: Venture Capital's government bailout begins (nextwave.partners)
As GDP contracts, venture capital abandons private markets for government funding, rebranding struggling startups as "strategic assets" to capture Trump's new sovereign wealth fund. A new innovation model emerges where political connections matter more than business fundamentals.
Venture Capital, Government, Economy, Startups
29 points by dollar 51 days ago | 21 comments
Scientist Left OpenAI Last Year. His Startup Is Already Worth $30B (wsj.com)
Silicon Valley’s hottest investment isn’t a new app or hardware product. It’s one man.
Artificial Intelligence, Startups, Business, Venture Capital, Silicon Valley
10 points by gwintrob 53 days ago | 1 comments
Vultr Secures $3.5B Valuation in Financing from LuminArx and AMD Ventures (vultr.com)
In a landmark move for the cloud computing industry, Vultr has completed a growth financing round at a $3.5 billion valuation.
Cloud Computing, Funding, Venture Capital, Technology, Business
4 points by keepamovin 55 days ago | 0 comments
Ask HN: Ethical VC Funds? (ycombinator.com)
Are there any ethical VC funds? This is a genuine question. It feels like the majority of venture firms can rationalise away their position as doing good for the world but when you start to dig into it, the sole goal is making money and who they make money for isn't always the most righteous of people or entities.
Venture Capital, Ethics, Finance, Business
63 points by asim 59 days ago | 38 comments
Y Combinator Supports AI Startup Dehumanizing Factory Workers (404media.co)
A venture capital-backed “AI performance monitoring system for factory workers” is proposing what appears to be dehumanizing surveillance of factories, where machine vision tracks workers’ hand movements and output so a boss can look at graphs and yell at them about efficiency.
Artificial Intelligence, Labor, Surveillance, Venture Capital
67 points by cratermoon 59 days ago | 8 comments
Y Combinator Supports AI Startup Dehumanizing Factory Workers (404media.co)
A venture capital-backed “AI performance monitoring system for factory workers” is proposing what appears to be dehumanizing surveillance of factories, where machine vision tracks workers’ hand movements and output so a boss can look at graphs and yell at them about efficiency.
Artificial Intelligence, Surveillance, Labor, Venture Capital
151 points by marban 59 days ago | 36 comments
'Hey Number 17 ' (404media.co)
A venture capital-backed “AI performance monitoring system for factory workers” is proposing what appears to be dehumanizing surveillance of factories, where machine vision tracks workers’ hand movements and output so a boss can look at graphs and yell at them about efficiency.
Artificial Intelligence, Surveillance, Labor, Manufacturing, Venture Capital
424 points by Amorymeltzer 60 days ago | 157 comments
The Unicorn Boom Is Over, and Startups Are Getting Desperate (bloomberg.com)
The billion-dollar startup bubble is deflating, and more than $1 trillion in value is locked up in companies with dwindling prospects.
Startups, Venture Capital, Economics, Technology
42 points by kjhughes 70 days ago | 38 comments
Antithesis: Lessons from Launch (antithesis.com)
It’s basically a cliche at this point for founders to write the “my experiences from one year of blah” post. Not quite “our incredible journey”-level, but getting there. And why not? It’s pure Hacker News catnip, practically guaranteed to get you views from the people who run the companies that you sell to and buy from in the Great Venture Flywheel / Startup Circle of Life. So I suppose I have to do one.
Startups, Venture Capital, Entrepreneurship, Web Development
24 points by Klaster_1 72 days ago | 2 comments
Startup Funding Roadmap (anyonyashraya.com)
This is a concise roadmap to help founders navigate the fundraising journey, from pre-seed to IPO. It provides actionable insights into funding sources, equity dilution, pros and cons, best practices, and common pitfalls, enabling founders to make informed decisions at every stage. Note: Beyond securing capital, fundraising is about finding strategic partners who align with your vision and can drive long-term growth.
Startup Funding, Venture Capital, Business, Finance, Entrepreneurship
10 points by KuriousCat 73 days ago | 4 comments
The Butter Thesis (2019) (nickgrossman.xyz)
At USV, we talk a lot about our investment thesis.  The USV thesis is a set of ideas that has guided our investing over the years.  It is a tool we use to help ourselves know what to look for, and to help companies who fit into it to find us.
Investing, Venture Capital, Business
21 points by SoKamil 74 days ago | 15 comments
Venture Capital Extremism (vcinfodocs.com)
Tech extremism emerges from the power grab of right-wing venture capitalists in the tech industry.
Venture Capital, Politics, Tech Industry
9 points by greenie_beans 78 days ago | 0 comments
Andreessen Horowitz stands by decision to hire Daniel Penny (techcrunch.com)
Andreessen Horowitz is defending its decision to hire Daniel Penny, according to an investor memo seen by The New York Times.
Venture Capital, Law, Technology, New York
16 points by jmyeet 78 days ago | 4 comments