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šŸ•¶ļø 22 years, zero turnover — What are they hiding?

Retention Wars: OpenAI poaches, VCs preach loyalty

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Building a business used to be about ideas. Now it’s about survival instincts.

Today’s founders are dodging crypto politics, coping with rising churn, and trying to raise money without raising red flags. AI is changing how we hire, how we shop, even how we debug our apps; and the ground rules keep shifting.

So what’s your edge when the future’s being negotiated in real time?

-šŸ•¶ļø 

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Eight bullets of updates

  1. šŸ’³ A third of customers say they’d stop visiting small businesses that add credit card fees, passing the cost might cost you more.

  2. šŸ¤– Blok is using AI-generated personas to simulate real user behavior and speed up app testing, devs watch bots interact like real humans to debug faster.

  3. 🧘 Great leaders don’t get dragged into team drama; they set emotional boundaries, stay present, and keep the spotlight on solutions, not egos.

  4. šŸ‘‹ Linda Yaccarino steps down as X CEO after a rocky tenure marked by advertiser exits, internal chaos, and Elon Musk’s relentless control behind the scenes.

  5. 🐶 Two friends turned puppy yoga into a booming business, mixing wellness with adoptable dogs proved to be the perfect formula for viral growth and steady revenue.

  6. šŸ’æ A Gen Z founder just launched a physical CD subscription service, betting on nostalgia and collectibility to stand out in a streaming-saturated market.

  7. 🦾 Hugging Face opens orders for Reachy Mini, a $1,800 desktop robot that brings open-source robotics and AI tinkering to hobbyists and developers alike.

  8. šŸŖ™ Trump’s campaign is quietly courting crypto donors, tapping industry lobbyists and embracing digital assets as a 2025 wedge issue with big-money potential.

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šŸ›ļø The VC Firm No One Quits

In venture capital, partners come and go, often taking founder relationships, deal flow, and firm secrets with them. But at Emergence Capital, nobody leaves. In 22 years, the firm claims it’s never lost an investing partner to another VC shop. That stat alone sets it apart in an industry where turnover has quietly become a source of chaos for firms and the founders they back.

Emergence’s secret sauce? A culture that prioritizes deep collaboration, clear economics, and a glacial promotion pace. Most partners rose through the ranks over years, and once they make it, they share in the upside. The firm also avoids the ā€œspray and prayā€ strategy, each partner makes one to two investments per year, with full ownership and conviction baked into the deal process.

It helps that the returns are strong: $8B in gains on under $2B invested. But the real edge might be Emergence’s structure: lean team, slow growth, no internal power grabs. In a sector obsessed with velocity, they’re betting that stability is the real superpower. And so far, nobody’s bolted.

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How to Hack Wall Street (and not end in Prison)

In 2018, a single click on a compromised file gave Russian hackers a window into Wall Street—and they used it to steal $100 million. 

This is the wild true story of how a PowerShell backdoor on a filing agent’s laptop gave a Russian cybercrime ring early access to earnings reports from companies like Roku and Skechers—allowing them to trade on insider info for years without getting caught. Until one of them went skiing. ā›·ļø 

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These companies just raised money

  1. šŸ“ˆ After selling his startup for $120M, this founder is diving into the $13T logistics market, betting that AI can finally fix global supply chain chaos.

  2. šŸš€ SpaceX is reportedly in talks to raise new funding at a $400B valuation, pushing it even closer to becoming the world’s most valuable startup.

  3. šŸ¦„ LangChain is nearing unicorn status with a fresh funding round, sources say, the LLM dev darling is riding the wave of AI agent hype straight to $1B.

  4. šŸ’Ø French AI startup Mistral is reportedly in talks to raise $1B at a $6B valuation, less than a year after launching, and with no commercial product yet.

  5. 🧬 Biotech dominated the Netherlands' top 10 funding rounds in H1 2025: life sciences startups pulled in over €350M, outpacing fintech and climate tech.

  6. šŸš“ā€ā™‚ļø Rivian spinoff Also raised $200M to build electric bikes, scooters, and more, aiming to carve out a sleek, sustainable lane beyond cars.

  7. šŸš— Finnish startup Donut just raised €25M to reinvent electric vehicle batteries, promising faster charging, longer range, and greener materials.

  8. šŸ“Š Ryft raised $8M from Index and Bessemer with a pitch deck built entirely in Notion, proving clean storytelling still beats flashy slides.

  9. šŸ’¬ OneText raised $4.5M from YC and Khosla to reinvent shopping via SMS — aiming to turn texting into the next big e-commerce channel.

  10. šŸ” A Moroccan founder raised $4.2M for her YC-backed startup building the next layer of AI search, aiming to outsmart traditional engines with context-rich results.

  11. šŸ›”ļø A European VC just broke ranks by backing pure defense tech, investing €2.5M in battlefield tools built in Ukraine, and challenging long-held startup taboos. 

  12. 🚘 LA-based VC firm Wonder Ventures backed Slate Auto early with a $1M seed check, betting the startup’s AI-driven car dealership tech could modernize how used cars are sold.

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A growth calculator that lets you forecast the impact of your ARPU (average revenue per user) and Churn Rate on the long-term potential of your subscription business.

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🧠 OpenAI Just Raided the Competition

OpenAI poached four top engineers from Tesla, xAI, and Meta this week, including David Lau, formerly VP of software at Tesla, and two infrastructure leaders behind xAI’s 200,000-GPU supercomputer. They’ll join OpenAI’s scaling team, which manages the deep backend of training and deploying its massive models. Think Stargate, not ChatGPT.

The hires reflect OpenAI’s growing focus on infrastructure as it chases artificial general intelligence. Lau called it the ā€œmost rewarding missionā€ of his career; others cited Stargate’s ā€œmoonshotā€ ambition. Internally, Sam Altman has already hinted at juicing compensation to keep pace with Meta’s escalating pay wars, Zuckerberg has reportedly lured away at least seven OpenAI staffers with compute-rich deals.

All of this unfolds as OpenAI fends off a lawsuit from Elon Musk, its ex-cofounder turned bitter rival, while Musk’s own AI firm, xAI, just lost multiple core engineers. The takeaway: talent is now the front line in the AGI race, and OpenAI just won a battle.

šŸ‘‰ And if you missed the chaos behind Sam Altman’s brief firing, we made a deep-dive video on the OpenAI coup — watch it here.

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Startup Events and Deadlines

  1. Today! Slidebean Crash Course in Financial Modeling l Jul 10 l Online

  2. Startupbootcamp | Energy & Sustainability | Deadline: Aug 10 | South Africa

  3. Startupbootcamp | Health & LifeScience | Deadline: Aug 10 | Netherlands

  4. Antler Canada | Deadline: Sept 29 | Canada

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