Startups & Ventures

🕷Firecrawl - the AI web-crawler Firecrawl.dev is turning web scraping from tedious copy-paste into an AI-native tool. The YC 2023 alum raised $14.5M Series A, hitting $1.5M revenue in 2024 with only 10 people, and it’s already profitable. 🔸 Bypasses site protections and handles dynamic content 🔸 Extracts clean structure and context, outputs JSON, markdown and more 🔸 Used for price tracking, reviews analysis, lead generation, and AI training datasets 🔸 Partners with publishers to offer “fair compensation” for content used by AI The demand for data keeps exploding.

The real question: will sites fight harder to block crawlers, or monetize access with models like Cloudflare’s “pay-per-crawl”?

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🔥 Perplexity: Google is our only competitor An interview with Perplexity’s head of communications shows how the company is carving its own path in AI. Unlike OpenAI or Anthropic, Perplexity doesn’t build foundation models, it builds a product. They integrate the best models on the market and focus entirely on usability. 🔸 Jesse Dwyer, comms chief, said: “We certainly see Google as our only competitor.” 🔸 Perplexity treats hallucinations as a bug, not a feature - every answer is source-linked, making it easy to verify. 🔸 Their Comet browser, now rolling out, works like a “second brain”: it searches, books, fills forms, and can be controlled by voice. 🔸 The company doesn’t hide from controversy — from Cloudflare’s accusations of “stealth crawling” to Truth Social adopting its API — but keeps doubling down on accuracy and product. The point is simple: while others chase model supremacy, Perplexity is building an AI-native search and browsing experience from the ground up.

For anyone who has tried it, it already feels closer to the future of the internet than Google.

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⚡️Learn circuits the fun way Interactive textbook on electronics - in game-like form you’ll learn how to read schematics and understand how things actually work. 🔸 Build devices in real time 🔸 Access dozens of step-by-step tutorials 🔸 See electronics explained visually and clearly 🔸 Runs free in your browser

👉 Start tinkering here 👈

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📺 China’s new sales force: AI streamers China’s e-commerce platforms are being flooded with virtual streamers - avatars powered by Baidu and DeepSeek that run 24/7 shopping shows. For many brands, these “digital sellers” already outperform human hosts. 🔸 Live commerce makes up over a third of online sales in China, with half the population buying through streams. 🔸 Brands like Brother report a 30% sales boost after switching to AI streamers - one avatar pulled in $2,500 in just two hours. 🔸 Startups such as PLTFRM, Silicon Intelligence, and Xiaoice build avatars for as little as $1,000, trained to mimic gestures, answer comments in real time, and even adjust strategy mid-stream. 🔸 Some companies run hybrid streams: humans open, AI takes over for the long haul. The result is consistency — no fatigue, no loss of energy. 🔸 In total, AI streamers have already generated millions in sales, squeezing out mid-tier human hosts while complementing top influencers. The small glitches in lip-sync or gestures don’t outweigh the cost savings and scalability.

For China’s brands, the “always-on” shopping channel is becoming less about people, and more about perfectly tireless clones.

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🤖 The AGI-pilled and the damned As AI moves from hype to looming reality, people in tech are splitting into strange camps. Some see an age of superabundance. Others see extinction. And they’re changing their lives accordingly. 🔸 AI safety researchers in the Bay Area are building DIY bioshelters for <$10K, stocking food and HEPA filters in case of AI-engineered pandemics. 🔸 Investors and startup founders are spending down savings - convinced there are only a few years left to build wealth before “intellectual labor” becomes obsolete. 🔸 A new “smart-to-hot” ethos is emerging: if AI eats brains, charisma and fitness may become the true social currency. 🔸 Some Rationalists throw wild parties “before the end,” while others buy Wyoming land or Southeast Asian survival sanctuaries. 🔸 Even relationships are fracturing — activists in groups like Pause AI are divorcing over different strategies for fighting the labs. For every bunker builder, there’s someone pivoting to leisure, fitness, or bucket-lists. Whether AGI means utopia or collapse, Silicon Valley is living like the clock is ticking.

Would you prep for an AI apocalypse, or just party through it?

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⚡️ Jack Dorsey’s #1 fundraising rule: show them it works When Dorsey and McKelvey built Square, they hacked together a working prototype in just a month. Jack would literally swipe cards and email receipts to investors - charging them $5–50 on the spot. That demo helped secure $10M from Khosla Ventures. 🔸 A working product inspires more than any deck or vision 🔸 With Twitter, many investors were already users, making the pitch effortless 🔸 Proof > promises: traction or even a scrappy prototype tells the story better than words

Dorsey’s lesson is simple: don’t just pitch an idea - show something real.

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🎧 Your personal bandmate is here: AI that finishes your demos Musicians just got their dream tool - an AI that turns a riff into a full track. 🖱 Upload your guitar (or any instrument) - it adds drums, bass, and layers. 🖱 Picks up your style, rhythm, and energy to keep the vibe intact. 🖱 Customize the parts with grooves and fills. 🖱 One-click mix and master for pro sound, even on a cheap mic. 🖱 Free and works right in the browser.

Try it here 👉 Moises Studio

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✈️ Oway wants to be the Uber for freight San Francisco startup Oway, backed by YC and General Catalyst, has raised $4M to tackle America’s $100B problem: half-empty trucks on long-haul routes. By matching cargo with unused trailer space, Oway claims it can slash shipping costs by up to 70%. 🖱 Founded in 2023, team of 12 🖱 Cuts LA–Dallas pallet shipping from $220 → $60 🖱 Uses AI to match loads and automate paperwork 🖱 Built on truck ELD data for real-time routing 🖱 Promises speed of full-truckload with cost of less-than-truckload 🖱 Already piloting with large undisclosed fleets Oway’s pitch is simple:

Turn wasted truck space into an efficient, decentralized logistics network.

If it works, this model could reshape U.S. freight over the next decade. ✔️Powered by Trade Watcher

🚀 Palmer Luckey: why sci-fi is the best source of startup ideas Oculus founder Palmer Luckey says none of his ideas have ever been “new” - every concept he’s worked on already existed in science fiction decades earlier. 🖱 Sci-fi authors don’t wait for tech to be possible — they imagine freely, often years ahead of reality 🖱 Many AR/VR military tools he’s building today appeared in Starship Troopers (1959) 🖱 Autonomous fighter jets? Written about for nearly a century, long before modern computing His advice:

If you’re struggling to find startup ideas, read science fiction. The future is often hiding in plain sight, on the page.

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⚡️ The brutal truth about fundraising Most founders believe fundraising is about running a clean process, lining up warm intros, and pitching every VC. In reality, venture capital works more like outbound sales, and 90% of the money flows to founders that investors proactively chase. Tier-1 VCs openly admit: 🖱 Analysts scan the market nonstop to spot breakout teams. 🖱 Associates reach out, follow up, and push for meetings. 🖱 Partners spend months convincing founders to take their capital. LPs do the same when backing funds, most allocations are outbound, not inbound. That means if you’re the one knocking on doors, you’re competing in the 10% bucket of deals that investors didn’t originally prioritize. The $30M seed your classmate closed? It wasn’t because they ran a better process, it’s because VCs wanted to chase them.

The real takeaway: don’t just optimize your pitch. Build a company so compelling, with traction or vision so strong, that VCs feel they must come after you. Great companies are bought, not sold.

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🚀 Alibaba introduces Qoder – an agentic coding platform Alibaba has launched Qoder, a tool that can take on full-stack tasks, from writing code to testing and final assembly. 🖱 Works in Agent Mode (pair programming with full control) or Quest Mode (autonomous coding from task to production). 🖱 Can deeply parse large codebases, including architecture and patterns. 🖱 Provides smart hints, auto-documentation, and long-term memory for team style. 🖱 Automatically selects the best AI model (Claude, Gemini, GPT, etc.) for the job. Qoder is now available in public preview and free to try.

The line between “developer” and “AI agent” just got a little thinner.

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📣 Elon Musk’s go-to interview question Musk doesn’t start with brainteasers or case studies. He simply asks candidates to tell the story of their career, the hardest problems they faced, how they solved them, and how they made key decisions. 🔸 He’s looking for evidence of exceptional ability, proven by overcoming tough challenges 🔸 To test credibility, he asks for details — real problem-solvers don’t forget the struggle 🔸 Degrees don’t matter: Gates, Jobs, Ellison are proof talent can trump credentials

Musk’s rule of thumb: past exceptional achievement is the best predictor of future impact.

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🤖 Food delivery goes robotic in Zurich Just Eat Takeaway.com has rolled out robot dogs from Swiss startup RIVR in Zurich - Europe’s first pilot of autonomous ground robots designed for real city environments. The bots move at up to 15 km/h, climb stairs, carry 40 litres of food, and last 30 km per charge. 🔸 Customers order via JET app, unlock delivery with a QR code 🔸 12 robots will cover 5 km² across three neighbourhoods 🔸 Target: 90% on-time rate and lower costs vs. human couriers 🔸 Expansion plans include Amsterdam, Berlin, and Paris 🔸 Operating cost: ~€0.40 per km, with 18-month payback

For Europe’s foodtech, this marks a shift from lab tests to real urban streets, a preview of how automation could reshape delivery at scale.

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🧽 Scrub Daddy: the billion-dollar sponge Scrub Daddy started as a simple idea on Shark Tank in 2012, a sponge that changes texture with water temperature. Firm in cold, soft in hot, odor-free and long-lasting, it quickly became a household hit. 🔸 Sold 42,000 units in 7 minutes on QVC after the show 🔸 Viral on TikTok with 3.3B+ views of #scrubdaddy 🔸 $340M revenue in 2024 🔸 Lifetime sales passed $1B in 2025 🔸 Products now in 257K stores with 160 SKUs

From a $100K TV investment to a billion-dollar brand - Scrub Daddy proves even the simplest product can turn into a global startup phenomenon.

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⏳ Brian Armstrong on building Coinbase after hours While working full-time at Airbnb, Brian Armstrong spent nights and weekends coding what would become Coinbase. He avoided using company time or laptops - “if you build it on company hardware, they probably own the IP.” 🔸 Workdays: Airbnb until 7pm, Coinbase from 8pm to midnight, 3–4 nights a week 🔸 Weekends: Sunday afternoons, 7–8 hours straight 🔸 This grind lasted ~18 months until Y Combinator funded him 🔸 He admits friendships took a hit, but says urgency and mortality pushed him forward His advice:

Go hard at it. Launch your thing. Just start - even if you don’t know what to do, action produces information.

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🔥 Free Rizz Generator: AI wingman for any situation An AI trained on 200 books and courses from dating coaches and pickup pros promises to turn you into the ultimate smooth talker. 🔸 Drop in a message from your crush - get a ready-made pickup line and follow-up script 🔸 Built to work in real-time, even mid-date 🔸 Marketed as the tool to escape the friend zone and boost confidence Your personal AI pickup coach here 📊 Powered by Crypto Insider

🔎 New UAE startup offers $20M for smartphone zero-days Advanced Security Solutions, a newly launched firm in the UAE, is offering up to $20 million for tools that can hack any smartphone via text message - one of the highest publicly known bounties in the zero-day market. 🔸 $20M for universal smartphone exploits; $15M for iOS or Android zero-days 🔸 $10M for Windows, $5M for Chrome, $1M for Safari/Edge 🔸 Claims cooperation with 25+ governments and intelligence agencies 🔸Staffed by veterans of elite intelligence units and private military contractors 🔸 Refuses to disclose owners, funding, or customer list The zero-day market has ballooned in the last decade - from $1M iPhone exploits in 2015 to today’s $20M offers.

But with anonymous buyers and state-level stakes, the ethical questions are growing just as fast as the payouts.

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💻 Bending Spoons: the brand resuscitator Based in Milan, Bending Spoons isn’t a VC fund or a quick flipper, it buys mature digital products, puts in its own operators, and revives them with new growth. Recent €500M debt raise (≈€1B total so far) fuels even more acquisitions, backed by JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs, and HSBC. Their playbook: pick strong brands with PMF, then optimize from code to unit economics. Chances are you’ve already used something in their portfolio: 🔸 Remini: boosted revenue, added video generation 🔸 Evernote: redesign + stabilized sync 🔸 StreamYard: better UX and integrations 🔸 WeTransfer: stronger team, API upgrades 🔸 Komoot: new markets + offline mode Named after the Matrix spoon-bending scene - the idea is that reality itself can bend if you know how. And they seem to be proving it by reanimating products most others would have written off.

So which “dead” product would you send to their rehab ward?

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❗️ Vlad Tenev admits remote-first was a mistake Robinhood’s founder says declaring the company remote-first in 2022 was “the wrong decision”, and one he regretted almost immediately. Now the firm runs on an office-heavy model: 🔸 Executives in-office 5 days a week 🔸 Managers 4 days 🔸 Individual contributors 3 days Tenev’s logic: leaders should take on more pain than their teams.

If you want people to move fast, you start by setting the example at the top.

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⚡️ The only mega-prompt you need for ChatGPT A Redditor claims to have solved the biggest issue with LLMs - human imprecision. Since 92% of the quality of an answer depends on how well you frame the question, this prompt flips the process: ChatGPT does the clarifying, you just confirm. The structure is simple:

You are to act as my prompt engineer. I would like to accomplish: [insert your task].

Please repeat this back to me in your own words, and ask any clarifying questions. 
I will answer those. 

This process will repeat until we both confirm you have an exact understanding, 
and only then will you generate the final prompt.

Instead of struggling with wording, you let the AI drill down, refine, and finally output the sharpest possible version. 📊 Powered by Crypto Insider