Thiel Secures $5 Billion 💵
Founders Fund, Twitter Creator Tools and Biden's Crypto Exec. Order
Gm. Here’s Sahil Bloom’s single best piece of career advice. Few understand this.
Welcome to Issue 02 of The Quest Digest, where we break down Silicon Valley news for you every week, in 3 minutes.
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Founders Fund Raises $5B for Early-Late Stage Investments
Founders Fund has closed over $5 billion for two new funds across both early and late-stage investments. This has more than doubled the size of assets under management to $11 billion.
The fund has previously backed Airbnb, Palantir, Affirm, Asana, and Nubank.
Our Take
Recently, startup valuations have been shrinking and macroeconomic conditions have turned markets to become conservative. Despite this, Brian Singerman (General Partner) isn’t concerned – even noting lower valuations make it cheaper to invest.
The fund’s partner and COO, Lauren Gross states much of the new capital will be used to double down on its current portfolio – she says “too many funds raising too much capital ahead of what they should.” Both of which we agree to be fair statements.
Twitter Rollout New Creator Tools
Twitter is introducing a new tool called the “Creators Dashboard”. The tool is designed to help creators understand how much they earn via monetization features like Super Follows (paywalled content) and Ticketed Spaces.
The new dashboard can be accessed in the app’s “Monetization” tab. As of current, it’s only available to beta testers in the United States who have > 10,000 followers.
Our Take
Twitter has been ramping up its support for creators to stay competitive against other social media platforms.
It might come as a challenge for Twitter because, for years, users have gotten used to content on the platform for free. But at the same time, many of the site’s prolific writers have found alternative ways to monetize via offshore platforms like Substack, Gumroad, and Patreon.
We suspect the change won’t be too drastic and could help Twitter’s own monetization strategy.
Biden Issues Executive Orders on Crypto
The Biden administration put out an executive order on Wednesday calling the government to examine the risks and benefits of cryptocurrencies.
The order lays out a strategy for how the government plans to approach: consumer protection, financial stability, illicit activity, US competitiveness, financial inclusion, and responsible innovation. The fact sheet issued by the White House also mentions the exploration of a state-backed cryptocurrency – a U.S. Central Bank Digital Currency.
Our Take
This is a watershed moment for crypto and digital assets. The industry has been rocked multiple times in the past by regulatory watchdogs such as the SEC threatening Coinbase with legal action and BlockFi being hit with a $100 million fine.
While the order has no mention of DeFi or NFTs, the statement appears to have a favorable approach to understanding the crypto space. The White House also seems determined to explore digital currencies as a way to stay competitive against China and its digital yuan.
Crypto investors agree and appear to be optimistic with the price of Bitcoin surging over $42,000 USD. Wagmi.
🔥 Press Worthy
Here’s a recap of Apple’s March event, Peek Performance. Launches include a new M1 Ultra chip
Tech companies Amazon, Samsung, Apple, Dell, Intel, and Microsoft have suspended shipments and/or sales into Russia
Aussie fintech Zeller raises $100 mil series B at $1 bil valuation
Snowflake acquires Streamlit for $800 mil
Microsoft announced plans to support 10,000 startups in Africa
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The Quest Digest is written by Hannah Ahn and edited by Brent Liang, two dropouts who hate long tech newsletters. You can sign up to our next issue below.