What's in the air? Big chat & investor trends
Necessary Nuggets
Happy Wednesday! If you’re new here, welcome to Necessary Nuggets, your one-stop pre-seed shop. We deliver updates from Necessary Ventures and helpful tidbits on our little corner of the world. Every edition is also on our blog.
Jobortunities 🚨
Necessary Ventures: If you love this newsletter, we think you might like investing in what the world needs too. We have full-time and part-time opportunities to think early stage and have an impact on solving founders’ problems.
| Investor |
Taro: Taro increases access to healthcare while reducing costs and physician burnout via direct primary care based health insurance.
| Product Engineer |
Forage: Create a unified API that helps low-income Americans buy online groceries. It’s Stripe, but for Electronic Benefits Transfer.
| Senior Backend Engineer | | VP/Director of Engineering |
Reach out with any questions! All 165 open job postings are listed here.
Market Stirrings 🚩
The number of companies backed by venture capital is on a steady, free solo climb upwards; no safety nets holding this one back. According to PitchBook, pre-seed and seed companies backed by VCs stood at about 8,500 in 2014. As of Q1 2024, the new total stands at about 18,700, signaling a ~120% increase from 2014 and the result of steady growth in VC-backed company count every year since then.
Good Reads 📖
For the rushed reader …
A new report from Stanford’s Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence revealed that global investment in AI dropped 20% in 2023 compared to 2022.
The FTC is proposing a $7 million fine against telehealth firm Cerebral for sharing patients’ data with third parties, lying about it, and instituting a misleading cancellation policy.
Founded by venture capitalist Naval Ravikant, Airchat is a fresh social media experience where users communicate through voice notes, and Silicon Valley dwellers are rushing onto the app.
For the less rushed reader …
AI OF THE STORM: Investors are growing wary of AI, and AI companies are wondering where-y the money has gone. A new report from Stanford’s Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence revealed that global investment in AI dropped 20% in 2023 compared to 2022. Billion-dollar investments, like Amazon’s contribution to Anthropic and Microsoft’s $650 million to acquire Inflection AI’s top talent, have slowed down. There are multiple possible reasons for the decline; perhaps it’s an AI-bubble burst, or perhaps it’s market saturation, where investors no longer want to fund capital-intensive new players. Unsurprisingly, generative AI remains a bright spot in AI’s funding story, raking in $25.2 billion in 2023, a quarter of all AI-related investments that year. Reckoning day is coming soon for generative AI as VCs evaluate if it’s capable of producing efficiency gains at scale. We’re afraid the only check AI might be seeing this year is a reality check.
LIFE OF THE THIRD PARTY?: Cerebral is struggling to wrap its cerebral around data handling, and now it’s going cerebral to cerebral with the Federal Trade Commission. The FTC is proposing a $7 million fine against telehealth firm Cerebral for sharing patients’ data with third parties, lying about it, and instituting a misleading cancellation policy. The FTC report says that Cerebral shared sensitive data of nearly 3.2 million consumers for advertising purposes with third parties like LinkedIn, TikTok, and Snapchat. The bigger question mark remains what other skeletons might lurk in the telehealth industry’s data closets. Washington state passed a law requiring telehealth firms to get explicit consent to collect and share patient data, but no such federal law exists. Cerebral might need to admit itself as a patient at the nearest data hospital after this headache.
HOT AIRCHAT BALLOON: A new app just moved into Silicon Valley based on the idea that if we can post face-to-face and text-to-text, why not voice-to-voice? Founded by venture capitalist Naval Ravikant, Airchat is a fresh social media experience where users communicate through voice notes, and Silicon Valley dwellers are rushing onto the app. Airchat released a new version last Friday and was forced to shut down sign-ups after a massive influx of new users. Ravikant founded the company alongside Brian Norgard, the longtime chief product officer of Tinder, originally envisioning a peer-to-peer messaging app. The most exciting piece of the potluck is Ravikant and Norgard's gamble that communicating through natural voice can enhance information sharing in a way that other platforms can't. The question is, can it really compete in the saturated social media swamp alongside apps like Twitter, Mastodon, and even Jack Dorsey's Bluesky? Airchat is certainly hot news right now, but only time will tell if it's just hot air.
Fire Up the Pre-Seeds🔥
Notable pre-seed raises in …
Climatetech
Bayou Energy - Creating utility for utilities
The Problem: Accessing utility data is painful, yet a variety of businesses rely on real-time energy use information.
The Tech: A platform that pulls customer data from U.S. utilities to ideally provide a tool to people building energy companies.
Recently Raised: $1.2 million in funding from Surface Ventures, CoFound Partners, LeapForward Ventures, Stepchange Ventures, and Very Serious Ventures.
Also Note: The company currently accesses data from 24 utilities, capturing 44% of the U.S. market.
edtech
Superintelligent - Spread the educAItion
The Problem: It's expected that AI will eventually dominate the professional world, but people have yet to learn how to best leverage AI's capabilities.
The Tech: A platform that can teach anyone to use AI for either work or fun via practical videos and hands-on tutorials.
Recently Raised: $2 million in funding led by Learn Capital.
Also Note: Since its beta launch in December 2023, it has attracted more than 1,500 subscribers.
Outro🚪
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