Hustle Fund

Angel Squad is an angel investing community run by Hustle Fund that was created to teach how to invest in startups and provide access to invest in the most promising ones. TechCrunch referred to Angel Squad as the "YC of Angel Investing."

Angel Squad Co-Founder

Multiple companies

The best place to learn more is @ my personal website: nicholsb.com

I lead an active syndicate with 3.5k members that's deployed $25M+, and have formally Advised 5 companies.

Angel Investor

On Deck

Created, launched, and ran the first two cohorts of the On Deck Angels program. The program pioneered On Deck's expansion into verticals outside of the founder fellowship. 

The success of the program led to On Deck developing the org structure to hire Program Directors to lead verticals that were complementary to the founder fellowship.

Program Director, On Deck Angel Fellowship

- Responsible for procuring sponsorships for On Deck Founder and Angel Fellowships.
- Built and manage program to introduce our founders to investor partners as founders begin fundraising process.

Head Of Partnerships

BlackBird

BlackBird was acquired by Surf Air in February, 2020

- Instrumental in Series A fundraise ($10M from NEA)
- Focused on strategic partnerships / the future of flight (electric aircraft)

Head Of Business Development

- Grew team from 5 to 40+ full-time employees and contractors.
- Recruited and hired leadership from Lyft, Postmates, Uber, Caviar to support the rapid growth of the business.

Head Of Operations

First Round Capital

Angel Track is a masterclass and community for angel investors whose full-time jobs are in leadership roles at tech companies.

1 of 16 selected out of 1k+ applicants.

Angel Track

Zoox Inc.

Zoox was acquired by Amazon in June, 2020.

- Responsible for standing up remote teleoperation unit to support fleet of autonomous vehicles during live operation.
- Represented Zoox’s operations organization when meeting potential investors during our Series B fundraise ($500M, $2.7B valuation).

Operations Manager

Lyft

- Responsible for building out Lyft's local presence in all top 25 Lyft markets.
- Hired local leadership, scaled repeatable playbooks, and provided analytics solutions for Lyft's highest growth markets across the country.

Market Operations Manager (National)

- First Market Manager on the West Coast, drove efficient growth for all of the CA Markets
- Accounted for 50%+ of all Lyft rides

Market Manager, California

RewardTag

RewardTag was bootstrapped and acquired by STM Goods (https://www.stmgoods.com/).

Main partners included Logitech, Seidio, STM Goods which lead to over 2.5M RewardTag units distributed globally.

Co-founder

Over the last decade, I’ve helped build Lyft, Zoox, On Deck, and BlackBird past a combined market cap of over $5B, and helped raise $500M.

In 2019, I decided to try something new.

I decided to shift my focus from building businesses to investing in them.

I teamed up with Ann Miura-Ko to start Uplyft (Lyft alumni syndicate). I was so lucky to have such a great VC guide me when I was brand new to investing. 

It started with 300+ of Lyft’s earliest employees who have invested over $30M+ together.

I soon found myself becoming the go-to "alumni syndicate guy."

I helped Airbnb, Stripe, Pinterest, DoorDash, and many others get their alumni syndicates off the ground.

After opening up the Lyft alumni syndicate to the public (any accredited investor can join, regardless of affiliation with Lyft), I started to notice a trend. There were folks from all over the world, all professional backgrounds, who were investing alongside us.

These folks didn't have access to a network, the knowledge, and the guidance that I was lucky to have.

So, in October 2020, less than a year into the pandemic, I quit my job and joined Hustle Fund – my favorite early-stage VC – to build Angel Squad.

The results were pretty phenomenal.

In 2.5 years, 1,400+ people joined Angel Squad, and as a group, we have invested $21M+ in 50+ startups.

We have reporters, scientists, founders, and students from all over the world in our community. Everyone is welcome.

My portfolio:
-> I run Angel Squad, Hustle Fund's Angel Investing Community
-> I run the Uplyft Syndicate (aka the Lyft Syndicate)
-> I invest in and advise marketplaces and consumer startups

My results:
-> 1,400+ angels are part of the Angel Squad community
-> 4,000+ angels are part of my Uplyft Syndicate
-> $50M+ deployed in startups through Syndicates
-> 100+ startups in my portfolio

ANGEL SQUAD

- Hustle Fund shares their approach to investing 
- LIVE PITCHES from top portfolio companies, and you can invest as little as $1k.
- Meet other members at IRL events as well as get matched 1:1 online.
- Not yet an accredited investor? We pay for your Series 65 exam fee.
- We have a strict no a-hole policy.
- This is a membership offering, with 10 team members who support the program.
- Join 1,400+ others!
- Learn. Invest. Network.

→ GO HERE: www.hustlefund.vc/squad

UPLYFT SYNDICATE

- See 2-3 of my personal deals/month
- There is no community, education, or opportunities to support founders
- It’s free (but nothing like Angel Squad).

→ GO HERE: https://angellist.com/s/team-uplyft/OXf89

Twitter: @b_nicks11
Website: nicholsb.com

This is what a $5k angel check turned into.

One investor wrote that first small check. Made 5 valuable introductions that converted into additional checks totaling $170k.  

Those 5 introductions converted into 16 more checks totaling $530k.

So $5k turned into $700k...

People think small checks don't matter. This founder would tell you otherwise.

That angel who wrote $5k became the most valuable investor in the entire round. 

Not because of the money but because they made it their personal mission to get this company funded. 

I've watched this happen so many times now. The $5k check that somehow brings in half your round. The $10k investor who three months later introduces you to your Series A lead. 

The small believer who becomes your loudest champion when things get hard.

Check size and impact aren't the same thing.  

Some of the most helpful portfolio support comes from angels who can only invest small amounts but have networks that would make a GP jealous.

Founders: don't write off the small checks. They're often connected to the big ones. Sometimes they ARE the reason the big ones come in.

Aspiring angels: if you're sitting there thinking your $2k or $5k check is too small to matter, you're wrong. What founders need isn't just capital. It's someone who believes in them enough to spend social capital getting other people to believe too.
--
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Brian Nichols

Founder of Angel Squad | I write about startups, investing, and hard-earned lessons | Small Bets newsletter

Databricks recently crossed $4 billion in revenue. Growing over 50% year-over-year. Yesterday they made headlines - they are raising at a $130B+ valuation.

Unbelievable company...and it's still private.

Snowflake did $3.6 billion in revenue last year. Growing 29%. You can buy it on the NYSE right now.

So Databricks has more revenue than Snowflake AND is growing almost twice as fast. But retail investors can only access the smaller, slower option.

This drives me crazy. 

The best companies - the ones with the most insane growth - are staying private longer than ever.

Snowflake is a great company. But if you're trying to catch the real rocket ships - the ones that haven't already reached max velocity - you need to be investing in the private markets. 

The gap between what's available in private markets versus public markets just keeps getting wider. And most people don't even realize it's happening.
--
👉 I write a weekly newsletter - subscribe for more like this: https://lnkd.in/gPeXk6Eb

Talks about #startups, #fundraising, #angelinvesting, #venturecapital, and #entrepreneurship

Databricks

Snowflake

$5K investment in Uber's seed = $25M at IPO
5,000x return over 9 years

$5K investment in S&P 500 = $13K-$16K after 10 years (depending on timing)
2.6x-3.2x return over 10 years

But obviously there is WAY more risk in early-stage investing...
- Angel investing failure rate: 50-60% 
- Public market failure rate: ~0%  → the S&P 500 has never produced a negative return over any 20-year period.

So if you make 1-2 angel investments you're basically gambling. Roughly 50-50 chance of losing money on each investment.

If you make 20-30+ angel investments you're building a portfolio. Math starts working in your favor. One 1,000x return can cover multiple losses and still generate exceptional returns.

Elizabeth Yin has hammered home the message to me that the key to this game is smart portfolio construction.

Angel investing is about accessing the power law.

In venture capital, about 5-10% of investments generate 60-75% of returns. If you only make 1-2 bets, you'll probably miss those outliers.

But if you make 20-50 small bets ($1K-5K each), your odds of catching at least one rocket ship improve dramatically.

General Partner at Hustle Fund

Cursor just raised $2.3B at a $29.3B valuation from investors like Accel, Thrive, a16z, and even Nvidia and Google.

Four years ago investors got in at $2.17 per share.
Today: $538 per share.

That's roughly a 250x return.

📈 So a $5,000 check in their first raise turned into $1.25M in four years.

Some backstory - Cursor launched publicly in March 2023 as a tool that rebuilt coding from scratch with AI baked in, making developers 2-3x faster without them having to change how they work.

In less than two years, they crossed $1 billion in ARR. 

Bloomberg called them "the fastest growing startup ever."

The trajectory is absurd:
October 2023: $8M seed round (OpenAI Startup Fund)
August 2024: $60M at $400M valuation
December 2024: $100M at $2.6B valuation
June 2025: $900M at $9.9B valuation
November 2025: $2.3B at $29.3B valuation

What's striking is how Cursor got here without any marketing spend. Engineers at OpenAI, Stripe, and Spotify started using it because it worked better than the alternatives. Word spread the way it does when something is genuinely 10x better.

The lesson isn't "invest in every AI company." 

Most will fail. 

The lesson is that when distribution happens through genuine customer love rather than paid acquisition, growth can be exponential...and the share price follows suit (especially in today's frothy AI market).

Cursor

Facebook IPO'd in 2012 after 8 years as a company.

Compare that to startups today...

Stripe's been private for 15 years and shows no signs of going public.

What changed?

The advantages of staying private are now too good to ignore.

- No quarterly earnings pressure means Stripe can invest in R&D without Wall Street breathing down their neck. 

- They get strategic flexibility to pivot and make long-term bets without activist investors. 

- Employees get liquidity through secondary sales while keeping upside through equity. 

- Founders maintain control instead of answering to public shareholders. 

- SpaceX, Anthropic, OpenAI, Canva, Databricks, and many others have all been rumored to allow early employees/investors to sell a % of their vested shares, so internal pressure has died down. 

Add massive amounts of private market capital hunting for deals, and going public starts to feel...optional.

So the biggest wealth creation in startupland happens before retail investors get a shot.

This is why understanding private markets isn't just nice-to-have anymore.

It's essential.

One of the biggest frauds in crypto history accidentally made one of the best AI investments ever...and then had to sell it early because of the fraud.

The irony is almost too perfect.

In 2021, Sam Bankman-Fried invested $500M of stolen customer funds into Anthropic for an 8% stake (about 45 million shares).

Fast forward to the FTX bankruptcy in 2024, and the estate was desperate for cash to pay back creditors.

So they sold the entire position:
30M shares for $884M (March 2024)
15M shares for $452M (June 2024)
Total: $1.3B at $30/share

At the time, it seemed like a win. This helped make the FTX customers whole.

But then the AI boom kept booming.

Anthropic is now targeting a $400B valuation for its next round.

At $307/share ($400B valuation) that would $13.8B (10.6x what they sold for)

FTX left $12.5B on the table.

You can have perfect deal flow. You can pick the next generational company. You can time the market just right.

But if you lack integrity, none of it matters.

SBF found the winning lottery ticket...with stolen money. 

And when the bill came due, he had to cash out early while everyone else got to ride it to the moon (as they say in crypto land). 🚀

If a founder tells me their team is doing 9-9-6 in our first pitch meeting, I will not invest in that company.

Nine hours a day, 9am to 9pm, six days a week. It reminds me of CrossFit.

Remember when everyone who did CrossFit couldn't stop talking about doing CrossFit? It was performative. It was inauthentic. And most importantly, it was unsustainable.

The reason we don't hear about CrossFit from those same people anymore is simple: they stopped doing it altogether.

They got burnt out and realized they didn't actually love the workout. They just loved telling people about it.

Here's what I see when founders brag about 9-9-6:

1)A culture that mistakes hours worked for value created
2)A team that's probably heading toward burnout. 
3) A founder who's optimizing for appearances instead of outcomes.

The best founders I've backed don't talk about their hours. They talk about their progress. They talk about real business traction like this thing called "revenue."

They're obsessed with solving the problem, not performing hustle theater for investors.

If you're doing 9-9-6, ask yourself - are you doing it because the work demands it, or because you think it's what investors want to hear?

Because I promise you - it's not.

Mina Fung joined Angel Squad almost 2 years ago now.

She jumped right in, got involved, and now, is off to the races starting her own company.

This is a trend we've seen time and time again - start with curiosity about startups (and potentially about startup investing), write a few small checks, and then get the itch and decide to start one yourself.

That's a hidden benefit of joining our community. 

The energy is contagious. 

You start to realize: "hey, I can do that."

Maybe you start a company.

Maybe you Advise (with a capital "A") companies.

Or maybe you just offer to help founders when you can.

In all cases, we feel SUPER lucky to have created the ecosystem that empowers this for almost 2500 members in 40+ countries.

Join us: angelsquad.co

Phil Knight tried to raise money for Nike (then Blue Ribbon Sports) in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

Nobody wanted it.

He started by selling Tiger shoes from the trunk of his Plymouth Valiant at track meets. By 1964, he and Bill Bowerman had invested $500 each to start Blue Ribbon Sports. By 1969, they'd sold $1 million worth of shoes.

But...big problem - banks wanted him to never outgrow his cash balance. They'd only loan him amounts equal to what he already had - basically just factoring his receivables.

When he tried to raise outside capital, the proto-VCs around Stanford (this was right before Don Valentine started Sequoia) all passed. They looked at sports tech and said no.

So Knight got creative. He discovered Nissho Iwai, a $100 billion Japanese trading company. They agreed to finance all of Nike's inventory and gave them a 4% royalty deal.

Nissho introduced Blue Ribbon to manufacturers and helped them build their own shoes. When Nissho did an audit and discovered Blue Ribbon had misrepresented how they'd used a previous loan, the manager just said, "There are worse things in life than ambition."

I love that.

We all know what happened next...Nike became Nike.

But venture capital as we know it today didn't exist for companies like Nike back then. The ecosystem wasn't built for consumer products or sports tech.

This isn't about Nike being overlooked. It's about how the capital structures we have today are relatively new.

What seemed obvious in hindsight - funding a company doubling revenue every year - was considered too risky at the time.

Reading Shoe Dog, the most painful part was watching Knight nearly lose everything month after month because he couldn't access capital that matched his growth.

Customers wanted more shoes than he could supply. But the financial infrastructure to support that kind of growth just didn't exist yet.

Today's venture ecosystem isn't perfect, but it's built to fund exactly what Knight was building - fast growth, market validation, massive potential. 

More entrepreneurs can actually get financing they need today when they have something that has legs. 

(That said, I'm also a HUGE fan of bootstrapping when that path is an option...a topic for another post).

Nalina Murthy spent 7+ years at Accenture and is focused now on FemTech and digital health.

And she is an amazing member to have in our Angel Squad community + as a Venture Fellow at Hustle Fund.

Her testimonial below made my day - that last part really gets me.

She didn't talk about deal flow or returns or portfolio construction. She talked about the humans and the vibe.

Because that's what actually matters when you're learning something new. 

When you're trying to break into a space that wasn't built for you.

Nalina could've joined any angel group. She chose Angel Squad because we don't tolerate a-holes, and we actually care about making angel investing accessible to people who aren't from the typical Silicon Valley mold.

She's exactly the kind of person who makes this community special. Someone who's built real things, has domain expertise that founders need, and genuinely wants to help others.

We interview every single person who wants to join for 15 minutes. Not because we're gatekeepers, but because we protect the culture.

2,000+ members now from 40+ countries. Still zero a-holes.

Bridging Health, Tech & Capital | Women’s Health Investor | Startup Advisor | Community Builder

Angel Squad

There's one thing that guarantees I'll never invest in your next company.

It's not a failed exit or a messy cap table. It's probably not what you think...👇

🥁 It's failing to send investor updates.
 
According to Visible.vc - startups that send consistent updates are twice as likely to raise follow-on funding. But that's not even why I care.

When I write a check, I'm not just buying equity. I'm buying education. 

I want to learn from your journey – what worked, what didn't, the pivots you made and experiments you ran, the customer conversation that changed everything.  

The founders I back repeatedly share the journey with me - and I also like when they share ways that I can get involved to help (customer intros, referrals, etc.)

This shows me that they're resourceful.

The best founders treat updates as a way to build trust, not as homework. For some, it also helps clarify their thinking.

Angel investing isn't transactional. The check is just the beginning. 

Radio silence tells me everything I need to know about how you'll treat me (and my investment) next time.

There are now 5 private companies valued at $100B+:

OpenAI- $500B 
ByteDance (TikTok) - $480B 
Anthropic - $350B 
SpaceX - $350B 
Databricks - $130B 

(Stripe is right there at just under $100B)

So almost $2T of market cap across 5 companies...

Yet retail investors can't touch them.

OpenAI

ByteDance

Anthropic

SpaceX

Stripe

OpenAI may dominate the headlines, but Anthropic is coming.

Since February 2024, Anthropic's share price has 5X'd.

Over the same time period, while OpenAI dominated every tech news cycle, their share price only 3.3X'd.

Do the math on which would have been a better investment a year and a half ago.

It's not necessarily the company you read about the most.

I mean, look at the Google Trends screenshot below...it's not even close.

But if you'd invested $5k into Anthropic shares in early 2024, you'd be sitting on $25k today.

That same $5k into OpenAI? You'd have $16.5k.

The lesson here isn't about picking winners and losers - it's about understanding that headlines don't always equal returns.

The loudest company isn't always the best investment.

And here's something most people forget - it wasn't THAT long ago where Sam Altman got booted from his spot at OpenAI.

You know who they wanted to replace him with? Dario Amodei...the CEO of Anthropic.

Makes you wonder...

Dario was super early in the AI game at Google, and while Sam Altman is the household name, don't sleep on Dario Amodei.

This race is still in the early innings and both companies have wildly different strategies about where they're headed.

We've never seen anything like this before.

 (price per share data according to Notice.co)

Notice.co

Peter Thiel put $1,700 into his Roth IRA in 1999 to buy PayPal shares at $0.001 per share.

When eBay bought PayPal three years later, that turned into $55M.

He then used $500k of those proceeds to invest in Facebook.

That Facebook investment alone grew to over $1 billion. His total Roth IRA is now worth over $5 billion.

And he'll never pay a penny in taxes on it.

Most people can't replicate that. You need insider access to pre-IPO deals and frankly, a lot of luck.

But there's another tax strategy that's more accessible: QSBS.

Section 1202 of the tax code lets you exclude up to 100% of capital gains on qualified small business stock. The cap is $10 million or 10x your basis, whichever is higher.

The requirements: hold the stock for five years, the company must be a C-corp with under $50 million in assets when you invest, and it needs to be an active business.

Here's a scenario - you invest $10,000 when the company is worth $5 million. Five years later, it gets acquired for $200 million and your stake is worth $2 million.

With QSBS, you pay zero federal capital gains tax on that $1,990,000 gain.
Not $5 billion like Thiel. But still potentially hundreds of thousands in tax savings.

Most startup investors/operators have no idea QSBS exists.  

Tomorrow (Thursday), Ankur Nagpal 💰- who I think of as "the tax optimization master" - is diving into this topic in detail during our 10 Minute Blitz: https://lnkd.in/e9pcSSR8

🎥 RSVP to attend or for the recording

luma.com

10 Minute Blitz with Ankur Nagpal: Avoiding Tax Pitfalls as an Angel Investor · Zoom · Luma

Founder @ Carry, Silly Money, Teachable | Build durable wealth with proven tax, finance, & business tactics

OpenAI in Feb 2024 was around $80B valuation.

Their recent raise was at a $500B valuation.

So if you invested $10k in Feb 2024, your investment would be worth ($500B/$80B x $10k = $62,500) today, right?

Wrong.

New investor 🤝 Dilution

In February 2024, the price per share was around $150 in their tender offer at $80-86B valuation.

Today shares in the secondary market are selling at roughly $500 per share at the $500B valuation (per Notice.co).

That's about 3.3x...not 6.25x.

How does this happen?

When a company raises new money, they issue new shares. Those new shares don't magically appear...they dilute everyone who already owns equity.

Think of it like a pizza. You own 2 slices out of 8 (that's 25%). The company decides to make the pizza bigger by adding 4 more slices to raise money. Now there are 12 slices total. You still own your same 2 slices, but that's only 16.7% of the pizza now.

Same thing with OpenAI. 

Between the $80B valuation and $500B valuation, they raised $40B+ in new funding rounds (btw...$40B!!! that's a lot of money...) 

So existing shareholders owned a smaller percentage of a much larger company.

The valuation went up 6.25x, but the price per share only went up 3.3x because of dilution.

This is why early-stage investors obsess over ownership percentage, not just company valuation. 

A 10x increase in valuation doesn't mean a 10x return because of dilution.

Ramp went from $13 billion to $32 billion in valuation in 8 months.

They're generating over $1 billion in annualized revenue and serve 50,000+ customers.

My favorite part is that they're not an AI company. They're a fintech that happens to use AI really well.

Everyone keeps saying "AI is a bubble." 

Sure. 

But companies like Ramp prove there's something more interesting happening. 

They're using AI to automate expense approvals, flag fraudulent transactions, and eliminate hours of manual work. 

This is real stuff that generates ROI + accelerates real business value.

While pure-play AI companies are raising at insane multiples, Ramp is solving the boring problem of expense management and corporate cards and doing it with AI under the hood. 

Sometimes the AI bubble debate misses the point. 

The real winners aren't the companies building foundation models, they're the ones using AI to make existing workflows 10x better/faster/more efficient.

Ramp won by making expense reports less painful. AI just made them faster at it.

Ramp

📈 Over 300 RSVPs for our bootcamp with Nicole DeTommaso this Thursday.

Nicole broke into VC as a first-gen college grad with a 10-page "Why Me" deck and no inside connections. She's now a Principal at Harlem Capital with 150k+ followers across platforms, helping people break into top firms.

The Angel Squad community knows her well. We've already hosted Nicole twice this year and both events were packed. 

People show up because she actually answers the questions most aspiring VCs can't figure out on their own.

Thursday's session covers:
+ How to get started with angel investing
+ How to break into VC
+ The tactical mistakes people make when trying to break in (this part is gold)

We're going deep on the stuff that's hard to find anywhere else. 

The kind of information that's usually locked behind networks most people don't have access to.

🎥 RSVP if you want the recording. This'll be one of our biggest events of the year:

Angel Squad x Nicole DeTommaso, Bootcamp: How to Break into VC Through Angel Investing · Zoom · Luma

Principal at Harlem Capital | Forbes30u30 | Providing insights to demystify the VC industry🪄

Ann Miura-Ko talks about something she calls an "earned secret" when she evaluates founders.

I asked her about it -- and my favorite part is how she describes the best founders as "squirrels" 🐿️

I've talked to Ann a million times, but that metaphor was new to me...and tbh I think she nails it.

🎥 Watch the video to see what I mean.

As background - an earned secret is a non-consensus belief that gives you an acceleration into the market that provides exponential growth. Something you know that most people under-appreciate or don't understand.

The key word here is "earned." You can't just read a TechCrunch article and have a secret. You have to have lived in a space, struggled with a problem, talked to hundreds of customers, built prototypes that failed. The secret comes from the work.

Most founders pitch what they're building. The best founders pitch what they know that you don't.

(You'll have to watch the video to see how that all ties back into squirrels...)

Co-Founding Partner at Floodgate

Melissa Perri taught product management at Harvard Business School.

She's consulted for Capital One, Vanguard, and Walmart.

She wrote "Escaping the Build Trap" and built Product Institute to 15k+ students.

And also...she's an angel investor.

Here's why that makes sense:

Product leaders already do half the work of angel investing without realizing it.
Evaluate opportunities. Assess market size. Pressure-test solutions. Identify founder-market fit. Decide where to place bets with limited resources.

Sound familiar? That's literally what angel investors do.

The difference is the financial lens. Product people know how to spot great products, but most never learned how to evaluate companies through an investment framework.

When you combine product instincts with investor fundamentals, you become dangerous (in the best way).

You can spot the gap between what founders say and what the data shows. You understand unit economics. You know if founders are building for a real problem or just in love with their own idea.

And product leaders can actually help the companies they invest in. You're not just writing a check. You're bringing years of expertise in building products and scaling teams. 

As Melissa told me: "Being in the seat of an angel investor has given me exposure to product strategy discussions from founders, and that's helped me in my day-to-day work too."

It goes both ways. Investing makes you a better product leader. Leading products makes you a better investor.

If you're a product person and you've never considered angel investing, ask yourself: why not?

Come to our virtual event this Thursday to hear Melissa share more:

RSVP for the recording:

10 Minute Blitz with Melissa Perri: Why Product Leaders Make Phenomenal Angel Investors · Zoom · Luma

Board Member | CEO | CEO Advisor | Author | Product Management Expert | Instructor | Designing product organizations for scalability.

80 new unicorns were minted in 2025 according to TechCrunch

Most of them AI-related, but scattered across everything from blockchain trading to satellite manufacturing to probiotic soda.

The numbers are wild when you look closer.

Thinking Machines raised a $2B seed at a $10B valuation - Founded by Mira Murati from OpenAI. That's a seed round bigger than most late-stage rounds.

Polymarket hit $9B and has now raised $2B to date.

Periodic Labs got $300M at a $1B valuation for materials science. Founded this year.

80 companies crossed $1B+ valuations in one year. We're celebrating that milestone like it's the finish line, but it's really just the starting gun.

Some of these will 10x+ from here, some will get acquired at modest premiums. 

But the reality is that some won't make it to their next round.

The unicorn milestone used to mean something rare (by definition 🦄). 

Now it's more like making varsity - great achievement, but the real game is just starting.  

The companies that matter will be the ones still standing (and growing) when the hype settles. The ones solving actual problems, not just raising at inflated valuations during a funding frenzy.

Real talk - how many of these 80 will still be valued at $1B+ by this time in 2027?

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