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A hub for startup news, trends, and insights, covering the global startup ecosystem for founders, investors, and innovators. Community: @startupdis Buy Ads: @strategy (this is our only account).
🔥 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.
📺 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.
⚡️ 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.
✈️ 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.
⚡️ 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.
📣 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.
🧽 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.
🔥 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
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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?
⚡️ 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.
🔗 Neuralink faces a rival with ultrasound and gene therapy
Merge Labs, linked to Sam Altman and OpenAI, is exploring sonogenetics, using gene therapy to make brain cells responsive to ultrasound.
Instead of electrodes, a tiny implanted emitter would read and modulate neural activity through modified cells.
🔸 Plans to raise $250M at $850M valuation, with OpenAI’s venture arm as a key backer
🔸 Altman is co-founder but not an investor; Musk’s Neuralink remains focused on electrical implants
🔸 Altman hinted at a broader vision: “think — and instantly get an answer from ChatGPT”
🔸 Other players in ultrasound neuromodulation include Nudge ($100M, Fred Ehrsam) and a Reid Hoffman–backed startup ($12M)
🔸 Merge’s approach could unlock a new class of brain–computer interfaces, though clinical use is likely years away
The bet isn’t just medical - it’s about enhancing cognition itself.
🚀 Two paths to a seed round
Hot founders in hot markets can skip straight to $4M seeds.
Everyone else takes the long road - bootstrap, grants, accelerators, angels - before VCs write the $2M check.
Same label, very different journeys.
🤖 China unveils plan for pregnancy humanoid robot
Kaiwa Technology in Guangzhou is working on the world’s first humanoid robot with an artificial womb.
The machine is designed to carry a fetus through full gestation using artificial amniotic fluid and nutrient delivery, a prototype is expected by 2026, priced under $14K.
🔸 The concept was presented at the 2025 World Robot Conference in Beijing
🔸 Founder Zhang Qifeng says discussions with regulators in Guangdong are already underway
🔸 Artificial womb tech has been tested before - premature lambs were successfully grown in “biobags” in 2017
🔸 This leap aims to move from partial incubation toward full-term artificial gestation
🔸 The announcement has sparked both ethical concerns and interest as a potential solution for infertility
The project sits at the intersection of biotech and robotics, and raises a bigger question:
how far should we go in outsourcing the most human processes to machines?
💻 15 hottest coding topics for your next side project
A massive open-source library of coding project ideas is making the rounds - perfect for brushing up on skills and building a killer portfolio.
🔸 Covers everything from Python, Java, JS, Kotlin, R, HTML/CSS, C/C++ to advanced algorithms, data structures, VR, and graphics apps
🔸 Clearly structured by topic and difficulty so you can progress step-by-step
🔸 Includes creative picks like VR games you can build for headsets
👉 Dive in here 👈
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🍞 Google launches “AI model for your toaster”
Google has released Gemma 3 270M - a compact open-source AI model with 270M parameters that runs on smartphones, Raspberry Pi, and smart devices.
🔸 Works fully offline without internet access
🔸 Fine-tunes easily for specific tasks
🔸 Beats similar models in instruction-following tests
🔸Consumes just 0.75% of Pixel 9 Pro’s battery for 25 chats
👉 Download here 👈
Already used in apps like children’s story generators, it’s built for privacy, low power use, and cloud-free operation.
⚡️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 👈
🤖 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?
🎧 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
🚀 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.
🚀 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.
🤖 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.
⏳ 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.
🔎 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.
❗️ 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.
🤖 The ultimate collection on optimizing agent systems
A powerhouse roundup from 2023–2025, covering self-evolving agents, efficiency hacks, and everything you need to make your AI agents not just “alive” but actually effective.
👉 Full collection here 👈
Free up your own time by letting agents do the work.
🫂 AI brings back in-person job interviews
Companies are shifting away from Zoom and back to face-to-face meetings. Reason: too many candidates lean on AI to cheat during online interviews — especially in technical roles.
🔸 Google, Cisco, and McKinsey have reinstated live stages
🔸 At Google, even coding interviews are back in person
🔸 McKinsey says it’s about seeing how candidates connect in real life
🔸 FBI warns of bigger risks - deepfakes, fake profiles, and workers posing as others with AI help
The return to old-school interviews shows that sometimes the best filter is still human presence.
💡 Don’t fall in love with your MVP
Many founders get too attached to their first version. But an MVP is only a starting point, not the final product.
🔸 Early Airbnb had no payments or maps
🔸 Twitch began as a livestream of a founder’s daily life
🔸 Stripe launched as “devpayments,” just an API for developers
Your MVP is like homework from first grade, useful at the time, but not worth clinging to. The real journey is in what comes after.
🤖 Robot wins race… after knocking over a human
At the first-ever World Robot Games, a Unitree runner made headlines for more than just speed - it accidentally knocked a person down mid-race.
🔸 The robot still crossed the finish line first.
🔸 Distance: 1.5 km in 6 minutes 34 seconds.
🔸 Event: part of the competition’s endurance category.
Good thing there’s no robot biathlon yet - we’d rather keep the rifles away.
💼 Cohere hits $6.8B valuation with $500M raise
Cohere, the enterprise-focused LLM developer, has closed a $500M round, boosting its valuation from $5.5B last year to $6.8B. The 2019-founded company focuses on corporate clients, not mass consumers.
🔸 Partnerships include Oracle, Dell, SAP, RBC, Fujitsu, and LG
🔸 New investor: Healthcare of Ontario Pension Plan
🔸 Backers in the round: Radical Ventures, Inovia Capital, AMD, Nvidia, Salesforce
🔸 New hires: ex-Meta research head Joelle Pineau, ex-Uber and Shield AI exec François Chadwick as CFO
🔸 Subtle jab at rivals: “Repackaged consumer models” can’t match AI built for enterprise security from the ground up
Cohere is doubling down on the corporate AI race.
🚀 The video that kept Perplexity’s CEO going
When asked what helped him push through the early days before any big wins, Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas didn’t name a mentor or a business book. He said: “A video of Elon Musk.”
🔸 The clip shows a reporter pressing Musk about failed rocket launches - trying to get under his skin.
🔸 Musk’s answer: “I never give up.”
🔸 That moment became Aravind’s personal reset button whenever things got tough.
So, no heavy startup tips this Friday, just a shot of raw motivation.
Here’s the video that fires him up every time
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