(Re)Share | #4 - Semiconductor drama and a great renewables pun
A weekly curation by Matt Wichrowski
Stuff Worth Sharing
Geopolitical chess: I’ve shared stuff in the past on the ongoing saber rattling between the China and the West over Taiwan. This NPR podcast was really great in understanding the odd history of bureaucracy and gamesmanship.
Upgrade AZ: Related to above, TSMC planning to build a second fab inside Arizona. The impact that this would have on the Southwest is massive. This is not investment advice but I very much support buying real estate there.
Wave goodbye to coal: (see what I did there?) If you’ve spent anytime in the UK in the past ever, you’ll know that solar is not a realistic option for renewables. Cool, brief piece on tidal power.
Buyer’s remorse: Masayoshi Son apparently owes nearly $5 billion to his employer after the macro market crash and a series of uniquely bad investments. Two years ago this man was single handedly moving the global venture market as he pleased.
Transparent failure: Companies in a portfolio shutting down is a feature, not a bug, of any given venture portfolio but it doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt. As the markets tank a lot of investors are brushing off losses as immaterial, but any GP (or sophisticated LP) will know that’s not true. Hunter Walk explains why.
The new technical sales: good friend Mike Dempsey wrote a great piece on the shifting ground that deep tech founders now face in the funding market.
It no longer is believable that technology will sell itself, and it is more important than ever to be able to sequence to multiple commercial milestones in order to show step function changes of value accrual instead of technical milestones of years past.
Shameless Plug
Surfboard (A Fly VC portfolio company) announced a $5 million seed round. We were lucky enough to back CEO, Natasha, at the truly day zero stage back in early 2021 and it’s been amazing to see the product grow into an emerging defacto standard in customer service team scheduling. If your company wants to become a “Surfer”, please let me know.!
Kheiron Medical (angel investment) unveiled a new partnership with Microsoft and NHS Grampian. Their core AI product, Mia, has shown a 30%+ improvement in breast cancer detection over radiologists, which is a massive lift to an already capacity constrained specialty.
Tuesday Job Drop
Every week I share cool new job postings from early stage startups I know. Find the jobs board here. Last week I added jobs from Ophelos:
🥞 Full Stack Engineering (2x)
🖼️ Senior Product Manager
🚂 Business Operations & Strategy Lead
Asks
I’m good. Have a great week!