🍸 VC Deals and Startup Wheels
☕️ This is the Kernal Newsletter: we're the easy green run making it stupidly simple to ski the startup slopes. Full disclosure: we're also mildly addicted to alliteration
📰 Latest news: Helpful hands are pouring into Turkey and Syria. Kansas City Chiefs won 2nd place to Rihanna. Fenty Beauty's social media manager needs a raise. Elon Musk's gonna find a new CEO by December. Apple was awarded a patent that includes drawings of a foldable device. You wrote your lover a 9/10 Valentine's Day card. I've got some my first million podcasts to listen to so let's hit the goods 👇
The Elevate Festiveal loves startups. So we teamed up with them to offer you 60% OFF their 2023 tickets. Click here to secure your conference pass and meet legendary folks innovating in the startup world like Michelle Romanow, Venus Williams and Seth Rogen. Yeah, you read that right.
Today's Menu:
- 🔥 Startup ideas you should riff on
- 🏎 VC deals catching our eyes
- 🐦 Tweets that make you think
✨ Startup Ideas ✨
"There's a high chance the next Mr. Beast is hiding in the Kernal weekly idea round up" - TechCrunch 2023
Wanna build or invest in a startup idea?
Click below to support your favourites.
Startup Idea: Costly - Find the Hidden Cost of Your Meetings by Danny Grande
Why we like it: Danny chased this idea after seeing Ryan Holmes get 100+ comments on his LinkedIn post. So Danny built a prototype overnight, emailed it to Ryan and he's already got a landing page ready to roll. Test it out by clicking below and share a comment if you'd pay or invest in the concept.
Startup Idea: Influencer Run Venture Fund by Dru Riley
Why we like it: Dru has 50,000 email subs at Trends.vc and knows a good idea when he sees it. Somebody should cold email him and get this off the ground asap.
Startup Idea: GoldenYearsGo: A Tech-Powered Platform Connecting Student Caregivers and Elders by Juanjuan Xu
Why we like it: the founder did their research, it's a serious opportunity and $100K of investment is already listed on the startup idea. Chime in below.
Got a startup idea of your own? We wanna hear it. Quit sitting on your hands and start sharing it with your fans.
Tap that button below and let's get you rolling.
🏎 VC Deals on our Radar
As a founder, the best people to follow advice from aren't the "thought leaders". It's the "get-shit-down" folks. And there's easy to spot. Wanna know how?
The news does the talking for them. Here's some founders we've been following this week that have just announced some timely updates:
- SandboxAQ, a startup using AI and quantum tech to help companies transition to post-RSA security, raised a $500M round from Breyer Capital, T. Rowe Price, TIME Ventures and ex-Google CEO Eric Schmidt (RT)
- Deepwatch, a managed detection and response security startup, raised $180M in funding from Springcoast Capital Partners, Splunk Ventures, and Vista Credit Partners (BW)
- Superplastic, a startup creating and developing ‘synthetic’ influencers, raised a $20M Series A-4 led by Amazon’s Alexa Fund (TC)
- SignalFire, an early-stage VC firm using data and AI to scale and identify investments, raised $900M for multiple funds (BW)
- Rumin8 is an ag-tech startup focused on livestock farts and burps secure seed funding from Bill Gates
- a16z leads $32M seed round for Myspace founder’s next-gen social platform, Plai Labs
- 3D design tool (think Figma + GoogleDocs) for the construction industry raises $6.6M seed led by Accel (Snaptrude)
Thanks to our friends at Exec Sum for the deets
Fresh Blog Drop with Drake Dukes
Sonia from our team just published a deep dive with Drake Dukes on his journey building Gravity.
If you want an inside look at building something from the ground up, this is the article to read.
Now let's jump to some fresh startup ideas that have developed this week.
Hold onto your hat.
🐦 Tweets of the Week
Take a spin and tell us which ones win
Have a fantastic weekend founders.
Cya round founders,
💚 The Kernal Fam
How did you like today's newsletter?
🔥 11/10 · 😕 Meh · 😴 Boring Sauce