Happy Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islanders Heritage (APPNHPI) Month!

This past week, I had the privilege of attending the TAAF Heritage Month Summit & Celebration in New York City, hosted by Norman Chen, Joe Tsai, Jerry Yang and 1,000+ AANHPI scholars, entrepreneurs, and community leaders. It was stimulating to think deeper how we can better cultivate the APPNHPI education, sports & culture and entrepreneurship movement.

Here are a few great things to read/watch this week:

• 💰 How to Pick the Right Series A Investors - Who invests in a startup matters as much — or more — than the total capital they’re bringing with them. Founders shouldn’t just pick any one with a big name and/or an impressive fund. Also there is the timing: January, February and September are the most active months for investors. Read more on TC.

• 💸 High Valuation is Good News Only for Founders. Not So Good for Hiring - Every single new potential hire will ask the billion dollar question: ‘What’s your valuation?’ ‘How much money did you make today?’ ‘How many customers do you have?’ ‘What’s your revenue plan?’ Read Why lofty valuations could be a hurdle in hiring the best talents? 

• 🔥 Kara Swisher’s Burn Book - I finally got the chance to finish Kara's Burn Book which is a must-read history book for anyone in tech. Her sharp wit, sarcasm, and insider knowledge makes this book a hilarious and insightful read. Some forgotten moments in Silicon Valley include Jeff Bezos investing $250,000 in Google at 4 cents per share, Kara making Mark Zuckerberg sweat profusely during their privacy interview in 2010, and that she refers to Rupert Murdoch as Uncle Satan 👿

• 🤓 Meet Ted Kaouk: America's First Chief AI Officer - The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) has named Ted Kaouk as its first Chief AI Officer responding to the Biden administration’s push to govern the use of AI across the federal government. Surprisingly, the US is not the first country with its own Chief AI Officer, Omar Sultan Al Olama was appointed as Minister of State for AI for the UAE back in October 2017, and now Dubai wants to have a Chief AI Officer in every government entity.

• 👓 Meta is Quietly Winning the AI Wearable Race - I’ve been playing with the 2nd generation Meta Ray-Ban smart glasses proudly built by my friend Sadia Hasan. It’s cool that you can “talk” to your sunglasses by saying the voice command “Hey Meta,” and start asking questions of what you are looking at while you are walking. The call quality using the smart glasses’ five-mic system was surprising great! Check out the awesome reviews from WSJ and Verge. How do I look?

This week a total of 14 startups raised $786M in funding, 0 M&As:

• $491M goes to 8 Enterprise startups

• $5M goes to 1 Web3 startup

• $14M goes to 1 FinTech startup

• $27M goes to 1 Real Estate startup

• $126M goes to 1 Healthcare startup

• $100M goes to 1 BioTech startup

• $23M goes to 1 Consumer Electronics startup

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Edith
X, LinkedIn

Funding (300 miles radius from Silicon Valley)

Enterprise

• Island (enterprise browser) raised $175M Series D led by Coatue and Sequoia

• Corelight (open network detection and response) raised $150 Million Series E led by Accel

• Elisity (identity-based microsegmentation) raised $37M Series B led by Insight Partners

• StrongDM (zero trust privileged access management) raised $34M Series C led by Anchor Capital

• SafeBase (trust center for security reviews) raised $33M Series B led by Touring Capital

• Peregrine (data integration platform) raised $30M Series B led by Fifth Down Capital, Friends & Family Capital

• Mimic (ransomware defense platform) raised $27M Seed led by Ballistic Ventures

• Seem AI (AI interface for customer information) raised $5M Seed led by Bessemer Venture Partners

FinTech

• Ansa (fintech infrastructure platform) raised $14M Series A led by Renegade Partners

Web3

• Paragraph (web3 blogging platform) raised $5M Seed from Union Square Ventures and Coinbase Ventures

Real Estate

• Inhabitr (AI-powered commercial real estate furnishing platform) raised $27M Series B led by Hamilton Ventures

Healthcare

• Transcarent (healthcare experience platform) raised $126M Series D led by 7wire Ventures, General Catalyst

BioTech

• Karius (genomic diagnostics for infectious disease) raised $100M Series C led by 5AM Ventures, Gilde Healthcare, Khosla Ventures

Consumer Electronics

• Thintronics (interconnect insulator technology) raised $23M Series A led by Maverick Capital, Translink Capital

IPO & M&A (300 miles radius from Silicon Valley)  

• N/A