Spotify crosses the 600M monthly active users mark, Bluesky is now open to the public

Top News

Spotify announces that the service now has 600M+ monthly active users, adding 28M users in the quarter, marking the second biggest quarterly gain in the company’s history. - Link

Bluesky, a micro-blogging app funded by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey as an alternative to X, is now open to the public. - Link

Mozilla introduces a new subscription service that will locate and remove personal and sensitive information from data broker websites around the web. - Link

Jam’s out to enhance internal bug reporting by automatically collecting information related to the bug and delivering a complete package for engineering teams to address it. - Link

Indian fintech startup CRED will acquire mutual fund and stock investment platform Kuvera as part of an expansion into wealth management. - Link

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Advice of the Day

Having a Definite View of the Future

Peter Thiel emphasizes adopting a definitive perspective on the future, especially for entrepreneurs. He acknowledges the natural focus on short-term goals due to immediate business pressures but stresses the importance of long-term planning. Thiel encourages considering a business’s future value, its competitive landscape, technological advancements, and overall world development. He believes that great entrepreneurs think about these difficult questions while maintaining well-reasoned beliefs about the future, even if they are incorrect. Thiel argues against the notion that the future is random and uncontrollable, suggesting that such beliefs pave the way for failure. - Link

Startup Demo of the Day:

PopAi is a personal AI workspace. It combines reading, writing, and creation into one platform with features like document and image chats, presentation generation, and text recognition, helping users work more efficiently.

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This Week in Startups

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E1891: Jason gives an update on the late-stage VC market and then Sahand Dilmaghani talks about founding Terra Kaffe and the benefits of the Terra Kaffe machines over pod machines. He explains what makes a super-automatic machine produce good coffee and discusses expanding the product's use in offices, schools, and homes. - Watch

E1890: Michael Kim and Jason discuss Fund of Funds, investor attraction in pre-seed and seed startups, and the rise of "micro VCs." The conversation covers alpha, beta, and quality indices, investor networks, current market trends, and the shift where seed is the new series-A. The episode ends with insights into founder demographics seeking investment. - Watch

E1889: Jake Gutstein joins Jason to discuss the creation of Zest, from the initial concept to product development. They explore Zest's transition to full-time operations, fundraising, and insights from user research. The episode also covers the product launch, fundraising approach, and experiences with the Launch Accelerator program. It concludes with a glimpse into Zest's future plans and goals.- Watch

E1888: Sunny joins Jason for the 100th demo on the show. The episode includes demos of MultiOn, Paid Leave, Consensus, and Depth Anything. Sunny also showcases AI advancements posted by Barsee on X. This episode is dedicated to the memory of Aaron Swartz. - Watch

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