Start the Wiz IPO countdown clock

The docket for tomorrow's live show: TWiST records early tomorrow — 8 AM Eastern, 7 AM Central time — so we’re sharing the docket the day before. Here’s our current work. It will get a final filling-in tomorrow morning, so pour some coffee and hang out with us dark and early!

Top News

• Wiz preps for IPO: Now flush with $500 million worth of revenue, Israeli cybersecurity unicorn Wiz is looking to go public in the next year, according to its now-president Fazal Merchant. The company is famous for turning down a $23 billion buyout offer from Google, saying at the time that it would instead target $1 billion ARR and an initial public offering. Now, with its executive bench tweaked and continued growth under its belt, Wiz is a few to-dos closer to its IPO.

• Google’s AI podcast push: It may be traditional for Google to have multiple competing projects that converge on the same point, but if it’s podcasting, do we care? Google’s new ‘Daily Listen’ experiment for users that have “opted into the company’s Search Labs experiment” will be able to have the software generate a five-minute podcast based on their interests. Google’s NotebookLM project has a similar feature that has proved popular. (Recall that several NotebookLM denizens are now out building their own product.)

• PrettyDamnQuick’s PrettyDamnNeat venture round: Gone are the days when A/B testing was considered revolutionary. Today, startup PrettyDamnQuick (PDQ for short) wants to offer online retailers a tool that can customize a key portion of the ecommerce game — checkout and shipping user flows. The gist is that PDQ thinks it can offer tailored checkout and shipping options to customers, allowing for fewer abandoned carts and more total revenue. It just raised $25 million after helping facilitate $4 billion worth of GMV.

TWiST500

Wiz is a TWiST500 company, which means that the news that it has reached $500 million is a top TWiST500 story. But since we’ve covered the cybersecurity outperformer quite a lot on both the show and the newsletter in the last year, let’s put that aside for now.

Instead, let’s talk about Weaviate. It’s one of ten companies that we’re moving from out backlog onto the TWiST500 today.

Weaviate is an open-source vector database company. Before the current AI boom, I chatted with its CEO, Bob van Luijt, who was kind enough to explain vectors to me. Vectors are a math concept that combines size and direction. You can think of them as a series of numbers. Vector embedding is the process of assigning vector values to unstructured data.

Modern techniques allow for the creation of vector embeddings (the size and direction of the information in question) en masse; therefore, large amounts of unstructured data can be stored with their vector embeddings, allowing for vector databases to index, store, and serve up that information using similarity as the method to generate results.

It’s all a bit tetchy but critical. That’s why I am adding Weviate to the TWiST500. I could point to its well-known backers or GitHub data if we wanted. But what I think matters the most is that Weaviate was early to the current market moment, making it prepared to make the most hay possible when the AI sun started to shine all the more brightly.

And I love open-source software companies that offer managed services alongside their OSS offerings. Just like Weviate. Onto the list it goes, and may no one buy it before it can go public. —Alex

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This Week in Startups

E2069: Jason and Alex kick off the episode with a discussion about the recent fires in Pacific Palisades and Malibu, exploring the implications for insurance and startup opportunities. They dive into Meta's new content moderation strategy, analyzing Zuckerberg's motivations and potential actions from leadership. The conversation shifts to NVIDIA's AI supercomputer chip, Lenovo's rollable laptop, and Slack's iOS integration, showcasing cutting-edge innovations in tech. The episode wraps with a look at BYD's new supercar, Anthropic's valuation, and Jason’s experience with luxury Japanese minivans.

E2068: Jason and Alex kick off the episode with TWiST’s new interactive “live docket” experiment and dive into the Vail Resorts Epic Pass controversy, critiquing its management and stock performance. They explore Sam Altman’s insights on fusion energy, U.S. innovation, and rural business subsidies. The conversation shifts to cybersecurity concerns over Chinese hacking and China’s economic struggles, emphasizing domestic production. The episode wraps with a thoughtful discussion on handling online criticism and tips on security for public figures in a less empathetic online world.

E2067: Jason and Alex kick off the year reflecting on mindfulness, family moments, and Instacart’s funding rounds, while Jason highlights his renewed focus on early-stage investing and Founder University. They dive into venture capital trends, including the concentration of fundraising and its impact on seed rounds, as well as challenges and solutions for H1B visa reform. The episode wraps with predictions for startup failures by 2025, potential mergers in the autonomous and on-demand sectors, and updates on opportunities for founders through Founder University.

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LAUNCH Founder University Cohort 10

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