Uber reaches a $120B valuation, Brave’s Leo AI assistant is now available to Android users

Top News

Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi receives options to buy stock worth ~$136M after hitting a performance target to reach a $120B valuation for the company. - Link

Brave is launching its AI-powered assistant, Leo, to all Android users, allowing them to ask questions, translate pages, summarize pages, and create content. - Link

Stack Overflow partners with Google to launch a new program that will give AI companies access to its knowledge base through a new API named OverflowAPI. - Link

X adds a feature that lets Spaces hosts enable live video when they create a new session, available on iOS. - Link

Vibe helps small companies buy video ads on streaming services. - Link

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Advice of the Day

The Power of a Narrow Idea

Max Levchin, CEO of Affirm, highlights the effectiveness of narrow ideas in startups. He emphasizes the value of entrepreneurs who concentrate on excelling in a specific area within a market with great potential. For example, Yelp was initially a local review site for San Francisco. It appeared to be a risky investment due to its limited scope and unconventional growth strategies. However, this focused approach paid off, as Yelp replicated its San Francisco model globally, becoming an international leader in local review services. - Link

Startup Demo of the Day:

Bootstrap by Fuelfinance is a financial management system for startup founders, designed to fit any business model. The tool integrates with Quickbooks, provides a dashboard, financial reports, and helps users align with their finances.

Founder University is a 12-week pre-accelerator program run by Jason/LAUNCH for builder founders. We're investing $25k in 20-30 companies from Cohort 7. Apply at founder.university/letsbuild.

This Week in Startups

E1906: David Clark joins Jason to discuss VenCap's investment strategies and analyze over 500 investments. They delve into the criteria for success in VC, examining data from 12K companies and the concept of the power law. Key topics include the selection of top-performing investments, the benefits of long-term company investment, challenges faced with seed managers, and selling strategies. - Watch

E1905: In this "Ask Jason" episode, questions range from the relevance of a fintech degree for joining startups to strategies for pre-VC survival and the timing of fundraising. Other questions include the pitfalls of incorrect pivoting, whether to focus on deep relationships with a few customers or to target a broader base, and common mistakes by first-time founders. - Watch

1904: Sunny Madra joins Jason to discuss the challenges faced by Google's AI, exploring how Google can learn from Meta's solutions. Google's Gemini model, Apple's gradual integration of AI features, and an analysis of OpenAI's Sora are also discussed. - Watch

E1903: Jason, along with guests Bryan Rosenblatt, Michael Downing, and David Weisburd delve into the potential of Reddit as an advertising platform in light of its upcoming IPO. The integration of AI in traditional businesses and a comparison between consumer-focused and enterprise AI are also discussed. - Watch

E1902: Jason hosts LAUNCH’s Accelerator Demo Day, featuring pitches from Melengo, PodcastAI, Tolt, River, TaxGPT, and Fanfare. - Watch

This Week in Startups Paid Partnerships

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