Zuck Will Not Be Taking Prisoners

After trying the Vision Pro, Mark Zuckerberg says Quest 3 ‘is the better product, period’

“In a video posted to his Instagram account on Tuesday, Zuckerberg gives his official verdict on the Vision Pro versus his company’s latest Quest 3 headset: “I don’t just think that Quest is the better value, I think Quest is the better product, period.”

Full article from The Verge

Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund made $200 million crypto investment before bull run

“From late summer to early fall last year, the fund invested $200 million to acquire crypto tokens, half in bitcoin and the other half in ether, the two largest cryptocurrencies, two sources with direct knowledge of the matter told Reuters.”

Full article from Reuters

Instacart to lay off 250 employees, or about 7% of the company, as part of restructuring

“The layoffs are focused in part on middle management and creating a flatter organizational structure, according to Instacart, as well as focusing teams on larger projects, such as advertising efforts on Roku, Google Ads and more.”

Full article from CNBC

Hot Links

Over half of Vision Pro-only apps are paid downloads, far more than wider iOS App Store

Meter Secures $35 Million in Funding

Code testing startup Antithesis raises seed funding at $215M valuation

Exclusive: Ex-Salesforce co-CEO Bret Taylor and longtime Googler Clay Bavor raised $110 million to bring AI ‘agents’ to business

Upcoming Live Events

Up Next: Personal Finance Apps Post-Mint

Join us live tomorrow!! - Thursday, February 15th - at 3pm EST to learn more about the role of personal finance apps in a post-mint world.

• ​Ankur Nagpal - Founder at Carry

• ​Todd Curtis - CEO at YNAB

• ​Val Agostino - Co-founder & CEO at Monarch Money

For context: Mint was one of the largest personal finance apps in the world and it is being sunset by Intuit, who bought mint for $170M in 2020.

Click here to learn more and RSVP!

On Deck: Anduril and Defense Tech

Join us live on Thursday, February 22nd to learn more about Anduril and the Defense Tech sector. We're excited to be joined by:

Scott Sanders - Chief Growth Officer @ RRAI

RRAI is an industry-leading vehicle autonomy company providing autonomous driving solutions for defense and commercial applications. Founded in 2002, the Company has leveraged twenty years of experience customizing autonomous solutions to apply best practices across verticals and become a trusted technology partner to the public and private sectors. From people to platforms, at home or overseas, RRAI is driven to make the way you move smarter, safer, and more efficient. To date, their vehicle-agnostic Autonomy Kit has been deployed on four continents in over 10 countries.

Ross Fubini - Managing Partner at XYZ Venture Capital

Operating under the belief that execution solves all problems, XYZ is a venture firm that invests in early-stage founders to help them go faster. XYZ aims to support entrepreneurs in building enduring companies in fintech, enterprise and tech-forgotten industries like insurance and the public sector. The firm primarily backs talented founders at the earliest stages of company building -- people who have discovered a key insight and have an unfair advantage from “doing the work” or based on their own lived experience.

Click here to RSVP!

More Details Soon: NYC’s Definitive Demo Day

Really excited to put this event together alongside our friends at Verci. Our goal is to make this a monthly window into the best of what the NYC startup scene has to offer. Great founders building exciting solutions with smart questions from active investors.

Sign up for updates right here right now.

Previously on Sandhill

Most recently: AI & B2B SaaS

This was really great! Thank you to everyone who came out live. For those of you who missed it we had a really insightful conversation with this group of operators:

• ​​Wade Foster is the Co-founder and CEO of Zapier.

• ​​Des Traynor is the Co-founder and CSO of Intercom.

• ​Benjamin Gammell is the CFO at Brex.

You can check out the full recordings below and I’ll be sharing clips on social soon:

• Full recording on Twitter

• Full recording on LinkedIn

​Another shoutout to Walter Chen from Sacra for helping put this together!

Semi-recently: Howard Lindzon and This Is Not Financial Advice

This was great and I think I’m a better investor now after talking to Howard. We even broke the news that he is returning to Stocktwits as CEO after 8 years away!

Check out the full recordings below and stay tuned for clips + key takeaways soon:

• Full recording on Twitter

• Full recording on LinkedIn

It was a winding Friday afternoon conversation that covered everything from what This Is Not Financial Advice is really about to how it’s important to know yourself to be a good investor.

Letters From The Editor

Misc. (short for miscellaneous)

More Data Since You Like It

Do we like this type of data?

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 Yes, give us more! (17)

🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️ Sometimes. In context it's great. (10)

🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ Ehhn, not super relevant to me. (4)

🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️ Other / Leave a comment (8)

Noted and will keep this going! If you’re really into this type of thing make sure to check out Notice.co - they’ve been big supporters/friends of Sandhill for a while and I’m excited to bring more of their work your way.

One name that has been out of the news for a bit, but I think is worth paying attention to again is Stripe. For a long time they were living in a similar category as SpaceX as one of the world’s most beloved private market names. They did the right thing for employees by cutting valuation and offering liquidity in the low $20s pps. Since then though we’ve seen a steady increase in price/activity.

Starting a couple of years back Patrick and John started putting together Annual Letters that go out in early April. Here’s a look at their 2022 letter.

I bring this up because from a private markets perspective this could be related to an earnings call in how it can move the market. I’ll be watching closely and will be interested to see how they’ve been doing.

Talk soon,
Adam

PS - Do you want to sponsor this newsletter or an upcoming live event? Reply to this email and/or shoot a note to [email protected] to learn more.