Hacker News Reader

billplayfairon Block spent –$68M on an event for employees last quarter

Anyone know what the event was?

billplayfairon Big Tech is back to doing what it does best: gobbling up startups for billions

Hi, I wrote this article and thought HN might be interested!

Google just inked its biggest deal ever, Nvidia reportedly bought Gretel, and Meta is chasing an AI chip startup — and that was just in the last week. The flurry of dealmaking could continue.

billplayfairon Nvidia made $3.6M of revenue per employee last year, more than Meta/Apple

Pretty insane how little the company has scaled its headcount relative to its revenue.

Since 2022; revenue is up 385%, headcount is only up 60%.

billplayfairon Whistleblowers shared a $98M reward, no wonder people are spamming SEC with tips

Pretty insane how much money some whistleblowers are getting paid for successful tips to the SEC. Some stats:

In fiscal year 2024, the Commission reported getting nearly 25,000 TCRs, some 14,000 of those were from just two people!

Largest reward ever was $279 million.

billplayfairon 75% of founders in the Y Combinator S24 cohort are working on AI startups

yeah! they did. Nowhere near to the same extent though, which is interesting (and as you said suggests the majority of YC founders weren’t as enticed by crypto as they are by AI).

“In 2022, when “Crypto / Web 3” was the hottest thing to work on, 33 YC startups were working in the space — in both of the most recent batches there was only 1.”

So that’s still only like 5% working on crypto stuff even during the mania I guess?

billplayfairon 75% of founders in the Y Combinator S24 cohort are working on AI startups

$5m inbound at demo day

billplayfairon Chinese Hackers Breach US Internet Firms via Startup

Apparently Volt Typhoon has breached 4 US firms, including internet service providers.

billplayfairon Duolingo notifications: persistent, annoying, and oh-so-effective

Duolingo now has 100 million MAUs

billplayfairon VW to Build €20k EVs on Its Own, Forgoing Partnerships

From the article: “The German manufacturer plans to unveil its proposals for affordable compact EVs in 2027, it said Tuesday.”

If that article is correct, it is insane that the established Western companies are going to take 3 YEARS(!) to even UNVEIL their new low-cost EV efforts.

billplayfairon [dead]

Interesting! YC themselves said it was “at least 50%”, but looks like even more than that based on the company tagging in startup directory. Curious how much people think this is (probably all 3):

1) signal value: AI-anything is getting funded atm and founders are smart. 2) founder-level trend: founders are actually just working on AI much more naturally. 3) YC selection trend: YC deliberately pivoting towards AI in its selection process.