A billion-dollar opportunity. Corporates in AI. The genomics revolution.
Ok, this pie chart is ok
Hi there,
A bunch of newsletter readers sent this one in, so a thank you to all.
It’s a pie chart that we actually like.
A billion-dollar opportunity?
We dig into how asteroid mining could become a near-term opportunity for entrepreneurs and investors alike. The most well-funded startup in the space since 2013 is Planetary Resources, with $49M in disclosed funding.
When we started CB Insights and were <15 people, I always thought of company culture as this thing big companies try to create to brainwash people. Culture was, in my naive view, big companies putting posters on the wall emblazoned with words like “Integrity,” with some platitude that tells you…wait for it…that integrity is important.
At around 30 people, I started waking up.
At 30 people, not everyone knew exactly what was going on at every moment, and I was no longer handwriting people’s paychecks. We were still tiny, but we were no longer sitting around one table in a single small room or conducting meetings in the fire escape.
At 50 people, Jon and I finally understood culture. We realized:
It is the operating system of an organization
It is not about happy hours or perks
And if you let it happen organically and don’t actively work on it, it will turn into a isht show
And now at 150 people, I can say that building and maintaining the culture we want alongside the rest of the team is almost as hard as building product, selling subscriptions, etc.
It’s our first attempt at really detailing our culture — defining what it is, what we want it to be, and the type of people we want to be part of it. We’ve realized that each doubling of headcount results in new challenges, questions, etc. that we had not anticipated, so this will definitely evolve.
If you’ve read about or know of a company that has maintained an amazing culture as it’s grown from 150 to 500 teammates, we’d love to learn more. If any companies are recommended by many of you, we’ll highlight them in a coming newsletter.
From genomics frameworks to financing trends to corporate involvement, and more, we dive into trends that are shaping the genomics revolution. Chatter around the subject has increased over the years, especially as we start to see publications and journals explore more nascent and specific areas of genetics, including CRISPR (gene-editing) and the microbiome.
CB Insights data is the most trusted by those in the industry and the media. A few recent hits.
Vanity Fair. Maya Kosoff (@mekosoff) writes about the threat of the “job-stealing robot apocalypse” and references a CB Insights tweet on the retail industry.
The Times of India. A look at Matrix Partners’ expansion into Delhi with a reference to CB Insights research on India’s top tech cities.
P.S. Join us for a discussion on tech investing in Southeast Asia next week. We’ll dive into financing trends, startups, and active players in the region. Sign up here.
