everything to read instead of doomscroll this week by @stephthefounder (July 6)

The best succinct + fun weekly newsletter to learn about all the best things you need to know across tech, startups, VC, AI, etc, sent out every Monday. (and at the minimum, it will include the links I post about every week on instagram!). Feedback? Things I should add? Respond back here or comment below x

your dream job is easier to get than ever

in a world where anyone can pay $49/month to spam resumes to tons of companies + where everyone is expected to be a player-coach (not just a coach) + where ai makes it almost easier to create rather than describe what you would create, companies are now looking for real work to even get through to an interview

this has been true for creative jobs for a long time - where portfolios or real work product are weighted more than LinkedIn or a resume. examples are the taktile media challenge that i shared last year, a competition asking candidates to create viral LinkedIn content for $100k in cash prizes + a chance to be their Head of Media. or Ramp’s very cool search for a Viral Creative Producer, which requires only 3 things: 1) passing their “taste test” to see if your visions are aligned, submitting a link to a viral moment you produced, your email.

but this is extending now to all jobs. for example - notion is hiring SDRs/BDRs and their application is building an agent that a sales team would actually use.

Notion@NotionHQ

Skip the resume. Seriously. We're hiring SDRs and BDRs. To apply, just build an agent a sales team would actually use. Apply by July 15 (tag your friends): jobs.ashbyhq.com/notion/e84f611…

10:34 PM · Jun 29, 2026 · 659K Views

81 Replies · 77 Reposts · 1.59K Likes

or hiring engineers by asking them to complete a related challenge first

Dhruv Bindra ⏳@bindra_dhruv

Hiring our first dev Scrape urbanoutfitters.com and email the catalog CSV to dhruv@stylapp.ai for an interview You have 48 hours 🫡

urbanoutfitters.com

Urban Outfitters: Men’s & Women’s Clothing, Homeware & Decor

6:48 AM · Jun 13, 2024 · 423K Views

84 Replies · 15 Reposts · 740 Likes

there is a current arbitrage for people who know how to use ai to actually ✨do things✨ (a strategy that takes just as much effort as custom cover letters used to, but now impress 10x more). it’s never been easier to stand out in a sea of ai slop temporarily rebranded as “custom” resumes / cover letters.

Every week I highlight a few of my favorite startups that I personally think are really promising. They’ve typically received funding that week + are hiring, and occasionally I’ll include some special bonus ones.

And now you can easily earn some cold hard cash 💰: you can now use Shortlist (a fun product my company has been building) to earn $$ (anywhere from $5K to $30K) for successfully referring people to top startups. The brilliant part about this is:

1. you don’t even need to know the person who’s ultimately hired - if you post a link on LinkedIn and the algorithm shows it to someone who ultimately clicks the link and is hired, you get the $$$ 😏

2. all of these companies are great and highly respected, so your friend (or random person who saw your post) will also thank you 😉 win win

(PS are you a founder or do you work at a cool startup that’s hiring? reply back with the name so we can give you guys a shout!)

This week’s featured companies:

• Etched: A chip startup designing inference-specific processors called Sohu, with over $1 billion in customer contracts and plans to ship this summer. The company has raised $800 million total, including a $500 million round at a $5 billion valuation led by Stripes.

  • Job openings can be found here

• Together AI: A computing infrastructure platform for companies to train and run open-source AI models at scale. The company raised an $800 million Series C at an $8.3 billion post-money valuation led by Aramco Ventures.

  • Job openings can be found here

• Scaled Cognition: An AI company developing models and tools designed to reduce hallucinations in enterprise software. The company raised a $100 million Series A at a $750 million post-money valuation led by Khosla Ventures.

  • Job openings can be found here

Some bonus companies that were also funded last week:

• TwelveLabs (video intelligence AI) 📹 → $100M Series B (Job openings here)

• 1001 (industrial AI, Gulf region) 🏗️ → $30M Series A (Job openings here)

• Arcturus (carbon nanomaterials) ⚛️ → $8M Seed (Job openings here)

• Pocket (AI conversation recorder) 🎙️ → $11M Round (Job openings here)

• Proception (robotic hands) ✋ → $11M Seed (Job openings here)

• Hera (senior care coordination) 👵 → $27M Series A (Job openings here)

• Pie (AI search visibility) 🔍 → $19.5M Series A (Job openings here)

• Switch (AI data centers) 🏢 → ~$2B Round (Job openings here)

All the best things I’ve read this week

1. In San Francisco, Even $180,000 Tech Salaries Are No Longer Enough (NYT). over 5000 of you responded to my story and here are the results (!):

   

(large contrast to tech twitter’s more critical, young-people-are-being-dramatic take)

2. for anyone on the hunt for their dream job, i’ve sent this to many people lately and the advice (be proactive because your dream job won’t fall into your lap) is more relevant than ever:

All the most important things that happened last week, from intellectual to guilty pleasure and optimistic to cringe:

• Anthropic’s Fable 5 returned globally on July 1 (and is included in your Max or Pro plan until tomorrow, so take advantage!!)

• The Italian software company Bending Spoons (owner of Vimeo, Evernote, AOL, WeTransfer; known for buying flailing software companies and reviving them) went public! They priced above range at $29/share, raising $1.68B at an ~$18.4B valuation.

• $510B (an all time high) was deployed into startups in the first half of 2026. OpenAI/Anthropic alone accounted for 43% of it 🤯

• OpenAI Proposes Giving 5% Equity to US Government: everyone (including the government) wants equity (especially AI equity). OpenAI may donate 5% of its equity to a US sovereign wealth fund (at their current $852B valuation, 5% is equal to ~$42.6B). The proposal suggests other AI companies would make similar donations.

• Weave Robotics launched a $8k robot that can do your chores, and someone created this cool graphic comparing all the humanoid companies’ robots

aka random things that I found interesting enough to screenshot or take a picture of last week

• For people who want a more educational doomscroll: Google via NotebookLM launched Short Video Overviews that allow you to create videos about any concept

  

  NotebookLM@NotebookLM

  Doom scrolling but make it educational 🤓 Introducing Short Video Overviews in NotebookLM! Turn your most complex sources into 60-second, vertical videos that deep dive into any concept. Rolling out now to Google AI Ultra and Pro subscribers on mobile & web (free users soon!)

  4:01 PM · Jun 30, 2026 · 2.5M Views

  361 Replies · 1.05K Reposts · 11.9K Likes

• if you want to take advantage of Anthropic Fable until tomorrow, I’ve been inspired by this post. you can’t re-create Fable magically (if only re-creating a ~$1T company were that easy) but it’s helped Opus step up a lot for a lot of my research-based tasks

  process:
  - put the same prompt for common tasks you do in Opus and Fable
  - put both outputs into Fable and ask it to compare/contrast
  - ask Fable to write a skill taking into account the difference and how it would guide Opus to create an output more similar to Fable
  - save the skill. do the same 1-3 steps again. if outputs are still very different, repeat process + refine skill further

• for anyone else who enjoys a well done investigative podcast: i’m halfway through Bone Valley and am hooked

• a24 crushes it again: i loved The Invite and the balance of comedy/depth. I’m always impressed with movies that are engaging/interesting with few ‘gimmicks’ (ie one simple setting - this apartment).

• weekly shiba content (there’s something particularly cute about having 2 “twin” dogs 😭):

<3 until next week!

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