AI Impact on MMANGA & Job Conversion Rate %

Feb 26, 2024 - AI’s impact on Big Tech, Doordash stock vesting, How many applications to land an offer?

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AI eyes on the big guys today…

1. Which MMANGA to join in AI boom?

2. Is front-loading stock vesting bad for employees/candidates?

3. How many job applications and outreaches do you need to land 6 offers?

Here we go…

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TECH COMPANY MARCH MADNESS

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🏀 The 3-Pointer: AI’s Impact on MMANGA

1. Brad Gerstner and Bill Gurley discussed the impact of AI on MMANGA: Meta, Microsoft, Apple, Nvidia, and Amazon on their Bg2 Pod
   Bg2 is #1 in my top 5 podcasts for understanding macro trends in tech

2. I summarized their assessment of each company below as 3-pointers

3. Surprisingly, net talent flows in January (hiring minus layoffs/departures) and stock trends map to the company ratings on riding the long-term AI wave

So what? If you think that e.g. Google is undervalued and Nvidia and Meta are overvalued in the 1-4 year horizon when your equity grant vests, that could affect your decision to join. If you believe in Nvidia long-term, you might take that risk anyway.

Nvidia - Winner 🏆
$NVDA: +64% YTD

• Nvidia poised to ride $2 trillion AI compute wave. Leading ecosystem hard to replicate. But boom/bust risks similar to Cisco’s in 2000 exist if adoption stalls.

• AI's ubiquitous nature makes growth more durable than past niche crypto boom/bust. But forecast misses likely amid demand/supply balance volatility, temporarily putting off some investors.

• Any major selloffs in the near-term ultimately will be buying opportunities. Inevitable incentives around AI productivity gains favor durable demand, whatever near-term turbulence or increase in competition.

Talent Flow Data Source: livedatatechnologies.com

Source

Microsoft - Winner 🥇
$MSFT: +10% YTD

• Boosts all key businesses - Office, cloud, developers

• Copilot makes engineers 30% more productive

• All-in partnership with OpenAI cements leadership

Meta - Winner 🏅
$META: +39% YTD

• More engaging ads and content in apps via AI

• Pivoting hard into conversational commerce

• New platform for vertical AI chatbot businesses

Amazon - Neutral ◻️
$AMZN: +16% YTD

• Core retail gains slightly from better recommendations

• Fierce new AI-powered competition emerging

• AWS renting AI compute more than building new

Apple - Uncertain ◻️
$AAPL: -2% YTD

• Risks missing AI boom, but iPhones prime for disruption

• Depends if Apple gets serious enough about AI

• Could unlock phone as a service business model

Google/Alphabet - Loser 🔴
$GOOG: -0.5% YTD

• Search facing disruption from AI chatbots and an innovator’s dilemma

• Other biz units benefit somewhat from AI tech

• But over 80% of profits at risk, and the stock reflects this

Forward Top Tech to a friend! Everyone should be building their job options in 2024.

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💰 Salary Spotlight

Is front-loading equity vesting in stock offers employee-friendly or slight of hand?

• DoorDash is the latest big tech company to join the trend of front-loading equity vesting schedules to make their first 1-2 years of total compensation on new job offers seem more competitive.

• This also limits the large amounts of equity compensation paid out if there is a stock run up before years 3-4 of an employee’s tenure.

• Google has been doing this for a couple of years, and they will now only match competing job offers on the boosted first-year total compensation, not the average of 4 years

Optimists say: Front-loaded equity is better since employees stay <2.3 years

Cynics say: This artificially inflates offers and deflates an employees income at a company over time if the company doesn’t make up for it with large equity refreshers.

What do you think?

What else would be valuable for your job search? Let us know by leaving a comment.

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💸 Get Hired

🧰 Job Search & Negotiation Tips

Tip: Data suggests that today’s job search is a QUANTITY AND QUALITY game.

1. 0.6% of applications led to an offer based on 12 candidates with <5 years of experience who tracked their job search funnel

2. There is a consistent 6-7% application-to-round 1 interview rate. This included roughly 70% online application forms and 30% warm and cold outreach for intros.

3. 50% of offers come from companies where they have connections where they had a much higher conversion rate at each stage, but some of the accepted (and better) offers came from cold outreach.

   

So what?

1. You need to do warm, 2nd degree, and cold outreach via email and LinkedIn at high volumes AND tailored — but split to 3 tiers 70/20/10 for level of effort.

2. You also need to cold apply if you do not get quick responses. This makes your resume still very important for getting interviews, but the resume is also critical all the way up until the hiring decision.

3. If you apply cold online, don’t stop there. Continue to try to find an intro internally who can flag you to the hiring manager or recruiter.

   PS: These candidates came to me for negotiation coaching when they were near offer stage, which was too late for me to help expedite their job search and after they missed some important opportunities to increase leverage for negotiating.

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📈 Company Power Rankings

Now it's time to take action…
Here are this week's company power rankings, so go start those reach-outs!

Legend:

💸 Pays top of market

💰 Pays competitively

🔥 Heating Up

Tip: Consider these as targets

• Mistral launched a competitor to OpenAI’s ChatGPT with a MSFT partnership

• Nvidia riding $22.1B quarterly revenue as demand for AI chips outstrips supply

• Reddit filed for IPO (see IPO Watch below) and offering shares to contributors

• OpenAI let employees sell PPUs (like shares) at $86B valuation (10x for some)

💵 Raised Funds This Week

Tip: Should be hiring soon. Reach out to hiring managers before they even post the jobs

• Antora Energy (Sunnyvale, CA) - Thermal battery startup raised $150M Series B led by Decarbonization Partners

• EigenLayer (Seattle, WA) - Crypto startup raised $100M from Andreessen Horowitz

• Abridge (Pittsburgh, PA) - AI patient-doctor notes platform raises $150M Series C

• Fabric (New York, NY) - Healthtech startup raised $60M Series A led by General Catalyst

• Crisp (New York, NY) - Retail data startup raised $20M Series B extension from Blue Cloud Ventures, FirstMark Capital, Spring Capital and others

• Synadia (San Mateo, CA) - Cloud startup raised $25M Series B led by Forgepoint Capital

• Carewell (Miami, FL) - Online caregiver retailer raised $24.7M Series B led by MBF Healthcare

• Dub (New York, NY) - Investment copying platform raised $17M seed round led by Tusk Venture Partners

• Recogni (San Jose, CA) - AI hardware startup raised $102M Series C co-led by Celesta Capital and GreatPoint Ventures

• Magic AI (San Francisco, CA) - Software engineer AI assistant raised $117M

• Clumio (Santa Clara, CA) - Cloud data protection company raised $75M Series D led by Sutter Hill Ventures

• Oula (Brooklyn, NY) - Maternity care startup raised $28M Series B co-led by Revolution Ventures and Maverick Ventures

• PermitFlow (San Jose, CA) - Construction permitting software startup raised $31M Series A led by Kleiner Perkins

• Monzo (London, UK) - Challenger bank startup raised up to £350M at $4B valuation target

• Moonshot AI (Beijing, China) - Generative AI startup raised $1B from Alibaba and HongShan at $2.5B valuation

☁️ Proceed with Caution

• Klarna - Board of Directors drama with a failed attempt by Sequoia Capital to oust former Sequoia partner Michael Moritz from the board. Valuation has gone from $46B to $7.6B in recent years.

• Rivian - Laid off 10% of staff

• Lucid Motors - Only building 10% of predicted 90,000 EVs in 2024

🚀 Who's Hiring

Don’t narrow your search too much!
New jobs posted this past week (trueup.io):

• Public 5,352

  Private 4,972

• >$100B 2,106
  <$5B 2,239

• B2B 6,724
  B2C 3,170

Companies posting new roles this week…

• 💸 Stripe - https://trueup.io/co/Stripe - Unicorn • 8,000 employees • 353 open jobs

• Zero Hash - https://trueup.io/co/Zero-Hash - Early-stage startup • 180 employees • 6 open jobs

• Blue Origin - https://trueup.io/co/Blue-Origin - 9,000 employees • 1,391 open jobs

• GitLab - https://trueup.io/co/GitLab - Public • 2,000 employees • 127 open jobs

• Mattermost - https://trueup.io/co/Mattermost - 160 employees • 30 open jobs

• TikTok - https://trueup.io/co/TikTok - 50K employees • 3,000 open jobs

• Ocado - https://trueup.io/co/Ocado - 320 employees • 141 open jobs

• Helm - https://trueup.io/co/Helm - Early-stage startup • 80 employees

• PhonePe - https://trueup.io/co/PhonePe - Unicorn • 10K empl. • 128 open jobs

• Cato Networks - https://trueup.io/co/Cato-Networks - Unicorn • 800 employees

• Imagen - https://trueup.io/co/Imagen - Early-stage startup • 120 employees • 7 open jobs

• Zscaler - https://trueup.io/co/Zscaler - Public • 6,000 employees • 707 open jobs

• LaunchDarkly - https://trueup.io/co/LaunchDarkly - Unicorn • 500 employees • 17 open jobs

• Tower Research - https://trueup.io/co/Tower-Research - 1,100 employees • 55 open jobs

Who Pays Recruiters The Most?
💸 Top 50 Highest Paying Companies (Full List: Levels.FYI, Recruiter)
Reminder to be good to your recruiters…Laid off first. Paid last.

🕒 IPO Watch

🟢 Promising

• Reddit - Social media community platform planning March or April IPO, but could push

• Shein - Changing to the London Stock Exchange? Chinese fast fashion giant may avoid SEC rejection by moving to the UK-based exchange for IPO

• Navan - Corporate travel management company formerly known as TripActions; on IPO watchlist

• Astera Labs - Fabless semiconductor company; on IPO watchlist

• Circle - Major USDC stablecoin developer confidentially filed for IPO

• Zeekr - Chinese electric vehicle company planning 2024 IPO

• Rubrik - Data management and security company pushed back plans to Spring 2024 or later

• SeatGeek - Sports/concert ticket marketplace filed for IPO in April 2023, expected in 2024

• Turo - Car-sharing startup delayed IPO a few times but could go public in 2024

🟡 Still waiting

• High-paying 💸 Databricks, 💸 Plaid, and 💸 Stripe all silent on IPO plans

• Now 💸 OpenAI has joined 💸 Databricks, SpaceX, and 💸 Stripe in allowing employees to sell shares to investors recently to delay the need for an IPO

• Navan, Fanatics, and Klarna have all been quieter after earlier IPO speculation

📈 Recent IPOs:

• Oddity Direct-to-consumer beauty brand

• Arm England-based chip designer

• Klaviyo Marketing automation platform

• Instacart Grocery delivery

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Forward Top Tech to a friend! Everyone should be building their job options in 2024