🚀 AI's Edge & Chip Craze: Navigating Valuations, Startups vs. Big Tech Decisions 🤖💡

Feb 12, 2024 - AI Chipmakers soar, From layoff to VP, Find a better job fit,Don't join a startup?

Weekly inspiration…

Laid off with a new baby to VP at Amazon…

From Ethan Evans, former VP of Engineering at Amazon (on LinkedIn)…

The layoffs are getting bad. In 2003, three days after returning from adopting my daughter in China, I was laid off. My wife had left her job to be at home with our new child. We had gone from two incomes and no kids just months prior to no incomes with an infant.

Obviously, we were afraid. We were early in our careers and we had little savings. If you are in a similar situation, it is okay to be afraid. Here is what we did: job hunting became my full time work. Every day I applied for jobs and I networked with anyone I could.

We reduced expenses and did the math on when the 401k would all be gone, the credit cards would be maxed out, and the checks would start to bounce. I began reading books whenever I was not job hunting to improve my skills. I learned SQL in this process.

It took me three months to find a job, a bad job that required a move. But it worked out. My daughter turns 20 in a few days and as you know I eventually ended up at Amazon. This was long before "paternity leave" was a thing, but I spent the first three months of our lives with our daughter at home with her every day.

You can get through this!

Focus, cut expenses, and work as hard at job hunting as you did at "work."

📈 This week:

1. Chip manufacturing and AI industries getting red hot, but VCs are scared of inflated valuations among the smaller startups

2. Learn how to outreach to land interviews (deep dive coming soon)

3. Should you join a startup? We talk to a 30-year startup veteran.

4. Big tech stocks and revenues surge amidst layoffs…what does it mean?

5. [Video] Feeling stuck in your current role? This separates the top 10% tech careers

💸 Take action. Get Hired.

• 💸 Tips: 3 Tips This Week!

  • Don’t work at a startup? (guest post)

  • How to do outreach to get interviews

  • What to do if you’re feeling undervalues (video)

• 🔥 Company Power Rankings: See who’s heating up and cooling off

• 💼 Who’s Hiring? Companies posting new jobs this week

• 💰 Top Paying Companies: Product Manager top-payers this week

• ⏱️ IPO Watch: Track who is and isn’t going public in 2024

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🏀 The 3-Pointer

1. AI and manufacturer stocks are through the roof, with Nvidia approaching Amazon’s market cap and Arm stock soaring +48% in a day.

2. OpenAI hit a $2B revenue run rate and plans to raise at $100B, but some investors/VCs didn’t buy their last share sale. VCs generally are afraid that most of the AI startups will fail under the weight of OpenAI and inflated valuations.

3. It is still a great time to join (some) AI companies, but if things shake out like every other new tech wave market bubble, only the top 5-10% of these companies will make it unscathed to the other side. Take the role to learn and grow, but be okay with losing out on equity if your company falls in the 90% that won’t support its inflated valuation.

Big Tech Stocks Soar

FAANG (or MAMAA or MANGA ??) stocks are mainly soaring lately. This won’t spur the hiring spree of 2021, but it should encourage healthy investment in mostly builder roles.

Nvidia is closing in on Amazon’s market cap…

And Arm, another chipmaker that recently IPO’d, grew +48% in a day on earnings

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman hopes to raise $7 trillion (with a “T”) for a new AI chip venture.

What does this mean for the job search?

• Some speculate it could be oversupply with the AI funding boom. We saw this for chips during the Web3 crypto boom and then there was a drawback.

• It could just be the start of the hockey stick, but it would likely be a bumpy ride.

• If you look at the long trajectory, you should not bet against the big chipmakers. AI, autonomous vehicles, web3 (yes still), AR/XR and just general chip requirements will sustain this industry

• Sam Altman raising $7T for AI chips doesn’t scream “we’ve hit oversupply” yet

If you get a job at Nvidia or Arm, no one will blame you for snapping it up, even just for the exposure.

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

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💸 Get Hired

🧰 Job Search & Negotiation Tips

Triple tips today!

1. Should you join a startup in 2024?

A lot of laid-off FAANG employees are looking for greener grass in the startup world.

30-year startup veteran and author of The Startup Lottery: Your Guide To Navigating Risk And Reward,

Gus Bessalel

, wrote a guest post to help job seekers understand what they’re walking into when they join a startup over a public company.

I will also be interviewing Gus for a podcast episode, so comment with your questions!

2. How do you reach out to referrals, hiring managers, and recruiters?

With all the applicants on the market, I see very few people get to the offer stage by just applying to job postings. Almost all of them have or build some connection to the company.

I am currently writing a deep dive on how the best in the industry do cold and warm outreach to land interviews.

But here are 3 tips to start you off this week:

1. LinkedIn has tons of features to find connections (alumni, past employers, shared backgrounds, 1st/2nd degree) at target companies. Use them!

2. Use hunter.io to find work emails, write personalized short messages with low-effort asks, and follow up! The squeaky wheel gets the grease.

3. Don’t be afraid of hard work:

   1. Reach out to a large volume (50+ per week)

   2. Send personalized messages.
      If they don’t respond the first time, send one with some impressive work product or even do work for them (talk to customers, make a deck, build a model, test some things online, etc.). Make their lives easy.

This is just scratching the surface, so stay tuned for the deep dive.

Leave a comment with your questions or challenges networking for a job…

3. Feeling underpaid, undervalued, and underappreciated? This engineer’s story may help…

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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

1. 💸 OpenAI - Achieved a $2 billion run rate this past December, marking it as one of the fastest-growing startups ever.

2. 💰 Arm - Stock price surged 48% today on better-than-expected third-quarter earnings. SoftBank still owns 90% of the company's stock.

3. 💰Nvidia - Market cap may soon eclipse Amazon's

💵 Raised Funds This Week

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

• NinjaOne - IT system monitoring raised $231.5M at $1.9B valuation led by Iconiq Growth (Austin)

• Kin - home insurance raised $15M at $1B+ valuation led by Activate Capital (Chicago)

• Züm - electric school bus service raised $140M led by GIC (CA), large round for electric transportation

• Ambience Healthcare - medical note-taking software raised $70M led by Kleiner Perkins (San Francisco), large raise from top VC

• Zededa - edge computing platform raised $72M led by Smith Point Capital

• Avnos - carbon removal raised $36M led by NextEra Energy (San Francisco), large round in hot sustainability sector

• ProducePay - produce industry financial services raised $38M led by Syngenta Group (LA)

• Ezra - full body MRI scans raised $21M led by Healthier Capital (NY), large round for early detection

• StatusPRO - VR training for athletes raised $20M led by GV (Miami), large round from top VC

• Closinglock - real estate transaction security raised $12M led by Headline (Austin), large round preventing fraud

• Starship Technologies - delivery robots raised $90M led by Plural and Iconical (Estonia), developing autonomous delivery

☁️ Proceed with Caution

• Grammarly cut 230 employees, 25% of headcount after raising at a high $13 billion valuation in 2021

• DocuSign laid off 6% of staff and was going to be bought by private equity before discussions stalled

🚀 Who's Hiring

Companies posting new roles this week

AI focus this week - they need more than just researchers:

• 💸 Nvidia - GPUs and AI chips (1,675 total jobs)

• 💸 Databricks - Data analytics platform (125 eng jobs)

• 💸 OpenAI - AI research organization (74 eng jobs + 13 research)

• 📈💰**Snowflake** - Cloud data platform (25+ eng jobs)

• Lightmatter - Photonic AI chips (24 eng jobs)

• 💰**Scale AI** - Data labeling for AI (21 eng jobs)

• 💰**Anthropic** - AI safety research (16 eng jobs)

• Typeface - Text-to-3D graphics (12 eng jobs)

• Adept - AI for small business (9 eng jobs)

• Helsing - AI for drug discovery (8 eng jobs)

• Inflection AI - Synthetic data for AI (5 eng jobs)

• Eleven Labs - AI chip design (5 eng jobs)

• Perplexity AI - AI for commerce content (3 eng jobs)

• Anduril - Defense tech and drones (1 eng job)

🌟 Top 20 Highest Paying Companies (Source: Levels.FYI, Product Manager: All Levels)

🕒 IPO Watch

🟢 Promising

• 💸 Plaid has a new President, possibly hinting at IPO plans

• Reddit hasn't released its public IPO filing yet, but Bloomberg reports that the social networking site did $800 million in revenue in 2023, a 20% jump over 2022.

• Circle - Major USDC stablecoin developer confidentially filed for IPO

• Shein - Chinese fast fashion giant seeking approval for US IPO, but Beijing investigating

• 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 has delayed IPO plans a few times, but could go public in 2024

🟡 Still waiting

• Unfortunately, 💸 Databricks, SpaceX, and 💸 Stripe have all allowed 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:

• 🔥 Arm (+89.65% since IPO!) England-based chip designer → Stock soared +48% in a single day this week!

• 📉 Klaviyo (-9.34%, but rebounding) Marketing automation platform

• 📉 Instacart (-11.33%, but rebounding) Grocery delivery

• Oddity (-13.17%) Direct-to-consumer beauty brand

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