Gm. For the first time ever, the median listed rent for an available apartment in the US passed $2,000 a month or as LA and NYC residents would call it, a steal.

FRESH POWDER

Looking at three funds that recently topped up their coffers.

STARTUPS 

Secondary markets hit a traffic jam

If you’re a startup employee, you probably have three portfolios you are scared to look at right now: stocks, crypto, and the value of your startup shares. If that’s the case, you're not alone—the secondary market for private companies’ stock has all but seized up this year. The main reason? No one is willing to buy.

How secondary markets work: Much like the normal stock market, there are secondary market exchanges—like CartaX, Forge Markets, and Nasdaq Private Market—where trading can take place. Employees can buy and sell private shares, as can accredited investors like VCs and institutional investors. It hasn’t been pretty in recent months for any of them.

The CEO of Forge Markets, Kelly Rodriques, told TechCrunch that the “supply of private shares right now is higher than it’s ever been in history,” mainly due to a price disequilibrium. “There’s a ton of seller interest,” she said, “but the range between seller and buyer expectations is too wide for a lot of trading to happen.” As a result, Q1 trading volume on Forge fell 61% versus the same period last year.

The depressed trading volume has also driven the price of the biggest private companies down.

• Stripe shares are trading roughly 40% lower than at the beginning of the year.

• Klarna is in the same boat, also trading 40% lower.

• Opensea shares are technically up since January, but are down 27% from their February peak.

Still, things aren’t all bad. Those who did manage to find a buyer for their shares, earned an average 24% premium compared to the prices the shares were valued at during a previous funding round, according to Forge COO Jose Cobos.

Looking ahead…one way out of the private market logjam is for the IPO market to heat back up. If that happens (and more employees are able to realize gains on their shares) it could be the kick the private market needs to sputter back to life.

SOCIAL MEDIA

Careful what you wish for...

Because you might just get an huge and unwieldy dataset. Twitter finally agreed to give Elon Musk access to the so-called “firehose” API that contains the metadata of all the tweets posted on the platform.

But now that the dog has caught his proverbial tail, Elon might not know what to do with it.

The trouble he faces ahead

The firehose dataset is essentially what your Twitter feed would look like if you followed every single account on the platform. It shows data relating to the content of a tweet, when it was posted, and how it was posted (iPhone, desktop etc.).

• It doesn’t include things like a phone number or IP address, two details that are helpful in determining if an account is real or fake.

• It also doesn’t account for “lurkers,”—Twitter users who are active, but don’t post any tweets.

So, in order for Elon to see how many bots are on the platform, he will likely have to take a sampling of random accounts, then count how many appear to be fake. In other words...exactly what Twitter already does.

Bottom line: Elon and his team could hypothetically find a more efficient way of counting bots. But more than likely, Twitter used the dataset as a piece of leverage to call Elon’s bluff and get the deal across the finish line.

QUICK HITS

Seed Round

Stat: While venture funding may be down, the phrase “data is the new oil” has never been more true. Over the last two weeks, three data visibility companies have raised a total of over $400 million. All three are SF-based—Cribl, Monte Carlo, and Coralogix—and each raised over $100 million.

Story we’re watching: Frontier Fund, a new non-profit VC fund founded by former Google CEO Eric Schmidt and Peter Thiel, is seeking $1 billion from Congress to advance chip manufacturing in the US. It’s got a good chance of getting it, too—Gilman Louie, the fund's CEO, also sits on President Biden’s Intelligence Advisory Board.

Rabbit hole: On being an optimist (Not Boring).

WHAT ELSE IS GOING ON

• US safety regulators expanded their probe into Tesla’s autopilot feature as the cars keep running into parked first responder vehicles.

• Amazon is getting into VR, launching a feature to let users virtually try on shoes through their phone camera.

• NASA is putting together a research team to study UFOs.

• Stitch Fix shares sank after company announced layoffs, and offered weak guidance.

GUESSTIMATE

How many Bird electric scooters are currently New York City, one month into its rollout?

A. 1,000

B. 0

C. 10,000

D. 1,500,000

FUNDRAISING FRIDAY

Justin Kan, the founder of Twitch, is not feeling very optimistic.

FOUNDERS CORNER

The best resources we came across this week that will help you become a better founder, builder, or investor.

🗽 The full NFT NYC event schedule

👥 A guide on using community to drive growth

🏗 A tool from Paradigm to help structure DAOs legally

GUESSTIMATE ANSWER

A. The NYC Department of Transportation initially only allowed Bird to launch 1,000 scooters. But that number increases to 2,000 starting in a few weeks.