Gm. This has officially been the longest short-week ever. 

FRESH POWDER

Looking at three funds that recently topped up their coffers. 

LAYOFFS 

Coinbase gets cold feet

Like a flaky Hinge date who doesn’t look like their profile picture, Coinbase is bailing on their big hiring plans. The company announced yesterday it was freezing hiring “for the foreseeable future,” and would rescind some job offers it had already sent out. Even worse, it’s pulling those offers via email. 

A lot can change in a few months

Back in February Coinbase seemed immune to the apprehensiveness the broader market was feeling and proudly annouced it was planning to hire 6,000 new employees which would nearly triple its headcount. 

• The markets have not obliged: Bitcoin and Ethereum are down 36% and 51% this year respectively and the crypto frenzy of 2020 feels like a distant memory. As a result, Coinbase reported shrinking revenue and declining users in their Q2 earnings call. Its stock tanked 26% and still hasn’t recovered. 

To be fair, Coinbase has already hired around 1,200 employees this year, so it’s not like they fully pumped the brakes. But other exchanges that rely on trading volume to support their business are cutting back. 

• Robinhood cut 9% of its staff last month while Gemini, a crypto exchange founded by Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, announced it was laying off 10% of its staff just yesterday. “This is where we are now…what our industry refers to as ‘crypto winter,’” the brothers wrote in a message to Gemini employees yesterday. 

Zoom out: While it may indeed be a crypto winter, it’s pretty chilly anywhere else you look as well. Industry wide, over 15,000 startup employees were laid off in May, while 13 startups have already announced layoffs in the first two days of June, per Layoffs.fyi. Coinbase may not be the exception, but the norm. 

BIG TECH 

Parting of the Bergs

After 14 years as Zuck’s right-hand woman, Sheryl Sandberg announced on Wednesday that she is stepping down as COO of Meta. From a changing business model to a strained relationship with Zuck, here are some reasons why the two 'bergs finally floated apart. 

• The pivot: Since she joined the company back in 2008, Sandberg’s domain has always been the ad business. But after the pivot to Meta, tech product design was more in demand. And with the metaverse still a ways away from becoming monetizable, it makes sense why Sandberg decided to go.

• Scandals: From scrutiny over Facebook's role in the 2016 election to the Cambridge Analytica scandal two years later, Sandberg weathered her fair share of storms. Zuck reportedly placed a large amount of blame on her for the latter scandal, which led to her stepping back from the spotlight a bit. 

• Plain old burnout: Being an exec at Facebook is not for the faint of heart and Sandberg might just want to do something else. “14 years later, it is time for me to write the next chapter of my life,” she wrote in her farewell post. 

Zoom out: Sandberg’s lengthy stay at Facebook demands a boatload of respect. Under Sandberg, Facebook IPO’d, became the second-leading ad platform on the internet, acquired Instagram and WhatsApp, and increased in value by over 500%. Not a bad legacy to leave.

QUICK HITS

Seed Round

Stat: Tiger Global, like the rest of the market, keeps sliding the wrong direction. According to Bloomberg, the firm's hedge fund dropped another -14% in May bringing its total losses for the year to an unbelievable -52%. Tiger decided to cut its management fees down to 1% through the end of 2023 in response. 

Story we’re watching: As the great rock band Smash Mouth once said, yeah the layoffs keep coming and they don’t stop coming, (especially when it comes to startups with bloated valuations relative to their revenue). Crypto exchange Gemini laid off 10% of its workforce. Clubhouse laid off three department heads, and Loom laid off 14% of its workforce in the latest round of staff reductions. 

Rabbit hole: Number of downloads required to hit #1 on the app store (TechCrunch).

WHAT ELSE IS GOING ON

• Kanye West, just months after claiming “my focus is on building products in the real world,” filed trademarks to launch NFTs around his YEEZUS brand.

• A former Open Sea product manager was charged with wire fraud and money laundering for front-running NFTs that were about to appear on the platform's homepage. 

• Ford  is investing $3.7 billion into US factories in an effort to ramp up its EV manufacturing.

• Solana went down for four hours before the network was restarted after a specific type of cold storage transaction caused the outage.

GUESSTIMATE

How many copies of Lean In were sold in its first five years on the shelf?

A. 1.1 million

B. 2.6 million

C. 4.2 million

D. 6.1 million

FUNDRAISING FRIDAY

"Winning" fundraising is not always net positive in the long term. Good advice to keep in mind.

CRAZY STORY YOU NEED TO READ

This would make a sweet Netflix series. 

FOUNDERS CORNER

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

🃏 How to make decisions like a poker player

💸 A guide to responding to unsolicited offers to buy your company

🔁 16 ways to measure network effects

GUESSTIMATE ANSWER

C. Lean In sold 4.2 million copies in its first five years, ranking at #1 on the NYT best-sellers list for a full year.