Gm. You know it's a crazy Halloweekend when you schedule an email for 8:30 PM instead of AM.

FRESH POWDER

Looking at three funds that recently topped up their coffers.

TWITTER

Keeping Up With Twitter

As you are probably aware, Elon formally took control of Twitter last week. So far, it’s been as smooth and controversy-free a transition as we’ve ever seen.

Sike. Cmon now, this is Elon we’re talking about.

Let’s recap the highlights from Elon’s first week as Chief Twit.

Rahul Ligma

On Friday morning, legacy media reporters printed a story on two laid-off Twitter employees leaving HQ carrying boxes of their stuff, Lehman Brothers style.

It’s a good story. Saying something to the tune of “look at what Elon is doing to these poor innocent people!” pretty much guarantees clicks.

The names of these two martyrs? Daniel Johnson, and…Rahul Ligma.

We promise we’re not making this up. Reporters from CNBC literally believed that a Michelle Obama stan named Rahul Ligma was fired from Twitter.

It’s just too bad that nobody asked him, “Ligma what?”

Golden Parachutes

We talked about Elon’s Twitter cuts last week, but it now appears that he’s booting up to 30% of the staff, not 75%.

As we said last week, Twitter only really needs 5 people tops, but we digress.

Among the staff being axed are former CEO Parag Agrawal, former CFO Ned Segal, and former Chief Legal Officer Vijaya Gadde.

Like all employees being laid-off, they are entitled to severance payments. Any guess on the combined amount of these severance payments?

$187 million. Sheeeeeeeesh.

Knowing Elon, we’d bet he’ll try to find a way out of this.

Oh wait, he already is.

Blockchain Bots

Few things are more annoying in this world than Twitter bots. We honestly can’t think of any besides babies on planes and waiting in line at Chipotle.

Needless to say, we’d be excited if Elon was able to nuke bots as promised.

Turns out that Binance, the largest cryptocurrency exchange and newfound investor in Twitter, also agrees that bots suck and want to help in their annihilation.

Binance’s solution? Blockchain and crypto.

We have no idea how crypto gets rid of bots. Binance says they are “in the early stages now and still figuring out a plan”, which means they also have no idea.

But we definitely hope they figure it out.

VENTURE CAPITAL

Climate Tech Takes Off

To put it mildly, the environment is not in the best place right now. Global temperatures are rising at rates not seen since humans lived in caves, and they show no signs of slowing down.

The consequences will be dire should this trend continue. Unfortunately for you, me, and everyone else on Earth, it does not appear that our elected (and un-elected) leaders will be able to fix it in time. Shocker, we know.

However, it’s not yet time to panic buy a boat. That is because we are entering a golden age of climate tech, all armed with innovative solutions and boatloads of VC funding.

A Banner Quarter

Q3 was not the easiest time to be a startup. With venture funding down 53% year over year and 33% quarter over quarter, raising money was as tough as it’s been since the early days of the pandemic.

Except if you are in climate tech.

Climate tech startups have already raised as much money in 2022 as they did for all of 2021, and Q3 was an especially strong quarter for the blossoming industry.

How good was it, exactly?

• Swedish battery manufacturer Northvolt raised $1.1 billion, the largest VC deal in Q3.

• EV charging company TerraWatt Infrastructure raised $1 billion, the 2nd largest.

• Nuclear startup TerraPower raised $750 million, the fourth largest.

• Investments in EV chipmaker Black Sesame Technologies ($500 million) and Lithium extractor EnergyX ($450 million) also made the top ten list.

Not too shabby.

Totally Serious Climate-Tech Product Ideas

1. AI software predicting the Minimum Viable Snow Day (MVSD)

2. Lightning-only storms so thunder stops scaring dogs. No clue how to do this, but hopefully my dog will stop hiding under my dirty laundry.

3. Putting B2B software advertisements on tigers across every zoo in America to raise money to save the tigers. Nathan Fielder approves.

Product Hunt launch coming soon.

QUICK HITS

Seed Round

Stat: Netflix's hit show The Watcher was viewed for 148.2 million hours this week.

Story we're watching: Ex-Uber employees are building a decentralized Uber on Solana. Fun fact from Jason: I met the founder at a party and I thought he was either joking or crazy. Now he's raised $9 million. So I was right. Definitely crazy in the best way possible.

Rabbit hole: What Moneyball-for-Everything Has Done to American Culture (The Atlantic)

WHAT ELSE IS GOING ON

• Volkswagen is developing a hydrogen car that can travel 2,000km on a single tank. That sound you hear is a collective sigh of relief from everybody in California.

• iPhones are finally getting USB-C ports. Lightning cables will now be used as belts and bookmarks for Michelle Obama's book.

• Dogecoin has surged since Elon took over Twitter. To the moon.

• U.S. Treasuries are having their worst year since…the Constitution was written.

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MONDAY MUSIC

Artist: Senamo (Spotify)

Playlist: Instant Dopamine (Spotify)

Song: You Can Do It Too by Pharrell Williams (Spotify)

P.S. If you have any songs or artists you love, feel free to reply to this email and send ‘em our way.

LAYOFFS TRACKER

Notable layoffs this week

54gene: 100 people (55%)

RenoRun: 208 people (43%)

Seagate: 3000 people (8%)

FOUNDERS CORNER

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

🎂 It's my 25th birthday today so I shared 25 lessons for creators and builders.

🎤 Behind Genius Ventures's Rylie Jennings shared a thread on her team's podcast tech stack and press-record-to-publish process.

👻 Contrary GP Will Robbins shares his thoughts on 23-year-old Snapchat CEO Evan Spiegel's email exchange with Benchmark GP Mitch Lasky.

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WeWork!