Jon

Operating Partner @Unusual_VC Former @AppDynamics @Amazon, @Holloway Contributor @uarizona (opinions are my own)

[Jon @jonv1919]

As an early stage founder, at every point during the recruiting process, you have to be selling candidates on why your startup is going to be the next great opportunity in their career. https://t.co/O1dbxuwk93

[Unusual Ventures @Unusual_VC]

In the early stages of building a company, hiring is one of the biggest challenges founders face.

Our Talent Partner, Jon Volk, advises founders that attracting great talent requires more than just a compelling role. Founders need to inspire candidates to believe in their vision, trust their leadership, and see the start-up's long-term potential.

Learn more about Unusual Ventures' Founder Services: https://t.co/ROcAD8NfMj

[Unusual Ventures @Unusual_VC]

Huge congratulations to Unusual Ventures portfolio founder @steijnpelle and the Lassie team on their Series A led by @a16z.

We're proud to be part of the journey and excited for what's next!

[Unusual Ventures @Unusual_VC]

Only desperate people buy from startups.

Robbie Th'ng from our Founder Services team highlights a key startup truth: your earliest customers are often those with an urgent, painful problem that existing solutions aren't solving.

Learn more about Unusual Ventures' Founder Services: https://t.co/ROcAD8NfMj

[Jon @jonv1919]

@JimmySpencer Time my friend, time

[Adam Auslund @followAdamA]

This stuff is nothing. Twitter would have melted during the 2002 WCF.

[Unusual Ventures @Unusual_VC]

Big move from @cartainc. The launch of Carta Law through the acquisition of Avantia marks another step toward building a more integrated operating system for founders and startups.

Read more: https://t.co/ptNXpJ7uXZ

[Unusual Ventures @Unusual_VC]

Last night, Unusual Ventures and @lithos_ai hosted an Engineering Leaders Happy Hour at MLSys focused on “Beyond the Hype: AI Agents from Demo to Production.”

Great conversations with leaders from @GoogleDeepMind, @Meta, Together AI, @perplexity_ai, @SpaceX, and more on what it takes to bring agentic systems into production.

[lily clifford @lilyjclifford]

we're hiring across the board at rime - revenue, marketing, engineering, modeling, data operations.

join us - my dm's are open!

[David Kwon @dkwon98]

Btw @feross and team are absolute animals, and Socket is quickly growing into a generational business. If you’re interested in joining, please let us know!

[Dina Bass @dinabass]

Socket, a security software firm focused on protecting open source code, said it's valued at $1 billion in a round led by Thrive. @SocketSecurity, also backed by a16z & with clients like Anthropic, played a key role in fending off the March Axios npm hack https://t.co/nofoiapn3i

[Jon @jonv1919]

Exciting news from @SocketSecurity

[Feross @feross]

Today is a big day for @SocketSecurity. We just raised a $60M Series C at a $1B valuation, led by @ThriveCapital with participation from @a16z, @AbstractVC, and @CapitalOne Ventures. Total funding is now $125M.

Four years ago, we started Socket because open source dependencies were flowing into production faster than anyone could vet them. AI has massively accelerated that. Code is being written, shipped, and deployed before any human reads it. Security has to operate at that same speed.

One data point from Thrive's diligence that I keep coming back to: they first discovered Socket because @cursor_ai, @OpenAI, and @AnthropicAI all independently told them it was the most important security tool they'd adopted for AI-driven development. Three of the most sophisticated AI companies converging on the same vendor unprompted.

Since our Series B, Socket has grown to more than 20,000 organizations, protecting over 1.5 million repositories and blocking more than 1,000 supply chain attacks every week. The team is now over 100 people.

Three out of five FAANG companies are Socket customers. So are the companies building the most ambitious AI products: @AnthropicAI, @cursor_ai, @xai, @figma, @vercel, @Replit, @scale_AI, @GustoHQ, @Mercadolibre, and @cribl_io, alongside Fortune 100s in financial services and global media.

What we've shipped since the last round:

• Socket Firewall blocks malicious packages at install time, before they reach a developer's laptop or CI pipeline. Free for everyone.

• Reachability analysis via our acquisition of Coana, eliminating 50-80% of irrelevant vulnerability alerts by focusing only on CVEs that are actually exploitable.

• Socket Certified Patches for remediating exploitable CVEs in seconds without waiting on upstream maintainers.

• Coverage extending to browser extensions, editor extensions, MCP servers, and AI tools via our acquisition of @secureannex.

When the Axios compromise hit, our detection systems flagged the malicious dependency within six minutes. Within 24 hours, more than 2,000 organizations onboarded to Socket to block it.

Where the funding goes: deeper investment in Firewall, massively expanding Certified Patches, moving protection closer to every point of install across the developer toolchain, and new product launches pushing Socket into a category we haven't entered before.

We're hiring across engineering, sales, customer success, and threat intel.

❤️ Thank you to our customers, investors, and the open-source community for your support. Together, we’re making software safer for everyone.

[Unusual Ventures @Unusual_VC]

Exciting news today from Unusual Ventures portfolio company @SocketSecurity! Huge congratulations to @feross and the entire team on this milestone.

Cybersecurity has never been more important, and Socket is building exactly the kind of company the market needs. We’re grateful to have partnered with Feross and the team since Day 1.

[lily clifford @lilyjclifford]

our latest speech model CODA is now live and in public beta. we believe this is the last text-to-speech model you'll ever need to build with.

why? because it truly crushes every competitive model on both perceptual and brass tacks metrics like latency and throughput. and we are super proud that every day people on the street agree!!

[Unusual Ventures @Unusual_VC]

Today, code volume is exponentially higher. As our Co-Founder and Entrepreneur Partner, @jyotibansalsf, says: “10 times more code means 10 times more problems.” That’s why detecting issues early and fixing them quickly is more important than ever.

[Jim Rome @jimrome]

.@thedrmondo on "The Cheatcode" methodology, how to filter out the noise and live in the moment, what makes Lindsey Vonn one of one, why success doesn't guarantee happiness, how to access your flow state and so much more.

Listen Now: https://t.co/ipBxe041BI

[Rime @rimelabs]

new model dropping soon!

[Patrick Coleman @patrickscoleman]

i'm a meme

[Unusual Ventures @Unusual_VC]

We’re excited to lead the $6.3M seed round in @MiravoiceAI, a specialized AI voice agent platform transforming how research and operations teams collect structured data through voice.

We couldn’t be more thrilled to partner with @najain, @2Shreyz, and Danny as they build what’s next.
https://t.co/DO42auks2S

[Nishant Jain @najain]

I’m thrilled to share that @MiravoiceAI has raised $6.3M from @Unusual_VC, @neo, and @25m_official to reinvent the way the world collects data.

[Jon @jonv1919]

Very excited to be working with the @MiravoiceAI team! They are hiring Founding Engineers. I am happy to make any introductions!

[Nishant Jain @najain]

I’m thrilled to share that @MiravoiceAI has raised $6.3M from @Unusual_VC, @neo, and @25m_official to reinvent the way the world collects data.