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Do Top Silicon Valley VCs Favor Their Own? Survey of 8,525 Startups: Fund Background Triples Success Odds, Chinese Educational Background Shows Negative Correlation

60 minutes ago

Beating AI Express News (Dongcha) — For startups in Silicon Valley, what credentials most easily secure top venture capital funding? While graduating from a top university and having big tech company experience help, the biggest advantage surprisingly goes to those who previously worked at a top VC firm. Menlo Ventures partner Deedy Das analyzed 8,525 U.S. startups founded between 2019 and 2026 using Harmonic data. He studied 63 founder background traits to compare who is more likely to land lead investments from top VCs in seed or Series A rounds. The results show founders with top VC experience have a roughly 2.83x higher chance of securing a lead investment than peers with similar other conditions, ranking first. Founders with experience at cutting-edge AI labs and cybersecurity backgrounds have odds of 2.16x and 2.03x respectively. By comparison, top university backgrounds give a 1.41x odds, and former Google employees have 1.29x. The term "former VC employees" includes not just investors, but also in-house entrepreneurs, researchers, and even interns. Many were incubating startup projects within the fund, so they know the investment process and can directly access investors. This pre-built network and information advantage may be key to their easier funding access. The study also found several negative correlation factors: founders with an MBA have a lead investment odds ratio of 0.65; those educated in China have 0.59; and teams where the oldest founder is over 50 have 0.57.

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MiniMax rallied nearly 11%, with some longs turning from losses to profits.

According to TradingBeats monitoring, the MINIMAX contract is currently trading at $22.36, up around 10.9% in the past 24 hours. On-chain, three large holders (each holding over $100,000) collectively hold approximately $516,700 in positions, with a weighted average entry price of $22.80, resulting in a total unrealized loss of roughly $10,000. Two of the holders are in unrealized profit, while one remains in unrealized loss; some low-cost long positions have started turning profitable. The address starting with 0xfd42 holds a $180,000 long position at an entry price of $21.18, with an unrealized profit of about $9,489. The largest long holder, address 0xf777, holds a $181,300 long position at an entry price of $21.60, and has turned a prior loss into a profit of around $6,210. Another long holder, address 0xd33c, has an entry price as high as $26.06, with remaining long positions valued at $155,400. This address began reducing positions to cut losses this morning, realizing a liquidation loss of approximately $6,074. On the news front, MiniMax announced this morning further progress on community quantification and local deployment adaptation for M3.1 Flash, including reducing the operating memory threshold and expanding hardware support.

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Solana has officially merged the SIMD-0567 proposal, planning to replace the existing ATA program with p-ATA that delivers higher compute unit efficiency.

According to Solana’s official GitHub page, the Solana Foundation has merged the SIMD-0567 proposal into its main branch. The proposal aims to replace the existing Associated Token Account (ATA) program with an optimized version called p-ATA, built on Pinocchio, to reduce compute unit (CU) consumption and boost execution efficiency. Per the proposal, p-ATA uses a no-standard-library design, avoids heap memory allocation, parses instruction and account data via zero-copy, and minimizes dependencies. Developers’ prior benchmark tests show p-ATA cuts transaction execution time by roughly 35% compared to the legacy program. When a Rent Sysvar account is provided, CU consumption drops further, though actual execution time rises slightly, with transaction-level latency remaining around 1%. The proposal went through multiple rounds of technical review, and was officially merged 17 hours ago after completing formal verification of the new program, updating the program’s binary hash, and finalizing the migration process. It’s important to note that merging the proposal does not equate to a mainnet program replacement; the new program still needs to be deployed in line with the established migration workflow.

6 minutes ago

RUNE has dropped around 20% in the past 24 hours after being used to launder over $40 million for Binance hackers.

According to HTX market data, THORChain’s native token RUNE plummeted around 20% in the past 24 hours, briefly falling below $0.5. Notably, during the earlier Bitget hack incident, massive funds flowed through THORChain’s cross-chain swaps, driving a sharp surge in trading volume and fees. The market viewed this as a positive for the protocol’s revenue, leading to a corresponding rally in RUNE. This latest decline stems from heightened regulatory and security risks, as the market worries whether THORChain can uphold its permissionless model while resolving the conflict between security and regulation. On-chain data shows that after the recent Binance hack, hackers deposited approximately 185.1 million TRX and 3.83 million USDT via THORChain, totaling around 2,697 transactions. They netted roughly $48.3 million in swaps through THORChain, with actual proceeds of about $42.7 million—around $5.7 million lost to fees and slippage. Additionally, the FBI, U.S. Secret Service, and IRS Criminal Investigation (IRS-CI) jointly requested THORNode, RPC nodes, and DeFi service providers to block fund flows linked to North Korean hackers. THORChain co-founder Chad Barraford stated that node operators have no more information than the general public and made no explicit commitment to proactively block addresses. Another co-founder, JP Thor, publicly opposed cooperating with freezing efforts, arguing that the protocol should adhere to decentralization and permissionless principles.

6 minutes ago

South Korea's KOSPI index saw its intra-day gain widen to 3%, with SK Hynix rising more than 5%.

According to Bitget market data, South Korea’s KOSPI index has continued to rally, with its intraday gain expanding to 3%. SK Hynix rose more than 5%, and Samsung Electronics gained 2.9%.

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Pando Rings hackers transferred 4,000 ETH worth approximately $9.22 million via Tornado Cash.

According to EmberCN’s monitoring, the hacker who stole approximately $22 million in assets from the Pando Rings project four years ago spent 16.98 million DAI to buy 7,548 ETH on the dip, with an average purchase price of around $2,249, after the Binance attack three days ago triggered a market downturn. About two hours ago, the hacker transferred 4,000 of these ETH (valued at roughly $9.22 million) via Tornado Cash.

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Unitree UNITREE stages a V-shaped reversal after a flash crash, with its price rebounding 15% to trigger short position liquidations.

According to TradingBeats monitoring, the UNITREE contract from Unitree saw a rapid V-shaped reversal today. At 9 AM this morning, its price plummeted from $95.762 to $85, a drop of roughly 11.24%. The price then rebounded continuously, recouping all losses from the earlier decline after 11 AM, hitting a high of $97.747 – a roughly 15% rise from the low point. As of press time, the mark price stands at around $97.18. During the price rebound, the funding rate turned negative rapidly. UNITREE’s hourly funding rate was still +0.000625% at the 10:00 settlement, shifted to -0.07247% at 11:00, and further fell to -0.16303% at 12:00. Amid the rebound, an address starting with 0x1770 that opened a new short position was liquidated: 1,751.8 UNITREE were forcibly closed at an average price of ~$91.47, totaling about $160,200 in value and resulting in a loss of roughly $7,838.51. The account subsequently resumed trading and now holds a small long position in UNITREE. In the same period, UNITREE’s 24-hour trading volume is approximately $25.59 million, while the notional value of its open interest stands at around $29.27 million.

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