The Spotlight by Founders Capital - Edition 3

What We’re Reading

CoreWeave's IPO Tested the Waters—and Missed the Mark - Financial Times

Craig Coben articulately breaks down the core factors that muted the success of CoreWeave’s highly anticipated IPO, which ultimately saw half of the shares allocated to just three investors.

Researchers warn of ‘catastrophic overtraining’ in LLMs - VentureBeat

Can too much training data make AI worse? This article explores a new study that challenges the “more is better” mindset in AI development, warning of something called catastrophic overtraining. A compelling read for anyone curious about the limits of scaling.

MBAs are launching venture capital funds to back their classmates. Now, Harvard Business School has one, too. - Business Insider

Harvard MBAs just launched their own VC fund, Twenty25 Ventures, raising nearly $1M to back startups founded by classmates. It's part of a growing trend where students aren’t just studying entrepreneurship, they’re funding it.

Must-Listen Podcasts

Tugce Bulut, CEO of EloquentAI - Success Is In The Mind

Tugce Bulut was the founder of Streetbees, an AI-driven consumer intelligence platform that raised over $50 million from top-tier investors. Now? She’s moved to San Francisco to launch her next venture: EloquentAI. In this episode, Tugce opens up about the lessons learned from scaling Streetbees, building resilient teams, and what’s driving her forward in this exciting new chapter at the heart of Silicon Valley’s innovation scene.

Will Revolut and Monzo List in the UK?- 20VC

Dame Julia Hoggett, CEO of the London Stock Exchange, unpacks how pension fund reform has weakened the UK economy, fact-checks the stigma around UK vs US listings, and shares what it’s really like to lead a national stock exchange. A fascinating conversation with one of London’s most influential financial figures.

Founders Capital Perspective

If you’re enjoying this newsletter and want to stay on the pulse, make sure to read our weekly private market trends newsletter - The Dealflow by Founders Capital. Last week we explored the relative strength of UK Fintech, and, as always, shared our insights and perspective.

Research & Resources

Tracing the thoughts of a large language model - Anthropic

Anthropic’s latest research takes a big step forward in decoding how large language models like Claude "think." Borrowing techniques from neuroscience, researchers traced flows of information inside the model to understand how it processes concepts, makes predictions, and represents language.

One standout finding: Claude appears to operate in a shared conceptual space across multiple languages. By translating sentences and tracking internal activations, researchers uncovered a kind of universal “language of thought” - a key insight that could help improve translation, reasoning, and multilingual understanding in AI systems.

The team also found that Claude plans several words ahead during generation (especially in poetry and arithmetic), and that the model’s reasoning can be subtly influenced by prompt phrasing - an important step toward understanding both its strengths and limitations.

While we’re still in the early days of decoding how AI thinks, this research marks meaningful progress in understanding these systems - and making them more reliable.

Read the full paper here.

Last week we asked you: Where’s the Smart Money Going in AI Agents?

The most popular response was: “(B) Industry-specific AI agents (healthcare, legal, finance)”

Beyond the Boardroom

Inversion and The Power of Avoiding Stupidity – Farnam Street

Farnam Street delves into the concept of "Inversion" - a problem-solving approach that involves thinking backward to uncover potential pitfalls and solutions. This method, favored by thinkers like Bezos and Munger, is invaluable for navigating uncertainty in entrepreneurship.

How to turn a group of strangers into a team – Amy Edmondson (TED Talk)

Harvard Business School’s Amy Edmondson unpacks the science of “teaming” - the art of quickly building collaboration among people who’ve never worked together before. She highlights how trust, curiosity, and psychological safety enable effective teamwork, especially in fast-moving, high-stakes environments. A must-watch for founders building dynamic teams in uncertain conditions.

Like what you see? Think we missed anything? Let us know and we will check it out ahead of the next edition.