Interessant3 #140 | 🔁 Fundraising Loops, 🧠 Science Without Results, 💫 Gold from Lead
Three Interesting Things for W/C 2025-05-11
Double issue this week. This one is mostly on science/technology and money.
🔁 Fundraising as Loop, Not Ladder
First-time founders quickly discover that startup fundraising feels less like scaling a ladder and more like spinning in place, until suddenly, everything happens at once. Andreas Klinger lays out why early-stage rounds often hinge on perception: investors hesitate until momentum snowballs, then rush in. His tactical playbook is sharp: treat early calls as advice-seeking, not pitching; use SAFE notes to seed momentum; and always enter with an ask (especially for intros). Above all, keep building. Traction closes rounds better than tweaking your deck.
🧠 Science, Cuts, and the Case Not Made
In a contrarian take, Terence Kealey from the Cato Institute argues that Trump’s budget cuts to federal science agencies were more empirically justified than critics admit, but poorly defended. Drawing on decades of data, Kealey notes that post-war surges in government R&D didn’t correlate with stronger growth or longer lives. Instead, he contends, public funding has often crowded out private innovation. The failure isn’t the cuts, it’s the Trump administration’s refusal to explain them clearly or implement them gradually.
💫 CERN Turns Lead into Gold
Speaking of government-funded science, ALICE, one of the LHC’s key detectors, has observed a process straight from the pages of medieval alchemy: lead nuclei skimming past each other at near light-speed, ejecting three protons, and momentarily becoming gold. Roughly 89,000 gold nuclei now form every second at CERN, though each vanishes before it can be seen.
Join us next week for three more intriguing topics that challenge the norm and expand your horizons! ✌️
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