Where there are people, there are rivers and lakes.
Author |Wang Wang edited the first picture of the vine week**: ShopifyMafia's culture is written in the genes of Silicon Valley people.
The original Mafia may have been the "rebellious eight" who left the Shockley Semiconductor Lab to create Fairchild Semiconductor, and two of them later left to start their own business and start Intel's half-century career.
In the Internet era, the world-renowned PayPal mafia is still releasing huge influence in the technology and investment circles. Of course, Google Mafia and Facebook Mafia are also powerful. Today, as generative AI continues to grow in popularity, OpenAI Mafia is starting to show its prominence. It's not just the top giants that have Mafia, some "middle factories" have also formed their own social circles over the years, such as Palantir Mafia, Slack Mafia and Instacart Mafia, which we have followed. In other words, when the forest is big, you can always make up for starting a mafia. In fact, Silicon Valley tech companies see Mafia not only as a source of pride, but also as an extremely important competitive advantage. Mafia social circles allow them to quickly acquire new technologies, evaluate new ideas and attract talent. Leading tech companies put a lot of effort into maintaining their strong MAFIA, and are also actively recruiting new talent through various channels such as startup competitions, hackathons, innovation incubation programs, and more. Of course, there is the warmth of insiders, and there is the indifference of outsiders. When it comes to people outside of their own gangs, the mafias in Silicon Valley also take on the posture of gangsters. Ryan Breslow, the founder of payments company Bolt, has publicly attacked rival Stripe and the Y Combinator behind it. He pointed out that YC used his network and influence to attract customers, investment, and brand endorsement to Stripe, which led to Bolt's hard work for 8 years to break through the $11 billion valuation - and Stripe's easily exceeded the $50 billion valuation. Where there are people, there are rivers and lakes, and where there are rivers and lakes, there are always you fighting for me.
There is always envy of the big factory Mafia for how to start a sect and create a grand cause, or envy the deep brotherhood of the blue wisps of the road. In fact, outside of the legendary story, there are also stompy head-to-head flowers that don't sound so good. There is nothing new under the sun, let alone Silicon Valley Mafia, which circle is not like this. Instagram, founded 13 years ago, was born with a golden spoon (with a seed round of investment from A16Z), and was acquired by Facebook two years after its establishment. To date, Insta Mafia, formed by former employees of Instagram, has founded 33 companies and raised a total of 2$4.8 billion. Interestingly, Insta Mafia's members are mainly engineers and product managers, and Instagram's Engineer No. 2 is among them. From the perspective of business areas, many of them are web3 companies that have become popular in the past few years, and finance and entertainment also occupy a fairly high proportion. Among the current trends in generative AI, Tome, an AI PPT generation tool, is also a member of Insta Mafia. 
Founder: Hunter Horsley, Former Instagram Product ManagerCumulative funding: $84.5 millionInvestor: General CatalystStage: Series B Bitwise is a leading crypto asset manager in San Francisco, managing the world's largest crypto index** and offering a range of products.
cyberconnect
Founder: Ryan Li, Former Instagram Software EngineerCumulative Funding Amount: $25 Million Investors: Animoca Brands, Sky9 Capital, Uphonest CapitalStage : Series A CyberConnect is a crypto startup that develops tools for Web3 social**, gaming, and metaverse applications. CyberConnect aims to build a decentralized social graph protocol and is committed to returning data ownership to users In order to break the monopoly of giants and realize user data centers, the CyberConnect team hopes to build a social graph protocol to replace centralized institutions such as Facebook, and realize data in the context of Web3. Sharing between applications, ultimately achieving the goal of users migrating their social data (the accounts they follow and the followers they follow) between any web3 platform.
chaos labs
Founder: Omer Goldberg, Former Head of Technology at InstagramCumulative funding: $20 millionInvestor: Bessemer Venture PartnersStage: Seed LaunchChaos Labs is a cloud platform designed to address the security vulnerabilities and technical challenges posed by decentralized blockchain applications. It provides a testing environment for dApps with high-fidelity** and scenario-based simulations, helping teams reduce time-to-market while ensuring the security of the protocol. It is currently available for Ethereum, with plans to expand to other blockchains.
run the world
Founder: Xiaoyin Qu, former Instagram Product Manager.
Cumulative Funding Amount: $14.8 Million Investor: G** Capital Stage: Series A Run The World is a one-stop solution for virtual social gatherings, webinars, and conferences to increase user engagement.
shibuya
Founder: Jacky Wang, Former Instagram Software EngineerCumulative Funding Amount: $6.9 Million Investor: A16Z Stage: Seed RoundShibuya is a Web3 content studio and creator platform that prioritizes decentralization and blockchain technology for secure content distribution and monetization. It provides tools and resources to help creators produce high-quality content and build a deep connection with their audience. Shibuya aims to disrupt the traditional model of content monetization by leveraging NFTs and changing the way content is created, owned, and consumed.
sesame labs
Founder: Aman Jain, Former Instagram Software EngineerCumulative Funding Amount: $4.9 Million Investor: Twin VenturesStage: Seed LaunchSesame Labs is Web3's first marketing platform to rethink what decentralized and fair advertising looks like in Web3.
kangaroo
Founder: Maria Zlatkova, Former Instagram Software EngineerCumulative Funding Amount: $3.3 Million Investor: Greylock Stage: Seed Round Kangaroo is a gaming platform that allows fans to interact with celebrities from Hollywood to NFT projects and create new story games in the metaverse.
ottr finance
Founder: Aleksei Zakharov, Former Instagram Software EngineerCumulative funding: $3.1 millionInvestors: Race CapitalStage: Pre-Seedottr Finance is a mobile wallet that brings the best Web3 financial services to customers who don't understand cryptocurrency, starting with instant global payments, zero-fee crypto transactions, and yield products.
Founder: Eric Wei, Former Instagram Product ManagerCumulative funding: $45.6 millionInvestor: Union Square VenturesStage: Series Akarat Financial Offering business credit cards tailored to the needs of digital creators and influencers. It is helping creators and influencers deal with financial issues such as taxes, bookkeeping, and credit cards.
rutter
Founder: Eric Yu, Former Instagram Front-End EngineerCumulative Funding Amount: $28.5 Million Investor: Y Combinator Stage: Series A Rutter is a trusted integration partner for leading fintech and business companies, offering APIs that can read and write to more than 40 business, accounting, and payment platforms. Its customers include Ramp, Mercury and Airwallex.
attune
Founder: Andy Bandyopadhyay, Former Instagram Product ResearcherCumulative Funding Amount: $2 Million Investor: N**AL R**ikant Stage: Seed Round Attune is a B2B technology platform that helps employers and financial services companies enhance the financial health of their employees and customers. Its customers include global card issuers, top 25 banks, and innovative credit unions.
Founder: Charles Gorintin, Former Instagram Data ScientistCumulative funding: $54.3 millionInvestor: Ribbit CapitalStage: Series Ean is a health partner that provides intuitive health insurance, mental health services, and access to clinics. They reach more than 315,000 members and work with 20,000 companies to promote a healthy, productive lifestyle.
nourish
Founder: Stephanie Liu, Former Instagram Software EngineerCumulative Funding Amount: $9.3 Million Investor: BoxGroup Stage: Seed RoundNourish Connecting users with registered dietitians through telehealth, supporting the use of health insurance payments. Nourish focuses on people with chronic diseases and wants to help Americans eat better.
Founder: Greg Hochmuth, Second Engineer, First Product Manager on InstagramCumulative funding: $5 millionInvestor: BoxGroup Stage: Series A Dreams is a mobile-only TV platform that creates a mobile-first TV news experience based on computer vision technology. The company's software converts live TV news into a vertical** format in real-time, enabling the first real-time, 24/7 vertical** news channel.
Founder: Omar Raja, Founder of SportsPostersCumulative funding: $40.5 millionInvestor: Hillsven CapitalStage: Series C Bleacher Report is a digital platform for sports fans that offers sports and cultural content created and collaborated with millennials. rylo
Founder: Alex Karpenko, Chris Cunningham, Former Instagram Software EngineerCumulative Funding Amount: $31 Million Investor: Sequoia Capital Stage: Series B Rylo is a compact and powerful camera that captures 360° with superior stabilization technology *Its advanced features enable users to create cinematic and visually appealing ** that can be easily shared with others.
Founder: Eli Brown, Former Instagram Software EngineerCumulative Funding Amount: $10.2 Million Investor: InitializedStage: Seed LaunchGuilded Connect gamers and fans across all platforms around the world, providing communication, recruitment, collaboration, and organizational tools to enhance their gaming experience. The company's goal is to create an inclusive and enjoyable space for all gamers.
honeycomb
Founder: Nicole Wee, Former Instagram Product ManagerCumulative funding: $4 millionInvestor: Precursor VenturesStage: Seed LaunchHoneycomb Like a quick and easy automatic magic baby book, interactive digital scrapbook. Built by parents, for parents, preserving children's ideas.
BloomFounder: Lauren Vegter, Former Instagram Product ManagerCumulative funding: $2.5 millionInvestor: Y CombinatorStage: Seed RoundBloom is a social and dating app that helps people connect and build community around events. marco experiences
Founder: Nick Freeman, Former Instagram Software EngineerCumulative funding: $2.9 millionInvestor: Potluck VenturesStage: Seed LaunchMarco is a platform for finding, organizing, and booking high-quality experiences that foster collaboration and engagement. Marco believes that technology can foster community by creating experiences that build new relationships and strengthen existing ones.
Founder: Keith Peiris, Former Instagram Messaging, Camera AR Product LeaderCumulative Funding Amount: $75.3 Million Investor: Greylock Stage: Series B Tome is a PPT production tool that leverages generative AI. Creators generate narrative content in seconds, from presentations to outlines to stories and visuals.
integrate.ai
Founder: Steve Irvine, Former Global Head of Instagram Partner ProgramRaising fundraising: $49.6 millionInvestor: Real VenturesStage: Series A Integrate AI helps developers solve the world's important problems by unlocking the value of sensitive data.
transform
Founder: Paul Yang, Former Instagram Software EngineerCumulative Funding Amount: $24.5 Million Investor: Index VenturesStage: Series A The app delivers business intelligence with a metrics-first mindset, providing stunning visualizations, governance tools, and monitoring capabilities. It's built on top of Metricflow's advanced open-source semantic layer for consistency and a unique analytics experience.
Founder: Zain Manji, Former Instagram Software EngineerCumulative Funding Amount: $1.9 Million Investor: Y Combinator Stage: Seed LaunchFIIX Provide affordable, convenient, on-demand auto repair services from home or office to people in Toronto. The above is all the introductions of entrepreneurs and companies that have come out of Instagram, do you think Instagram Mafia can have giants?