The Computomatix Times

The US government will give your startup up to $1.55M and take 0% equity.

@NSF's America's Seed Fund is open again after Congress reauthorized it in April.

Three tracks:
- Phase I: up to $305K to prove the idea
- Phase II: up to $1.25M to build it
- Fast-Track: up to $1.55M, both phases in one go

Who can apply:
- US-based startups with 500 or fewer employees
- 51%+ owned by US citizens or permanent residents
- Not majority owned by VCs
- All the work done in the US

How it works:
- Send a 3-page Project Pitch first
- NSF invites the best ones to submit a full proposal
- Next full proposal deadline: Nov 4

Phase I funding rates have run about 10 to 20%. It's work, but nobody takes your cap table.

Application link 👉 seedfund.nsf.gov

Bookmark and tag a tech founder who needs this.

The Claude Startups program is expanding to more founders.

Members can get a year of Claude Team, API credits, special offers on the tools a startup runs on, and office hours with Anthropic’s Applied AI team.

Qatar's entire startup ecosystem raised $11M in venture capital in 2023. This new program writes single checks of $5.5M. One company can now land half the country's annual VC flow just by agreeing to move to Doha.

Here's the mechanism underneath it. Cities with real startup density charge you to be there. San Francisco collects it in rent, New York collects it in salaries, and founders pay gladly because the customers, talent, and capital are all within a mile. Cities without that density have to run the trade in reverse. They pay you.

So the $5.5M is Doha putting a price on the network effects it doesn't have yet.

The regional race explains the urgency. Saudi Arabia pulled in $1.4B of venture funding in 2023, 52% of all MENA. The UAE led the region in deal count. Qatar took 6% of deals. In a three-country contest for Gulf tech, third place pays cash.

The structure shows how targeted this is. It's equity, drawn from a $100M fund managed by Qatar Development Bank, disbursed on milestones, and relocation is mandatory. A $100M fund writing checks up to $5.5M caps out around 18 companies at the top track. They're running an auction for a few dozen anchor startups, and the visas and subsidized housing exist to tip founders who are already indifferent between Gulf cities.

This playbook has worked before. Singapore's Economic Development Board spent the late 1960s paying companies to show up, and Texas Instruments went from decision to production in Singapore in about 50 days in 1968. GDP per capita there was around $500 at the time. Today it's roughly $90,000.

The unsolved part is retention. Checks get companies to land. Density is what makes them stay, and density only arrives after enough checks pile up in the same place at the same time. Singapore cleared that threshold. Qatar is betting $100M it can too.

It took me 5 minutes to get into the Claude Startups program

And you don't need VC funding anymore

What you get:

- A year of Claude Team
- API credits
- Priority rate limits
- Deals on the tools a startup runs on

How to apply:

- Create a Claude Console account (the API one, not the app)
- Use a company email, not Gmail
- Go to claude.com/programs/startups
- Fill in the form with what you're building on Claude

Easiest trade I've made all year

we’ve hit $2m ARR in 5 hours

not a joke btw

Airbnb just responded to "reviewgate"

The replies here are literally hundreds of people who got their reviews removed directly contradicting what Airbnb says here

The "policy" they have seems to be to remove a guest's review and rating whenever a host asks for it

I don't get why they don't just fix this? Everyone would love to see Airbnb have honest reviews and ratings you can trust

Short term you might get more bookings if everything is a 4.5 or 4.99 but long term people discover it means nothing and they can't trust your platform and they leave elsewhere

I think they're in some internal gridlock by MBAs who want to see revenue go up, not realizing that they're destroying a company

I hope they fix it!