Gibson Launches A Search for The Iconic 'Marty McFly' Guitar From ‘Back to the Future'
The guitar that Marty McFly famously played at the Enchantment Under the Sea Dance in Back to the Future has been missing for decades, and hopefully it won't take a DeLorean and a flux capacitor to find it.
Gibson — the guitar brand behind the iconic cherry red ES-345 Michael J. Fox wielded in the movie — announced that it's on the hunt for the guitar, with the company sharing a callout Tuesday asking for anyone who may have details on its location to reach out with tips. 'Have You Seen This Guitar?' Gibson's poster reads, accompanied by a still from the movie of Fox playing the instrument. The search — and if all goes the way Gibson would like, the re-discovery — will be featured in an upcoming documentary the company is producing called Lost to the Future.
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Gibson posted a video Tuesday with Back to the Future stars Michael J. Fox, Lea Thompson and Christopher Lloyd — along with Huey Lewis, who cameoed in the film and whose 'The Power of Love' was famously featured in the movie — all calling on the public to send information to their website, or to call the 800-line Gibson has set up.
'We need your help, we're trying to find the guitar I played in Back to the Future,' Fox said in the video. 'It's somewhere lost in the space-time continuum, or it's in some teamster's garage.'
The company initiated the search and documentary this year to tie the efforts to Back to the Future's 40th anniversary, and Gibson is also featuring an interview with Michael J. Fox on Oct. 21 ('Back to the Future Day') and will release custom guitars modeled after the original Gibson they're searching for, Gibson said.
'We've been looking into leads and rumors for a long time, and as you can imagine, we're talking 40 years ago, so memories fade,' Lost to the Future director Doc Crotzer tells The Hollywood Reporter. 'We weren't in the era of digital trails, or of receipts and things like that. There are conflicting reports too. You can find about as many different rumors as you can people.'
Indeed, there are several different stories about what happened to the guitar. The Back to the Future team first rented the instrument from Norman's Rare Guitars, a famous guitar shop in Los Angeles, when they were filming the first movie. They'd returned the guitar after they finished shooting, and per Crotzer and Mark Agnesi — Gibson's director of brand experience and Norman's former GM from 2009 to 2019, that's where their trail currently goes cold.
Crotzer first asked Agnesi about the guitar around a decade ago when Agnesi was still working at Norm's, and several years ago, after Crotzer first spoke with Back to the Future co-creator Bob Gale, he'd approached Agnesi again at Gibson. Agnesi and Crotzer list off several rumors, like that the guitar was headed to auction in the '80s but never made it there for a sale.
A likely scenario, they say, is that someone simply bought it from Norm's and the origins of the sale have been lost. Norman's owner, Norman Harris, has given several interviews in the past, suggesting he sold it to a friend, who eventually sold it to a woman who came back to his store years later and offered $1 million to sell it back. But Harris had also suggested in the past that it'd been sold to someone in Japan. Needless to say, so far Gibson and Crotzer haven't tracked the guitar yet. Aside from the public inquiry, Crotzer says the film is taking them through prop houses and guitar shops as well.
'I knew that guitar came from Norm's, the first day on the job, I was looking in cases,' Agnesi says. 'Every time I'd go to storage to Norm's warehouse, I was checking ES-cases to see if he still had it. I've been looking since 2009, 15 years of looking for this thing. It's cool we're going to let the world know we're looking for it and everyone gets to join in.'
Gale tells THR that he 'never gave it that much thought' on what happened to the guitar before he was told it was missing in around 2019, but that since then he's become more invested in tracking it down.
'It's like we want to put it on milk cartons, 'have you seen me,'' Gale says with a slight chuckle, describing the search efforts. 'We rented the guitar again for Part 2, but I've learned that guitar might not have been the one we used in the first film. So the question is, what happened to the original?'
Back to the Future's high school dance scene is one of the most memorable guitar scenes in the history of the film business, as Marty McFly unintentionally inspires the creation of Chuck Berry's 'Johnny B. Goode' by performing the song with the band on stage, eventually losing the crowd as his performance devolves into a Van Halen-style guitar solo. Artists, including John Mayer and Coldplay's Chris Martin, have called that scene in the movie instrumental in inspiring them to pursue music.
The scene almost never happened, as Robert Zemeckis contemplated going straight from the kiss to the scene at the clock tower, but it stayed in after testing at a preview when the audience reacted positively to it.
'We had no idea it would be part of the film's legacy, the Johnny B. Goode scene is the only scene in the entire movie which doesn't really advance the character or plot. We were basically doing what they do in India, where we stopped the movie for a musical number,' Gale says. 'It's been amazing over the years to discover how important that particular scene was to people. It inspired so many people to pick up a guitar and be a rock and roller.'
Gibson says the guitar in the movie was likely a 1960 or 1961 ES-345 (Its use in the film was a historical inaccuracy, given most of the movie was supposed to take place in 1955 and the 345 didn't hit shelves until three years later). An early '60s 345 on its own could already fetch $25,000 to $50,000 given how sought-after vintage Gibsons are, but its place as one of film's most iconic guitars makes it priceless.
Gibson and the doc team don't have the guitar's serial number, which would be the easiest way to identify a specific instrument. Luckily, they say, the guitar has a key identifier that makes it stand out. Usually, the ES-345 models would have a split parallelogram inlay going completely down the fretboard, but on the guitar in the movie, the 12th fret had a single sold bar marker on it instead, a rare anomaly that would make the guitar more unmistakable.
'That's the smoking gun if we're being honest,' Agnesi says. 'It's that inlay on the 12th fret that's really going to let us know that we found it.'
Overall, the team feels confident their search will be successful, even if the search has to go well outside the country. Agnesi has a 'Japan theory' for the guitar's whereabouts, given a vintage guitar boom that hit the country in the '80s. He said Gibson's international teams in Japan, China and Europe will help spread the word as well.
As for what they'll do if they actually do find it? That's still to be determined, though Crotzer said, 'there's something poetic about the idea of reuniting this guitar with Michael J. Fox, whether it's for an hour, or forever.'
'My hope would be whoever has this guitar is enough of a fan of the movies to allow that to happen. There are a lot of possible scenarios. Does the person who has it want to be found? Do they want to, say, lend us the guitar?'
Agnesi says he'd like to get the guitar in a place it can be showcased for 'as many people to have a chance to see it as possible.'
'If that means Gibson buys it for their collection and puts it in the vault, I am absolutely 100 percent ready to start talking with anybody who comes forward who might have the guitar about potentially buying it,' Agnesi says.
Still, as Gale says, the focus remains on finding the guitar right now.
'At this point, we just kind of want to know it's in good hands and is being well taken care of,' he says. 'Everything else you figure out after that, but let's solve that mystery first.'
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AI is shaking up the tech sector. Here's what you can expect
Listen and subscribe to Stocks In Translation on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you find your favorite podcast. In this episode of Stocks in Translation, Free Agency founder & CEO Sherveen Mashayekhi joins Markets and Data Editor Jared Blikre and Producer Sydnee Fried to discuss the current state of venture capital as well as the tech landscape in 2025. The trio breaks down the broader economic impact from things like sector layoffs and AI, and what people can anticipate moving into the future. Twice a week, Stocks In Translation cuts through the market mayhem, noisy numbers and hyperbole to give you the information you need to make the right trade for your portfolio. You can find more episodes here, or watch on your favorite streaming service. This post was written by Lauren Pokedoff Welcome to Stocks and Translation Broadcasting from Yahoo Finance Studios in New York. I'm Jared Blickery, your host, and with me is the People's Voice, also known as Sydney Freed. Please like, subscribe, and comment on Stocks and Translation on Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon, or YouTube, and today we are welcoming Sherveen Mashaki, founder and CEO of the talent advisory firm Free Agency. He also hosts the live New York City pitch show The Feedback Loop, which gives founders blunt investor every week and today we're gonna be talking about venture capital, startups, and yes, AI. Our word of the day is series, not in the baseball sense, but how companies raise money before they become public. And this episode is brought to you by the number 59,000. That's the number of tech layoffs this year through May, according to TechCrunch, and that's after 150,000 layoffs in 2024. Why this matters for everyone as tech feels the AI heat before we dig in, Sherveen, uh, just tell us your overview of what's transpired this year in your view in 2025, and we're almost halfway through. The fact that we're almost halfway through is shocking. Um, it's been a weird year in tech, broadly speaking, it's been a funky year because moving faster than the founders and venture capitalists can kind of keep up with. So you've seen basically just like, I'd say if you ask most tech founders, most tech commentators, they'd go, it's just been a blink. Then there's the politics and infusion of venture capital, kind of tech takes over DC theme that a lot of people are concerned about at the same so 2025 so far has been chaotic, and I think is probably in our industry of predecessor for a continuous tumultuous few years, AI continuing to outpace kind of how people can understand what's going on, um, tech and politics continuing to converge in weird and interesting ways and venture capital experiencing kind of transformation because of all of those factors. So odd, I'm with you 100%. And it just seems like we're at the this, we're gonna dig into it, but now our our word of the day, and this is series, series which could be A, B, C, it is the letter tag for each round of venture funding. Every new series sells fresh shares and usually lands a bigger check at a higher company valuation, at least that's where it's supposed to go. But, uh, tell us how the venture capital processworks. Yeah. So typically you're gonna have an early stage company go through a variety of funding these nicknames mean different things in different phases. And so you might raise a pre-seed round or a seed round of funding when you're in early stage business. This is when you might go to some angel investors or an accelerator. These are small money folks, either individuals, and you're an angel investor. I'm an angel investor myself, and so you might come to me for, um, as an individual 1500 to $20,000 depending on how wealthy I am. Um, and then you might go to an accelerator or a small fund for a couple $ those terms have been fuzzy over time. So preceed is a kind of a recent machination because a seed round meant too many things. It could mean you raised $50,000 or you raised $3 million and people could no longer tell the difference between what that meant for you as a business or what the CEO did in that moment. But then after that, you start to get to some standardization. So after you raise a seed round, let's say again.5000 all the way to maybe 2 million bucks, you might raise a bridge round another seed, but you eventually get to series A, B, C. Increasing rounds of funding where investors are getting confident that when they put dollars to work, there's something they're betting on a business model that's working or an approach that's working and they want to go, hey, let's pour $5 million.10 million dollars, $20 million onto whatever's going on. And venture back startup ourselves. We've raised $15 million. One of that, one of those rounds is a $10 million Series A. Um, so these are mostly so that there's common language around how much money is being thrown at a company and what sort of confidence you guys talk really fast. I also just talk extraordinarily fast. I get that feedback all the time. So I'm probably even in that crowd.I have questions about the seeds, but I'm just curious how people even find angel investors. Is there like a database? What's your phone number? Yeah, so the hard part actually for a lot of first time founders is this initial finding of the first set of investors because you need an initial yes, whether it's an individual angel or if you raise later rounds, you need a firm to give you your first yes. Typically speaking, these are going to be for most founders, and this is a bad thing about our industry, people you know, so you're going to need to somewhat or find your way into that network. But if you're not somebody who has that network, then your initial few attempts are going to be going to events, finding, let's say a tech accelerator. These are programs that will set up 3 month initial boot camps for early startups. There you can apply public, you can apply online form, but for the most part, again, you're looking to either be in that network already because of where you worked, maybe you worked at a startup, maybe you met somebody who became a venture capitalist or an angel investor, or you're going to need to kind of break your way in through again, an event and accelerator, because you needthem to introduce you. Let's say you do find somebody who gives you your first yes, they're going to only be 500 100 $20,000 of your initial round. You need a couple 100 grand to get started. They're going to need to introduce you to others inside the venture capital ecosystem. And why so many seeds? Because you said you could actually have multiple pre-seed before you even get to ABC. So this becomes the like language of venture capital, right? And so the fact that we call something a seed round is, is not only a deination of how much money you're receiving and at what sort of also a sense of your progress. And so seed round companies typically still going to be a set of experiments at early stage team, not yet scaling to an amount of revenue. Depends on your business model, whether you're consumer or B2B. Um, but by the time you get to Series A, or if you say you're raising a Series A, you raised a Series A, you're indicating to everybody in the world, whether you're partners, future investors, we have figured out our initial business model on the seed. We've made some progress. We're now betting on something that is working. Let's say we built a CRM for doctors, it's some extent, customer exactly database for all of your patients and your insurance companies, all of that. Maybe you go to your Series A because you go, OK, we, we're making 500K in annual revenue. We want to take this to the next level, we need to invest in more technology, but there's something here that's working. If you're raising, let's say you raise a Series B, get to Series C. It's time a Series C, again, this is just the language of venture capital. The amount of money evaluation can differ, but then you've really proven some revenue you've probably been making one.5 to $10 million on an annual basis and you're saying there's even more to bet on. We want to scale our go to market teams, we want to do market expansion. We have competitors that are, you know, at our heels. And so again, it winds up being a language in venture capital, nothing is strict. And so again, you you saw Series A, let's say in the frothy times of 2021, when venture capital was at its height, a Series A started to mean anywhere from 10 million bucks being raised by a company to 100 million bucks being raised by a company. And this is one of the critiques I think of the language of seed or series this stuff again, winds up being redefined based on the norms of the moment rather than being definitional. Ilove moving goalposts. But you just mentioned 2021 is a peak, and this led to my next question I was going to ask you anyway. 2022 was a terrible bear market in stocks and, you know, publicly traded stocks, but we also narrowly avoided a recession. And then we talked to a couple of VC people last year and they said things were just finally starting to thaw in 2024. What is the market like now for funding? It is very feast or famine based on who you are and what you're doing. And so the market overall for venture capital, uh, if we think about this is, you know, kind of the market of how LPs, the people who fund these venture capital firms think about this asset class is not fantastic. The returns have not been great. There was a lot of height funding that kind of started in 2018 to 2022 vintage at valuations that didn't pan out into companies that didn't pan out, um, and a lot of this again is kind of being reevaluated right now from the LP base that invests in venture capital there's a drawback of overall dollars. Then you have the venture capital firms themselves who invest in startups, and they're nervous because there was a whole decade they basically learned from where they invested in startups, but the theories of growth, the theories of revenue didn't pan out. Yeah, and we had ultra low interest rates. I mean, we're in a differentmacro environment. Exactly. And so now I think you have venture capitalists who are nervous, LPs who are not necessarily viewing the asset classes positively, except the winners. And so there are firms, funds, andstartups that did really well in this moment. There is still the positive outcomes. And so you have this flight to quality or the flight to perceive quality where, for example, venture capital firm that is investing in 2025 is being very cautious and going, what founders do I already know that are taking another crack at it? Or if you're an LP looking to invest in a venture capital firm, which venture capital firm do I already know and where do I want to put those dollars? You have AI being obviously a huge buzzword for funding and so you see a lot of flights to AI because that's the hype does mean a lot of startups with more traditional or slow moving ideas or maybe first time founders are struggling. And so you see again this feast or famine kind of effect from it all. Yeah, thatseems tough. I'm curious, you said you raised, was it 15 million Series A. So what gets you to be? You haven't gotten B yet. And we view, you know, our path might not be continued venture capital, might be using venture capital we have so far to continue our growth, and that depends on every particular business. For us, let's say that we did want to continue to raise venture us, that market would be on revenue. Um, every business is going to be slightly different. What sort of revenue that a Series B investor would want to see. So, you know, we're kind of consumer services and orientation, so they probably want to see from us, something in the realm of 10 million bucks to be confident to do a Series B or Series C round of funding, versus your B2B business where it's a little bit more repeatable in a hot space like AI, you might give that sort of company a Series B round just off of a million bucks of initial revenue because you go, the gonna be explosive. Yeah, you don't want to missout. I, yeah, and we'll have plenty of time to talk about AI after the break because I got a million questions, but just real quickly, if, if somebody's considering taking a job in a startup, like what, what stage should the company be in to maximize their personal return and what are the risks versus rewards in each of these different stages orwhatever? Such a lottery ticket. And so I I advise so many job seekers and they always ask me this question a lot. It's just a lottery ticket. Now that's a lottery ticket that you influence, right? And so I think when IAdvise people on this. I advise a lot of people to join startups and I go, do you like the potential of this company? Don't necessarily do the math and think I'm guaranteed that my equity, especially there's options that you have to actually purchase over time. There's a whole bunch of mechanics I can get into, but there's so much that stands between an early employee and eventual cash. If you wind up joining a company like a Facebook, these Power Law outcome companies, or even an Uber, then yes, you will get life changing amounts of money, but that's such a lottery ticket compared to the amount of workforce that enters and gets early stage it's important, I think, to recognize, hey, I'm in for this mission. It's a lottery ticket that I can influence. Do I want to spend my time kind of living in the business, the industry, the go to market model, etc. of that business? If so, take that lottery ticket ride. It can be fun for a variety of other reasons for your career, but it's not necessarily going to be sure you can map it out in the early stage. And just to close this loop, like you get Series C funding and then is it IPO after? Whathappens? Nowadays, not so much. Private companies are spending longer and longer in the private markets. They're finding it, you know, appetizing to, you know, continue to get private rounds of funding, whether venture capital or otherwise because they get to continue to exercise control over their company. They don't have to you know, uh, subject to all the, the, the need of the regulatory scrutiny scrutiny, quarter. And you'll you'll hear there are two competing forces in venture capital. These are really big voices like in Anderson Horowitz or Founders Fund on one side of the equation going stay private, we'll give you more money. We want it to be private. We want to run this show versus Bill Gurley, whoa benchmark fame who goes, hey, these companies are going to be better off if they have this public scrutiny, shaping the executive team, shaping their go to market, but also allowing other people, allowing the public to invest in the moments where there's still a lot of upside for the public markets, which also tends to mean that these companies have an audience in their stockholders. So they're competing you know, should companies be staying private as long as they are, but nowadays you might be raising many hundreds of millions of dollars, sometimes even billions of dollars with these AI companies that are raising large financing rounds before you even consider going public. All right, hold that thought. We need to take a short break, but coming up we're going to be talking tech layoffs and a politically oriented venture capital runway showdown. Stay episode is brought to you by the number 59,000. That is the number of tech workers laid off so far in 2025 through May. That's according to TechCrunch. Many of these are from some well-known names like Amazon, CrowdStrike, Microsoft, but also from smaller names like CEG, Match, General Fusion, Beam, and others. So that's about, uh, that's after 150,000 layoffs in 2024, which was, in my mind, not a bad year. Like, how serious is this getting and then maybe tie it so I think there's two themes. The second one being AI, the first one being companies in general drawing back on what they think of as being regional, reasonable budgets headcounts, how much management layer do we need? What do we think of as being our entry level workforce. This has less to do in last year or 2025's case with just like AI replacing anybody or augmenting anybody as it does with, we spent too much money in this last phase of technology. We do not need as many people to execute on some of business models. It's not literal math that people are doing, but instead executive teams going, OK, what didn't pan out in the last bet? What was more cultural than it was practical? So that I think has driven a lot of what has happened so far. Then you have the emergence of AI and it's not again yet displacing people in like kind of a direct way, but what it is doing is it's telling people, do I want to invest in the workforce? Do I want headcount that might be here for the next 3 to 5 to 10 years? Do I want to invest in a management layer that has expectations?If I believe that AI is coming in a way, and we're starting to see this augmentation where engineers as an example, can produce a lot more code if they're using some of these tools, you don't want to in 2025 invest in a big junior or mid-level engineering class because you'll have those people in 2 to 3 years. And so that's now this future forecasting that I think is impacting some of these headcount decisions. So it's a little bit of backwards, hey, this headcount stuff didn't work in the past and forward looking, let's not make the same mistakes, especially with AI in mind. But are we, OK, this is weird, but are we just gonna end up with many more companies with few workers because of the combination of what you were saying first with the advancements of AI like it's gonna be like times companies buy 500,000 and they only have 3 people. And how do these younger workers get experience then if nobody wants to hire the junior level? So that's a huge problem. The unemployment rate amongst the college, whether you're in engineering or in any other field, it's it's really bad. So we've seen Derek Thompson wrote about this in the Atlantic and other people are kind of looking at the graduation undergrads, um, that that cohort is currently not doing well post graduation. So um they're not getting exposure. They're not getting learning by osmosis. They're not in the office in the same way and they're not getting these opportunities. It's not just for a remote work factor.I don't know how we solve that. I think a lot of this is now going to be an onus on people to decide to self train, and that has to do also with like, what jobs will exist. So this goes to, you know, kind of the second category of what do we think is changing? Are there going to be a lot of small companies?I don't know if they're going to be a lot of small companies. Companies will certainly be smaller. So there are people in venture capital who are, you know, at the forefront of AI who believe this is going to lead to an explosion of entrepreneurship and all these tools are going to enable people to build their own businesses. But are all three of us, for example, going to want to build our own, you know, mug business and sell each other mugs? I don't know that that's actually what they want. Well, maybe I just stay home though, like if I can make, if there's going to be a way I could as long as I'm making money though, by the way, I do have a question though, overall, like, are these tech layoffs or is it is a warning sign for the broader economy? Almost certainly. The thing with the broader economy that people don't quite when people try to make this translation and don't quite understand it is the broader economy requires more in terms of automation in the real world for companies to make the same sort of forecasting decisions, and that of, OK, what will robotics be capable of? What will automation in the physical world be capable of, what will drones be capable of? And I think people have even in tech have less of an understanding because we can all play with chatship ET, but not everyone has access to the latest that's going on in humanoid robots. So people are, are not there yet, even executives are not there yet. But I think that just requires again, seeing the chathi ET moment happen, let's say in robotics or in humanoids, and suddenly those same executives making the sort of choice with their software teams or their worker teams will make that choice also with retail, with um a factory, obviously self-driving, so it is a little bit lagging, but I don't think that'll last. Yeah, it seems like at least a few years lagging, but you mentioned you touched on something about the different levels, and I want to talk to you about chat GPT. I have to subscribe to the Pro version and it is light years 03, um, yeah, with chain of thought reasoning, and then 4.5 with its ability write scripts, for instance, it's just amazing to me, but there's, it seems there's going to be the stratification and for the average person, they're going to have a level of AI accessible to them that is just like, not even a 10th, not even 100th, maybe not even 1000 of what is possible. Yeah, I think this is going to continue to be the case, this bifurcation of like, OK, um, you get what you pay for. So right now we have the example. I'm also a subscriber to the pro version of JatT. This gives us access to a one queries of deep researcher 3, these models that are better than what, let's say a free subscribers, subscribers paying a lower tier are going to receive. That's the first set of bifurcation. The second set is actually when you just unleash costs. So the examples here are actually right now in the coding tools. So this is like a clawed code or an AM code. And the interesting pricing model behind these is these are essentially charged on consumption. So developer is using, let's say cloud code to generate a driven they're not paying, let's say a subscription. There are some subscription models, but in some of these cases, it's just based on what you use. And what the companies are doing in this case, and they're going, we're not going to restrict the model in this case. When we're subscribed even at $200 a month to your BT OpenAI goes, we want to limit how much the AI does in that moment because as the AI does more stuff, reasoning, using tools, it costs them money, it costs them if you tell the consumer, hey, you can have as much as you want, you're going to pay for it. You have programs again, like AM code, cloud code that just run wild. The developer pays for it, but if they get high quality output, they actually don't mind. Now you have developers who are spending $200 a day on AI generated outputs, and you can see companies obviously budgeting for this, whereThey're going to access not only high quality intelligence, you're pointed at a different tier of pricing, but they're going to access a lot more of it because they're willing to pay the compute price. And I think this is going to be aification you not just in code, but in other forms as well. So we are going to see there's the base layer of free or you know, kind of accessible cost. There's the kind of subscription based here where the model makers are going to shape what you get. And then there's going to be get all the intelligence you want and in a fire hose, and that'll be priced at even a third tier. It's an Just quickly, do you think there's any situation with adoption of things like chat GPT on on a level that would have any stigma attached to it and people might not want to purchase that higher level like, oh, you know, I, I use it once in a while, but I'm not buying the the big version we're getting to our next round too. We got multiple rounds yeah yeah it' will be a stigma and you see it already when people can identify when you've used like AI written, you can see the hyphens or the M dash N dash. Um, I think that will away when people just realize how powerful we can all be if we're using the best models all the time. So stigma today, normalization tomorrow. I do. I use them all the time. And here's one. It's right in the script. Look at that spotlights up. It is time for a showdown. Now first up, we got this strip down the strip is a red cap rainmaker strutting and a 50 tweet thread on regulation in his back pocket. He's not just talk. His firm hosts DC fundraisers as often as it signs term sheets. Now close behind, we have the blue cap believer waving a net zero term sheet promising impact and returns. He says his money is clean and purpose driven, but is that a failure or a feature or just a label? AndSlipping between them comes this stealthy gray cap numbers ninja who lets the returns do all her talking. No press releases, no slogans for her, just cold hard IRR and a giant quiet pile of exits. Now Sheveen, who steps off the cat this catwalk with the hottest term sheets in 2025, either of the political firebrands or the stay out of it purist? Uh, there are no purists anymore. He have the opinion of venture capital. And so we have the class of folks who are very opinionated with what the capital is intended to do. So this is, let's say the Andrews and Horowitzs of the world who say American dynamism and they're, you know, they even somewhat supported the current administration during the electoral process. And these folks are somewhat pointing, you know, kind of they're painting a worldview and they're saying, hey, our dollars not only are intended to get us returns, we have a longer term theory of what nation states should be folks are king right now. The problem is a lot of founders don't necessarily align with that worldview. And so the question is over a long enough time horizon, do either new purists or people who do think about impact at the same time, um, start to compete because they say, hey, look, this has become too opinionated as capital, right? And so in 2025 opinionated capital in the form of Andrew and Horowitz or Founders Fund, these very political firms where um their originators or even current partners are activists, um, are currently leading the hypothesis is on a 2 to 5 year time horizon, you're going to see pushback, and especially from a founder class that again might not align with the worldview that's being painted. Any tips for making your pitch for funding on an angel tips I give everybody. The first is context is king. And so in a lot of pitches, what you see is people don't realize it's not just your pitch. It's like, do people what's important about your pitch and you have to world build, you have to give people a little bit of context. So you have to tell them about the industry. You have to tell them what you know, what your secret is, what the insight is that you're building on, beyond the thing you're building. And so delivering that context is king. The second thing, and this is probably, you know, what most people make as a mistake is you want to be I'm a foreign language from someone we had on our show, the feedback loop, a venture capitalist judge, the point and initial pitch is to be compelling but not complete. A lot of to pour all the details, all the nuances, all the future cases they're going to solve. But the problem in that moment is the venture capitalist is new to what you're offering and can't quite rock at all. And so instead, if you're compelling but not complete, you're giving them enough to want the second meeting. All good podcasts must come to an end. This is going to do it for this episode of Stocks and Translation. Be sure to check out all our other episodes on the Yahoo Finance site, mobile app, and we will see you on the next episode of Stocks and Translation.
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
AI is shaking up the tech sector. Here's what you can expect
Listen and subscribe to Stocks In Translation on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you find your favorite podcast. In this episode of Stocks in Translation, Free Agency founder & CEO Sherveen Mashayekhi joins Markets and Data Editor Jared Blikre and Producer Sydnee Fried to discuss the current state of venture capital as well as the tech landscape in 2025. The trio breaks down the broader economic impact from things like sector layoffs and AI, and what people can anticipate moving into the future. Twice a week, Stocks In Translation cuts through the market mayhem, noisy numbers and hyperbole to give you the information you need to make the right trade for your portfolio. You can find more episodes here, or watch on your favorite streaming service. This post was written by Lauren Pokedoff Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Newsweek
2 hours ago
- Newsweek
What Happened to Yulissa on 'Love Island USA'? Here's What We Know
Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources. Newsweek AI is in beta. Translations may contain inaccuracies—please refer to the original content. Yulissa Escobar's sudden exit from Love Island USA during the second episode of Season 7 has stirred speculation among fans. The departure, shown without context or explanation, left her co-stars and viewers in the dark. The twist was revealed with show narrator Iain Stirling announcing "Yulissa has left the villa" about 18 minutes into the show, according to The Hollywood Reporter. Yulissa, who had been coupled up with Ace Greene, was then noticeably absent from the villa. What we know What the show didn't mention—but what fans already knew—was that Yulissa had come under fire online after old podcast clips surfaced revealing a use of racial slurs. In the recordings, which spread across social media as the show launched on Tuesday night, Yulissa can be heard using the N-word multiple times while discussing past relationships, as first reported by TMZ. Newsweek has contacted both Yulissa and Peacock via email for comment. Yulissa Escobar (left) exited "Love Island USA" in the show's second episode of Season 7. Yulissa Escobar (left) exited "Love Island USA" in the show's second episode of Season 7. Ben Symons/Peacock Her social media has remained silent since the episode aired, and she has not publicly addressed the backlash. What Else Happened in 'Love Island' Last Night? Episode 2 delivered on the drama promised in the season premiere, picking up right where host Ariana Madix left viewers hanging—with the introduction of two new Bombshells, Cierra Ortega and Charlie Georgiou. After a round of raised hands from interested Islanders, Cierra and Charlie each selected one contestant for an overnight hideaway date: Nicolas Vansteenberghe and Chelley Bissainthe. Sparks flew, with Nicolas and Cierra sharing a kiss. The villa also saw its first moments of tension. Jeremiah Brown confronted Huda Mustafa over whether she kissed another contestant during a game. After clearing the air in the morning, their relationship appeared back on track. Meanwhile, Taylor Williams and Olandria Carthen navigated a similar hiccup with ease when she admitted to kissing Ace Greene. As the day progressed, the Bombshells made their rounds, getting to know the rest of the cast. Jeremiah stayed loyal to Huda, despite a chat with Cierra, and Belle-A Walker gracefully handled Nicolas breaking the news about his new connection. Couples Cierra Ortega & Nicolas Vansteenberghe Huda Mustafa & Jeremiah Brown Olandria Carthen & Taylor Williams Chelley Bissainthe & Austin Shepard Single Belle-A Walker Ace Greene Charlie Georgiou The episode ended with a surprise recoupling at the fire pit. Islanders were asked if they wanted to stay in their current pairings or opt to recouple. Cierra ultimately chose Nicolas, while Charlie was left single after no women stepped forward for him.
