A $1.6 billion startup that's aiming to take business from Oracle reportedly just filed to go publicMongoDB, a database startup with over $300 million in venture capital financing, has confidentially filed to go public, reports TechCrunch. At the time of its last private valuation in 2015, MongoDB was reportedly a $1.6 billion company. The Wall Street Journal reported in May that MongoDB had hired Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley to underwrite an IPO. A change to SEC regulations took effect earlier this summer, allowing any company to confidentially file to go public — a move intended to jump start the IPO market. Previously, this option had only been available to companies under a certain size. [ Business Insider ] Why Benchmark May Want to Cash Out of UberTake the money and run is the new Uber benchmark. The ride-hailing company, valued at nearly $70 billion in its most recent funding round, is facing multiple controversies, managerial turmoil and huge losses. The early investor Benchmark may be loath to give in to demands to sell its 13 percent stake. But it would help restore some stability and let the venture capital firm rake in billions of dollars. Benchmark, which led Uber’s Series A funding round in early 2011, has injected nearly $30 million into the company, according to fellow shareholders. Now, though, it has turned to the courts to try to stop Uber’s co-founder and former chief executive, Travis Kalanick, from participating in board business. [ NY Times ] Why this tech CEO turned down funding inquiries from more than 100 investorsAs the CEO of the communications software company Basecamp, Jason Fried has taken a non-traditional approach to finding success in the tech industry. In addition to his relaxed company culture and 32-hour summer work week schedule, Fried has grown his business while turning down more than 100 investments from venture capital and private equity firms over Basecamp's nearly 18-year history. "Basically, when you take other people's money you owe them something," Fried tells CNBC Make It. "You either owe them money back or a business decision that is kind of no longer yours. Often times that means selling the business or being acquired and being run by someone else, and we don't ever want to do that." [ CNBC ] With 2 million users and $75 billion worth of transactions, Robinhood is ushering a new generation into the stock market and beyond. Dallas resident Steven Card has a thing for Costco hot dogs. “Every time I go, I Snapchat the sign, [telling friends,] ‘I’m here again!’ ” he says. So when the 26-year-old started trading stocks through Robinhood—an online brokerage that launched in 2014—it made sense to him to buy shares of both Costco and Snap, Snapchat’s newly public parent company. Card’s other stock holdings follow a similar pattern: Ford (there’s one in his garage), AMD (maker of the graphics card in his computer), and Anheuser-Busch InBev (cheers to that). [ Fast Company ] The 8 most active VC investors in US IoTLosant, the provider of a platform designed to help developers build products for connected devices, has secured $4.5 million in one of the latest venture capital fundings for a US-based IoT business. This ambitious founder wants to find high-paying biz dev jobs for one million AmericansRahim Fazal grew up in government housing. He worked, as do many students, at McDonald’s during high school. He didn’t go to college. These aren’t the kinds of details that might excite a recruiter at a big tech company, yet Fazal has done just fine, including co-founding a company a decade ago that sold to Oracle, where he spent the next two and a half years; becoming an advisor at CodeNow, which works with underrepresented youth to teach foundational computer programming; and, more recently, co-founding SVAcademy in San Francisco. What it does: find people like Fazal himself who are under-resourced but have no shortage of grit, and train them how to work in a professional tech setting. It’s getting them jobs, too, including at places like Salesforce, Box and Zora. Andrew Ng is raising a $150M AI Fund
We knew that Andrew Ng had more than just a series of deep learning courses up his sleeve when he announced the first phase of his deeplearning.ai last week. It’s clear now that the turn of Ng’s three part act is a $150 million venture capital fund, first noted byPEHub, targeting AI investments. Ng, who formerly founded Google’s Brain Team and served as chief scientist at Baidu has long evangelized the benefits AI could bring to the world. During an earlier conversation, Ng told me that his personal goal is to help bring about an AI-powered society. It would follow that education via his deep learning classes is one step of that and providing capital and other resources is another. [ Tech Crunch ] The Mysterious Case of the Missing Internet BillionaireA dozen years ago, the largest internet company in China wasn’t Alibaba or Tencent, but game developer Shanda Interactive Entertainment Ltd. Its founder was a young man named Chen Tianqiao, who had become a billionaire at 30. Chen was more prominent than Alibaba’s Jack Ma for much of the last decade -- then he disappeared. He left China, dropping out of public view almost completely. He took his Nasdaq-listed company private in 2012. Chen is finally ready to talk publicly again. Now 44, he’s living in Singapore with plans for his next act. During a visit to his office there, he explained what led him to give up his life’s work and cede the market to Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. and Tencent Holdings Ltd., whose founders are now the country’s two richest men. It started with panic attacks in his 30s, then escalated amid the rising stress of competition and government regulations. He eventually decided he had to salvage his own health. [ Bloomberg ] Female engineers: James Damore wasn't fired for 'truth'; he was fired for mishandling a complex debateFour female engineers have spoken out about James Damore, saying he wasn't fired for "speaking truth to power" in his controversial memo but for "mishandling" a complicated and sensitive debate about diversity. The engineers made the comments anonymously during a forum discussion for Y Combinator's "Ask a Female Engineer" blog series. One of the women said she worked at Google. Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky Has a Strong Message for White SupremacistsAirbnb CEO Brian Chesky wants users to know exactly where his company stands on the ongoings in Charlottesville last weekend. In the days before the “Unite the Right” rally, the home-sharing giant cancelled the accounts of attendees who had rented lodging in the area because white nationalist philosophy is a violation of its terms of service. Rally organizer Jason Kessler told The Washington Post that Airbnb’s decision to remove users for attending the event “outrageous” and “grounds for a lawsuit.” [ Fortune ] |