8 Specific Tips for Overcoming Silicon Valley Sexism From a Female VCA trickle can widen a crack, increasing the flow and further weakening the dam. Then all of a sudden you have a leak of torrential proportions. That's basically what's happened in Silicon Valley the last month as whispered stories of VCs' bad behavior towards female founders gathered into a flood of disclosures about inappropriate advances, unequal treatment, and straight-up sexual assault. A round of resignations was the first consequence of the revelations, with others taking concrete steps to develop more robust anti-harassment policies. All of which will hopefully lead to real and last changing. But what if you're a female founder with a great idea and a need for capital right now? If you don't have time to wait for the industry to get its act together, then Cowboy Ventures partner Aileen Lee has some pretty specific advice for you. At Y Combinator's Female Founders Conference recently she condemned the behavior of some of her colleagues and called for change. But she also offered female founders specific advice for prospering despite the less than enlightened current state of things, TechCrunch reports. [ Inc. ] Forbes Releases 2017 Cloud 100 List of the Best Private Cloud Companies in the WorldForbes today released the 2017 Cloud 100, the definitive ranking of the top 100 private cloud companies in the world, produced in collaboration with Bessemer Venture Partners and Salesforce Ventures. The second annual list profiles top-tier private companies leading the cloud technology revolution. With advancements in software, cloud security, platform development and more, these companies are redefining the future of all industries and sectors. The companies on the Cloud 100 list have industry-beating metrics, including revenue growth, market share and valuation. Online payments company Stripe seizes the top spot on this year’s Cloud 100 list, followed by collaboration and file storage/sharing company Dropbox at No. 2. The cloud-based team-collaboration software company Slack, which was No. 1 on the 2016 list, drops to No. 3 this year. E-signature and digital transactions company DocuSign (No. 4), and Dutch online-payments company Adyen (No. 5) round out the top five. [ Forbes ] BENCHMARK’S MITCH LASKY ON THE SNAPCHAT JOURNEY FROM SERIES A TO IPO, WHY SMALL IS BEAUTIFUL IN VENTURE PARTNERSHIPS & WHY VENTURE IS VERY MUCH LIKE HOLLYWOODMitch Lasky is a General Partner @ Benchmark, one of the world’s leading VC funds with a portfolio including the likes of Twitter, Uber, Snapchat, eBay, WeWork, Yelp and many more revolutionary companies of the last decade. As for Mitch himself, Mitch has made investments or is on the boards of Snapchat, Riot Games, Discord, Outpost Games and Cyanogen, just to name a few. Prior to Benchmark, Mitch was CEO @ JAMDAT Mobile where he led the mobile gaming company from a 10 employee startup to a 700 employee global business leading their IPO on the NASDAQ in 2004 and later negotiating their sales to Electronic Arts for $680m. [ 20 VC Podcast ] First Round Capital - Introducing the Product Co-opFor most startups, the search for product-market fit is a long, difficult journey. One thing we know for sure: When you’re headed into the jungle with only a machete, it helps to have someone beside you who’s been there before and found their way through. That’s why we’re excited to announce the Product Co-op — a group of six product leaders working in tech who’ll advise and invest in founders taking on tough product challenges. These folks have helped build many of tech’s household names from Slack to Google to Blue Apron — and they’re set up to be steadfast partners for strong product-oriented founders. First Round’s kicking in the capital and operational support, but the investment decisions will be driven by them. Co-op members will choose companies to work with as a group, apply their active and ongoing experience, and spend real time with entrepreneurs as thought partners. The Co-op’s founding partners include Instacart Co-founder Max Mullen, Dropbox Head of Collaboration Products Olivia Teich, and Slack Director of Core Product Paul Rosania in SF; and Google VR Lead Jason Toff, Blue Apron Head of Product Melody Koh, and Nomad Health Co-founder and Head of Product Zander Pease in NYC. [ First Round ] Ashton Kutcher Rethought His Comments On Workplace Gender EqualityLast Wednesday, Ashton Kutcher started more of a conversation than he might have intended when he wrote a LinkedIn post about his foray into improving gender equality in the workplace. "Planning on hosting an live [sic] open dialog about gender equality in the work place [sic] and in tech in general with my fellow Partner from Sound Ventures Effie Epstein, on my facebook page on Monday or Tues of next week," Kutcher wrote. Google launches Gradient Ventures, an AI-focused venture fundGoogle launched today a venture capital fund, named Gradient Ventures, that will focus on early-stage AI startups. Gradient’s site says the new fund aims to “invest in and connect startups with Google’s resources, innovation, and technical leadership in AI.” “Many members of our team are engineers, so we’re familiar with the journey from big idea to product launch,” Gradient managing partner Anna Patterson wrote in a blog post. “The goal is to help our portfolio companies overcome engineering challenges to create products that will apply artificial intelligence to today’s challenges and those we’ll face in the future.” [ Venture Beat ] Dropbox vs. Box: Valuation Matchup At a $9.4B market capitalization and a $1B 2017 revenue run-rate, Dropbox would have a 9.4x price to sales multiple, double that of Box at its IPO. When Box went public in January 2015, the company priced its IPO at $14 a share, exiting at a valuation of $1.7B, or approximately $600M less than private markets’ $2.3B valuation of Box. On a price-to-sales basis, the valuation represented 5.8x its 2015 forward revenue guidance at the time, of $290M. One year later, Box ended 2016 with a market capitalization of $2.2B and $400M of revenue, representing a trailing price-to-sales multiple of 5.5x. Currently, as of market close on July 3rd, 2017, Box had a market capitalization of about $2.4B and projected 2017 revenues of $500M, which would represent a modest current price to projected sales multiple of 4.7x. To compare, in January of this year Dropbox CEO Drew Houston announced that his firm was expecting an annualized revenue run-rate of $1B for FY2017. If true, at its current $9.4B valuation Dropbox would have a 9.4x current price to projected sales multiple, double that of Box. [ CB Insights ] XFactor is a new $3M pre-seed/seed fund looking to invest in female-led startupsPart of the sexism problem in tech/VC comes down to the fact that women are far outnumbered by men, especially at the top of the food chain. Women represent seven percent of the partner positions within the tech VC community. This, in turn, leads to female founders receiving less funding simply because unconscious bias leads folks to invest in people who look like themselves and even approach those who are different more skeptically. In fact, a study of Disrupt footage from the Battlefield Q&A shows female founders get asked very different questions by VCs than their male counterparts. This leads us to XFactor Ventures. [ Tech Crunch ] Oscar Health to Join Humana in a Small Business VentureFor the last five years, Oscar Health has sought to portray itself as a new kind of health insurer, taking an approach that set it apart from its more traditional competitors. Now, Oscar plans to work with one of those rivals on a new venture. The start-up plans to announce on Wednesday that it is working with Humana, one of the biggest insurance companies in the United States, on a venture for small-business health insurance in Nashville. [ NY Times ] |