Ex-Warner Music Head Edgar Bronfman Starts a VC FirmTo the list of outsiders piling into venture capital in Silicon Valley, add one more: Edgar Bronfman Jr., the former head of Warner Music and the man who sold off the family business, Seagram Co., to French conglomerate Vivendi SA. Bronfman, now a managing partner at New York-based private equity firm Accretive LLC, is starting a venture firm with veteran investor Daniel Leff. The new firm, Waverley Capital, aims to raise a debut fund of about $100 million, targeting media investments. [ Bloomberg ] Kenzie Academy is an ambitious project to bring tech jobs to Middle AmericaThe most logical thing to do when you decide to step back from your successful startup, which didn’t end up in the deadpool like the other 99 percent, is to take some time off. Appreciate things. Enjoy the fact that years of work paid off, literally. Watch your kids grow up, get an expensive hobby, chill. These are all things that Chok Ooi, co-founder of little-known but lucrative outsourcing company Agility.io, could have done. But instead, the Malaysia-born entrepreneur is throwing himself into a new project that hopes to help battle the tech talent crunch and bring skilled jobs to the middle of America. [ Tech Crunch ] Why You Should Consider Developing A Product Without Building A Company FirstPhil Libin, the cofounder and former CEO of note-taking app Evernote, launched a startup studio called All Turtleswith a vision to reorient people’s innovation towards products, and away from the conventional start-up model. As an avid science-fiction nerd, Libin believes in creating products for the future, and wants to liberate entrepreneurs’ creative energy, energy that is usually focused on starting a new company every time they come up with a brilliant idea. [ Forbes ] Jessica Alba Just Revealed the Surprising Thing That Prepared Her for Running a $1 Billion BusinessNothing could have prepared Jessica Alba for launching a company--except, perhaps, being told she wasn't good enough. Six years ago, the Hollywood actress hatched a line of nontoxic household products including laundry detergent, soaps and diapers. Then a new mother, Alba had balked at some of the chemicals used in existing alternatives--include sodium lauryl sulfate--which once caused her to have an allergic reaction. So she founded the Honest Company on a simple premise: Every family should have access to healthy, affordable products that also look nice on the kitchen counter. [ Inc. ] How Floyd Mayweather Helped Two Young Guys From Miami Get RichCelebrity endorsements are helping start-ups raise big money in so-called initial coin offerings. Recently, Mr. Mayweather has shown his appreciation for a new kind of money. In September, he told his 13.5 million followers on Facebook not once but twice that they should buy a new virtual currency known as the Centra token. [ NY Times ] A Softbank investor presentation from 2010 shows an early glimpse at Masayoshi Son’s vision
Many people in the tech industry struggle to understand SoftBank. The Japanese company baffled investors in Silicon Valley a year ago when it announced it would raise a whopping $100 billion (paywall) to launch its Vision Fund for venture capital investing in tech companies. Earlier this month, Recode reported that the company is raising another fund that could be even larger. But the nature of the funds, the investment targets, and the company’s core revenue generators in Japan—an ordinary telco business and the aging Yahoo! Japan web portal—would seem to have little to do with one another. [ QZ ] New York Beat San Francisco in Venture Capital Funding, Thanks in Large Part to WeWork
New York City has surpassed San Francisco as the region whose startups attract the most venture capital money, thanks in large part to a mega-round of funding scooped up by co-working company WeWork. [ Inc. ] Emmanuel Macron makes bid for Silicon Valley on the SeineFrance is banking on a secret weapon to take on Silicon Valley’s big beasts — its government. From state-backed venture capital funding to an overhaul of the country’s notoriously complicated labor laws, France wants to turn all the punchlines you’ve heard about doing business in France (as well as those over-used — and false — clichés of wine-filled lunches and months-long summer vacations) into an asset for the country’s tech industry. [ Politico ] The 79-year history of Silicon Valley’s first tech startup was destroyed in the Santa Rosa firesThere’s a garage in Palo Alto called “the Birthplace of Silicon Valley.” In the small cramped shed in 1938, William Hewlett and David Packard started an electronics company backed by just $538 in cash. At first, it sold audio oscillators to test speakers. Today, the multi-billion dollar HP (formerly Hewlett-Packard Company) is the biggest personal computer manufacturer in the world. It’s widely considered the pioneering startup of Silicon Valley. On October 29, some of the physical evidence of that history went up in smoke. It was another victim of the wildfire that raged through Northern California’s wine country destroyed 6,800 homes and killed least 23 residents, reports The Press Democrat newspaper in Santa Rosa. [ QZ ] This Could Be the End of FacebookSeptember 29, 1982, seemed like a day that would live in corporate-America infamy after three Chicagoans died from taking cyanide-laced capsules of extra-strength Tylenol. In the coming days, four others would die from ingesting a corrupted version of the painkiller, which had been laced with cyanide. Johnson & Johnson, the maker of Tylenol, would subsequently be thrust into one of the biggest nightmares in its history. An investigation by the Food and Drug Administration suggest that someone had purchased the extra-strength Tylenol bottles over the counter, injected cyanide into the capsules, re-sealed the bottles, and then put them back on store shelves. Tylenol instantly initiated a total recall of the pills, the first of its kind in the United States. Many Wall Street analysts and media observers thought the company would never recover. Yet, just two months later, Tylenol was back on shelves (with a new tamperproof bottle). Today, most people don’t even remember what happened. [ vanityfair ] Main Sequence Ventures makes first investments from CSIRO’s $200 million Innovation FundThe CSIRO has officially launched its $200 million Innovation Fund, managed by Main Sequence Ventures, announcing today its first investments into companies Q-Ctrl, Intersective, Morse Micro, and Maxwell MRI. First announced as part of the National Innovation and Science Agenda (NISA), the fund was formed with the aim of commercialising research generated at the CSIRO and other publicly-funded bodies last December, with cofounder of Blackbird Ventures Bill Bartee appointed managing director. The Fund comprises $70 million in government funding, $30 million in revenue from CSIRO’s WLAN program, and additional private sector investment. [ Startup Daily ] Meet David Rosenblatt, the e-commerce CEO who’s not afraid of AmazonSimple's founders and board are out as marketing start-up raises fresh funding |