Silicon Valley Flocks to Foiling, Racing Above the Bay’s WavesWhat happens in the San Francisco Bay every Thursday night does not look real or even possible, and it certainly does not look safe. Dozens of people skim across the waters at speeds of up to 40 miles per hour, kites far ahead and their boards floating two feet above the chop of the waves. They move so smoothly and quietly that some riders are on their cellphones. They call it hydrofoiling — or, if you’re hip to it, foiling. And every week, the foilers of San Francisco race. [ NY Times ] How to invest in the singularityPeter Thiel has made some shrewd bets in his lifetime: a half-million dollar wager as Facebook's first outside investor, earning him roughly $1 billion when he cashed out in 2012; and more recently, his contrarian political bet on Donald Trump. Need more evidence to recommend Thiel's foresight? Check out this video from the 2007 Singularity Summit (ignore the erroneous year in the video title), in which Thiel suggests how to bet on the singularity, the inflection point when machines achieve super-human intelligence. [ Axios ] Fintech star Transferwise is about to land a big backer from Silicon ValleyOne of the UK's most successful fintech startups is about to land backing from a top Silicon Valley venture capital firm which has invested in some of the top tech businesses around, according to reports. Transferwise, the online money transfer company which turned a profit for the first time in May, is in talks with Institutional Venture Partners (IVP), an investor in Netflix, Snapchat and Twitter before they went public, Sky News reports. The talks come after the startup embarked on a new round of fundraising that is expected to see its value sail past the so-called unicorn valuation of $1bn. Why Seed Funding Fell Off a Cliff in 2017 How Donald Trump and The New York Times Killed an Entire Generation of Early Stage Startups in Silicon Valley. Entrepreneurs are finding it harder and harder to raise their first rounds this year. By 2016 ‘everyone and their brother’ was investing in early stage companies in Silicon Valley. 500 Startups, Techstars, Elevate, First Round, Lowercase and SOSV were on a tear investing in scores of companies — but they weren’t alone — more than a hundred other investors you’ve never heard of were making investments in hundreds of other companies you’ll never hear of again. ‘Seed’ was cool and if you wanted to be cool you were doing early stage. That all changed on November 8th, 2016. The cofounder of $1.3 billion startup Robinhood explains a 'logical fallacy' in investingRobinhood, the $1.3 billion San Francisco brokerage firm, is known for introducing zero-commission trades.
This Is How Sexism Works in Silicon Valley My lawsuit failed. Others won’t.In December 2010, Sheryl Sandberg gave a talk about women’s leadership in which she mentioned “sitting at the table.” Women, she said, have to pull up a chair and sit at the conference-room table rather than clinging to the edges of the room, “because no one gets to the corner office by sitting on the side.” SA’s Silicon Valley hero Roelof Botha on Interregnum and “the next big thing” Saffer Roelof Botha was a major drawcard at Singularity University’s global summit in San Francisco last week. The boss of Silicon Valley’s legendary venture capital firm Sequoia Capital ranks just behind Elon Musk as SA’s best known export to California. His firm has been a very early investor in hugely successful companies including Apple, Google, Oracle, YouTube and WhatsApp. Chances are if Slack is part of your office, it has become the main way that you communicate with coworkers. Now it might also be the way you find your next job. Just like meetups, Slack has over 400 public communities, centered around topics from productivity to JavaScript to cryptocurrencies. In recent years, these communities have become a way for recruiters to source candidates, particularly in the tech world. [ Fast Company ] Silicon Valley’s Favorite DealmakersFor the second year in a row, Goldman Sachs was overwhelmingly the favorite choice of investment bank in our subscriber poll. Not only would more subscribers pick Goldman to handle their company’s IPO than any other firm, but Goldman bankers were nominated more often as favorites than those from any other firm. In both categories, Morgan Stanley was the No. 2 pick, while Allen & Co. came in third in The Information’s second annual survey on tech industry dealmakers. |