These are the US startups that Russian investors are backingA taxi-hailing app. A transplant device developer. An online mortgage provider. Those businesses may have little in common, but one shared thread is that U.S. startups in these sectors have all secured large funding rounds led by Russia-based investors. They’re not alone. Over the past seven years, Russia-based strategic and venture investors have participated in more than 300 funding rounds for U.S.-based startups, according to Crunchbase data. Investments span all stages, major sectors and round sizes, and include both equity and debt financings. (See deal list here.) [ Tech Crunch ] Vanity Fair’s next editor may be the New York Times’ Radhika JonesConde Nast may have found its replacement for Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter: The publisher has been in advanced talks to hire Radhika Jones, who is currently an editor at The New York Times. Sources at the Times and Vanity Fair say Jones has been talking to Conde executives about the job. Times executives believe she is poised to take the position. If the hire goes through, it will surprise plenty of people in the media industry, where Jones has been a respected but low-profile figure. And she’d be a very different choice than many of the bold-faced names that have been floated since Carter announced he was leaving the magazine this year. Jones joined the Times a year ago to run its books coverage, and prior to that she spent several years at Time magazine, where she had been deputy managing editor and had been seen internally as a candidate to eventually run the title. [ Recode ] How This Salesforce Investor Created $100B In ValueHave you created $100 billion in value? I know I haven't. But on November 9, I interviewed someone who has played an important role in doing just that. And his success can be traced to some basic investment principles that are worth knowing -- even if you can't get as much mileage out of them as he has. [ Forbes ] Snap’s First Investor: CEO Evan Spiegel Is Not ‘a Naive Founder’Snap Inc, the parent company of Snapchat, revealed some worse-than-expected earnings in the third quarter and a $40 million Spectacles flop during its earnings call on Tuesday. CEO Evan Spiegel noted that the company will redesign the app “to make it easier to use.” Last Friday, I spoke with Jeremy Liew, the man who wrote Snap’s first check. Liew, a partner at Lightspeed Venture Partners, invested $485,000 in Snap in April 2012 — an investment that returned more than $1 billion when the company went public. Below is a conversation with Lieu. [ Fortune ] The 19 hottest San Francisco startups to watch in 2018It's been a wild year for tech in San Francisco. Some of the city's tech stalwarts, like Twitter and Uber, have been rocked by controversy and competition, while buzzy startups like Jawbone, Luxe and Juiceroshut down their services. Yet even amidst the turmoil, tech continues to reach new heights, with Salesforce tower now dominating the San Francisco skyline. San Francisco remains America's breeding ground for innovative startups, with an ever-growing flock of entrepreneurs busily at work creating the next big thing. [ Business Insider ] How this woman grew her startup from zero to $58 million in three years
Will.i.am has raised $117 million dollars in venture fundingWill.i.am has raised $117 million dollars in venture funding. His company was founded in 2012, and started by creating devices like headphones. Its new AI product is a corporate voice assistant named Omega, similar to Siri or Alexa. Tesla has announced that it will debut its electric semi-truck. We will get all of the full details on Nov. 16, but the truck is rumored to have between 200 and 300 miles of range per charge. It should be interesting to see if this semi-truck will have autonomous driving capabilities. Musical.ly, the massively popular social lip-syncing app beloved by teenagers, has a new owner. Chinese tech firm Beijing Bytedance reportedly just acquired the company for as much as $1 billion, according to the Wall Street Journal. [ WSJ ] Russian Money in Silicon ValleyA new trove of leaked documents, the so-called Paradise Papers, have revealedthat Yuri Milner, a Russian businessman with extensive investments in Silicon Valley, used funds from two Kremlin-controlled—and now U.S.-sanctioned—banks to make large investments in Facebook and Twitter. Both stakes have been sold off, but Milner’s path to Silicon Valley, where he continues be a power player and lives in a $100 million compound, was paved with the Kremlin’s money and a mutually beneficial relationship. Milner’s story illuminates the very beginnings of Moscow’s efforts to establish a foothold in Silicon Valley, back in the days when the American president was pushing a thaw with Russia. It was a moment that set the conditions of the current one, in which the Russians’ use of social media and other digital
tools to undermine America’s election has driven U.S.–Russia relations to their lowest point in decades. And it’s revealing of the Kremlin’s evolving methods in learning to control and manipulate the internet to advance its own interests—first at home, and then abroad. |