Funding for women-founded startups is stalling. Here are some reasons whyJeannine Shao Collins took her 16-year-old daughter’s idea for a way to champion young women entrepreneurs and ran with it in 2014. Girl Starter is a reality television show that centers on 18- to 24-year-old entrepreneurs who compete for $100,000 and guidance from a network of mentors. Fresh off its first season on Discovery TLC, the show toured several cities casting for its second season in May and June. Collins got there without funding from venture capital firms. Instead, sponsors, including Staples and Microsoft, saw a market where venture capital firms didn’t. [ USA Today ] Four key questions that will shape the outcome of Uber’s latest financial messTension in Uber’s upper ranks have already ricocheted to every corner of the company. An early investor has sued ex-CEO Travis Kalanick just as he tussles with the board over the search for his successor. Meanwhile, deep-pocketed suitors are circling for a piece of the $70 billion startup. We know Uber is in advanced talks with a consortium of investors as part of a deal that would allow some early backers to cash out and could resolve some of the stewing and have enormous implications for the company’s future. But there are questions hovering over the behind-the-scenes bargaining. [ Recode ] Why venture capitalists are tapping into the cryptocurrency boomTop-tier venture capital firms are quietly taking advantage of the recent explosion in new cryptocurrencies, with many backing so-called "crypto hedge funds" that trade and invest in cryptocurrencies, usually at their earliest stages. Others are experimenting alone. Why it matters: More than $1.5 billion has been raised through initial coin offerings — or ICOs — so far this year. In many cases they can serve as an alternative funding mechanism to traditional venture capital, so backing crypto hedge funds can help VCs maintain a piece of the action. In the spring, for example, venture firms including Sequoia Capital, Andreessen Horowitz and Union Square Ventures reportedly invested in a crypto hedge fund called MetaStable. Another crypto hedge fund called Polychain has raised from some of the same shops, while other VC firms like CrunchFundare directly participating in cryptocurrency token sales. [ Axios ] Social Capital adds a new partner to the mix: Mike GhaffaryIf you’ve worked in tech in the Bay Area over the last decade or more, you quite possibly know Mike Ghaffary, a USC undergrad who nabbed both his MBA and JD from Harvard before beginning to work his way through a number of well-known institutions. From his first stop at Summit Partners, to cofounder of the news and talk radio service Stitcher (sold to Deezer in 2014), to business development roles at TrialPay and Yelp and eventually, as CEO of Yelp Eat 24, Ghaffary has seemingly been working toward a career as a venture capitalist since leaving completing his degrees. Now, with Yelp selling its food ordering service Eat24 to GrubHub for $287.5 million earlier this month (roughly twice what Yelp paid for it in early 2015), he has landed just that role. To wit, Ghaffary just joined Social Capital as one of five full-time partners on the firm’s venture team. [ Tech Crunch ] Steve Jurvetson on why the digital divide needs to be addressed nowSteve Jurvetson took possession of the fifth Model 3 to roll off the assembly line at the end of July. That kind of pull isn’t surprising. The powerful cofounder of DFJ was among the first investors in Tesla Motors. And SpaceX. And more billion-dollar bets than nearly any other venture capitalist working today. In fact, most in Silicon Valley would agree that Jurvetson, who graduated from Stanford at the top of his class — in just two-and-a-half years, no less — has been ahead of many tech trends over the course of his 30-plus years as an investor. (It’s no accident that Jurvetson is still on the board of both Tesla and SpaceX and that he generally remains close with another renowned futurist, Elon Musk.) [ Tech Crunch ] Lessons From a Quarter Million Emails
Every weekend I send a newsletter, The Prepared, to a few thousand people. It focuses on engineering & manufacturing, where I’ve worked for about a decade, and over the past three and a half years it has become a core part of my career. I never intended for this to happen; I didn’t start The Prepared with any plan for how it would help me win friends or influence people. The work it takes to manage and write gets slipped into odd corners of my week – on the subway, during lunch, after my family goes to bed. I write it in addition to my job and my personal blog and my side projects. It takes up more of my time than any of these, or the half dozen or so conference talks I give every year. And it pays off more consistently – and in more nuanced ways – than any of those things ever could. [ YC Blog ] A Start-Up Suggests a Fix to the Health Care Morass If you watched the drama in Washington last month, you may have come away with the impression that the American health care system is a hopeless mess. In Congress, a doomed plan to repeal the Affordable Care Act, President Obama’s health care law, has turned into a precarious effort to rescue it. Meanwhile, President Trump is still threatening to mortally wound the law — which he insists, falsely, is collapsing anyway — while his administration is undermining its being carried out. So it is surprising that across the continent from Washington, investors and technology entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley see the American health care system as the next great market for reform. [ NY Times ] For Uber, a Quiet Investor Becomes a Sudden ThornFor the past week, Uber’s board members have been embroiled in conversations over a thorny question: what to do about Benchmark, the venture capital firm that is one of the ride-hailing company’s largest shareholders. While Benchmark had long supported Uber’s management, the investor had recently turned against the company’s top echelons. In June, Benchmark helped oust Uber’s co-founder, Travis Kalanick, as chief executive. Last week, the firm escalated its actions against Mr. Kalanick by suing him for fraud and saying he should be removed from Uber’s board. Then on Monday, Benchmark published an open letter to Uber employees intimating that the company had dark secrets that had not been revealed. [ NY Times ] Travis Kalanick strikes back against Benchmark lawsuit, calling it a ‘public and personal attack’Uber co-founder, former CEO and current board member Travis Kalanick fired back at Benchmark Capital in legal documents filed Thursday, arguing that the venture capital firm’s lawsuit was initiated “as part of its public and personal attack” on him. The legal filing, first spotted by Axios, also posits that Benchmark’s claims are subject to mandatory arbitration, and that the Delaware Chancery Court, where the complaint was filed, doesn’t have the jurisdiction to settle them. We have reached out to Benchmark for comment. Benchmark, which was an early investor in Uber and holds a position on the company’s board of directors, sued Kalanick earlier this month, saying that he had committed fraud, breach of contract and breach of fiduciary duty in his efforts to maintain control at the company he helped create. Union Square Ventures partner Albert Wenger to Fund 'XPRIZE' for Blockchain-Powered BlogsUnion Square Ventures partner Albert Wenger has revealed plans to fund a new prize aimed to incentivize the creation of a blockchain-powered blogging platform. Modeled after the storied XPRIZE award, Wenger's offer requires that the blog be built using emerging blockchain technologies in which Union Square Ventures is an investor, in particular, the Blockstack developerkit and decentralized storage system IPFS, built by Protocol Labs. Wenger had previously written of his idea for a blog without a central authority on his Tumblr channel. In the post, he raised concerns over monetary strategies as the blogging space becomes increasingly centralized. [ Coindesk ] |