Slack is planning to go public in 2019 at a reported $7 billion valuation
Here are Slack's Major Investors : Checkout Accel's Deals, Exits and Fund Raised Data. Austin VCs Say There’s Room For Peter Thiel In TexasPeter Thiel’s Mithril Capital Management is relocating its home base from San Francisco to Austin, Texas. The news is significant for the Texas capital, which is a growing hub for startups but has struggled
to be taken very seriously in the Silicon Valley-driven world of venture capital. There is no doubt that Austin has grown a reputation of being an increasingly popular alternative for startups due to its growing tech ecosystem (Facebook, Google, Apple and Amazon all have significant operations in the city), lower cost of doing business, and lack of state income tax. [ Crunch Base ] a16z Podcast: Technological Trends, Capital, and Internet 'Disruptionwith Fred Wilson (@fredwilson) and Chris Dixon (@cdixon) There's all sorts of interesting tech trends happening right now, including AI, VR/AR, self-driving cars and drones (as well as interesting stuff happening in verticals like healthcare and finance) -- and there's a lot also happening in seemingly more "mature" tech revolutions, such as mobile and cloud. Funding Circle IPO continues Index Ventures’ bonkers 2018: 8 exits and $1.65 billion in new fundsAs if Index Ventures wasn’t already on fire this year, the venture capital firm saw yet another exit from one of its portfolio companies today. The latest celebration is for Funding Circle, whose IPO on the London Stock Exchange valued the London-based fintech company at $2 billion and raised $391 million. [ Venture Beat ] Hey Reid Hoffman, What Is Blitzscaling?REID HOFFMAN KNOWS a lot about growing companies at a breakneck pace. An executive at PayPal during the company’s earliest days, Hoffman later cofounded social network LinkedIn and now invests in fast-growing companies at Greylock Partners. For years, Hoffman, who has been referred to as “the startup whisperer of Silicon Valley,” has been advising founders to take risks that prioritize speed over correctness and efficiency. In a new book, Blitzscaling: The Lightning-Fast Path to Building Massively Valuable Companies, Hoffman shares his secrets for startups that want to achieve global dominance. [ Fortune ] Troy Capital, Oaktree Capital affiliate create $200 mln fund for employee, investor liquidityTroy Capital Group and an Oaktree Capital Management affiliate said they created a $200 million fund to provide loan-based liquidity to employees and investors of pre-IPO private companies. Among Troy’s
co-founders is Josh Berman, co-founder of MySpace. [ PE Hub ] Funding Circle joins London Stock Exchange with valuation of £1.5bnPeer-to-peer lender Funding Circle has debuted on the London Stock Exchange with a valuation of £1.5bn, cementing its status as one of the UK's tech unicorns. The shares were priced at 440p each, at the bottom half of the original 420-530p price range it had set. Funding Circle had been hoping for a valuation of £1.8bn, but trimmed the price range earlier this week. [ Telegraph ] Y Combinator is changing up the way it investsTo keep up with the growing sizes of early-stage funding rounds, Y Combinator announced this morning that it will increase the size of its investments to $150,000 for 7 percent equity starting with its winter 2019 batch. Based in Mountain View, Calif., YC funds and mentors hundreds of startups per year through its 12-week program that culminates in a demo day, where founders pitch their companies to an audience of Silicon Valley’s top investors.
Airbnb, Dropbox and Instacart are among its greatest successes. [ Bloomberg ] Betterment keeps growing as fintech competitors riseBetterment, which Barron’s recently declared the largest independent online financial adviser, is betting that the future of online investing includes a blend of robot and human advisers. And the plan is working, according to chief executive Jon Stein. [ Tech Crunch ] Check out Capella Betterment's major investor - Deals, Exits, and Fund Raised data on our platform. The death of once high-flying VC fundsRobotic process automation, or RPA as it is usually abbreviated, isn’t the sexiest term to emerge from the technology industry, but it is fast becoming a core component of companies’ push to optimize their workflows through machine learning. And yes, by optimize, we mean automate. [ Venture Beat ] |