He Blew the Whistle on a Silicon Valley Highflier. Then Came the BlowbackFrancisco Riordan says he helped expose Rothenberg Ventures to the SEC. It’s a touchy subject in job interviews. Rothenberg Ventures didn’t waste any time with the red flags, Francisco Riordan says. During Riordan’s first week working on the website for the San Francisco company, known to Silicon Valley startups for its over-the-top spending on parties and perks, Rothenberg’s finance director resigned with no explanation. That was February 2016. By July, Riordan says, he’d downloaded emails, financial reports, and other records from the network that he says showed the company’s namesake, Chief Executive Officer Mike Rothenberg, was using investor money to fund other projects he owned—projects the investors hadn’t agreed to support. “It just kept escalating and escalating,” says Riordan, 28, who’s featured in the latest episode of the Decrypted podcast. So he contacted the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. [ Bloomberg ] Coach to Buy Kate Spade in $2.4 Billion DealCoach Inc.agreed to acquire rival Kate Spade & Co. for $2.4 billion, as the handbag and accessories maker seeks to tap younger consumers amid slower growth in the handbag market. Sales of handbags are lagging as women have traded down to smaller, less expensive purses and aggressive discounting both in stores and online has pressured profits. The proposed merger would combine two big U.S. players, creating a company with $5.9 billion in annual sales and 1,300 retail stores and outlets around the world. [ WSJ ] What’s keeping NYC’s leading D2C Brand Makers Up at Night? A Primary Table Talk Hosted by IVP’s Eric LiawEric Liaw, General Partner at IVP, counts some serious ecommerce heavyweights among his list of notable investments. The Honest Company, Mindbody, Glossier, and Supercell are all on his recent roster, and the list extends into software and FinTech, as well. As an experienced late-stage investor - mostly late B, early C round investments - we were thrilled to have Eric lead the discussion at last week’s Primary Table Talk, where 15 of NYC Tech’s leading ecommerce brand makers broke bread and discussed their observations, challenges, and upcoming trends in building D2C consumer brands. [ Primary VC ] A group of Obama veterans are banding together to invest in tech that can help Democrats winHoping to gain new ground after an Election Day disappointment, a group of tech experts who worked with President Barack Obama are banding together to give progressive political candidates a bit of a digital upgrade. The effort is called Higher Ground Labs, and it aims to invest in new political technologies so that progressive office-seekers at the state and federal levels can tap the same Silicon Valley-style tools that helped Obama and other nationally inclined Democrats win past races. [ Re/Code ] Live Office Hours with Adora Cheung and Avichal Garg As WeWork Grew, Some Employees Say They Were MistreatedWeWork Cos., the world's largest co-working company, rents out office space in 140 locations around the world, which means its daily needs are basic but essential: working internet, clean conference rooms and fresh coffee. To keep its existing customers happy and to enlist new ones, WeWork hires a small army of "community staff," and it's these people who run the WeWork spaces every day. These 1,200 workers make up more than half of the company’s staff. But as WeWork shot from 350 to 2,200 employees in two years, some community staff said they were overworked, underpaid and misclassified as ineligible for overtime. [ Bloomberg ] Dell Is Merging Its Venture Capital UnitsDell Technologies said on Monday it has combined the venture capital operations from its two predecessor companies, computer maker Dell Inc and data storage firm EMC, and said it plans to invest about $100 million a year in startups. Dell also revealed a portfolio of 70 existing and prior investments made by both operations, some of which, like Arista Networks, which went public in 2014, had not been previously disclosed. [ Fortune ] VCs Put $110 Million Into Grammar-Checking SoftwareVenture capitalists want a piece of just about anything involving artificial intelligence, whether it’s computers learning to drive or helping people shop for clothing. The latest to get a sizable investment is a startup looking to use AI to improve people’s grammar. General Catalyst, a Silicon Valley venture firm, said Monday that it led a $110 million investment in Grammarly Inc. The San Francisco startup makes software that underlines awkward words and phrases in the user’s writing and makes suggestions, similar to a feature in Microsoft Word. [ Bloomberg ] Peak Ventures shores up its second fund for $50 millionUtah-based Peak Ventures has closed on a second fund for $50 million, outpacing Kickstart Seed Fund as the seed VC firm with the largest coffers in the state thus far. Peak took in $23 million for the first fund and has since invested in local startups like Owlet and Homie as well as the New York-based Nigerian education startup Andela. [ Tech Crunch ] Food startup Maple shuts down operations in New York to join DeliverooMaple, the prepared food delivery startup that had raised over $25 million, tried to differentiate itself from other startups by owning the whole process of the food cycle from sourcing the food, to preparing it and then delivering it. As the headline suggests, it didn’t work out for Maple. That’s why Maple is ceasing operations in New York (the only city it served) and teaming up with UK-based food delivery company Deliveroo. [ Tech Crunch ] City of Melbourne identifying Smart Cities opportunities with StartupbootcampStartupbootcamp has been busy since its arrival down under was announced by LaunchVic last August. The organisation, a global network of industry-focused accelerators founded in Copenhagen in 2010, received $600,000 from the Victorian government’s startup body to help it open a hardware lab in Melbourne and fund the launch of an accelerator program this year. After Sheryl Sandberg’s husband died, strangers on the internet helped her copeThe sudden death of a loved one can be devastating for anyone. But in 2015, when Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg lost her husband — entrepreneur and the widely loved “soul” of Silicon Valley, Dave Goldberg — she also had to grapple with the public nature of her grief. Two years later, Sandberg has co-written a book about that process, “Option B: Facing Adversity, Building Resilience, and Finding Joy,” with her friend, psychologist Adam Grant. On the latest episode of Recode Decode, hosted by Kara Swisher, she talked about the mistakes we often make when people we know are in mourning — mistakes that Sandberg herself was guilty of in the
past. Want Your Kids to Build the Next Airbnb, Snapchat, or Uber? Teach Them This SkillIn one of the industry’s largest deals in recent years, Washington, D.C.-based Everfi on April 26 announced it had raised $190 millionfrom The Rise Fund, TPG Growth, Main Street Advisors and Advance Publications. The company provides subscription-based digital learning to K-12 schools, universities, corporations, sports leagues and non-profits. Everfi is fueled by its Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) subscription model. [ Crunch Base ] |