Famed VC Jim Breyer on finding the next Mark Zuckerberg (and much more)Yesterday, at the Web Summit conference in Lisbon, we caught up with Jim Breyer, renowned in Silicon Valley thanks to a decades-long track record of smart bets, most notably in Facebook. Breyer was the managing partner at Accel Partners, which invested $12.7 million in Facebook in 2005 when the company was priced around $100 million; that bet proved to be among the most lucrative in the history of the venture business, returning many billions of dollars to Accel’s investors after the company went public in 2012. [ Tech Crunch ] Founder Gym aims to help underrepresented startup founders build tech startupsFounder Gym, co-founded by Mandela Schumacher-Hodge and Gabriela Zamudio (pictured above), is unveiling its online platform to support and train underrepresented founders building tech startups. Instead of describing it as a school, bootcamp or incubator, Founder Gym describes itself as a topical, four-week training program that covers topics like fundraising, pitching, user growth and problem validation. “We’re trying to use different language in order to break paradigms that have been established,” Schumacher-Hodge told me over the phone. “What we’ve seen time and time again is that model doesn’t work. What we’re trying to do is create a new model.” Sequoia Capital raising dedicated seed fundSequoia Capital is raising up to $180 million for a new fund that will focus exclusively on seed-stage opportunities, Axios has learned from multiple sources. Why it matters: Sequoia has a particularly strong track record in the seed space, having cut small, early checks for such companies as Airbnb, LinkedIn, Stripe, Palo Alto Networks and YouTube. The $180 million size sounds huge for seed, but it's actually more about changes to book-keeping than changes to strategy. Namely: Sequoia already has raised a pair of "scout" funds, and the new vehicle is viewed as the third in that series. The only difference is that Sequoia Scout III also will include seed deals (generally <$2m) that historically have been done out of Sequoia's flagship fund (although completed seed deals will not be transferred over). [ Axios ] Compass is now a real estate tech unicornCompass, a New York-based online platform for real estate purchases and rentals, has raised $100 million in Series E funding led by Fidelity at a $1.8 billion post-money valuation. Existing shareholders include Peter Thiel's Founders Fund and Joshua Kushner's Thrive Capital. Bottom line: The valuation looks rich for what appears to be a real estate version of Casper or Blue Apron, companies that use software to augment, rather than disrupt, traditional (and profitability-challenged) business models. Particularly given that quasi-rival RedFin, which appears to have similar revenue, has a public market cap of $1.74 billion (albeit with a decade's head start, which likely is a key differentiator for Fidelity). [ Axios ] THE UNDENIABLE UPSIDES OF FOUNDER-LED COMPANIESIn Silicon Valley, the very word “founder” has a kind of shamanic power. Using it to explain a decision can stop an argument cold. To say “the founder(s)” brought in a new executive, chose the office location, or even designed the logo requires no further discussion. If they did or said that, the thinking goes, that’s good enough for us. After all, they are The Founders. [ Wired ] China’s Tencent Buys 12% Stake in Snap Less than a day after Snap Inc. posted weak results that sent its shares plunging, the struggling social-media and camera company disclosed that Chinese internet giant Tencent Holdings Ltd. had recently bought a 12% stake, becoming one of its largest shareholders. Tencent, an early pre-IPO backer of Snap, acquired roughly 146 million of its shares in the public market, Snap said in a filing Wednesday. The purchase adds to an investment Tencent made in Snap in 2013 during a fundraising round before the company’s initial public... [ WSJ ] The Latent Purchasing Power In The SaaS Acquisition MarketThe startup acquisition market is off by roughly 35% year-over-year. Why the decline? One consistent response from potential acquirers is that they are waiting for tax reform to happen. If it does happen, and when acquirers do decide to pursue acquisitions, I suspect we will enter a very acquisitive environment for three reasons. First, the cash available to finance acquisitions on the balance sheets of publics as companies has grown by 20 X over the last 10 years and now totals more than $8.5 billion. [ TOMASZ TUNGUZ ] Softbank Vision Fund: Enabling the New Age of Innovation w/ Jeffrey HousenboldThese 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 areas 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.) The cross-border deal-making isn’t limited to Russian investors backing U.S. startups. Venture firms based in the U.S. have invested in more than 150 funding rounds for Russian startups over the past decade, with a particular focus on e-commerce and consumer internet deals. We’ll look at those trends in the second installment of this two-part series. [ CrunchBase ] THE INSIDE STORY OF VENTURE CAPITAL'S MESSIEST BREAKUPQuantitative Investing in ShampooSilicon Valley's 'gut-wrenching' year confronting its dark sideHow you can push for more transparency from Silicon Valley’s tech giants'The Most Powerful Company in the History of Silicon Valley Tried Everything in its Power to Silence and Threaten Me.'How to watch ex-Yahoo Marissa Mayer and Equifax executives testify to Congress on major data breachesIndian men are terrible at buying underwear. This startup wants to help |