Women's Club The Wing Raises $32 Million Series B, Led By Competitor WeWorkAll-women social and co-working club The Wing has raised a $32 million Series B round of funding as it quickly grows into a network of outposts in multiple cities. This marks one of the biggest Series B rounds raised by women founders in recent memory, and takes total investment in The Wing to over $42 million. In April, the startup raised an $8 million Series A round. The timing of this round means that cofounders Audrey Gelman and Lauren Kassan, both 30, were pitching venture capitalists while the latter was heavily pregnant. [ Forbes ] This is the tech bubble we have been waiting for
The venture capitalist Bill Gurley was recently asked whether he thought cryptocurrency "initial coin offerings" (ICOs) were in a bubble. Billions of dollars have been poured into over 1,000 new digital coins issued by startups so far this year. These coins mimic the construction of bitcoin, meaning they can be freely traded on digital exchanges and have no central bank standing behind them. Gurley had an interesting answer. Yes, he said, ICOs look speculative, because interest rates are so low and "there is nowhere [else] to put money." [ BI ] Binary Capital wants to move ex-employee lawsuit to arbitrationBinary Capital is pushing back on a lawsuit filed in June by a former employee, seeking to move some of the claims into private arbitration, according to court documents filed on Friday. Memory refresh: After allegations of sexual harassment surfaced against Binary Capital co-founder Justin Caldbeck, former employee Ann Lai filed suit against the firm. She claimed that Binary Capital threatened her ability to find work if she discussed her work experiences, and made disparaging statements about her to prospective employers. [ Axios ] 200x GrowthBack in 2011, my partner Brad suggested that USV invest in a search engine called DuckDuckGo. I laughed at the idea, “why would we ever want to compete with Google?” “Because they do something Google will never do”, Brad explained. That thing was private search, no storage of search history, no storing of personal information. DuckDuckGo was doing about 100,000 searches a day when we had that conversation. Last week, they had a day in which over 20mm direct searches were done. [ AVC ] Tellme is one of the best Silicon Valley companies most people have never heard ofSeventeen years ago, I competed against Mike McCue, who is currently the Founder and CEO of Flipboard. Back then, he was the co-founder and CEO of Tellme Networks and I was the VP of Business Development at a company called VoiceGenie. I met Mike for the first time two weeks ago at the Flipboard offices on a quiet street in Palo Alto, in a converted bowling alley. [ CNBC ] Zuckerberg’s Wealth Manager Wants to Be a Buyout ShopA secretive wealth manager that invests money for some of the most prominent names in Silicon Valley plans to ramp up its private-equity investing, a move that raises the specter of possible conflicts with some of its clients. Iconiq Capital LLC, whose early clients included Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg, plans to pursue more buyouts of mature, medium-size technology companies, according to people familiar with the matter. Until now, the firm has mostly pursued venture-capital deals in potentially fast-growing startups. [ WSJ ] Stitch Fix’s CEO says ‘We’ve been underestimated before’Stitch Fix accomplished more in six years than most companies do in a lifetime. But in the narrow world of IPO pricing, its public debut last week did not go as planned. The online retail and personal styling company was convinced it could sell its shares at $18 to $20, but ended up having to settle in the end for $15. A few hours after the company opened trading on Friday, I visited Nasdaq for a candid discussion with founder and CEO Katrina Lake. Here are some of the highlights. [ Recode ] Ten years on: Seedcamp outs new £41M seed fund and says it’s ready to invest in tokens“The maturity of founders is just exponentially better and different from when we started in ‘07,” says Seedcamp co-founder and Managing Partner Reshma Sohoni. “[They are] so much more knowledgeable, so much more practiced in the art of starting up”. I’m on a conference call with Sohoni, Seedcamp’s other Managing Partner Carlos Espinal, and three additional members of the Seecamp team. All are sounding buoyant, and perhaps with every reason to be so. The London-based VC firm recently sold its first two funds to Draper Esprit, and today is announcing the first close of a new £41 million fund, double the size of its last. This year the VC is also celebrating its 10 year anniversary. [ TechCrunch ] Uber hid a 2016 data breach that affected 57 million peopleUber failed to notify some 57 million users that their data — including names, email addresses, phone numbers and driver’s license numbers — was exposed when hackers accessed that information in 2016, newly minted CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said in a statement on Tuesday. As a result of the failure to notify its customers, Khosrowshahi opened an investigation into how the company handled the incident, and fired two people who handled the response process. [ Re/Code ] E780: News Roundtable! Peter Rojas & Iain Thomson: Tesla, Apple, StitchFix, backflipping robotsHow To Finally Fix The Gender Gap In VCThis Silicon Valley–Style Meeting Can Transform Your Whole TeamOne-third of Outcome Health's staff takes buyoutsLeaders vs. Followers: Can VC Investors Spot The Next Big Thing?Meg Whitman, one of Silicon Valley's best-known execs, is stepping down from the CEO job at Hewlett Packard EnterpriseMeg Whitman, the veteran Silicon Valley executive who steered Hewlett Packard Enterprisethrough its recent spinoff, will resign in February — an unexpected announcement that comes several months after she was identified as interviewing for the CEO job at Uber, though she ultimately did not get it. Whitman will be replaced by Antonio Neri, currently the president of HPE, but she will remain on the board of directors. Shares of HPE, which also reported quarterly results on Tuesday, were down 6.6% in after-hours trading. Whitman, 61, has taken HPE through some drastic changes since she joined in 2011 as the CEO of what was known as Hewlett-Packard. She has conducted layoffs that sliced tens of thousands of employees from HPE, with more layoffs expected. [ BusinessInsider ] Why Marissa Mayer Could Cost Verizon Hundreds of MillionsVerizon Communications Inc. paid $4.5 billion for Yahoo! Inc.’s web businesses. Then it took a $500 million hit for post-acquisition costs. It’s poised to pay up again, thanks to a high-profile deal struck by Marissa Mayer when she ran the internet company. Executives at the telecom giant are negotiating a bill they will likely owe Mozilla Corp., owner of the Firefox browser, after an expensive web search deal fell apart. Verizon could end up paying hundreds of millions of dollars, depending on how the agreement is interpreted, according to people familiar with the deal and online chat logs shared with Bloomberg. The bill could also come in lower, the people said. Last week, Mozilla said its latest Firefox browser will rely on Google’s search engine as the default in the U.S. and three other countries. That broke a five-year contract Mozilla signed with Yahoo in 2014. [ BloomBerg ] Blue Sky VC participates in US$65 million Series B round for Thailand’s aCommerceThis Handheld Device Can Give You an Eye Exam in SecondsStartup Muster 2017 finds almost 36 percent of founders were born outside Australia |