Greylock just hired Josh McFarland, who sold his Greylock-backed company to Twitterby Connie Loizos It’s not such a giant leap for McFarland, who knows the firm well. When Greylock first approached him years ago, he was a product manager at Google. At the time, he was less interested in becoming a junior VC than in starting a company of his own, so Greylock invited him to become an entrepreneur-in-residence. [ Tech Crunch ] How Andreessen Horowitz Is Disrupting Silicon ValleyJust over the crest of the highest point on Sand Hill Road, amid a cluster of relaxed buildings that could easily pass as residential units, sit the offices of Andreessen Horowitz (A.H.). Inside, you enter a lobby that doubles as a library featuring some of the favorite books of Marc Andreessen, who originally made a name for himself as co-founder of Netscape, the early web browser, which sold to AOL. There’s a wide array of books in the A.H. lobby – from highly technical tomes about coding to more popular and well-known best sellers that have been ingested by millions, like Built to Last by Jim Collins. Reflecting on the self-conscious nature of the book selection and placement, the receptionist describes how each book was selected for a reason. Each book has a story behind it, she says. There’s a lot of modern art, too, all around, and within the bowels of the offices once you’re past the reception, including Robert Rauschenberg paintings. It’s all part of the brand. Anyone who has worked in venture capital understands that the industry is driven by sales as much or more as by thinking or ideas. And, when it comes to marketing and public relations, one thing is certain: No Silicon Valley venture firm is as vociferous and aggressive with marketing these days as Andreessen Horowitz. [ Medium ] Better rules, long IPO wait mean secondary market boom for 'unicorns'After the debacle that preceded the initial public offering of Facebook Inc (FB.O) in 2012, when the company's stock changed hands at wildly varying prices and with little oversight, the market in secondary trading in shares of hot startups has made a strong comeback. Regulators and the startups themselves have gradually tightened rules governing buying and selling shares, while a growing number of startups delaying their IPOs amid a wash of eager private capital has created a huge swell of demand among both buyers and sellers. "A lot of companies learned from the headaches that Facebook had to deal with," said Brian Feinstein, a partner at Bessemer Venture Partners, which has purchased early investor and employee shares in secondary transactions. [ Reuters ] Fast Company asked CEOs across industries—social good, sexual health, beauty, tech, and more—about their expectations for 2017, from challenges they may face to how the election outcome might help affect change. Here's what they had to say. [ Fast Company ] Silicon Valley’s Biggest Companies Pay Her for Advice — but It’s Free to You!We have an advice columnist at Backchannel. We’re lucky enough to have Karen Wickre at the Help Desk, the name we’ve given to the column. For a brief period we wondered whether we should have her write under a pseudonym, something mysterious, and maybe trigger a minor media frenzy to discover who this person is, a la the “Anonymous” author of Primary Colors, or the Startup Jackson Twitter account. But then we decided transparency would be best. After all, for those in the know, The Real Karen Wickre is the best possible person to do this column. Silicon Valley Dreams: What if it all comes true?Silicon Valley prides itself on thinking not just big, but beyond. Everyone’s a futurist with an opinion about what the world ought to look like 100 years from now. In my view, 2016 has marked an inflection point where several of the Valley’s ambitious, Jetsons-esque ideas — autonomous transportation, advanced robotics, virtual reality, longevity medicine, drone delivery, space travel — suddenly appear imminently viable. In the last 12 months, a convoy of trucks drove themselves across Europe and Uber began picking up customers with self-driving vans in Pittsburgh and San Francisco. This seems like an encouraging development: a key part of lessening transportation’s impact on the environment is finding efficiencies through technologies like autonomy and self-routing. But what about the 3.75M+ trucking and livery jobs in the U.S.? An Indian businessman built the world’s largest air-cooler company, giving shareholders 91,000% returns in a decadeAchal Bakeri could have taken an easier way out if he wanted. After all, he is the heir to one of India’s oldest real estate companies, the Rs109-crore ($16 million) Bakeri Group. But as a young MBA graduate returning from the US in 1986, the then 26-year-old Bakeri had other plans. [ QZ ] Curated by Venture Pulse Team. Find us on : [ Venturepulse.org, CrunchBase, AngelList ] |