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San Francisco's VC Boom Is Over

But tech investment is still rolling along in the rest of the country. The second-quarter PricewaterhouseCoopers MoneyTree report on venture capital investment in the U.S. (based on data from CB Insights) came out last week, and it once again showed the San Francisco area in the lead. This leadership is a relatively new thing. Until 2010, the San Francisco area had, except for one quarter in 1999, always trailed Silicon Valley -- the longtime headquarters of the U.S. tech industry just to its south -- in the MoneyTree tallies of inbound VC investment, which go back to 1995. In fact, PwC had just counted the two as a single region called Silicon Valley until this year, when it decided to split the area along the dividing line of California Route 92. [ Bloomberg ]

It’s 2017, and women still aren’t being funded equally

Broadly, the venture capital industry is thriving. But still, too often, women seeking funding are left out of the boom because of hidden biases, sexism and a general unawareness. Because of this — and recent reports of incredibly low-brow behavior among high-profile investors — it is more important than ever to understand where women founders stand when fundraising.

Since 2015, Crunchbase has reported on gender diversity in venture capital. And, once again, the story for women looking to be funded remains stubbornly predictable. Here’s what the numbers tell us. [ Tech Crunch ]

What The SoftBank Vision Fund Means For Tech Investing—VCs & Industry Leaders Sound Off

The SoftBank Vision Fund, first announced in October 2016, has now closed at least $93B of a target $100B to invest in global technology companies – making it the largest tech investment fund in history. With moonshot ambitions to enable “the next stage of the Information Revolution” using only private capital, the Vision Fund will make $100M-minimum investments in late-stage startups in areas such as IoT, artificial intelligence, and robotics. The fund’s leaders are currently scouting investments in quantum computing and are in talks to invest in UK delivery startup Deliveroo, according to reports.

$100B is an unprecedented sum for a single fund, totaling almost exactly the same amount that all VC-backed companies received in 2016 ($100.8B across 8,372 deals globally, per CB Insights data). Yet the fund’s massive size is raising concerns among some investors, who fear that an influx of high-dollar rounds could overinflate the market and prolong exits while crowding out competing investors. [ CB Insights ]

A Private Equity Fund Formerly Valued at $2 Billion Is Now ‘Nearly Worthless’

Wells Fargo (WFC, -0.47%) and a number of other lenders are negotiating to take control of a hedge fund previously valued at more than $2 billion that is now worth close to nothing, according to a report from the Wall Street Journal.

EnerVest (ENDTF, +0.32%), a Houston private equity firm that focuses on energy investments, manages the private equity fund that focused on oil investments. The fund will leave clients, including major pensions, endowments and charitable foundations, with at most pennies on the dollar, WSJ reported. [ Fortune ]

Flybridge Recruits Female Founders to Run Women-Only Venture Capital Fund. The new pre-seed fund looks to invest $100,000 in each of 30 women-led companies.

Flybridge Capital Partners is taking a small, yet potentially important, step toward making venture capital a more reasonable and inclusive place for women. On Wednesday, the firm announced the creation of the XFactor Fund, a pre-seed stage fund that will invest solely in women entrepreneurs.

The fund, and the amounts to be invested, are relatively small. The fund has $3 million, and it plans to invest $100,000 in 30 different companies. There will be no follow-on investing from the fund, although of course the hope is that when the XFactor companies are ready for another round they will be eager to consider Flybridge.

What's most interesting about the fund, however, is who's running it. Chip Hazard and Kate Castle, both partners at Flybridge, will participate. But Flybridge has also asked a group of women entrepreneurs to become general partners in the fund. These women will be bringing their own deal flow and recommendations for investment.

"We had been talking about starting a fund for so long that it's really a dream come true," says Ooshma Garg, founder and CEO of meal-kit company Gobble, and one of the women who will be running the fund.

Other founders who will be participating in the XFactor Fund include:

Anna Palmer, co-founder and CEO, WonderMile
Aubrie Pagano, co-founder and CEO, Bow & Drape
Elizabeth Whitman, co-founder, Manicube
Kathryn Minshew (pictured above), co-founder and CEO, The Muse
Danielle Morrill, co-founder and CEO, Mattermark
Erica Brescia, co-founder and COO, Bitnami
Jessica Mah, founder and CEO, inDinero

While some of these founders have made angel investments in startups before, Brescia says the appeal of working alongside other female founders, in a more structured investment environment, was persuasive. [ Inc. ]

VC OF THE YEAR: FORERUNNER’S KIRSTEN GREEN ON 2 $BN+ EXITS IN 1 YEAR, WHY WE ARE IN THE VERY EARLY INNINGS FOR COMMERCE & HOW BRAND HAS FUNDAMENTALLY CHANGED OVER THE LAST DECADE

Kirsten Green is the Founding General Partner @ Forerunner Ventures, where she has raised over $250M from leading investors and has invested in more than 40 early-stage companies. Forerunner Ventures is the only VC firm to invest in both Dollar Shave Club and Jet.com, two of the biggest and highest-profile e-commerce exits in recent years, and counts Birchbox, Bonobos, Glossier, Hotel Tonight, Warby Parker and Zola among its portfolio companies. She’s been honored in Time’s 100 Most Influential People in 2017, named VC of the Year at TechCrunch’s 2017 Crunchies Awards, and is part of Forbes 2017 Midas List. [ 20 VC ]

3D metal printer raises VC at $1 billion valuation

Desktop Metal, a Massachusetts-based maker of 3D metal printing systems, has raised $115 million in Series D venture capital funding. Investors include Google Ventures, Saudi Aramco, Australia's Future Fund, Lowe's and Milwaukee Tool. Axios has learned the round gives the company a post-money valuation north of $1 billion, compared to around $360 million post on its Series C round last fall. [ Axios ]

More Silicon Valley tech workers were born outside the US than in it

The US government has sent a clear message to potential immigrants over the past six months: no jobs here.

President Donald Trump’s administration has taken aim at the H-1B visa program, a pathway for many foreign-born workers to join US companies, and recently “delayed” implementation of the so-called startup visa, an Obama-era rule allowing immigrants with funded startups that employ Americans to secure temporary residence in the the US, until 2018 The delay may be indefinite.
[ QZ ]

Marc Andreessen says he’s reading these eight provocative books to better understand our world

Marc Andreessen’s (now dormant) Twitter feed was like the Venture Capitalist’s Review of Books. He issued a steady stream of dozens ofrecommendations (more than 100), revealing a catholic diet of science fiction, economics, American history, political science, and deep dives into the American hippopotamus industry. They’re still coming. In an interview with startup founders in the Stripe Atlas program at the payment company Stripe, the Netscape co-founder and VC who has backed in some of the biggest hits of the last decade (e.g. Airbnb, Twitter, Facebook), summarized the most challenging books he’s reading to better understand the world.

Andreessen, like all VCs, is paid to invest in the next big thing. One of the ways he does that is by keeping an eye on “what do nerds do on nights and weekend,” what he called the single most reliable source of new ideas adopted by the broader culture and economy (if interested, check out cryptocurrency, biohacking, quantified self, synthetic biology, virtual reality, drones, and self-driving cars). [ QZ ]