Ikea has bought TaskRabbitSwedish home goods giant Ikea Group has bought TaskRabbit, according to sources close to the situation. The price of the deal could not be determined, but the contract labor marketplace company has raised about $50 million since it was founded nine years ago. Sources added that TaskRabbit will become an independent subsidiary within Ikea and that CEO Stacy Brown-Philpot and its staff would remain. Fidelity CEO Abigail Johnson says the company is mining cryptocurrenciesFidelity Investments, one of the world’s largest investment firms with $2.3 trillion in managed assets, is taking a long look at cryptocurrencies. The firm has been experimenting internally with bitcoin, but is now bringing some of those features out to its broad customer base. According to reports in Quartz and The Financial Times, Fidelity’s chief executive, Abigail Johnson, spoke at length about the company’s commitment to cryptocurrency at Consensus, a bitcoin-themed conference in New York. [ Tech Crunch ] Fred Wilson’s five lessons for budding venture capitalists are also pretty good life and work lessonsIf you want to be a venture capitalist, get out your pom-poms. “A VCs most important role is that of a cheerleader,” says Fred Wilson, co-founder and managing partner of Union Square Ventures (USV), one of the most successful venture capital firms on the planet. “I know that seems like nothing. How hard is it to be a cheerleader? But it is everything. And very few venture capitalists do it.” For the past decade, venture capital has been riding a wave of glamor and riches. Last year, the VC industry in the US had $333 billion in assets under management, double the assets in 2004. Few have ridden as high as USV, which invested in startups like Twitter and Zynga at the equivalent of pennies per share. ‘Seed and Series A are the way to make one hundred times your money,” Wilson said during a lecture at MIT’s Sloan School of Management. “I am not aware of another legal way to do that.” [ QZ ] The Rise of "The Platform" for Venture Capital FundsTraditionally, the role of a Venture Capital Fund was to give founders access to capital and maybe one partner took a seat on your board. As the venture industry grows and becomes more competitive and founder focused, capital alone doesn’t create success stories. Here’s what matters now: How the firm helps you build the community and ecosystem around your idea. That’s where “the platform” comes into focus. [ Forbes ] Angry Birds-maker Rovio priced IPO, valuing company at $1 billionAngry Birds-maker Rovio Entertainment priced its IPO at 11.50 euros, at the top of its proposed range. It raises 30 million euros in proceeds. This values the company a little above $1 billion, just half of the $2 billion the company was previously said to be hoping for. The company previously raised at least $42 million in venture funding from Accel, Atomico, Felicis Ventures and others. [ Tech Crunch ] Venture capitalists with daughters are more successfulRICHARD NESBITT, a former chief operating officer at the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, has long been an evangelist for women in business. In “Results at the Top”, a book he wrote with Barbara Annis, he describes his efforts to convince men to promote women. When speaking to bosses, he stresses data showing that companies with more senior women are more successful. But he has noticed that men with daughters tend to be more receptive to his message. At least for venture-capital (VC) firms, recent research confirms this observation, as well as the assertion that gender diversity boosts performance. [ The Economist ] Hustle names Ysiad Ferreiras as Chief Operations OfficerHustle, a peer-to-peer (P2P) messaging platform that scales and humanizes the way that organizations communicate with people, today announced the appointment of Ysiad Ferreiras as the company’s Chief Operations Officer, reporting to CEO Roddy Lindsay. Ferreiras brings deep expertise in sales, operations, culture development, talent strategy, and leadership development to the Hustle executive team. [ Venture Pulse ] Used goods marketplace LetGo quietly raised $100M more at a $1B+ valuationLetGo, a startup that has built a marketplace for people to buy and sell used goods, is one of the fastest growing apps in the U.S. at the moment according to comScore, with some 75 million downloads, “tens of millions” of active users, and 200 million listings in the last two years. Now it is gearing up for another stage of expansion. TechCrunch has learned from a source that LetGo has quietly raised another $100 million in funding, at a valuation of over $1 billion. [ TechCrunch ] 'It's surreal': These 20-something Oxford grads just raised $30 million for their fintech startupDon't Start a Blog, Start a Cult - Mr. Money MustacheThree Paths in the Tech Industry: Founder, Executive, or EmployeeWhen people ask me for tech career advice I find it helpful to lay out the three paths I’ve encountered most in my career: founder, executive, and employee. I’m leaving out investor because the best path to being an investor that I’ve seen starts with being successful (or failing) at one of these three first. Below I’ll outline what I see as the pros/cons and useful strategies for each role. [ YC ] This Startup Lets You Use Your Extra Cash To Invest In Community DevelopmentHere's what Sergey Brin's resume looked like 2 years before he cofounded GoogleA guy who helped revolutionize Amazon explains what the future of finance looks likeInside Sea’s Billion Dollar IPOSnoop Dogg's venture capital firm is leading an investment in a cannabis tech companyA quick look at the evolving software engineering jobs market |