Where Silicon Valley Is Going to Get in Touch With Its SoulThe Esalen Institute, a storied hippie hotel in Big Sur, Calif., has reopened with a mission to help technologists who discover that “inside they’re hurting.” Silicon Valley, facing a crisis of the soul, has found a retreat center. It has been a hard year for the tech industry. Prominent figures like Sean Parker and Justin Rosenstein, horrified by what technology has become, have begun to publicly denounce companies like Facebook that made them rich. And so Silicon Valley has come to the Esalen Institute, a storied hippie hotel here on the Pacific coast south of Carmel, Calif. After storm damage in the spring and a skeleton crew in the summer, the institute was fully reopened in October with a new director and a new mission: It will be a home for technologists to reckon with what they have built. This is a radical change for the rambling old center. Founded in 1962, the nonprofit helped bring yoga, organic food and meditation into the American mainstream. [ NY Times ] A Venture Capitalist Talks About Her Best and Worst InvestmentsAfter Cisco Systems Inc. bought IronPort in 2007, Cyan Banister, an early employee of the acquired company, found herself with money from the acquisition that she didn’t know what to do with. She considered putting it in the stock market or in land, but settled on startups. The first check she wrote was to SpaceX. Without quantifying the size of her investment or her returns, she says “I’ve done quite well.” [ WSJ ] ConsenSys Ventures has made its first four investmentsA scant three months after its launch, the $50 million ConsenSys Ventures fund that was created to back companies developing applications on Ethereum (by Ethereum co-founder Joe Lubin’s ConsenSys Systems) has made its first four investments. Created as another way to boost Ethereum adoption and back companies to get them traction in the market, the Ethereum Ventures fund hired Kavita Gupta — a rising star in the technology firmament to run its investment vehicle. [ Tech Crunch ] Scaling your startup with SoulAfter nearly twenty years of covering the tech world, I’ve been able to interview most of the great entrepreneurs of our time. Maybe you’d be star struck by Elon Musk or squeal at the site of Mark Zuckerberg’s hoodie. I had to throttle those feelings back when I interviewed, Julie Rice and Elizabeth Cutler in 2015. Rice and Cutler founded SoulCycle, which is not only an urban cult-like sensation in places like New York, LA, San Francisco, Chicago and dozens of other cities, it started the boutique fitness craze. It didn’t seem smart or obvious in 2006: To charge a whopping $30 a class, for something that was already bundled into most gym memberships. But it worked. SoulCycle did well enough, it sold almost all of its shares to Equinox, starting in 2011, reportedly netting each founder some $90 million. [ Pando ] Justin Kan’s Atrium is starting a boot camp to help founders raise moneyRaising a Series A is hard for a founder. Especially when you consider they’re usually doing it for the first time, while the VCs on the other side of the table are essentially professional negotiators getting pitched and doing deals every day. So to help give founders a leg up Justin Kan’s new legal tech startup Atrium is launching a program to help founders become better fundraisers. [ Tech Crunch ] Elvie’s founder says to ignore the femtech naysayersElvie, the maker of a connected pelvic floor trainer that helps women with bladder control and yes, even better sex, has proven there’s a market for so-called “femtech” devices. After generating 1 million euros in its first months of direct sales, and growing 50 percent quarter-over-quarter, the company is a good indication that products for women that aren’t just ugly, utilitarian medical devices can make for a profitable business. But becoming a startup that’s now raised 10 million euro for its technology was not always easy, explained Elvie co-founder Tania Boler at TechCrunch Disrupt Berlin 2017 this morning. [ Tech Crunch ] From Bezos to Walton, Big Investors Back Fund for ‘Flyover’ Start-UpsWhen Steve Case, the billionaire co-founder of AOL, first met J. D. Vance, author of “Hillbilly Elegy,” the best-selling book about the industrial decline of the Midwest, Mr. Case told him, “I really love the book but there is a part of it I don’t love.” Mr. Vance listened patiently. [ NY Times ] Xiaomi Seeks Valuation of at Least $50 Billion in IPOMeetings Shouldn't Be BoringChase closes WePay acquisition, a deal valued up to $400MMatthew Garratt & Jason Karaian: What Can Corporate Venture Capital Bring To the Table?Blockstack raises $52 million to build a parallel internet where you own all your dataJeff Vinik sketches out plans for new venture capital grant fund and innovation hub at Water Street TampaWhat’s Going On With Early-Stage Investing? |