How Two Brothers Turned Seven Lines of Code Into a $9.2 Billion StartupNow, Stripe’s Patrick and John Collison are teaming with Amazon to grab even more control over the global flow of commerce. Every day, Americans spend about $1.2 billion online. That figure has roughly doubled in the past five years, according to the Department of Commerce, and it’s likely to double again in the next five as the internet continues to devour traditional retail. So it might come as a surprise that the web’s financial infrastructure is old and slow. For years, the explosive growth of e-commerce has outpaced the underlying technology; companies wanting to set up shop have had to go to a bank, a payment processor, and “gateways” that handle connections between the two. This takes weeks, lots of people, and fee after fee. Much of the software that processes the transactions is decades old, and the more modern bits are written by banks, credit card companies, and financial middlemen, none of whom are exactly winning hackathons for elegant coding. [ Bloomberg ] These 8 CEOs are changing the way we workIt's the beginning of the week, and you've got a big meeting to prepare for. Fortunately, you've got technology on your side. Artificial intelligence not only scheduled your meeting — after consulting your calendar and finding the best time — it's helped give you dossiers on the people you're meeting with. Meanwhile, you can send a robot off to retrieve the box of materials you'll need for the meeting from the storage room. Sound futuristic? Probably. But all of this technology exists today. [ Business Insider ] British Home Secretary pushes Silicon Valley on extremismBritish Home Secretary Amber Rudd is in Silicon Valley as part of her campaign to push platform companies to do more to combat extremist content. She's attending a forum involving tech companies devoted to the issue.
2016 Saw More Than 100 Down Exits Recently, Blue Apron priced their IPO with a valuation lower than their previous round, and the company’s share price continues to fall in public markets. As other companies become M&A targets or get set to go public, not all will be good outcomes for investors. We used CB Insights data to map out the number of down exits in the US since 2012 for companies with disclosed exit valuations. [ CB Insights ] 500 Startups’ Christine Tsai responded to sexual harassment allegations for the first time since McClure’s ousterThe new leader of a venture capital firm rocked by sexual harassment allegations offered her most extensive comments to date Tuesday on how exactly her venture firm, 500 Startups, is coping with the fallout. A month after Dave McClure, her fellow co-founder, resigned from the startup accelerator, Christine Tsai frankly acknowledged to an audience of investors and entrepreneurs that her company’s reputation was seriously damaged by his conduct and that it would work to fix the culture. Tsai, speaking to a dead silent room of about 400 people, addressed the allegations unprompted here at the outset of a 500 Startups Demo Day in Mountain View, calling the recent weeks a “very turbulent period.” “For many of you this was a confusing, emotional time where you probably questioned the 500 that you knew,” Tsai said, reading from prepared remarks. “This mission is much bigger than just one person. And it’s way too important to be taken down by one person’s mistakes.” [ Recode ] VCs don’t love podcasting, but Gimlet Media has raised another $15 million anywayYou are used to reading about media companies raising money, but you haven’t heard much about podcast companies raising money. So let’s change that: Gimlet Media, the podcast studio/network behind shows like StartUp and Reply All, has raised $15 million in a round led by Stripes Group. People familiar with the company say investors valued Gimlet at $55 million pre-money — that is, it’s worth $70 million now — and that the 80-person company is on track to generate something in the range of $15 million this year. Gimlet had previously raised $7 million. WHAT BIOTECH CEOS (AND THEIR FUNDERS) LEARNED FROM THE THERANOS DEBACLE The collapse of the diagnostic company Theranos shook the world of venture-funded biotechnology. Theranos was a “unicorn,” valued by its investors at $9 billion at one point. That made its founder, Elizabeth Holmes, the youngest woman billionaire in the world for inventing a technology that, she said, allowed pharmacies and doctors’ offices to do a bunch of medical diagnostic tests on a single drop of a person’s blood. [ Wired ] Venture capitalists are 'baffled' by SoftBank's massive $100 billion tech fund and the size of its investments
Venture capitalists across Europe are "baffled" and "bewildered" by the size and frequency of the tech investments being made by Japanese tech giant SoftBank. SoftBank shocked VCs worldwide last October when it announced plans to raise a $100 billion (£75 billion) "SoftBank Vision Fund" — a tech fund larger than any other on the planet. Mark Tluszcz, the CEO of Mangrove Capital Partners, who made $200 million (£140 million) from a $2 million (£1.4 million) early investment into Skype, told Business Insider: "Most investors are thinking this is insane. This is crazy." [ Business Insider ] Here's How Unicorns Trick You Into Thinking They're RealUnicorns aren’t real, and neither are the valuations ascribed to many of the startups that say they’re worth $1 billion or more. About half of private companies with valuations exceeding $1 billion, known as unicorns, wouldn’t have earned the mythical title without the use of complex stock mechanics, according to a study by business professors at the University of British Columbia and Stanford University. The tools used to negotiate a higher share price with investors often come at the expense of employees and early shareholders, sometimes drastically reducing the actual value of their stock. [ Bloomberg ] Hustle Raises $8 Million In Series A Funding to Transform One-to-One Communication San Francisco-based Hustle a one-to-one text messaging platform that scales and humanizes the way that organizations communicate with people, today announced it has closed a $8-million Series A financing. The round was led by Social Capital, with participation from new investor Twilio.org Impact Fund, and existing investor Canvas Ventures. What to Buy to Look Like: A Venture Capitalist in Silicon ValleyStatus can be a funny thing. Of course, its most obvious iteration comes with shiny hardware and easily recognizable logos, but it gets far more interesting as you narrow it down to the more opaque signals — when the way you tuck your shirt, or what you eat for breakfast, or your particular brand of notebook can mark you as in or out. And of course, what counts as a status item varies wildly across human tribes. [ NY Mag ] |