At Pear demo day, a who’s who of VCs, and plenty of fresh ideasPear, a popular seed-stage venture firm whose early bets include Guardant Health,Memebox, and Branch, hosted its fourth demo day in Woodside, Ca., last Thursday, and though it was a scorchingly hot afternoon at a largely outdoor venue, a veritable who’s who of VCs showed up: Bryan Schreier of Sequoia Capital was there. So was Brian O’Malley of Accel Partners, another frequent guest. Others of the 120 other VCs in attendance included Shawn Carolan of Menlo Ventures, Shahin Farshchi of Lux Capital, Ann Miura-Ko of Floodgate, Maha Ibrahim of Canaan Partners, Bobby Yazdani of Cota Capital, Semil Shah of Haystack, Hunter Walk of Homebrew, James Currier of NFX Guild, and Josh Elman of Greylock Partners. [ Tech Crunch ] A new messaging app hopes to learn lessons from Yik-Yak and become the next big thing on college campuses
Entrepreneur Greg Isenberg is serious about market research. He values it so much that when he launched his new messaging app for college students, called Islands, he rented a space in student housing at the University of Western Ontario so he could be closer to his potential customers. Facebook just bid $600 million to stream Indian cricket matches. Will it try NFL games next?In case you had any doubts about how serious Mark Zuckerberg is about video, this ought to help: Facebook just tried to pay $600 million for a five-year-deal to stream Indian cricket matches. Facebook didn’t win the auction for the Indian Premier League — Rupert Murdoch’s Star ended up paying $2.6 billion for a package that included broadcast and streaming rights. But the fact that Facebook was willing to put up that kind of money is a big, bold declaration that the company will write real checks in order to get its hands on must-see sports content. [ Recode ] Meet the 'Shark Tank' Co-Founders Giving Remote Work to Military SpousesCameron Cruse faced a problem common to those who marry into the military: Relocating often, it's hard to find a job, much less build a career. Cruse teamed with fellow military spouse Lisa Bradley to put people like themselves to work making high-end handbags. With R. Riveter, in Southern Pines, North Carolina, they've built a network of spouses to make their products. -As told to Etelka Lehoczky. [ Inc. ] THE RISKS OF DEMONIZING SILICON VALLEYFOR YEARS, THE ascent of tech has broadly been viewed as positive, heralding an era of increased productivity and greater communication. But recently, the litany of corporate missteps and a general sense of power accreting to a few extraordinarily rich and powerful companies and the men–yes, largely men–who lead them has triggered a wave of criticisms of the once-Teflon culture of the Valley. [ Wired ] Cryptocurrencies have crashed 20% in two daysThe cryptocurrency correction may have started. After months of unprecedented appreciation, almost every digital currency is seeing double digit losses over the last 48 hours. While a quick glance at the chart above or at coinmarketcap.com shows how bad things have been, you can get a sense of where things are by looking at losses in the two largest currencies: Bitcoin is down 16.5% over the last few days and Ethereum is down 23.5%. [ Tech Crunch ] Spotting Ecommerce Trends in Shipping Data - Laura Behrens WuVia raises $250M led by Daimler to bring its carpooling technology to EuropeAs outsized ridesharing companies like Uber and Lyft continue to build out their taxi-style marketplaces largely based around connecting individual passengers to individual drivers, a startup focused squarely on the carpooling opportunity has raised a large round of funding to expand outside of the U.S. [ Tech Crunch] The Latest Initial Coin Offering Supporter Is ... Paris HiltonHow This Beauty Startup Found Success by Dominating InstagramE760: MedAware & uHoo: two emerging international health startups fighting Rx errors & toxic airHow an Ivy Leaguer's need for caffeine launched a startupReid Hoffman has billions of dollars and one of the best networks in Silicon Valley. Here’s how he’s using them to take on Trump.Most of 2017’s tech IPOs are performing wellPutin says the nation that leads in AI ‘will be the ruler of the world’ |