This High-Tech Vertical Farm Promises Whole Foods Quality at Walmart PricesSoftBank-backed Plenty is out to build massive indoor farms on the outskirts of every major city on Earth. Before stepping into Plenty Inc.’s indoor farm on the banks of the San Francisco Bay, make sure you’re wearing pants and closed-toe shoes. Heels aren’t allowed. If you have long hair, you should probably tie it back. Your first stop is the cleaning room.
Open the door and air will whoosh behind you, removing stray dust and contaminants as the door slams shut. Slide into a white bodysuit, pull on disposable shoe covers, and don a pair of glasses with colored lenses. Wash your hands in the sink before slipping on food-safety gloves. Step into a shallow pool of clear, sterilized liquid, then open the door to what the company calls its indoor growing room, where another air bath eliminates any stray particles that collected in the cleaning room. WHY WEWORK THINKS IT'S WORTH $20 BILLIONIn the future, you’re going to love going to the office. Everything you need to do your job effectively will present itself without effort. You won’t have your own desk, because your employer will know you only use it for 63 percent of the day. But you won’t mind sharing it, because said employer will make sure you have a private room with green leafy plants, soundproof walls, and warm light between 2 and 2:20 p.m. so you can call your daughter. At 3:30 p.m., when you need a conference room for the product managers’ meeting, you won’t even have to book it. It’ll just be there. And everyone attending remotely will already be invited. [ Wired ] 23andMe hits $1.5B pre-money valuation in latest huge funding roundFollowing up on the news of 23andMe’s huge upcoming financing round, TechCrunch has learned that the company is raising the new financing at a $1.5 billion pre-money valuation. This compares to a $1 billion valuation in its last private round. Dan Primack over at Axios reported the same thing this morning, but we’ve heard from our sources the number is indeed accurate. TechCrunch first reported that 23andMe is raising around $200 million in a new financing round led by Sequoia, with Fidelity also looking to participate. 23andMe, an 11-year-old startup (if we can call it that at this point), now looks like it will continue to run as a private company for some time. [ Tech Crunch ] This start-up fled the high cost of Silicon Valley to help non-tech workers get an education
Start-ups typically flock to Silicon Valley to cozy up to venture investors and tap into local tech talent. But Guild Education, which was founded in 2015 at Stanford University, left San Francisco as soon as its founders realized the cost of living and hiring there could hamper the company's growth. "We have a lot of women who are executives and department heads here, starting with myself and my co-founder," CEO Rachel Carlson said. "So when we left, we deliberately chose a place where you can have a family." [ CNBC ] WHY AI IS MORE ARTIFICIAL THAN INTELLIGENT, WHY ENGINEERING-CENTRIC FOUNDERS ARE ABLE TO PIVOT BEST & WHY STARTUPS ARE LIKE GAMES WITH ALINA COHEN, GENERAL PARTNER @ INITIALIZED CAPITALAlina Cohen is a General Partner @ Initialized Capital, one of Silicon Valleys leading early stage seed funds. Their portfolio includes the likes of recent unicorn, Coinbase, Flexport, Cruise Automation, OpenDoor and many more incredible companies. As for Alina, prior to Initialized, she ran tech investments for Tamares Group, the first outside investor in Palantir, and previously founded Recrec, a computer vision startup which was acquired by Facebook, where she worked on Platform and Groups. You can also check out Alina’s voice controlled Arduino/Raspberry Pi here. [ 20 VC ] Silicon Valley’s Politics: Liberal, With One Big ExceptionSilicon Valley has long preferred to remain aloof from national politics, but the Trump era has altered that stance. In recent months, tech luminaries have repeatedly clashed with the president, criticizing his executive order on Muslim immigration, his ban on transgender troops, his “many sides” equivocation on white supremacists and his Tuesday announcement that he was ending the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which lets young undocumented immigrants remain in the country. [ NY Times ] A Stanford study finds the tech elite aren’t libertarians at all–just a strange breed of liberalsIt’s a bit of a mythical beast, like a unicorn: the Silicon Valley Libertarian. Sure, they exist. There is Peter Thiel, a dyed-in-the-wool believer. He holds that humanity’s hope lies in floating cities beyond the reach of needling bureaucrats and high marginal tax rates (see the Seasteading Institute). There are also groups such as the Bay Area-based Lincoln Network, a band of moderate libertarian techies that promotes market-driven solutions to issues from patents to job creation. [ QZ ] Top Silicon Valley tech exec on cash handouts: Let's eliminate poverty for all AmericansIt's de rigeur for the many of the richest of the rich to tout the benefits of giving cash handouts to all American citizens, in part as a way to end poverty. The idea, called universal basic income (UBI), is for every individual to be paid a regular sum of money regardless of employment status. One of the tech elite who has an interest in universal basic income is self-made multimillionaire and Y Combinator President Sam Altman. "Eliminating poverty is such a moral imperative and something that I believe in so strongly," Altman tells CNBC Make It. [ CNBC ] Mark Zuckerberg answered questions about Dreamers and immigration on Facebook LiveMark Zuckerberg is using his position as the leader of Facebook to push back against President Donald Trump’s decision to end a government program that protects young undocumented immigrants from deportation. Zuckerberg, who has more than 96 million followers on Facebook, said that he’ll go live from his home on Wednesday to “take questions” about DACA, the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program that currently protects the children of undocumented immigrants from deportation. [ Re/Code ] Sports e-commerce firm Fanatics closes $1 billion funding round led by SoftBankVCs Tune Out Podcasting Startups'Bikesharing is the next Uber': Spin founder optimistic amid Ofo's US launchThis HR software startup wants to tackle sungkan culture in Indonesian workplacesVenture capital firm Tempus Partners launches new $40 million fundTuro raises $92M and acquires Daimler’s Croove car sharing businessInfographic: Amazon’s Biggest Acquisitions |