Zenefits founder Parker Conrad takes another crack at HR onboardingParker Conrad’s last venture at Zenefits didn’t end so well with his departure as CEO and the company having to re-orient itself. But he’s once again starting a company that will figure out how to build an employee system of record and management, starting off with smoothing out the process of on-boarding employees and focusing on other major life events for those employees. Conrad’s new company is called Rippling, which is launching today. The goal is to turn the process of bringing on an employee and assigning them hardware and the services they’ll need to operate — like Gmail or Salesforce — right away. Rippling integrates with a bunch of major services on the back-end and automatically assigns those accounts to new employees, and also helps managers set up payroll in several states. Still, around 90% of Zenefits investors have once again put money into Conrad’s company — which happened around two weeks ago. The team already has around 12 engineers, he said, and it seems this time around Conrad is looking for a more calculated approach after the mayhem of Zenefits, which very quickly hit a $4.5 billion valuation and was on track to be one of the fastest growing SaaS businesses ever. [ Tech Crunch ] TRUE COST OF FINANCE HIRESJONATHAN GASS Why Is Silicon Valley So Awful to Women?Tech companies are spending hundreds of millions of dollars to improve conditions for female employees. Here’s why not much has changed—and what might actually work. [ The Atlantic ] Everything You Need to Know About the L.A. Tech Scene in One ChartMessaging service Snap’s IPO gave Los Angeles’ burgeoning tech scene a big win, but Silicon Valley still dominates in venture capital deals by both value and volume. What does that mean for L.A.? In the newsletter Term Sheet, Erin Griffith points out that having a big public tech company can play a big role in helping encourage other entrepreneurial ventures nearby. For other area entrepreneurs, that company is “one that will hire you if your startup fails, one that will mint angel investors and maybe even a ‘mafia’ of next-generation companies and investors.” However, L.A. is still a relatively young tech scene, and the data show it’s still a far cry from the Valley in terms of VC deals. Snapchat could be a decent start in helping close that gap. Early Palantir advisor Ross Fubini to launch new $70M VC fundLongtime venture capitalist and early Palantir Ross Fubini, formerly with Canaan Partners, is forming his own fund, XYZ Ventures, according to a new SEC filing. Fubini cofounded Redwood City-based enterprise social network CubeTree, which was acquired by SuccessFactors in 2010. Following the acquisition, he worked as a partner at Kapor Capital before joining Canaan in 2012. There are so many (good) ways to split your marketEven within the relatively narrow confines of B2B software, successful market segmentation can go beyond small/mid/large accounts, and industry-specific verticals. Andrew Filev, CEO of work management system Wrike, makes the case for function-based segmentation, and explains why a hybrid approach can be the key to winning acrosss all account sizes. [ The Startup Tapes ] Bill Maris’s next gig after GV is a $100 million health and biotech fundIt was happening, then it wasn’t — but now it seems Bill Maris’s venture fund might actually be more than vaporware. Maris, founder of Google Ventures, now called GV, is raising money again for a new healthcare, biotech and tech-focused venture capital fund, according to sources familiar with the matter. What was initially thought to be a $230 million fund has evolved into a
smaller $100 million fund with the same focus. [ Tech Crunch ] 20VC: SEQUOIA PARTNER, PAT GRADY ON WHY DATA IS THE NEW OIL, WHY WE WILL SEE THE RETURN OF THE APPRENTICESHIP MODEL IN VC & THE DEFINING CHARACTERISTICS OF THE NEXT GENERATION OF GREAT SOFTWAREPat Grady is a Partner @ Sequoia Capital, one of the world’s leading funds with prior investments in the likes of Apple, Google, Whatsapp, Paypal, Stripe and many more. At Sequoia, Pat has made investments in many past guests of this show and the SaaStr podcast including Zoom, Namely and Qualtrics, just to name a few. Prior to Sequoia, Pat spent 3 years with the team at Summit Partners. Thinx Promised a Feminist Utopia to Everyone But Its EmployeesFrom inadequate maternity leave to hostility to salary negotiations, Thinx employees saw a gap between the company’s message and their reality. Key Man Insurance: VCs – You’re Doing it WrongCARL NIEDBALA It’s easy to see why VCs want this coverage in force. Most institutional Seed or Series A deals are bets on the team, not the current product or idea. The RoI is dependent on a core team with complimentary talents absolutely crushing an industry. Rarely does the initial idea remain unchanged during the company’s path to profitability; conversely, a great team manipulates the MVP into something amazing. [ Founder Shield ] When the Children Crashed Dad’s BBC Interview: The Family SpeaksIn their first interview, Korea expert Robert Kelly and his wife Kim Jung-A describe the circumstances, chaos, and global reaction to their now-infamous home-office Skype catastrophe; ‘she was in a hippity-hoppity mood’. [ WSJ ] |