Lightspeed’s co-founders on their 17-year-long ‘overnight’ success storyLightspeed Venture Partners is having quite a year, between the sale of AppDynamics to Cisco for $3.7 billion on the eve of its IPO (Lightspeed wrote its first check); to the March sale of publicly traded Nimble Storage to Hewlett Packard Enterprise for just north of $1 billion in cash; to the IPO of the enterprise software company MuleSoft in March (the company is now valued at $2.8 billion); to the March IPO of the consumer tech company Snap, which is currently valued at $28 billion, despite a terrible earnings callearlier today (Lightspeed famously wrote the company its first check and remains its second largest outside shareholder). [ Tech Crunch ] The Obama Foundation wants to take on the internet’s echo-chamber problemWhat will Barack Obama do next? The question has hovered in the air ever since Donald Trump’s victory made clear that much of what Obama had done as president could be summarily dismantled. Now more clues are emerging. The Obama Foundation, which last week unveiled plans for its new headquarters on Chicago’s South Side, has hired Glenn Otis Brown, a veteran of Twitter and Google, as its chief digital officer. His task, say foundation officials, is to build a team that, among other things, will study “the problems of digital media in the 21st century”—the filter bubbles and audience fragmentation that have made it almost impossible for people from different political stripes to hold cogent debates around an agreed set of facts. [ QZ ] Silicon Valley is missing a 'big opportunity' because it doesn't understand poor people - Medicaid chiefSilicon Valley might be hunting unicorns in the wrong places. According to one top federal health official, entrepreneurs and investors are overlooking one massive population: Low-income Americans who qualify for Medicaid. That's a big mistake, given that new funds are available for those that are bringing IT innovation to the space, said Medicaid chief medical officer Andrey Ostrovsky. [ CNBC ] Kreditech raises €110M from Naspers’ PayU in strategic financing partnershipKreditech, the German startup backed by Peter Thiel, Rakuten and the IFC that creates credit ratings and provides finance to people who may not otherwise have credit histories, has raised another round of funding from one of its strategic partners. PayU, the payments company owned by Naspers that is known by some as the “PayPal of emerging markets” — its business is mainly in providing payment services to online merchants — is investing €110 million ($120 million) in Kreditech. [ Tech Crunch ] Clover Health Raises $130 Million, Valuing It at $1.2 Billion
Clover Health, an insurance startup using data science for preventative health care, has become Silicon Valley’s newest, and a rather reluctant, unicorn. Snapchat CEO Evan Spiegel doesn’t think olds have the patience for new technologyWhile touting the near-universal appeal of what Snapchat does—tell stories, essentially—Snap founder Evan Spiegel acknowledges that how Snapchat does it isn’t for everyone. Teenagers and millennials, yes. Older folks? Not so much. That’s fine with Spiegel, who took time on Snap’s earnings call with investors today to explain why drawing older populations is far from the app’s primary target. The 26-year-old CEO recounted “trying to teach [his] grandma how to use e-mail and she really preferred to just talk on the phone.” Spiegel recognizes that “things were different 20 years ago,” and that a lot of grandparents are using email now. The learning curve is likely identical for his product, too. [ QZ ] Startups: You Must Raise This Much To Join The 1% Today, we are finding out how much money a startup needs to raise to be counted among the best-capitalized new companies in its home state. Why bother with this? Because for states not on the coasts, the exercise gives local entrepreneurs and outside observers a benchmark for evaluating where a company sits on a state’s spectrum of startup companies. [ CrunchBase ] Postmates’ provocative new subway ads are a desperate plea for attentionA woman’s tongue curls around dark, slimy strands dangling in front of her face. Two fingers thrust a piece of salmon between half-open lips. The caption, in curly white writing, reads “Love At First Bite.” The ads are for Postmates, a San Francisco-based food delivery startup. They recently appeared in New York’s subway system and are, if nothing else, provocative. [ QZ ] SoFi plans to apply for a bank charter in the next monthWith an eye on providing banking services later this year, online lending startup SoFi is planning to apply for an industrial bank charter in the next month, according to CEO Mike Cagney. If approved, it would become the first company to receive a new industrial loan company (ILC) charter in a decade. Since launching in 2011, SoFi has gradually added new financial products and services to serve its member community. Banking is one area that it’s keen to enter, as it sees an opportunity to provide checking, deposit and credit card accounts to its users. The online fashion startup Stitch Fix has $730 million in annual revenue and is profitableFor several years, I’ve chased down rumor after rumor about new funding rounds for Stitch Fix, the online retailer and styling service that sends personalized boxes full of clothing to customer doors. And each time, they led to a dead end. Stitch Fix still hasn’t raised any funding since a $25 million round led by Benchmark in 2014, it turns out, but many e-commerce industry insiders couldn’t figure out how. [ Re/Code ] Coworking space for international students Outcome-Hub launches in MelbourneVictorian startup Outcome.Life has today launched a new hub at the edge of Melbourne’s CBD in Carlton, dubbed Outcome-Hub. The coworking space will support international students looking to launch their own startup, with the aim of strengthening Victoria’s growing startup ecosystem. Funded by the Victorian Government’s LaunchVic and private investors, Outcome-Hub will look to tap into Victoria’s 175,000 international students, offering them a space where they can transition from their degrees towards developing their business ideas. [ Startup Daily ] Silicon Valley may find a lot to fear in Trump’s FBI director replacementU.S. President Donald Trump’s sudden dismissal of FBI director James Comey today has left even the longtime law enforcement official’s critics — from tech companies to civil-liberties advocates — wondering if the new administration may seek to expand the government’s surveillance powers. From the campaign trail to the Oval Office, Trump has criticized tech giants like Apple that have tried to rebuff federal requests for greater access to their customers’ data and devices. Meanwhile, the president has appointed a number of key individuals to national security posts who want to expand government’s snooping programs. [ Re/Code ] VC 101: how VCs operate, and what you should know as a founderDrew Russ, AWS Startup & Venture Capital Business Development Manager, held sessions at the AWS Pop-up Lofts in San Francisco and New York that covered the basics that a founder needs to know about venture capital. From the definition of VCs to mechanics and bargaining, the discussion served as a primer for the second part of our series, “Selling to Fortune 100 Enterprises.” [ AWS ] Full transcript: Sheryl Sandberg talks grief, resilience and ‘Option B’ on Recode DecodeOn this episode of Recode Decode, hosted by Kara Swisher, Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg stopped by to talk about the events that led to her new book, “Option B: Facing Adversity, Building Resilience, and Finding Joy.” When her husband, entrepreneur and beloved Silicon Valley fixture Dave Goldberg, died suddenly in 2015, she found that the people around her didn’t necessarily know how to express their concern for her in constructive ways, and that she had to find out how to accept the kindness of strangers. “Option B,” written in tandem with a psychologist, presents what she experienced and learned. [ Re/Code ] ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ creator Bruce Miller talks about the new rules of making TV for the internetBruce Miller has made TV for the living room and the computer before, working on shows like “Eureka,” “The 100” and the Amazon show “Alphas.” But as the creator of one of the year’s buzziest shows — Hulu’s new adaptation of Margaret Atwood’s “The Handmaid’s Tale” — he’s taking full advantage of the freedom of web video. “For the last 6,000 years, we’ve basically been telling stories that are about one or two hours long,” Miller said on the latest episode of Recode Decode, hosted by Kara Swisher. “My job hasn’t changed all that much in terms of the writing, but the environment has changed incredibly around me.” [ Re/Code ] High School Dropout Turns Billionaire as Games Firm Goes Public
The man behind South Korea’s biggest initial public offering in seven years has charted an unlikely path in a country dominated by family-run conglomerates. Deals to beauty & grooming startups jumped in Q1’17, and investors and corporate leaders are getting more active in the startup space. L’Oreal partnered with Founders Fund to support early-stage startups, for example, while Sequoia made its first-ever investment into a cosmetics brand. Much of the investment has focused on products with organic or all-natural ingredients, though we’re also seeing growth in on-demand beauty services and startups focused on underserved markets. [ CB Insights ] Dropbox exec leaves to form new VC, following a well-worn pathXuezhao Lan has resigned from her role as head of corporate development for Dropbox and has plans to launch a venture capital firm, as first reported by Axios. There aren’t many details yet on the new VC, but Lan will be joined by two corporate development executives from a different highly-valued startup, per Axios. [ PitchBook ] How Iranian Women Became the Queens of Online ShoppingParisian entrepreneur Moojan Asghari noticed something unusual about the Tehran startup weekend she contributed to in December 2016: the prevalence of stylish hijabs and lipstick. Unlike the high-tech events she goes to in Europe and the United States, women were well-represented in the competing Iranian teams. “Most of the projects we had were related to e-commerce,” Asghari says. “Fashion tech is one of the trendiest topics in Iran.” These days, badass Persian women are quietly reshaping online shopping models from the ground up. Snapchat hits a disappointing 166M daily users, growing only slightly fasterSnap’s growth rate increased just a little in Q1 2017 — a bad start to its first quarterly earnings report since going public. Snap hit 166 million daily active users at a growth rate of 5 percent, compared to the 158 million DAUs it had in Q4 when it hit a 3.2 percent growth rate. Snap’s year-over-year growth rate continued to slip, falling to 36 percent year-over-year from 48 percent in Q4. [ Tech Crunch ] Med-Tech Planet: Mapping Medical Device Startups Across The GlobeGlobal funding to private medical device companies rose in 2016, reaching nearly $4B in 2016 across 479 deals. The United States receives a lot of attention when it comes to funding medical device startups, but private companies around the world are raising significant rounds. Opinion: Nearly all-male venture capital ranks missing a big opportunity for profitToday’s venture capitalists are ignoring an easy way to boost profits. They’re sitting on heaps of data that say gender diversity leads to greater financial returns. Yet they remain resistant to investing in women. Research shows that venture capitalists who bet on female talent enjoy higher returns — and that female partners are the best at recognizing talent. [ Mercury News ] |