At dim sum with angel investor Jason Calacanis, buying his book is mandatoryLate last month, Jason Calacanis messaged me on Twitter to invite me to dim sum in New York. We had never exchanged messages on Twitter before, but I must have followed him at some point because he was an early investor in Uber. “Alison, dim sum in nyc this week for my book launch,” he wrote. “Angel broke the top 50 on Amazon, in it I talk about my five unicorn angel investments .” This was followed by a link to his book on Amazon and another unicorn emoji. [ QZ ] Long-time Sequoia Asia partner Yinglan Tan has left to start his own VC firmYinglan Tan, a long-time Sequoia venture partner based out of Singapore, has left the firm following a five-year stint and is now launching his own fund. Both Tan and Sequoia confirmed that he departed earlier this year. [ Tech Crunch ] Elon Musk Inspired an Industry of Hyperloop Startups. Now He’s Building His OwnA person close to the billionaire says he plans to dig tunnels and build transportation infrastructure. Elon Musk introduced his vision for a futuristic mode of tube-based transportation called the hyperloop in 2013. In an exhaustive white paper, he laid out a body of research conducted with his team at Space Exploration Technologies Corp.demonstrating the system’s viability and seemingly offered it as a gift to the entrepreneurial community. “I don’t have any plan to execute because I must remain focused on SpaceX and Tesla,” he said in a conference call at the time. [ Bloomberg ]LinkedIn is rolling out a free service to pair users with mentors LinkedIn, the Microsoft-owned social network for the working world with over 500 million users, has put a lot of effort into new areas of business like content, education and bringing on new users in emerging markets; but today it’s embarking on the roll out of a new service that plays squarely into the bread and butter of its business: looking for work. [ Tech Crunch ] Mamoon Hamid is heading from Social Capital to Kleiner PerkinsMamoon Hamid, a longtime partner at U.S. Venture Partners who went on to co-found Social Capital with Chamath Palihapitiya in 2011, is moving on to Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. First reported by Axios and confirmed by Social Capital, Hamid will focus on early-stage tech investments, with a focus on enterprise software. We’ve reached out to Hamid, whose auto-responder states he is currently on paternity leave. But
Palihapitiya calls it “a great opportunity for Mamoon” and says that “we’re happy for him and Kleiner Perkins." [ Tech Crunch ] GrubHub bought competitor Eat24 from Yelp—here's whyGrubHub's biggest news on Thursday wasn't its quarterly earnings. Rather, it was its acquisition of food ordering service Eat24 from Yelp for $287.5 million, along with a five-year deal that will let GrubHub receive food orders through Yelp's listings. [ Axios ] Vision Fund 101: Inside SoftBank's $93B vehicle The SoftBank Vision Fund has been making headline after headline since plans for the massive vehicle were announced last October, mostly due to its sheer size: The fund held its first close on $93 billion in May and could total up to $100 billion when all is said and done. With an unprecedented amount of money to burn, we expect SoftBank to become one of the most active tech investors in the world over the next several years. The Japanese telecom giant and its founder, Masayoshi Son (below, right), have potential to shake up the entire VC space: With that much money, it can invest game-changing amounts in almost any company or industry. The fund is the largest VC or PE vehicle in history, dwarfing even the largest buyout funds, which sit in the $20 billion to $25 billion range. Below, we’ve put together everything we know about the SoftBank Vision Fund. We’ll update this page with developments and new investments. [ PitchBook ] Coinbase says it will support Bitcoin Cash after all — but it isn’t committed to trading yet
Coinbase, one of the world’s largest (if not the) largest cryptocurrency exchanges, has reversed its stance on Bitcoin Cash and said it will introduce support for the fork next year. Coinbase was among numerous exchanges to opt out of trading Bitcoin Cash after it came into existence on August 1 on the grounds that it wasn’t proven or safe. Beyond refusing to facilitate trading, Coinbase also said it wouldn’t allow customers storing original Bitcoin on its platform to claim their Bitcoin Cash entitlement. Those who wanted it were told to remove their coins and go elsewhere to do that. [ Tech Crunch ] Travis Kalanick has hired “CEO advisory” firm Teneo to improve his tarnished imageOusted Uber CEO Travis Kalanick has hired high-profile “CEO advisory” firm Teneo to help him manage his own embattled interests, according to several sources close to the situation. So, get ready for some positive stories on the embattled entrepreneur via open-hearted interviews (except to heartless Recode, because we always get left out of those for being too mean to delicate tech executives)! [ Recode ] WHY SILICON VALLEY WILL CONTINUE TO RULE“You can’t really understand what is going on now without understanding what came before.” Steve Jobs is explaining why, as a young man, he spent so much time with the Silicon Valley entrepreneurs a generation older, men like Robert Noyce, Andy Grove, and Regis McKenna. It’s a beautiful Saturday morning in May, 2003, and I’m sitting next to Jobs on his living room sofa, interviewing him for a book I’m writing. I ask him to tell me more about why he wanted, as he put it, “to smell that second wonderful era of the valley, the semiconductor companies leading into the computer.” Why, I want to know, is it not enough to stand on the shoulders of giants? Why does he want to pick their brains? [ Wired ] The secret ingredient that makes the Mediterranean diet work is moneyTo better understand the relationship between a Mediterranean diet and cardiovascular health, a team of Italian scientists recently turned to the data in the Moli-Sani cohort study, a longitudinal study of the cardiovascular health of thousands of people in southern Italy. Across a sample of nearly 19,000 people aged 35 and older, researchers saw a 15% average decrease in participants’ risk of cardiovascular incidents for every two-point jump on the scientists’ nine-point scale of diet adherence. That wasn’t terribly surprising: previous studies have linked the plant-rich diet to a lower risk of cardiovascular disease. [ QZ ] |