Uber Board Considers 3 Investment Offers to Buy Company’s SharesUber’s board has voted to move forward on proposals by two investment groups to buy shares in the ride-hailing service and is considering a third offer, with any final decision set to affect who gains the upper hand at the company. Over the last week, the privately held company’s board voted to take the next step on investment interest from SoftBank, the Japanese conglomerate. It is still considering an offer from a consortium led by Shervin Pishevar, an early investor in the company, to buy Uber shares from an existing investor. The board also earlier voted to go forward with a proposal from a coalition led by the Dragoneer Investment Group to buy stock from Uber’s existing shareholders. The three proposals were described by four people close to the process, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. [ NY Times ] The internet has raised more than $200,000 for Charlottesville victim Heather HeyerIn less than 24 hours, more than 8,000 people have donated north of $220,000 to the family of Heather Heyer, the 32-year-old who was killed in an attack while marching against the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Va., Saturday. Heyer’s campaign was set up on the fundraising site GoFundMe by a friend, who said in a post the money was being raised for Heyer’s family. GoFundMe said Sunday in a tweet that the campaign was legitimate. Heyer was a resident of Charlottesville who had been out protesting against Unite the Right Rally, where white nationalists, supremacists and neo-Nazis marched against the planned removal of a statue of a Confederate Army general. [ Recode ] From Gwyneth Paltrow's Goop to BuzzFeed: Future Fund's strange investmentsWhen former Treasurer Peter Costello decided to set up the Future Fund in 2004, he probably didn't envisage it investing in a wellness business run by a Hollywood celebrity, or a viral content site originally known for cat videos. But as it turns out, Australia's inter-generational sovereign wealth fund today has interests in Goop, Gwyneth Paltrow's controversial lifestyle brand that has been criticised by doctors, and BuzzFeed, the much discussed distributed media company. Funding Conditions for Tech Startups Soar to a New Record An index tracking business conditions for U.S. private companies surged 44 percent from a year earlier. There's rarely been a better time for American technology startups. The Bloomberg U.S. Startups Barometer, which tracks the business conditions for U.S.-based private technology companies, reached a record high. A 44 percent increase from a year earlier was driven by a surge in the number of businesses that raised money for the first time, reflecting investors' appetite to back the riskiest companies. The index, which goes back to 2007, doesn’t account for the frenetic days of the dot-com bubble. [ Bloomberg ] Tim Draper-Backed Blockchain Company Tezos Diverts $50 Mln into VC FundTezos, the Tim Draper-backed Blockchain technology company, has announced that it will be using $50 mln of the funds raised during its ICO to start a new VC fund dedicated to financing companies building on its ledger platform. According to the announcement: “The innovation and growth of the ecosystem is the top priority of the Tezos Foundation.” SoFi Is Being Sued by an Employee Claiming He Was Fired for Reporting Sexual HarassmentA former employee of the lending startup Social Finance, better known as SoFi, has filed a California lawsuit alleging that he was fired for reporting sexual harassment of female coworkers. The plaintiff’s lawyer says a broader class-action lawsuit will be filed next week on behalf of mistreated SoFi employees. The lawsuit also reportedly alleges impropriety in the handling of loans and loan applications at the company. That includes managers manipulating records to boost their own pay, a charge reminiscent of a massive scandal that recently engulfed Wells Fargo. [ Fortune ] Tech’s Damaging Myth of the Loner Genius Nerd The Google engineer who was fired last week over his memo wrote that most women were biologically unsuited to working in tech because they were more focused on “feelings and aesthetics than ideas” and had “a stronger interest in people rather than things.” Many scientists have said he got the biology wrong. But the job requirements of today’s programmers show he was also wrong about working in tech. In fact, interpersonal skills like collaboration, communication, empathy and emotional intelligence are essential to the job. The myth that programming is done by loner men who think only rationally and communicate only with their computers harms the tech industry in ways that cut straight to the bottom line. The loner stereotype can deter talented people from the industry — not just women, but anyone who thinks that sounds like an unattractive job description. It can also result in dysfunctional teams and poorly performing products. Empathy, after all, is crucial to understanding consumers’ desires, and its absence leads to product mistakes. [ NY Times ] EBay’s Founder Has a New Idea: Build a Dairy in HawaiiIf Pierre Omidyar gets his way, 699 dairy cows will soon enjoy a glorious view of the Pacific Ocean, framed by a pristine beach. Mr. Omidyar, the founder of eBay, wants to build a dairy farm on the island of Kauai. He is one of many tech billionaires who have established a presence in Hawaii, which is only a five-hour flight from Silicon Valley. Others include Larry Ellison, Oracle’s co-founder, who bought all but a tiny amount of the island of Lanai and turned it into a resort — investing millions, but frustrating some islanders by driving up rents — and Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, who was called a “neocolonialist” after he sued some locals over beachfront land he bought. (He dropped the suits.) [ NY Times ] Here's How Unicorns Trick You Into Thinking They're RealUnicorns aren’t real, and neither are the valuations ascribed to many of the startups that say they’re worth $1 billion or more. About half of private companies with valuations exceeding $1 billion, known as unicorns, wouldn’t have earned the mythical title without the use of complex stock mechanics, according to a study by business professors at the University of British Columbia and Stanford University. The tools used to negotiate a higher share price with investors often come at the expense of employees and early shareholders, sometimes drastically reducing the actual value of their stock. [ Bloomberg ] |