Airbnb Teams Up With WeWork to Lure Business TravelersBooking a room on Airbnb? Soon you’ll have the option to snag a desk or conference room at the closest WeWork location. Two of the world’s most valuable technology startups are teaming up in the hopes of luring young business travelers away from hotels. Airbnb Inc. plans to begin a pilot program Thursday with WeWork Cos. to provide travelers with amenities commonly found in hotel business centers, such as a work desk, Wi-Fi, printers and meeting rooms, said people familiar with the project. [ Bloomberg ] STARTUPS’ TRILLION-DOLLAR NUMBERS GAMEThe pitches that dozens of startup founders deliver at Y Combinator’s biannual Demo Day events have a ritualistic formality, alternating between change-the-world platitudes and invest-in-us promises. More often than not, those promises culminate in a very large dollar amount. “We are [startup name].” “We are disrupting [something].” “Our Total Addressable Market is [X] billion dollars.” Uber will IPO by 2019 and let Softbank buy a huge stake, following a big board meetingUber's board of directors struck a grand bargain on Tuesday, settling a fractious internal battle that has hamstrung the ride-hailing company for months and paving the way to a giant initial public offering in two years. The board also agreed to move forward with a multibillion-dollar deal to give Japan's Softbank as much as a 17% stake in Uber, the world's most valuable privately held tech startup. Here are the changes approved by Uber's board, which will take effect after the Softbank deal closes, according to a person familiar with the matter:
Via primary.vc Accel’s Ryan Sweeney: ‘Venture Capital Is Not a Spectator Sport’Ryan Sweeney, a general partner at Accel, joined the firm in 2008 to focus on growth investments. He became the first outside investor and board member at enterprise software companies including Atlassian, Qualtrics, and Squarespace. Below are some of Sweeney’s thoughts on investing, industry trends, and the future of cryptocurrency. [ Fortune ] Why SoftBank is investing in Uber -- and its big rivalsThe ride-hailing company's board decided Tuesday to take a major investment from SoftBank(SFTBF). The news comes after the Japanese firm's CEO, Masayoshi Son, spent months publicly courting Uber -- but he's not looking for an exclusive relationship. SoftBank is already a big investor in several major Uber rivals, including Didi Chuxing in China, Ola in India, Grab in Southeast Asia and 99 in Brazil. Earlier this week, Bloomberg reported that SoftBank took part in a fresh round of funding for Ola worth $2 billion. The companies declined to comment on the report. The Japanese firm's planned investment in Uber is expected to eventually run into the billions of dollars. And Son has previously expressed interest in Lyft. [ CNN Tech ] Houzz's $4B Valuation Sets Oren Zeev As One Of The Best Investors In AmericaHouzz’s recent $400 million investment round at a $4 billion valuation came as no surprise among the venture capital community. Just three years prior, the company raised $165 million from top Silicon Valley investors, including Sequoia and GGV at a $2.3 billion valuation, and its digital platform has since continued to grow at an exponential pace. What was surprising was the fact that Oren Zeev, who personally led the Series A round in the company back in 2010, invested another $20 million from his fund, Zeev Ventures, in the latest round, even though he already personally owned about 8% of the company. [ Forbes ] $9 billion startup Stripe has a new plan to make shopping online less frustratingShopping online kind of stinks. Or at least, checking out once you've decided you want something does. For instance: According to a survey commissioned by $9 billion startup Stripe, almost half of the top 100 online shopping sites don't have autofill working, so your web browser can't just automatically scribble in your name and shipping address. 20 of the top sites don't give you a numeric keypad for entering credit card numbers. And so on. [ Business Insider ] How Facebook’s VP of Product Finds Focus and Creates Conditions for Intentional WorkE767: Jason Goldberg (Pepo, Fab.com) intros Simple Token for apps to launch branded crytpo tokensEvery single Yahoo account was compromised by hackersThe Story Behind How Pocket Hit 20M Users with 20 PeopleWhy is Casper risking its reputation by getting cozy with two popular mattress review websites?Communicate with Users, Build Something They Want - Ryan Hoover of Product HuntFrom math-hater to programmer and veteran technopreneurMeet The Best Investor You've Never Heard Of: How She Stuck With Amazon, Netflix And Tesla For YearsSapphire Ventures injects $20 million into OpsRamp’s IT management solutionStartup Spotlight: Pulse Labs makes it easy for voice developers to test their Alexa appsAnnouncing The 2017 Update To The Crunchbase Women In Venture ReportIndia's Startups Are Moving Into Smaller, Second Tier Cities -- Why The Sudden Shift?This Startup Wants to Bring Face Recognition to All Kinds of SmartphonesVenture capital has hit an all-time high in India—and a quarter of it came from one investorVCs sold on the future of US real estate tech [datagraphic] |