The death of once high-flying VC funds. With the winding down of Social Capital, a particular era of Silicon Valley comes to a closeThey all started with the best of intentions. Formation 8 talked about bringing “smart enterprise” to the corporate world. Social Capital talked about how to “fix capitalism” and Binary Capital wanted to “affect global behaviour change.” Rothenberg Ventures set out to “work on the biggest problems that change the world.” [ Tech Crunch ] Checkout Social Capital's Deals, Exits and Fund Raised Data. Hear from investors at General Catalyst, FirstMark and Shasta at TC Sessions: AR/VRThe worlds of augmented reality and VR theoretically represent a boundless expanse for startups looking to create a new digital future. Realizing that future is the tough part, and doing so while Google, Facebook, Microsoft and Apple all look to plant their flags is even harder. [ Tech Crunch ] Two Explanations For Venture Capital's Inexplicable Interest In StablecoinsThis week it was announced that the most prestigious venture capital firm in Silicon Valley, Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), made a $15 million investment in the decentralized token
MKR, created by MakerDAO. MKR is a complementary asset to the actual stablecoin, Dai, which will maintain a 1:1 peg with the U.S. dollar even though it will actually be backed by Ether. [ Forbes ] Grubhub agrees to buy Khosla Ventures-backed Tapingo for $150 mlnGrubhub has agreed to acquire Israeli-based Tapingo, provider of an on-campus food ordering platform, for $150 million. The deal is expected to close in the fourth quarter. Tapingo, which also has an office in San Francisco, was founded in 2012 and has raised about $36 million in venture funding from Khosla Ventures, Qualcomm Ventures, Viola Ventures and DCM Ventures, among others. [ PE Hub ] Sequoia backs Maven, a virtual health clinic for womenDespite the increase in women in the U.S. workforce and public pledges from several high-profile CEOs to close the gender pay gap, women, especially working mothers, often find themselves without the resources necessary to succeed at work. Apple closes its $400M Shazam acquisition and says the music recognition app will soon become ad freeLast year, we broke the news that Apple was buying the music recognition startup and app Shazam for about $400 million, and nearly one year later, the deal has finally closed. Today, Apple announced that it has completed the acquisition, and that it would soon be making the service ad free to use for everyone, removing the app’s ad-supported free tier. [ Tech Crunch ] Dutchie Blossoms Thanks to Snoop Dogg’s Venture Capital FirmIn the old days, you had to meet your trench coat-wearing dealer in a dark alleyway to buy weed (at least that’s what TV has told me). Nowadays, in Eugene and Bend, there’s a weed platform called Dutchie, a tech start up based in Bend started in 2017. It offers people a way to order weed and cannabis products for delivery or pick up from local dispensaries. Thanks to venture capital investment, the company looks to expanding its services. [ EUGene Weekly ] How 20 big-name US VC firms invest at Series A & BNEA is one of the most well-known investors around, and the firm also takes the crown as the most active VC investor in Series A and B rounds in the US so far in 2018. Andreessen Horowitz, Accel and plenty of the other usual early-stage suspects are on the list, too. Can’t Raise Venture Capital? Find A MillionaireIn 2017, Utah was ranked the second-best state for starting a business. But that doesn’t mean it’s an easy place to raise capital. Despite a growing number of venture capitalists willing to invest in the state’s entrepreneurs, there are still a number of businesses who struggle to make it past the seed stage. Thankfully, when venture capital falls through, entrepreneurs have another option available to them: millionaires. [ Utah Business ] Research over 15K+ Venture Capital Investors on our platform. We’re Looking for a Partner Operations Manager to Work with Bill TrenchardFirst Round is a venture capital firm laser-focused on helping seed stage companies win. We love meeting incredible entrepreneurs and rolling up our sleeves to help founders build their companies from day one. We have offices in Philadelphia, New York, and San Francisco.[ Medium ] |