There's Blood In The Water In Silicon ValleyThe blinding rise of Donald Trump over the past year has masked another major trend in American politics: the palpable, and perhaps permanent, turn against the tech industry. The new corporate leviathans that used to be seen as bright new avatars of American innovation are increasingly portrayed as sinister new centers of unaccountable power, a transformation likely to have major consequences for the industry and for American politics. That turn has accelerated in recent days: Steve Bannon and Bernie Sanders both want big tech treated as, in Bannon’s words in Hong Kong this week, “public utilities.” Tucker Carlson and Franklin Foer have found common ground. Even the group No Labels, an exquisitely poll-tested effort to create a safe new center, is on board. Rupert Murdoch, never shy to use his media power to advance his commercial interests, is hard at work. [ BuzzFeed ] Silicon Valley Makes a Rare Bet on Silicon With Startup BarefootFor nearly two decades, venture capitalists in Silicon Valley have been losing interest in the technology that gave the area its name. One startup is convincing them to take another look at silicon. The brightest star in this long-neglected segment of the tech market is Barefoot Networks Inc. It’s building a new kind of customizable chip for the ubiquitous equipment that companies use to send data between computers. In less than four years, Barefoot has pulled in about $155 million of funding from the biggest names in the Valley, Wall Street and China. [ Bloomberg ] “IT WAS A FREE-FOR-ALL”: INSIDERS SLAM SOFI’S “FRAT HOUSE” CULTURE AS C.E.O. RESIGNSUnlike Uber, the sexual-harassment scandal suddenly roiling Social Finance, one of Silicon Valley’s hottest tech start-ups, has escalated rapidly. On Monday, C.E.O. Mike Cagneysaid that he would be stepping down, just one month after an employee filed a lawsuit against the company, better known as SoFi, alleging that he was fired after reporting the harassment of female employees by male managers. (SoFi said it had investigated the claim and found it meritless.) Still, Cagney’s swift resignation is unlikely to stanch the torrent of allegations now swirling around the online lending start-up, which is valued at $4 billion and says it is moving toward an I.P.O [ Vanity Fair ] Social Capital's Palihapitiya is 'massively long' bitcoin
Chamath Palihapitiya is a big believer in digital currencies. "We've been massively long" bitcoin for years, Palihapitiya said at the Delivering Alpha Conference in New York on Tuesday. "The genie is fundamentally out of the bottle," he added on the power of the blockchain. He doesn't think it will blow up as JPMorgan Chase CEO Dimon said earlier Tuesday. Palihapitiya also said technology investors need to focus on a company's ability to innovate in a rapidly changing world. "There is just this massive trade right now between the disruptors and the disrupted," he said. [ CNBC ] ZenBook maker Asus launches $50M venture fund to bring Silicon Valley startups into AsiaAsus, the Taiwanese hardware firm known for its ZenBooks, ZenFones and Zenbo the cute, humanoid robot, is stepping into the VC game with the launch of a $50 million venture capital fund. Managed in partnership with Fenox Venture Capital, it will focus on strategic investments with startups that want to enter Asian markets. Anis Uzzaman, general partner and CEO of Fenox Venture Capital, says Asus is particularly interested in artificial intelligence, the Internet of Things, big data, augmented and virtual reality, and other tech that can benefit from a partnership with the company, which is the fourth-largest PC maker in the world based on units shipped in 2015. [ Tech Crunch ] Called Bodega, this startup installs unmanned pantry boxes in apartments, offices, dorms, and gyms. It promises convenience, but also represents competition for many mom-and-pop stores. Canvas Promotes Sarah Catanzaro to Data Partner – What’s a Data Partner?Canvas Ventures promoted Sarah Catanzaro to “data partner” from investment associate this week. It’s not every day you see a title like data partner at a venture capital firm. That’s because there aren’t many, if any, until now. As data partner, Sarah will be strengthening the data-driven approach to investing at Canvas. She’ll continue to work with the general partners to invest in companies in analytics, machine intelligence, and data infrastructure. And lastly, Sarah will work directly with Canvas portfolio companies to define their data strategies. Why pick Sarah for this job? She’s got the chops for it. A native of NYC, she was deeply moved by 9/11. After getting a degree in international security studies from Stanford University, she led projects on Somali pirate network analysis at the Center for Advanced Defense Studies. When Sarah had enough of hunting pirates, she went to work at Mattermark where she led the data team to collect and organize information on over one million private companies. For more than a year, Sarah has put those skills to use at Canvas as an associate, where she helped identify several of the firm’s latest investments. In addition to Sarah, Canvas also promoted Jennifer Kaehms to associate from analyst. Should You Consider Emotional Intelligence When Hiring Your Startup's Team?How important is hiring for emotional intelligence? EQ or EI was introduced in 1964 by Michael Beldoch and popularized by Daniel Goleman in 1995. I hear EQ uttered in nearly every job interview and evaluations, and assumed that high EQ correlated to higher job performance. But I read two articles recently that changed my perception of emotional intelligence. [ Tom Tunguz ] Uber's bid to move Waymo court fight to arbitration denied by appeals courtUber Technology Inc’s attempt to move its high-profile trade secrets dispute with Alphabet Inc’s self-driving car unit Waymo to private arbitration was denied again by a U.S. federal appeals court on Wednesday. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit said the closely watched case should continue in U.S. District Court in San Francisco. Waymo sued Uber [UBER.UL] in February, alleging theft of its proprietary information relating to its self-driving car program. Waymo’s lawsuit accuses Anthony Levandowski, a former Waymo executive, of taking confidential documents with him when he left to create a startup later acquired by Uber. Levandowski is not a defendant in the case. [ Reuters ] The Players Keeping Slack From SlackingAmbitions To Elevate The Northwest's Venture Capital GameWhy Bonobos thought selling to Walmart was better than going publicHigh Fidelity: Meet the world's top backer of unicornsElizabeth Iorns on Biotech Companies in YCFormer Sequoia partner Yinglan Tan’s new fund backs Indonesian co-working chainFederal government introduces reforms allowing private companies to access equity crowdfundingAn anti-sex trafficking bill that Silicon Valley hates could see a hearing in the U.S. Senate next week |