Millennials Really Are Making a Move on Tech Funds
At the age of 27, Andre de Haes raised 30 million euros ($36 million) for his London-based venture capital fund, Backed VC. Now 30, he and his 29-year-old business partner Alex Brunicki are among a cohort of young investors who are having a greater say in how the billions that have flowed into European venture capital in recent years are spent. [ Bloomberg ] The first ICO unicorns are hereIt was always like to happen, but the speed in which the first ICOs worth more than $1 billion have arrived is surprising. Today both OmiseGO (OMG) and Qtum passed a $1 billion market cap today, according to coinmarketcap.com, a site that tracks the value of crypto tokens. In doing so, they became the first ERC20 tokens — subtokens that are built on the Ethereum network and sold to investors via an ICO — to pass the unicorn mark based on the total value of coins that have been distributed. Most incredibly, both have reached surpassed the landmark in mere months. [ Tech Crunch ] Exclusive: Sequoia Capital is Running a Mentorship Program for Hundreds of Silicon Valley WomenSilicon Valley venture capital firms haven’t exactly been models for gender equality—especially in light of the recent spate of sexual harassment scandals that have plagued the industry. But at least some are trying to do their part to promote more inclusion of women in the tech field. Fortune has learned that, for the past year, VC firm Sequoia Capital has been running a program that pairs technical women across its portfolio companies with mentors at other organizations. Dubbed “Ascent,” the initiative was started in the summer of 2016 by Sequoia's human capital partner, Joe Dobrenski. Step one was to enlist an online mentoring matchmaker called Everwise (which also happens to be one of the firm's portfolio companies) and survey more than 500 women and men across various startups. Not surprisingly, the findings showed that women often lacked access to relevant female role models and felt alone in their organizations. [ Fortune ]
Early Uber investor Bill Maris suggests he’d buy shares again, but all the sellers “have disappeared”While Bill Maris was the CEO of Google’s venture unit, GV, the outfit made a bet in 2013 that drew snickers: it poured $258 million into the ride-share company Uber at a roughly
$3.7 billion post-money valuation. The investment was by far GV’s biggest investment at the time. Yet while seemingly rich, the investment looks brilliant in hindsight. (It also looks complicated, of course, with Google spin-off Waymo now suing Uber for allegedly stealing its trade secrets.) Maris has more recently launched his own venture firm, Section 32, but as
the founder of GV, he maintains a meaningful interest in Uber’s future, and he suggests that after this week, he’d buy Uber again — at its current $68 billion valuation — if only he could find a seller. We talked with Maris earlier today about his renewed enthusiasm for the company. Our chat has been edited lightly for length. Uber’s Secret HR War Looms for New CEOUber’s top executives spent Tuesday evening at a hastily arranged dinner in San Francisco, gabbing and drinking with their new CEO, Dara Khosrowshahi. Several board members, including former CEO Travis Kalanick, also attended. On Wednesday, they were all smiles again at Mr. Khosrowshahi’s first all-hands meeting with Uber employees. But those happy expressions disguised rising tensions within the management team. At issue: Human Resources chief Liane Hornsey’s overhaul of Uber’s HR practices. And as they prepare for Mr. Khosrowshahi to take the reins next week, Ms. Hornsey and her colleagues are girding for a fight to sway him to one side or the other. At the heart of the battle is a question of how to reward the top performers. Ms. Hornsey wants to eliminate stark pay discrepancies between employees in similar roles and avoid excessive preferential treatment for the best people. But a host of other senior executives—including data science and growth chief Daniel Graf, engineering chief Thuan Pham, security chief Joe Sullivan and AI lab chief Jeff Holden—are fighting to preserve certain practices, including the ability to pay generous bonuses to certain top performers, which the executives see as key to retaining talent. [ The Information ] After failing to find a Buryat instructor, Inky Gibbens launched Tribalingual to offer e-courses in endangered languages spoken only by thousands of people. Buryat is an endangered language, still spoken by 300,000 people, but dwindling ever since Russian became the dominant language in the republic of Buryatia. If she wanted to learn, she’d have to return to the region where she had visited as a child. She was working on her PhD in sociolinguistics at the time but as she learned more about Buryat and other endangered languages, she realized she wanted to do more. [ Fast Company ] Full transcript: Social Capital CEO Chamath Palihapitiya on Recode DecodeOn this episode of Recode Decode, hosted by Kara Swisher, Social Capital’s Chamath Palihapitiya takes over the red chair to talk about how investing in Silicon Valley is a broken process. The outspoken venture capitalist matches wits with Kara, providing a very entertaining and enlightening conversation along the way.You can read some of the highlights here, or listen to the entire interview in the audio player below. We’ve also provided a lightly edited complete transcript of their conversation. [ Re/Code ] Silicon Valley is preparing to blast Trump if he ends protections for DreamersPresident Donald Trump is expected on Friday to eliminate a program that protects young people brought to the United States illegally as children from being deported — a move that’s already drawing strong objections from Microsoft and Uber. The program in question is called Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, and since it was implemented under former President Barack Obama, more than 800,000 so-called Dreamers have been allowed to stay in the country by obtaining renewable work permits. [ Re/Code ] How €1bn venture capital industry can learn lessons from ScandinaviaUber’s market share has taken a big hitWhy GoGoVan May Become Hong Kong's First UnicornRecode Daily: Uber meets its new CEO at an all-smiles, all-selfies all-handsWhere Major Corporations Like Salesforce And NVIDIA Are Investing In Artificial IntelligenceLoyalty Program Giftz Launches First ICO Pre-Sale on Crowdfunder |