Battery Ventures Raises More Than $1 Billion for New FundsBattery Ventures raised more than $1 billion for two new funds, underscoring the steady flow of money into the venture capital business. [ Bloomberg ] High-profile investors like Jeff Bezos, Ray Dalio, and Meg Whitman are flocking to a $150 million fund nurturing startups in overlooked American cities
Walmart has acquired a virtual reality startup as part of its tech makeoverWalmart has acquired a small virtual reality shop, called Spatialand, to be the centerpiece of VR efforts that the company hopes will someday transform the shopping experience across the company’s different websites and stores. Spatialand makes software tools that let creators transform existing content into immersive, virtual reality experiences. The startup worked with Walmart’s technology incubator, Store No. 8, on a project last year, and has now been acquired by that group. [ Recode ] Slack names Allen Shim as company’s first CFOIn a blog post this morning Slack CEO Stewart Butterfield announced the company is naming long-time employee Allen Shim as the company’s first CFO. “Today, I’m excited to announce another milestone: Allen Shim has been appointed Chief Financial Officer for Slack,” Butterfield wrote in the blog post. He went onto to describe Shim as his right hand man, who has been with the company from its earliest days. [ Tech Crunch ] Mirror raises $13 million to deliver in-home workouts through connected mirrorsThe health club industry generates around $83 billion in revenue globally each year, according to figures from the International Health, Racquet & Sportsclub Association (IHRSA), with 162 million members visiting 200,000 gyms and fitness centers around the world. Keeping fit, it seems, is big business. And that is why myriad fitness-focused startups are securing cash from venture capitalists the world over. [ Venture Beat ] In Travis Kalanick’s first public appearance since resigning from Uber, his competitive nature was put on trialThe legal saga between tech behemoths Alphabet and Uber began with a bruising condemnation of Uber’s former CEO. “This case is about one competitor deciding they need to win at all costs,” an attorney for Alphabet said in his opening statement on Monday. “Mr Kalanick, the CEO at the time at Uber, made a decision that winning was more important than obeying the law,” he continued. On Tuesday, the second day of trial in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California in San Francisco, an uncharacteristically soft-spoken Kalanick took the stand to face these accusations head on. It’s the first time the notoriously combative former CEO of Uber has spoken publicly since he was ousted by major shareholders in June 2017. [ Re/Code ] Backing Robinhood, JAY-Z’s Roc Nation invests in would-be RockefellersRoc Nation, the full-service entertainment management company created by the music impresario Shawn Carter (better known as JAY-Z), is making an investment in financial trading platform Robinhood. The investment, through Roc Nation’s Arrive subsidiary, is the latest instance of a celebrity rapper plowing cash into Robinhood’s free-to-trade investment platform. The company also counts Snoop Dogg and Nasir Jones (also known as Nas) among its big-time backers. Robinhood is actually Arrive’s third investment into a high-growth startup tech company. The firm has also backed Devialt, a French audio technology company, and InSite Applications, a location-sharing platform that’s planning to launch its services later this year. [ TechCrunch ] A little-known startup turned profitable by staying away from India’s Silicon ValleySilicon Valley engineer Tracy Chou: Stop saying that diversity means lowering the barFor a young person starting out in tech, an internship at Google or Facebook should be like winning the lottery. But from the moment software engineer Tracy Chou set foot in the offices of Silicon Valley’s tech giants, she felt deeply uncomfortable being a woman in a sea of white men. One male coworker “offered to give me a massage ‘because I looked stressed,'” she wrote in an essay for Quartz. “Another tried to get me to watch a movie with him in a dark room with the door locked and blinds closed.” Such experiences prompted Chou to become one of tech’s most prominent—and passionate—diversity advocates. In 2016, she co-founded Project Include, a nonprofit helmed by former Reddit CEO Ellen Pao, that uses data to help tech companies bring on more diverse employees. [ QZ ] How my startup failure helped me find myself and see my family moreYGAP opens applications for First Gens accelerator program for migrant and refugee-led social impact startupsMax Lautenschläger - Iconiq Lab - ICOs: Chances and Challenges in the Token MarketsDay One Ventures launches fund which wraps VC and PR into oneAre Accelerators the Secret to Building Truly Great Startup Hubs?The antisocial network: how Silicon Valley became a male domainDavid Sacks’s new startup wants to make it safer for old-guard industries to jump into cryptoREA Group appoints Startup Victoria chief Georgia Beattie as executive manager of working space platform SpacelyKapor Capital promotes Ulili Onovakpuri to partnerraceAhead: Venture Capital Tries Diversity AgainHow Silicon Valley Came to Be a Land of ‘Bros’ |