Podcast - Chatting with non-profit maven and CEO of Crisis Text Line, Nancy Lublin. Entrepreneurship is not only about making money. It can also be used to create social change. Three time social entrepreneur Nancy Lublin has made a career out of starting non-profits to do exactly that. Last week she sat down with the Gotham Gal and talked about lessons she has learned along the way, most of which apply as much to for profit startups as non-profits. [ AVC ] With Dye Jobs For Just $45, Hair Color Startup Madison Reed Takes On $15 Billion MarketEvery venture capitalist has a story of The One That Got Away. For Amy Errett, it was razor subscription startup Dollar Shave Club, which sold to Unilever for $1 billion in July, making its earliest backers a fortune. "I was fixated," said Errett, who ran the San Francisco office of Starbucks founder Howard Schultz's investment vehicle Maveron for six years. "I got really obsessed with personal care. What was the women's analog to that repetitive nature of shaving?" Errett began researching the hair coloring market and found it ripe for disruption. It's a $15 billion business in the U.S., with 85% of women dying their hair, on average, every eight weeks. It was also an incredibly bifurcated space: 52% of women dye their hair in their own bathrooms, while 48% go to hair salons. The price differential is staggering too. A box of dye from Walgreens can cost as little as $5.99, whereas a salon appointment can cost hundreds. Errett left the VC world in 2013 to address the vast middle ground between cheap, chemical-filled drugstore hair color and $200-plus, multi-hour sessions with a stylist. To date, she's raised $40 million in venture capital funding to grow Madison Reed, named for her daughter. [ Forbes ] How the hot startup that stole Apple's thunder wound up in Silicon Valley's graveyardFor a moment, it looked like the story would have a happy ending. As struggling smartwatch maker Pebble discussed selling itself to Fitbit, a larger competitor in the wearable technology market, the chatter among the Pebble team was that they would continue working on their product under the wing of a new, more stable corporate parent. Fitbit’s co-founder James Park even visited Pebble’s offices and, following a brief introduction from Pebble CEO Eric Migicovsky, talked reassuringly about how excited he was to welcome Pebble into the Fitbit family. But within a month it became apparent that Fitbit’s $40 million acquisition wasn’t a lifeline for Pebble, it was a fire sale. [ Business Insider ] A timeline of the 13 Salesforce acquisitions of 2016Marc Benioff has been on a bit of a buying spree this year and now, just in time for the holiday shopping season, Salesforce has agreed to pick up Twin Prime. The company provides an app performance and improvement platform that uses machine learning to analyze network data in real time—techniques that Salesforce will deploy to optimize its expanding cloud services for mobile acceleration. The deal dials Salesforce's total acquisitions up to 13 for 2016. [ PitchBook ] Apple, Facebook, Google, IBM and Uber say they won’t help Trump build a registry of Muslim-AmericansTwitter was the first big tech company to say it would refuse to hand over data to help the United States government build a registry president-elect Donald Trump has described that would be used specifically to track Muslim-Americans, The Intercept reported two weeks ago. As of Friday, companies including Facebook, Apple, Google, IBM, Uber and Microsoft have all chimed in to likewise refuse to hand over data to help build a database that would profile Muslim-Americans, according to reports from BuzzFeed and The Hill. Podcast - DANIELLE WALKER: Against All Grain Revitalizes Gluten Free LifeDanielle and Jenna discuss how Against All Grain evolved from a small recipe blog for family and friends into the top destination for grain-free living for over 1.5 million health-seeking followers. [ 33 Voices ] How an Intellectual Odd Couple Reshaped Everything From Medicine to InvestingIn The Undoing Project, Michael Lewis shows how a pair of Israeli psychologists revealed the weirdness of the human mind. [ Bloomberg ] VENTURE CAPITAL JOBSVenture Capital Intern at Creandum, San Francisco, USUI Designer at Liaoyuan, Boston, USVenture Capitalist at Whoogle, Mountain View, US.Business Angel at Whoogle, Mountain View, US.Full stack Engineer at Liaoyuan, Boston, US.External Affairs Coordinator at Tech:NYC, NYC, US.Administrative Assistant at Canvas Ventures, Menlo Park, US. |