Meet the woman leading Accel’s consumer growth investmentsAs it approaches its 35th year in the venture capital business, Accel is staying true to its promise to continue passing the torch to the younger generation of investors. This week, the firm brought on Maya Noeth as a principal, leading its consumer growth investing efforts. Accel typically promotes from within; Noeth is its first outside hire since Amit Kumar joined more than two years ago. [ Tech Crunch ] Running Your Company by Patrick CollisonYC Partner Adora Cheung, along with Patrick Collison, the founder of well known YC alumnus Stripe, discuss how to most effectively run a startup company towards success. [ YC Blog ] Bumble to launch in India before year-endOn the heels of Tinder’s launch of a Bumble-like feature in India, which allows women to initiative the conversations, Bumble is today formally announcing its plans
for an expansion into India. The company says it has been building up a local team in the region over the past nine months and defining its strategy. The app will be available later this fall, with marketing spend focused on major metropolitan regions. [ Tech Crunch ] Priyanka Chopra Is a Tech Investor, TooPriyanka Chopra said her investments in technology would skew heavily toward companies with an element of social impact, and companies founded by women. There’s no shortage of celebrities investing in tech start-ups. So far, deals from male actors, athletes and musical artists have garnered much more attention than those from famous women. Ashton Kutcher is a regular at tech conferences; Carmelo Anthony and Nas have their own funds; Leonardo DiCaprio has been an adviser to at least three venture firms. [ NY Times ] Blume Ventures announces the first close of Fund III, will touch $100 million in few monthsBlume Ventures announced the first close of its third fund on Thursday. In a release, the VC firm said it had already reached half its target corpus of $80 million, and has a commitment from existing investors for another $20 million. The early-stage VC firm aims to achieve its final closure in the next few months. [ Your Story ] Uber investor Benchmark is raising latest $425 million venture fund without two key partners
Checkout Benchmark's Deals, Exists and Fund Raised Data. Revolut and beyond: Meet the startups taking on the banking industryWell, obviously. But this is coming increasingly true when looking at which particular sectors they are making the biggest bets in. Indeed, globally VCs have already spent more than double on fintech startups so far this year than they did in all of 2016 and 2017 combined, per the PitchBook Platform. [ Pitch Book ] Foursquare Closes $33 Million Funding Round, Aiming to ‘Refine’ Its ProductsFoursquare closed a $33 million Series F equity funding round led by Simon Ventures, Naver and longtime backer Union Square Ventures. The company said the first close of $25 million took place last Friday, and it anticipates a secondary close with the remaining $8 million by year-end. [ AD Eeek ] Check out Brightwheel's major investor - Talkdesk nabs $100M at more than $1B valuation for its smart call centersTalkdesk, the provider of cloud-based contact center software, has raised $100 million in new funding from Viking Global Investors, a Connecticut-based hedge fund, and existing investor DFJ. The round values the company at north of $1 billion, Talkdesk co-founder and chief executive officer Tiago Paiva confirmed to TechCrunch, but he declined to disclose the exact figure. [ ED Surge ] Deals, Exits, and Fund Raised data on our platform. Braze Raises $80 Million in Latest Funding Round, More Than Doubling Valuation to $850 MillionBraze (formerly Appboy), the leading global customer engagement platform that delivers personalized messaging experiences across push, email, apps, and more, today announced an $80 million Series E round of funding led by Meritech Capital Partners, a venture capital company with investments in leading technology brands such as Facebook, MuleSoft, and Salesforce. This latest infusion of capital brings Braze to $130 million raised in just over a year, and has more than doubled its valuation to $850 million from Series D in 2017. [ Business Insider ] Check out Braze's major investor - Deals, Exits, and Fund Raised data on our platform. Tencent Music, China’s largest streaming service with 800M users, files for US IPOThis year has seen a number of tech companies that are majority or substantially owned by Chinese giant going public in the U.S. Baidu’s iQiyi service, Xiaomi-backed Huami and Viomi are a few examples, and now Tencent Music — the music division of Tencent, as you can guess — is making its run after plenty of speculation. [ Tech Crunch ] |