Former Unity Technology VP files lawsuit alleging CEO sexually harassed herAnne Wojcicki is 45 minutes late, something so encoded in her habits as 23andMe’s CEO that employees have stopped complaining about it. They know it’s hardwired. On a Thursday morning in April, her team is waiting patiently as she swirls into the company’s headquarters wearing running shorts, a T-shirt that says “Yay DNA” and worn tennis shoes, having just pedaled the 5 miles to work while eight months pregnant. [ Tech Crunch ] Crypto Startups Are Raising Money Again, With a TwistThe market for initial coin offerings is mostly dead. Instead, entrepreneurs are flocking to a new way to raise money with digital tokens. Many startups that did ICOs during the cryptocurrency craze of 2017 and early 2018 were little more than ideas without real business models. Most of the digital coins they sold now trade below their original issue prices. [ WSJ ] SoftBank tops list of unicorn investments in India, followed by Tiger Global, TencentThe SoftBank Group of Japan has the largest list of unicorn companies under its portfolio in India followed by Tiger Global and Tencent, according to data by CB Insights. SoftBank, which has made aggressive bets on the Indian startup ecosystem, has seven Indian unicorns in its portfolio, while Tiger Global and Tencent have three each. Unicorns are those companies that enjoy a private valuation of $1 billion and above. [ Your Story ] Everyone loves pizza, including VCsSometimes a person (I’m not naming names here) tires of staring at startup funding data, and her hungry mind wanders to pizza. But ordering a pizza in real life isn’t always the best choice for such people/reporters. So instead, we’ll pivot to the next best (not really) thing: Looking at what startup investors are doing vis-à-vis the pizza industry. [ Tech Crunch ] CrowdStrike Ups Its IPO Price, Possibly Valuing Itself Near $6BA new price for CrowdStrike, which isn’t a huge surprise Yesterday, CrowdStrike, a cybersecurity company, upped the price range for its IPO shares. From a previous level of $19 to $23, CrowdStrike now intends to price its equity during its public offering between $28 and $30 per share. The firm’s new price interval is far above its preceding estimate of its value. And the new figures give it a somewhat close range, giving us a very clear picture of where CrowdStike will price, provided that it doesn’t manage a per-share sticker value slightly higher than its range; pricing above-range is possible. (More on CrowdStrike’s intial S-1 here.) [ Crunchbase ] How direct-to-consumer brands can avoid startup purgatoryOn June 6, sports community platform Hupu officially confirmed that it obtained 1.26 billion yuan ($182 million) from Bytedance in the pre-IPO round. This gives Bytedance a 30% stake in Hupu. Although Bytedance isn’t Hupu’s largest shareholder, the investment could facilitate the growth of sports-related content on Bytedance’s products such as Jinri Toutiao, Douyin, and Xigua Video. [ Venture Beat ] Lakestar Is Said to Be Raising Largest-Ever European VC FundTiger Global Management has the highest number of unicorn portfolio companies, while SV Angel has made the most early-stage investments in $1B+ companies. There are 344 private unicorn companies globally valued at $1B+ as of 5/5/2019 — all featured on CB Insights’ real-time global unicorn tracker. Over the years, a total of 2,018 disclosed investors have backed those unicorns. While 72% of unicorn investors have only invested in one unicorn company, there are some investors who have pulled away from the group, backing 10, 20, even 40+ unicorn companies. [ CB Insights ] Qualcomm Invests in RISC-V Startup SiFiveInvestors are zeroing in on the open standard RISC-V instruction set architecture and the processor intellectual property being developed by a batch of high-flying chip startups. Last fall, Esperanto Technologies announced a $58 million funding round. The chip IP vendor is incorporating more than 1,000 RISC-V cores onto a single 7-nm chip. Data storage specialist Western Digital is an early investor in Esperanto, Mountain View, Calif. [ HPC wire ] Fashion Forward: How Tech Is Targeting Waste & Pollution In The $2.4T Fashion IndustryFashion is one of the most wasteful industries in the world, but thanks to new technology and consumer demand for more eco-friendly practices, that's starting to change. [ CB Insights ] How to Acquire the First 20 Customers for Your StartupStartups are having to acquire customers and get revenue in the door sooner and sooner. Gone are the days of raising big venture dollars before you really focus on revenue and customers. Data tracked by venture capital firm Wing and reported by TechCrunch last month found that 82 percent of companies that raised Series A rounds in 2018 were post-revenue, up from only 15 percent in 2010. [ Entrepreneur ] Unmortgage, the ‘part own, part rental’ housing startup, loses founder and CEOUnmortgage, the London-based startup that wants to let people buy as little as 5% of a home and rent the rest, has lost its founder and CEO, TechCrunch has learned. According to a regulatory filing on Companies House, Unmortgage’s Rayhan Rafiq-Omar was terminated as a director on 4 May, and has been replaced on the board by Unmortgage co-founder and product lead Josef Wasinski. [ Tech Crunch] The Be MPowered Pitch Competition gives female startup founders a shot at $10,000 and moreAre you a woman in business? Do you have a startup idea that needs a funding injection? Then get set to enter the Be MPowered 2019 Pitch Competition. The Be MPowered Pitch Comp is the brainchild of Mums & Co. founder, Carrie Kwan, who knows first-hand what it’s like to try to attract funding as a female founder. With only 2.2 per cent of venture capital funds currently being awarded to women-led ventures, Kwan is determined to level the playing field. With this in mind she launched the MPowered Pitching competition in 2018 and this year it is back, bigger and better than ever. [ Startup Daily ] What's Next for Esports Startups [ A16Z ]Stadiums packed to capacity filled with screaming fans. Global audiences in the hundreds of millions. A multibillion-dollar economy. College scholarships for the top players. Talent agents. Professional teams with dedicated scouts. Beloved celebrities. Doping scandals. Are we talking about professional sports? Well, of a sort. We're talking esports. ShareChat May Raise $100 Mn From Twitter, Hillhouse CapitalIndian regional language social platform ShareChat may raise $100 Mn at $600 Mn – $650 Mn valuation. Reportedly, the investment is likely to come from new investors, the microblogging site Twitter and Hong Kong-based investment management firm Hillhouse Capital, with backing from existing investors including Xiaomi, Shunwei Capital and Morningside Venture Capital. [ inc42 ] Building Effective Venture-Backed Boards - Kinetic 2019Duel fireside chat with venture investors and scale-up CEO's on how they have worked together to overcome hurdles. Dive into the roles and responsibilities of each player, the expertise, dynamic and makeup of an effective board, and what's appropriate in relation to communications. Thumbtack is raising up to $120M on a flat valuationThumbtack, one of the first players in what is now known as the gig economy, has hit the fundraising circuit once again. The online services marketplace that matches customers with nearby professionals is raising up to $120 million in Series H shares, according to a Delaware stock authorization filing uncovered by the Prime Unicorn Index. Thumbtack did not respond to a request for comment. [ Tech Crunch ] Last Week In Venture: Doggy Drug Delivery, Digital Safe Places, Serving The Middle Mile Market, And MoreHey, how are you? Welcome! We’re so glad you’re here for Last Week In Venture, the weekly rundown of venture deals which may have flown under your radar. But first, let’s queue up a highlight reel of the Crunchbase News team’s work this week. We found that the birth rate of female-founded unicorns is on the rise and launched a column covering Texas venture and startup activity. We covered all manner of transactions, ranging from big M&A deals (like Google’s $2.6 billion buyout of Looker) and IPO rumblings (Peloton’s confidential filing, TheRealReal’s filing, and updates to Crowdstrike’s pricing come to mind) and too many venture rounds to list here individually. It’s been a heck of a week. [ Crunchbase ] Where are all the fintech IPOs?The smartphone revolution has well and truly disrupted the world of banking. A wide range of startups have cropped up that have completely removed the need to make visits to physical branches to open accounts, make deposits, pay for things, and ask for loans: you can now do all of these on the go by way of a simple tap on an app. [ Tech Crunch ] E943 Qualtrics' Ryan Smith: refusing VC, foregoes IPO to sell for $8b, focus, experience managementQualtrics CEO & Co-Founder Ryan Smith shares insights from building his data powerhouse, bootstrapping to profitability, refusing VC & foregoing IPO to sell for $8b, keeping focus, going all in, democratizing information & creating the new category of experience management Why Qualitative Market Research Belongs in Your Startup Toolkit — and How to Wield it EffectivelyIf you’re skeptical about the value of qualitative market research, Jesse Caesar gets it. “I started out as a creative. I saw market researchers as these killjoys who came in and lifted their leg on all of my beautiful work to make it bland and palatable for the masses,” he says. “Obviously, as a market researcher, I think a little differently now.” [ First Round ] Curated by Venture Pulse Team. Find us on : [ Venturepulse.org, CrunchBase, AngelList ] |