Boston's NextView Ventures just sealed up its third fund with $50 millionBack in December, we’d reported that NextView Ventures, one of few seed-stage venture firms in Boston, was looking to raise at least $50 million for a third fund, per an SEC filing that was processed at the time. Today, the firm says it has closed the fund with exactly that amount in capital commitments. It’s a slight step up from the firm’s second fund, which closed with $40 million in 2014 and its debut fund with $21 million in 2012. NextView was founded in 2010 by three former veterans of other venture firms: Dave Beisel, who’d previously worked for Venrock; Rob Go, who was formerly with Spark Capital; and Lee Hower, a former investor with Judith Capital. [ Tech Crunch ] Why WeWork’s $20B Valuation Isn’t CrazyWeWork just became the 6th most valuable startup in the world. Though its $20B valuation looks sky-high, it could be justifiable if the unicorn's projected revenue targets and ambitious expansion plans come to fruition this year. With WeWork‘s latest funding mega-round bringing the unicorn to a whopping $20B valuation with $2.76B in total funding to-date, investors have long been speculating whether the company merits such a high valuation. We’ve examined previous unicorn valuations including Dropbox, Airbnb, and Blue Apron and compared WeWork’s current and projected valuation data, using CB Insights’ Enhanced Valuation capability, against those posted by a few of its public-market counterparts. Specifically, we looked at Boston Properties, Vornado, and IWG plc (dba Regus). [ CB Insights ] 500 Startups surveys the early wreckage of a sexual harassment scandalTuesday was an early test of how VC firms might recover. If you squinted just hard enough, it looked like the sexual harassment scandal had battered someone else, not them.Tuesday appeared to be another routine Demo Day for 500 Startups, where a batch of its 31 new chosen companies worked a spartan room, wooing bankers with friendly eyes and over-eagerly digging for business cards. Over cabernets and bourbon-glazed meatballs, investors gossiped about which of the accelerator program’s chosen startups was the surest winner or the most certain dud. [ Recode ] Surviving As An Old in The Tech World About 15 years ago, I was inexplicably offered a job at Google—at age 52. At the time, my age reliably put me in the running for “oldest employee.” Still, I was thrilled to be there, and worked hard to become known as a good colleague, reliable, energetic, and a quick study. As the company grew, so did our team, and of course many new people (virtually all younger) were hired around me. [ Wired ] Many of Those Billion-Dollar Startups You Hear So Much About Are Ridiculously OvervaluedUnicorns aren’t real, and neither are the valuations ascribed to many of the startups that say they’re worth $1 billion or more. About half of private companies with valuations exceeding $1 billion, known as unicorns, wouldn’t have earned the mythical title without the use of complex stock mechanics, according to a study by business professors at the University of British Columbia and Stanford University. The tools used to negotiate a higher share price with investors often come at the expense of employees and early shareholders, sometimes drastically reducing the actual value of their stock. [ Fortune ] Fintech Startup Bread Raises $126 Million In Bid To Finance Big Online PurchasesWhen you buy something online, chances are you use your credit card. If it's a bigger purchase, like a mattress or a washing machine, you might decide to pay it off over time. Bread is among the financial technology start-ups attempting to get you to ditch your plastic and instead opt to finance your purchase with a loan that has lower rates and predictable monthly payments. Bread said on Wednesday it has raised $126 million through a Series B funding round to expand the number of retailers that offer its financing. Menlo Ventures led the equity portion of the investment, with participation from Bessemer Venture Partners, RRE Ventures and others. A debt facility was also provided by Victory Park Capital. [ Forbes ] Greylock COO out due to "inappropriate" relationship Tom Frangione has stepped down as chief operating officer of Greylock Partners, after the Silicon Valley venture capital firm learned of an undisclosed relationship with another employee, Axios has learned. The Information was first with the news of his departure. [ Axios ] WHAT METRICS LPS REALLY USE TO MEASURE MANAGER SUCCESS, WHY 10 YEAR FUND STRUCTURES REALLY DO NOT WORK & WHY VENTURE IS SO SIMILAR TO THE MOVIE BUSINESS WITH WILL PORTEOUS, GENERAL PARTNER @ RRE VENTURESWill Porteous is the General Partner & COO @ RRE Ventures, one of New York’s leading venture funds with investments in the likes of Buzzfeed, The Huffington Post, Giphy and Paperless Post just to name a few. As for Will, he works primarily with media and hardware companies, where he is a Director of BuzzFeed, Paperless Post, Spaceflight, and Spire. Prior to VC, Will held senior management positions with SupplyWorks and NetMarket, the e-commerce pioneer now owned by Cendant Corp. [ 20 VC ] INSIDE TRAVIS KALANICK’S FIGHT TO RETAKE UBERIn Silicon Valley, there are generally two kinds of boardroom dramas. In the first, the failed coup, a group of directors grows frustrated with their C.E.O. for any number of reasons and attempts to defenestrate him or her without tangible success. These botched efforts, which are often stymied by an early board member who takes the C.E.O.’s side, or a potential mass revolt from employees, are far more frequent than you might imagine. But they are generally withheld from the press on account of the material damage it would do to a company, and the masterful surreptitiousness of the boardroom operators involved. [ HIVE ] WHY SILICON VALLEY WILL CONTINUE TO RULE“You can’t really understand what is going on now without understanding what came before.” Steve Jobs is explaining why, as a young man, he spent so much time with the Silicon Valley entrepreneurs a generation older, men like Robert Noyce, Andy Grove, and Regis McKenna. It’s a beautiful Saturday morning in May, 2003, and I’m sitting next to Jobs on his living room sofa, interviewing him for a book I’m writing. I ask him to tell me more about why he wanted, as he put it, “to smell that second wonderful era of the valley, the semiconductor companies leading into the computer.” Why, I want to know, is it not enough to stand on the shoulders of giants? Why does he want to pick their brains? [ Wired ] Bootstrapped and free from the shackles of external fundingWhile entrepreneurs often need to engage with venture capitalists and private equity firms to take their businesses to the next level, many will secretly tell you how they would have loved to have been free of the shackles of external funding. Several promoters I have met say the idea of bootstrapping—building businesses with their own money—is extremely appealing to them. But for various reasons, they need to seek funds from VCs and PEs and thus begins a never-ending tug-of-war between the two sides. Not all VC/PE-entrepreneur equations are tension-ridden though, and there are several instances where they have worked together cohesively and built very successful businesses. However,
the freedom that bootstrapping accords makes it very attractive, at least in the initial stages when a venture is being built from ground up. |