Ethereum Cofounder Launches Venture Capital Arm With $50 Mln InvestmentJoseph Lubin’s Ethereum design studio, ConsenSys has decided to jump directly in the Blockchain venture capital ecosystem by setting up a dedicated venture investment arm. The new division, ConsenSys Ventures, would invest both in equity of Blockchain startups and in emerging cryptocurrencies. The company has hired Kavita Gupta as Founding Managing Partner to run the arm. Kavita comes with an interesting impact-investing background given her stints with the Google’s parent company Alphabet’s Executive Chairman, Eric Schmidt’s Schmidt Family Foundation, International Finance Corporation and the World Bank. [ Coin Telegraph ] There’s a new rival to the mostly male networking organizations that make deals happen in Silicon ValleySome investors and CEOs are choosing to fight a powerful target in their quest to make Silicon Valley more friendly to women: The Young Presidents’ Organization. As the tech industry grapples with a spate of sexual harassment allegations, prominent voices are quietly organizing behind a new rival to YPO, a networking league of executives that is largely male, Recode has learned. The YPO rival — called Leaders in Tech — has in recent weeks been pitching top venture capitalists on its effort, and the organization a topic at a Thursday evening dinner of female general partners at VC firms. [ Re/Code ] Men who want to fight sexism at work: Read Sheryl Sandberg’s blunt adviceFor years, Sheryl Sandberg has been at the forefront of women’s fight for professional equality. The Facebook chief operating officer’s 2013 book Lean In sparked innumerable contentious, essential debates about how women can advance in the workplace. But in a new interview with LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, Sandberg flips the narrative, sharing advice about what men can do to fight workplace sexism. Speaking on “Master of Scale,” Hoffman’s podcast, her message is both clear and cutting: Men need to care enough about gender equality to act. [ QZ ] Is It Exit Season Yet? Startup funding and exiting activity has been slow over the past few months in the U.S. Fewer companies closed rounds, IPO volumes were light, and not a lot of big M&A deals got done. But that’s to be expected, right? After all, it was summer break. Now that Labor Day’s over and we’re back at our desks, we can expect deal volumes to pick up. That seasonal explanation for a sluggish venture investment climate seems comforting on the heels of a muggy July and August that were conspicuously bereft of big exits. And it certainly seems like September is off to a more action-packed start, with new IPO filings and big funding rounds. Kombucha, climbing walls, free plane tickets for parents, and hard work — A day in the life of a Silicon Valley internThe tech industry is famous for having some of the best internships around. From free food, to impressive monthly stipends, Silicon Valley is the place to be for college students hoping to get an engineering job after graduation. While everyone knows about the perks of corporate tech, we wanted to find out for ourselves what it's really like to intern in Silicon Valley. So last month we visited the Sunnyvale, California, campus of LinkedIn — the employment-focused social network that Microsoft acquired last year. [ Business Insider ] Budget hotel network pioneer OYO raises $250M led by SoftBank’s Vision FundIndia-based OYO, a startup that pioneered and popularized the concept of budget hotel networks, has closed $250 million in new funding led by SoftBank’s Vision Fund. The startup was founded in 2013 by Thiel Fellow Ritesh Agarwal, now aged 24, and the concept centers around standardizing the quality of India’s wildly differentiated affordable hotels, and providing some structure to make bookings simple and customer service simplified. [ TechCrunch ] Uber's new CEO has proven record of M&A successThis line or something like it was already commonplace before the embattled ridehailing giant hired Dara Khosrowshahi for the job last week. But the same line could have been used a dozen years ago, when Khosrowshahi took over as CEO of Expedia. His subsequent success at the helm of the online travel company was thanks in no small part to some very savvy dealmaking. [ PitchBook ] SoftBank and Sprint are testing blockchain paymentsSoftBank Corp. and Sprint announced today that they have created a new consortium they hope will encourage telecom carriers to adopt blockchain technologies. Dubbed the Carrier Blockchain Study Group, or CBSG, the group initially consisted of those two giants, plus TBCASoft, a startup that is developing blockchain services for the telecom industry. As a starting point, the three partners have been testing a “cross-carrier payment platform system” that harnesses TBCASoft’s blockchain tools. Japanese startup plans one-stop ICO platform fueled by $25M from VCs and a $60M ICOChina banned ICOs this week and it is investigating platforms that facilitate them. Over in nearby Japan, one company is hatching an ambitious plan to offer a one-stop-service to let companies across the world take advantage of blockchain technology and IPOs. And all without violating financial regulations. Tech Bureau currently helps companies with consultancy and a range of technical services, but it is preparing to introduce new platforms to cover nearly every aspect of the process of an ICO, also known as token sales, and chiefly that of raising capital. 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