Slack, Valued at $7 Billion, Has Filed to Go Public
20VC: SLOW VENTURES’ SAM LESSIN ON HOW VC FORCES CERTAIN COMPANIES TO EXIST AND MAKES IT DIFFICULT TO FINANCE OTHERS, WHY CITIES WON’T LET SCOOTER COMPANIES BE PROFITABLE AND WHY DAPPS ARE A CONCERN AND WHERE EMPHASIS SHOULD BE PLACED IN CRYPTOSam Lessin is a Founding Partner @ Slow Ventures, one of the leading early-stage funds on the West Coast with a portfolio including the likes of Robinhood, Gusto, Pinterest, Casper, Postmates and many more incredible companies. Sam is also the Co-Founder & Co-CEO @ Fin Analytics, the startup that provides precision measurement and coaching for high-performance operations teams. Before founding Fin and Slow, Sam spent 4 years at Facebook as a VP of Product Management following their acquisition of his prior company, Drop.io. [ 20 Min VC ] The Future Of Real Estate: Fintech 50 2019Lagging prices of an uncertain housing market will put real estate fintech companies to the test. Many of startups who made this year's list of proptech stars have partnered with big banks and heavy hitters to weather a turbulent market. Former Fannie Mae CEO Tim Mayopoulos was recently named president of Blend, which counts two of the nation's largest mortgage providers, Wells Fargo and U.S. Bank, among its growing number of customers. Goldman Sachs’ private wealth
clients committed $250 million to Cadre's commercial real estate investing platform. Fundrise is raising $500 million with RSE Capital to invest in federal opportunity zones, like the Arts District in Downtown L.A. [ Forbes ] Tyra Banks is creating a tech-driven attraction called ModellandTyra Banks, the supermodel-turned-entrepreneur, has unveiled her latest venture. Dubbed Modelland, the in-person theme park-like experience will bring technology to the forefront, Banks told TechCrunch over the phone last week. “We’re very open to partnering with and having integrations with different brands that bring technology to the forefront and make sure what we’re providing in Modelland are things you cannot do on your phone,” she told me. [ Tech Crunch ] Databricks raises $250M at a $2.75B valuation for its analytics platformDatabricks, the company behind the Apache Spark big data analytics engine, today announced that it has raised a $250 million Series E round led by Andreessen Horowitz. Coatue Management, Microsoft and NEA, also participated in this round, which brings the company’s total funding to $498.5 million. Microsoft’s involvement here is probably a bit of a surprise, but it’s worth noting that it also worked with Databricks on the launch of Azure Databricks as a first-party service on the platform, something that’s still a rarity in the Azure cloud. [ Tech Crunch ] Which companies are truly dedicated to helping employees start families? The FertilityIQ Family Builder Workplace Index ranked the top workplaces by sector and found quite a few are willing to help workers have a baby. FertilityIQ, an online guide for fertility solutions, found that the vast majority of IVF patients treated in 2018 paid for most or all of their treatments out of pocket, with barely any assistance
from insurance companies. And it’s certainly not cheap: The average patients pays a whopping $22,000 per fertility cycle, and they often need more than one. In fact, more than half of patients undergo a second cycle, while one-third go through three or more treatments. [ Fast Company ] New York Clothing Startup Outdoor Voices Packed Up Its 40 Employees and Moved to Austin--and You Should TooJust a few blocks from a forest of glassy new skyscrapers, including the tallest residential building west of the Mississippi, about 70 young women in yoga pants (and a few men) dance and stretch to a Cardi B song on an impossibly green lawn. At the head of the group stands Tyler Haney, the 30-year-old founder and CEO of Outdoor Voices, who uprooted her New York City athleisure e-apparel company to relocate to Austin in 2017. [ Inc. ] Y Combinator’s Women-Only Forum Is Becoming Its Own BusinessNavigating a career in Silicon Valley can be hard without the right connections and advice. For women, often outnumbered in tech workplaces, it can be even harder. There aren’t as many other women to help answer big questions: What’s a standard salary for my role? How do I bounce back from a career misstep? How do you find a mentor? Cadran Cowansage, a 33-year-old software engineer, had a day job working at startup accelerator Y Combinator, but in 2017, she
started to spend her nights and weekends building Leap, an online community for women in tech. She wanted to answer those questions and more—how to fire someone, how to handle difficult conversations, when to raise funding and which investors are most friendly to women. She launched the platform as a part of Y Combinator, but as it grew, Cowansage started thinking about making it a standalone business. [ Bloomberg ] |