Former journo Alexia Bonatsos unveils her new venture fund, Dream MachineShe wasn’t building out her network merely to stay connected; she was also slowly piecing together checks from individual investors for a debut venture fund. Toward that end, last December, she registered her San Francisco-based firm, Dream Machine, with the SEC, listing the target amount at $25 million. [ Tech Crunch ] Waggl Raises $7M in Series A FundingWaggl, a Sausalito, CA – based platform for real-time feedback powered by employee voice, closed approximately $7m Series A funding. The round was led by First Analysis, with participation from other institutional and individual investors including Labora, Funder’s Club, and Rob Bernshteyn, CEO of Coupa. The company intends to use the funds to accelerate product and business development for its platform. [ FinSMEs ] Startups Colonize New York Subway, Pricing Out Plastic Surgery AdsYou’ve seen them if you’ve been to New York recently or are one of the city’s harried commuters. Bright, colorful, funny, cheeky ads for startups selling everything from insurance to mattresses, plastered in every subway car and station. The New York subway had long been known for ads hawking questionable services from plastic surgeons and personal-injury lawyers. Then young, well-funded companies like Casper and Seamless realized that even in the age of Facebook and Google, subway ads are a cost-effective way to grab attention. In a testament to the growing power of the city’s startup scene, these upstarts have helped push up the price of certain subway campaigns sevenfold in the past five years and chased away many of the surgeons and lawyers. [ Bloomberg ] Full transcript: NYU professor Scott Galloway answers listener questions on Too Embarrassed to AskSimon Benjamin on Architectures for Quantum ComputingThis Media Startup Is Beating the Competition With a Newsroom Run by RobotsAre Venture Capitalists Necessary?The Resurgence of Corporate Venture CapitalAmazon leads $12M investment in India-based digital insurance startup AckoSome big Silicon Valley names are throwing money around ahead of next week’s mayoral election in San FranciscoGreenwich venture capital firm puts a focus on female leadershipTencent pulls investment in content start-up after online backlashWhat one start-up did when it got called out for being too whiteI'm a founder who has raised $77 million over the last 10 years — here's my best advice on how to raise startup money, even when lots of people reject youDigital payments pioneer Lawrence Lerner bets on blockchain with $170M startup investment fundHow to bring diversity and inclusion to techCrunchbase's Jager McConnell, Freestyle's Jenny Lefcourt, Inkwell's Manon DeFelice, Ellevest's Melissa Cullens, WatchHerWork's Denise Hamilton and Fortune's Kristen Bellstrom at Collision Conf 2018. E03 - Jan Tony Abrahamsson, Venture Partner from TechGrind talks about Thai StartupsTechGrind is an ASEAN technology startup ecosystem. Jan Tony Abrahamsson is a Venture Partner at TechGrind, with than a decade of experience relating to business development, entrepreneurship and innovation, in different roles across different international contexts. Silicon Valley vs. everywhere elseAlgolia's Nicolas Dessaigne, Tradesy's Tracy DiNunzio, Toyota AI Ventures' Jill Ford and VentureBeat's Anna Hensel at Collision Conf 2018. Is Silicon Valley still the epicenter of startup innovation and funding or can companies grow to great heights from other parts of the world or even other parts of the U.S.? Airbnb’s new stories feature is an attempt to sell a new business line: travel services |