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One of Year’s Best Startups Isn’t in Silicon Valley, or China

One of the year’s most spectacular startup payoffs isn’t in Silicon Valley or China, it’s in Japan. Mercari Inc.’s $3.7 billion coming-out party will deliver a 149-times return to early investor United Inc., which engineered a 300 million yen ($2.7 million) round in the flea-market app in 2013. That stake will be worth at least 45 billion yen when Mercari goes public June 19, a mega-windfall that may galvanize the No. 3 economy’s stunted startup scene. [ Bloomberg ]

Comcast has formally announced its plan to make Rupert Murdoch even wealthier

Comcast has spent the past few weeks telling everyone it was going to compete with Disney for a big chunk of Rupert Murdoch’s media empire. Now it is making it formal: It is offering $65 billion, cash. That’s $35 a share — what it describes as a 19 percent premium over Disney’s bid. [ Re/Code ]

Fintech startup Study Loans secures $50 million debt facility

Fintech startup Study Loans, which looks to help students finance their tertiary education, has secured a $50 million finance facility from an ‘ASX200 finance company’ and launched a $5 million capital raise. Founded by Brett Shanley, Mark McCoach, and Rhett Simonds with an initial focus on vocational education, the startup works with educational institutions to have tuition paid to the organisation as a student progresses through their studies, like the government study loan programs. [ Startup Daily ]

Ashton Kutcher and Effie Epstein to talk Sound Ventures at Disrupt SF

While many celebrities try to invest in the world of tech, very few do so successfully. And no one has proved their worth as celebrity-turned-VC more than Ashton Kutcher . That’s why we’re absolutely thrilled to host Ashton Kutcher and Sound Ventures  partner Effie Epstein at TC Disrupt SF in September.

Kutcher first got into investing in 2011 with the launch of A-Grade Investments. The firm invested in big-name companies like DuoLingo, FlexPort, ProductHunt, Airbnb, and Uber. In 2014, Kutcher, alongside his longtime friend and partner Guy Oseary, started a new VC firm called Sound Ventures.  [ TechCrunch ]

Silicon Valley Investor's Weirdo Dream of Three Californias Just Got One Step Closer to Reality

Silicon Valley venture capitalist and bitcoin acapella singer Tim Draper successfully got his plan to split California into three states on the November ballot. Draper landed nearly double the number of signatures needed to qualify for the ballot, getting 600,000 people to support dividing the state threefold.

Draper’s plan—Cal 3—would divide the state into Northern California, Southern California, and, simply, California. Northern California would comprise of 40 counties, including San Francisco and Sacramento. Southern California would comprise of 12 counties, including San Diego, and California would comprise of six counties, including Los Angeles and Santa Barbara.  [ Gizmodo ]

A conversation with Sarah Cannon and Mark Goldberg, Index Ventures’ new partners

Index Ventures  — a firm with investments in companies like recent IPO Dropbox, a series of successful gaming companies like King, and others including Slack and coming IPO Zuora — has seen a lot of moves in the past few months. [ TechCrunch ]

Venture capital’s ‘party animal’ publicly shared former employee’s Social Security number, lawsuit alleges

Venture capitalist Michael Rothenberg — who was dubbed Silicon Valley’s “party animal” by Bloomberg in 2015 — and others allegedly shared a former employee’s Social Security number in a public blog, according to a lawsuit filed on Tuesday.

The former employee, Katie Fanelli, worked under Rothenberg at his venture capital firm, Rothenberg Ventures. Fanelli sued Rothenberg, his company and Christopher Grayson, a San Francisco-based entrepreneur, in California Superior Court in San Francisco this week, alleging they violated state law by sharing her Social Security number in Grayson’s blog on or around June 12, 2017. [ Mercury News ]

Why Bozoma Saint John is leaving Uber for Endeavor

Flying cars. Cures for death. And now ... space catapults. Bless you, California, for not letting reality get you down. On Thursday, a Silicon Valley startup called SpinLaunch Inc. will reveal the first details of its plans to build a machine meant to hurl rockets into space. To achieve that goal, SpinLaunch has secured $40 million from some top technology investors, said Jonathan Yaney, the founder. [ Bloomberg ]

Celebrity funds from Jay Z, Will Smith and Robert Downey Jr. are backing a life insurance startup

Ethos, the company that bills itself as making life insurance accessible, affordable and simple, has officially come out of stealth with an $11.5 million investment led by on of the world’s top venture firms, Sequoia Capital, and additional participation from the family offices of Hollywood’s biggest stars and an NBA all-star. [ TechCrunch ]

Saemin Ahn of Rakuten Ventures discusses his investment philosophy and vision

With investments in startups including Carousell, Algorithmia, and Send Anywhere, Saemin Ahn has built Rakuten’s global venture capital initiative from scratch. Now the Japanese internet giant is a major player with three separate $100 million funds for Global, Japan, and Fintech. He joined us at the Tech in Asia 2016 conference to discuss his journey and investment philosophy, and to share his next chapter in the Rakuten Ventures story.[ Tech In Asia ]

Breaking Silicon Valley’s Glass Ceiling

In 2013, engineer Tracy Chou penned a blog post that would become a major force in breaking the glass ceiling in Silicon Valley. After working at some of the top tech companies in the country, Tracy laid witness to the obvious lack of diversity in her industry. [ Tioga Publishing ]

Parenthood Transition Startup Cleo Raises $10.5 Million Series A Round

In almost half of two-parent households in the U.S., both parents are full-time employees and mothers account for the primary breadwinners in 4-in-10 U.S. families, according to the Pew Research Center. Yet the employee healthcare benefits for many working adults lack a variety of resources to assist in family planning. Cleo does. On Wednesday, the parenting- support startup announced a $10.5 million Series A round to grow its platform that caters to expecting parents in the workforce. [ Forbes ]

After botched IPO, Asian streaming startup M17 gets a $35M lifeline from investors

WeWork is chasing Uber in race to become most valuable VC-backed company in the US

How to prepare your startup for growth

Filings Indicate True Ventures Aims To Raise $650 Million Across Two New Venture Funds

Firstminute Capital Closes First Venture Capital Fund, at $100M

The top 11 VC investors in German startups

Mubadala to Launch $400M European Tech Venture Capital Fund

My dad's favorite startups

Just 34 Black Women Founders Have Raised Over $1 Million in Venture Funding Since 2009

AI chip startup Wave to buy Silicon Valley old-timer MIPS

Chowbotics raises $11 million to move its robot beyond salads

Tech co-operatives are leaving the startup rat race behind

4 takeaways from the ruling on AT&T's $85.4B acquisition of Time Warner

Meet The Startup That's Digitizing Vietnam & Building A Nationwide Smart Community

2018 PitchBook Benchmarks (as of 3Q 2017)

Pipedrive, a CRM and sales tool, raises $50M to take on Salesforce and Microsoft

What brought investors like Sequoia to India, and how do they support founders?

IP platform PatSnap picks up $38M from Sequoia and Xiaomi founder’s fund

Taking Corporate Venture: The Pros & Cons - NOAH18 Berlin

Impact Investing

Startup4Chinese #15: Panel - How to explore opportunities in the Chinese Market? (2)

Applied AI Conference 2018 - Panel Discussion - Applied AI in FinTech: Faster, Cheaper, Better?

Feminine-care startup LOLA receives $24M in venture capital

500 Startups CEO Tsai Discusses Abu Dhabi Investments

Christine Tsai, chief executive officer and co-founder of venture capital firm 500 Startups, discusses Abu Dhabi Financial Group's stake in the company. She also discusses international expansion and running the firm after co-founder Dave McClure's departure. Tsai speaks with Bloomberg's Emily Chang on "Bloomberg Technology."