Why I Became a Venture Partner
If you had asked me 10 years ago if I thought I’d be a venture capitalist someday, I would have laughed. Not because I knew women in the venture capital community are largely underrepresented (though they are), but because I’d never considered this career path. Starting a business, yes… But becoming a venture capitalist was not on the list. I was inspired to create my first company, a social network targeting new moms called Maya’s Mom, when working for Yahoo! in 2006. At a company offsite, I heard then Yahoo! executive (turned True Ventures partner) Toni Schneider speak. I was immediately impressed.
Tinder cofounder reveals how he came up with the app's game-changing 'swipe' feature in the shower
We’ve all done it. You walk into a room full of people and start scanning the crowd. Yes. Maybe. Not bad. Most definitely. Amen.You’re not just people watching, you’re sizing them up. You’re human, and you can’t help but make a series of judgments about the people standing before you. Do you like them? Do you dislike them? Who are you interested in? Who should you avoid?From facial features and voice to clothing and body language, everything about them provides a clue to who they are and what they’re all about. You’ve evaluated a tremendous amount of information about each person in a matter of seconds and now you’ve arrived at a
verdict.
[ Business Insider ]
A Silicon Valley Wake Up Call
We often talk about the ways that Silicon Valley is selfless. How we improve lives with world changing technology. How we spend our time helping other, younger entrepreneurs. But we rarely spend time talking about the ways that Silicon Valley is selfish. I must admit that most of my last decade building and investing in tech companies has been spent trying to figure out how to make my businesses work for me. How do you get users to click on more things? How do you get them to spend more time or more money? How do we raise more money, increase our value, sell our company, enrich ourselves? Silicon Valley is the Wall Street of the 80s: Greed is good.
Airbnb just launched a second potential growth engine ahead of its inevitable IPO
It’s not just an apartment-booking service anymore. It’s a “trip platform.” Airbnb has grown to a $30 billion valuation as a global marketplace for home and apartment rentals. Now the company has launched what it hopes can be another growth engine: An “experiences” business where travelers can book tours and activities led by local experts. At an event today in Los Angeles, Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky unveiled the company’s new “Trips” product, which has been under development for several years, recently in private beta testing. The main new feature: Starting today, Airbnb users will be able to browse and book a range of tours and group activities, such as “truffle hunting,” Korean embroidery lessons, food-market tours, reality-TV casting and multi-day “immersion” experiences in a dozen cities around the world. [ Recode ]
What's Next for the $3.65 Billion Company Behind Pokemon Go
A plaque hangs on the wall at Niantic Labs' San Francisco office that reads "Adventures on Foot." And over the last half of 2016, that's exactly what the company brought to millions of gamers all over the globe with the launch of its augmented reality game--Pokémon Go.To bring in Bulbasaur, chase Charmander, and round up Rattata, fans have downloaded the game more than 500 million times and walked roughly 2.8 billion miles, according to company data. The latter metric might seem like an odd one for measuring the success of a mobile game, but to Hanke, it's one of the most important. "We want to get people outside, active, having fun with other people, not just behind a screen," Hanke says of the company's mission. [ Inc. ]
LATEST FUNDING
Prevalent Raises $60M in Series C Funding
Prevalent, Inc., a Warren, N.J.-based provider of third-party risk assessment, monitoring, and collaboration platform, closed a $60M Series C funding round. The round was led by Insight Venture Partners. The company intends to use the funds to accelerate continued global expansion and product innovation. [ Finsmes ]
PeerStreet Raises $15M for Platform to Invest in Real-Estate Loans
By many accounts, it is a tough time to raise venture capital for a marketplace lending business today, but PeerStreet has pulled it off. The platform for real-estate-backed loans got $15 million in a Series A round led by Andreessen Horowitz. PeerStreet takes a different tack from consumer lenders. The company allows investors to fund secured real-estate loans on its platform. [ WSJ ]
Medtronic spinout Inspire Medical closes $38m Series F
Inspire Medical Systems, which spun out from Medtronic (NYSE:MDT) in 2007, said yesterday it closed a $37.5 million Series F financing round, as well as announcing the appointment of Marilyn Nelson to the board of directors.Inspire Medical developed and produces a sleep apnea implant, a pacemaker-like system designed to stimulate nerves to keep airways open during sleep. [ Mass device ]
Handshake nabs another $20M to make the job hunt more fair
Speaking from experience, finding jobs outside the region you went to college in is incredibly challenging. Sure, large Fortune 100 companies have programs in place to make it easy to recruit for offices in disparate cities, but if you are looking for a job at a company that doesn’t fit that profile, you will spend hours cold-emailing people you dug up online. [ Tech Crunch ]
honeygrow Closes $25 Million Growth Capital Funding with Miller Investment Management
honeygrow, the Philadelphia-based fast-casual eatery, today announced $25 million of committed financing, of which $5 million represents sale of interests by certain existing owners. The financing was led by Miller Investment Management and included participation from existing investor Brook Lenfest. [ Business wire ]
Ex-Google execs who pioneered Kubernetes launch Heptio cloud tech startup with $8.5M investment
Two founders of the Google-based Kubernetes project, Craig McLuckie and Joe Beda, have formed Heptio, a Seattle company backed by an $8.5 million Series A investment from the Accel venture capital firm, with participation from Seattle’s Madrona Venture Group. [ Geek wire ]
Petuum, Revolutionary AI/ML Development Platform, Closes $15 Million in Series A Funding Led by Advantech Capital, with Tencent, Northern Light Venture Capital and Oriza Ventures
Petuum, Inc., a startup building an artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) solution development platform, has closed $15 million in Series A funding led by Advantech Capital, with additional investors Tencent, Northern Light Venture Capital and Oriza Ventures. [ Business Wire ]
Particle Announces $10.4 million Series A Funding
Today Particle, the most widely-used Internet of Things (IoT) platform, announced it has secured $10.4 million in funding to help its community of more than 90,000 developers quickly build, ship and scale enterprise-class IoT solutions. [ Yahoo ]
Transcriptic Pulls In $13.4M
The new funding was led by Data Collective, along with new investors Digital Science and WuXi AppTec. Existing investors, including AME Cloud Ventures, and others also contributed to the round. Transcriptic will utilize the new capital to drive the company's product, team and expansion plans. Since the company launched in 2012, the company has executed experiments for individual researchers, institutions and large pharmaceutical businesses. [ VC news daily ]
MORE LATEST FUNDING
Forget WebMD, Israeli startup Kang Health gets $3.3 million seed round for better search on medical questions
Tray.io raises a $5m Series A, led by Mosaic Ventures, to sort out the mess in the Cloud
CodeFights raises $10M Series A round for its skills-based recruiting platform
LATEST EXITS
Providence Plans $1 Billion Sale of Diving Group PADI
Providence Equity Partners is exploring a sale of the Professional Association of Diving Instructors that could value the company at about $1 billion, people familiar with the matter said. The private equity firm is working with Deutsche Bank AG to find buyers for the Rancho Santa Margarita, California-based organization, said the people, who asked not to be identified because they weren’t authorized to speak publicly. [ Bloomberg ]
Verizon acquires SocialRadar to buff up MapQuest’s location data
We got word earlier today that Verizon had acquired SocialRadar, a mapping startup founded by Blackboard co-founder Michael Chasen that promises to provide its users with far more accurate location data for businesses — down to where exactly a door is. Reached by phone, Chasen confirmed the acquisition. [ Tech Crunch ]
MORE LATEST EXITS
Sprinklr acquires Little Bird, a tool for finding experts on anything via Twitter
BeyondSpring, a biopharmaceutical company, files to go public
Exponent Private Equity buys Enra Group
Affiliate of Sun Capital Partners, Inc. Sells Admiral Petroleum Company & Lemmen Oil Company
FUND RAISED
Sodexo Launches €50M Strategic Venture Capital Fund
Global services company Sodexo has launched a a €50m
strategic venture capital fund. Sodexo Ventures will invest in startups with high growth potential in line with Sodexo’s current or future activities to monitor, anticipate and respond to evolutions in the sectors and markets it operates. In the food environment, the company has already started developing direct-to-consumer applications and online portals proposing menus, nutritional information, card recharging, waiting times and pre-ordering features. [ Finsmes ]
MORE FUND RAISED
Curated by Venture Pulse Team. Find us on : [ Venturepulse.org, CrunchBase, AngelList ]