Look Out Uber—China's Didi Just Raised $4 Billion to Go Global in the Ride-Hailing BattleDidi Chuxing has scored another investment from SoftBank Group in a massive funding round that will bankroll the Chinese ride-hailing leader’s exploration of new markets and technologies. Didi said it’s secured new financing of more than $4 billion. That pushed its valuation to about $56 billion and lifts cash reserves to $12 billion, people familiar with the matter said, asking to not be identified as the details are private. The five-year-old company now intends to expand internationally as well as develop self-driving and electric vehicle systems, it said in a statement. [ Fortune ] Fly Ventures, a Berlin-based VC using machine learning to find its next deal, closes $41M fundFly Ventures, a relatively new VC operating out of Berlin, has closed its first fund at $41 million, capital it will use to invest at seed-stage in startups across Europe. LPs in the fund include the European Investment Fund (EIF), Korelya Capital, and a number of unnamed family offices from Europe and the U.S. [ Tech Crunch ] Sam Altman: ‘Too many’ Y Combinator companies raise moneySilicon Valley’s Y Combinator wields a powerful influence over the startup world. But president Sam Altman is apparently a bit worried there might be too much hype surrounding the accelerator program’s graduates. In a recent interview with Rachel Vanier of Paris’ Station F Startup Campus, Altman cautioned that not all startups coming out of the famed program are necessarily worthy of or ready for funding. When asked by Vanier about Y Combinator’s famed Demo Day event and who gets funded, he replied: “Not all of them, but certainly a lot do. In fact, probably too many. I think there’s sort of this halo around being a Y Combinator company, where companies raise money that perhaps shouldn’t.” [ Venture Beat ] Julie Meyer's VC firm Ariadne Capital has gone into bankruptcy administrationAriadne Capital, the venture capital firm run by high-profile technology figure Julie Meyer, has gone into bankruptcy administration. A letter sent to Ariadne Capital's creditors on December 18 shows that business rescue company Leonard Curtis took Ariadne Company into administration on December 15. Leonard Curtis did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Exclusive: Health insurer Oscar nears $1 billion in revenueOscar, the healthcare insurance upstart co-founded by Joshua Kushner, tells Axios that it is expecting to generate nearly $1 billion in premium revenue for 2018. That's up from "more than $300 million" in 2017 premium revenue. It also says that its insurance underwriting business is profitable for the first time, although the overall company remains in the red. Why it matters: Oscar continues to grow, despite having originally launched to provide health insurance to individuals under an Affordable Care Act that the Trump Administration has been slowly dismantling. [ Axios ] Mattermark to shut down after selling to Full ContactMattermark, the site for startup and company data, is shutting down its own business after selling in a disappointing outcome to Full Contact. In a document obtained by TechCrunch, co-founder and CEO Danielle Morrill wrote that “common stockholders will not be receiving anything in this deal.” In other words, Mattermark employee shares are worthless. It was just last year that Mattermark raised a $7.3 million Series B. Since it was founded in 2012, the business raised over $17 million from high-profile investors like Andreessen Horowitz, NEA, 500 Startups, Foundry Group and Sherpa Capital. The letter says that “the consideration for the purchase of the company did not clear the preference of preferred shareholders.” This means that the VCs aren’t necessarily getting all their money back, either. Unfortunately, as Mattermark data will show you, running a startup is tough. We’re told that it was hard to convince people to pay for the data in a competitive landscape that included Crunchbase, PitchBook and CB Insights. [ TechCrunch ] Project NOSH Live Winter 2017: Big Bets with CAVU -- with Brett Thomas, Venture PartnersEllen Pao on Silicon Valley in 2017: ‘It does take a village for change to happen’Silicon Valley is more in check now than it has ever been, and that’s a good thing. With sexual harassment allegations swarming across the tech industry, women VCs coming together to support female founders, and engineers getting fired over controversial manifestos, the Valley is certainly less tolerant of discrimination and harassment. Although heated, 2017 was a good year. Diversity and inclusion advocate Ellen Pao helped pave the way to where we are today when in 2012 she decided to sue her then employer Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers in a discrimination lawsuit. Although she lost, the “Pao Effect” is still in full force. [ Venture Beat ] Scaling A Startup In A New IndustryWhen the first rough draft of the human genome was completed in June 2000, there was a huge amount of hope and expectation at the genomic revolution that would follow. That it took another three years to publish the full sequence should perhaps have been enough to place expectations into their proper context, but there are signs that we are getting to a more fruitful place. For instance, while the original human genome cost billions of dollars to sequence, earlier this year sequencing startup Genos pledged to do so for $499 (providing you agreed to donate your data to medical research). The VC community are taking note, with Ginkgo Bioworks recently securing $275 million in funding for their latest genetic engineering product. [ Forbes ] How we got our bootstrapped startup debt-free and profitableIn early 2015, we announced that we were building a SaaS employee survey product that helped track employee sentiment and provide valuable data to managers. The startup was a side project of an existing business, a Perth-based digital marketing agency. We created the MVP for 6Q in a one day hackathon amongst the team. We launched a few months later to small fanfare and a handful of early customers. At the time, we made a conscious decision to try and self-fund this product; that is, we’ll use any incoming revenue on it, and won’t rack up some huge debt or take on an equity investment too early. Less than three years later, we’ve reached that magical bootstrap nirvana of being debt-free and profitable, with over 1,200 organisations on board. I believe there are a number of factors that have contributed to this. [ Re/Code ] It's Time: Break Up Big TechChester County invests pension funds in local venture capitalThe Chester County Retirement Board has agreed to invest $2 million in county retirement money in a new venture capital partnership, Venture Chesco, which will put the dollars in “emerging and growing” firms located in the state’s wealthiest county, or willing to move there. The money will be matched by another $2 million from Ben Franklin Technology Partners of Southeastern Pennsylvania, an early-stage tech-company funding group that has been working to broaden its funding base to reduce its dependence on state subsidies. Ben Franklin will manage Venture Chesco, and seek new firms to encourage the “growing innovation culture” in the county, Ben Franklin president RoseAnn Rosenthal said in a statement. [ Philly ] A Source of Sorrow in Silicon Valleywo weeks before Thanksgiving, I noticed a new sign sponsored by the City of San Jose in my neighborhood park. “Welcome to Saint James Park,” it reads. “Thank you for helping those in need.” It lists several bullet point suggestions — names of nearby churches and small food banks that offer weekly hot meals and toiletries to the homeless living in the park, and ways members of the community can lend their support. Last April, my husband and I moved from Austin to San Jose. We moved for the same reason many others have in the past — a better job opportunity. We live in a small, gray bungalow built in the 1940s in an area near downtown where stately Victorian mansions stand in varying states of disrepair. Most of the neighboring houses have been chopped up and remodeled into living spaces for multiple families and short-term renters. Look through the windows and you’ll spot the original crown molding, stained glass windows and crystal chandeliers. You will also see dirty sheets covering entry ways and stacks of garbage supporting walls in desperate need of a fresh coat of paint. Outside, the sidewalks are covered in blossoms of dried vomit, rotten fruit and garbage. The homeless pick through trash cans looking for items to sell, recycle, or eat. [ Medium ] Women in health IT blaze their own path even as gender inequality persists2017 Year in Review: The top VC rounds & investors in AIThis year’s new herd of unicornsEric Schmidt stepping down as Alphabet’s executive chairman to become a ‘technical advisor’ |