WeWork acquires Flatiron SchoolWeWork, the behemoth co-working company valued at $20 billion, has today announced the acquisition of Flatiron School. Flatiron School is a coding education platform that offers both online and offline classes to folks who want a career in the world of tech. The coding academy was launched in 2012 and has raised more than $14 million since inception, according to Crunchbase. The terms of the deal were not disclosed. WeWork CEO and founder Adam Neumann announced in a blog post that WeWork employees and members will now have access to Flatiron School courses both in-person and online. Saudi Billionaire Alwaleed Sees Enron-Like Demise for BitcoinSaudi billionaire Prince Alwaleed is joining the long line of skeptics saying bitcoin is a bubble as the digital currency continues to set record highs. [ Bloomberg ] Y Combinator's Altman on AI Research, Trump's PoliciesSam Altman, Y Combinator president, discusses the debate over artificial intelligence and his views on President Donald Trump's policies with Bloomberg's Selina Wang at the WSJ D.LIVE Conference in Laguna Beach, California. [ Bloomberg ] The 11 most valuable VC-backed fintech companies in the USLast month, we put together a valuation-based ranking of the top VC-backed companies in the US. Noticing two of the top 14 companies—Stripe and SoFi—are in the fintech industry, we decided to take a closer look at the space. Reset - I would recommend that every male VC read this bookI read Ellen Pao’s book Reset on my trip. I know a lot of the people in the book and I am not into taking sides or making judgments about what happened in the case. But I would recommend that every male VC read this book. A lot of what we do, how we do it, and why we do it is unconscious. Reading this book and others like it will help us to avoid doing those things. And that will be a very good thing for the VC world, for entrepreneurs, and for the tech sector more broadly. [ AVC ] EVENTBRITE FOUNDER, JULIA HARTZ ON THE LESSONS LEARNED SCALING EVENTBRITE TO UNICORN VALUATION & $3BN IN GROSS TICKET SALESJulia Hartz is the Co-Founder & CEO @ Eventbrite, the unicorn startup that is the world’s largest event technology platform, powering over 2 million events around the world each year. They have raised over $330m
from some of the greats of industry including Roelof Botha @ Sequoia Capital, Jeff Clavier @ SoftTech, David Saks, Bebo’s Michael Birch, Tiger Global and many more. Under Julia’s leadership, she has taken Eventbrite to become the world’s largest event technology platform and has received multiple accolades for workplace culture, being named the best place to work in SF for 7 years running. Personally, Julia has won numerous awards including Fortune’s 40 Under 40, Inc’s 35 Under 35 and Most Powerful Female Entrepreneurs. State commits €85m to US venture capital fundThe State’s sovereign development fund has committed $100 million (€85 million) to a technology fund being raised by New York-based venture capital firm Insight Venture Partners, which may result in more than €250 million being invested in Irish companies. The pledge by the Ireland Strategic Investment Fund (ISIF), the successor to the National Pension Reserve Fund, to Insight’s fund is aimed at filling an existing funding gap for established and growing Irish software businesses. [ Irish Times ] How An Emerging VC Fund Manager Got Into Some of This Year's Most Competitive DealsJordan Nof was working at Blackstone, the U.S. company seen as bellwether for the alternative asset sector, that now manages a record $371 billion worth of assets, when he saw an opportunity to expand the scope of the firm’s strategic investment portfolio beyond high-growth fintech companies and into the emerging sector of Real Estate Technology. The 21st-century Hollywood: how Silicon Valley became the world’s trend capitalThe strangest thing about Bulletproof Coffee isn’t stirring a pellet of grass-fed butter and a dollop of coconut oil into your morning cup and calling it breakfast, weird though that is to swallow. No, what makes Bulletproof really unusual is the trajectory the trend has followed. The craze started with the Silicon Valley entrepreneur Dave Asprey, who turned the alleged weight-shedding, brainpower-enhancing benefits of caffeine turbocharged with fat into a mini-empire. He took the idea to Santa Monica, where he opened a cafe. David Beckham started dropping in. E770: Northvolt Peter Carlsson takes on Tesla; Jacob de Geer iZettle leads Europe FintechUber whistleblower Susan Fowler already sold her movie ... and she's working on a bookThe psychology behind the way Netflix raises pricesGlobal markets can be a key to startup successNew Job: Self-Reflection and ChangeLyft's cofounder didn’t take a salary for 3 years and slept on a couch in an 'apartfice' before his company was worth $11 billionSilicon Valley’s Russian ads problem, explainedLI firms raise nearly $39M in VC funding, running ahead of 2016Can Silicon Valley Rescue Health Care?This Consumer-Level AR App Targets A $400 Billion Industry |