BuzzFeed has started its layoffs, but it’s also talking about a merger
BuzzFeed began laying off 15 percent of its staff — about 200 employees — on Friday. Its next move could be a merger with Group Nine, another big digital publisher.
Speculation about a tie-up between the two companies has been bubbling in the media industry for months, and sources familiar with both companies say the two have indeed been discussing a merger. The two companies aren’t close to a finalized deal and may ultimately find different partners. If there
is a merger, sources say, it won’t happen imminently. [ Recode ]
Here are BuzzFeed's major investors :
Checkout New Enterprise Associates Deals, Exits and Fund Raised Data.
Checkout Andreessen Horowitz's Deals, Exits and Fund Raised Data.
Checkout RRE Ventures Deals, Exits and Fund Raised Data.
Checkout Hearst Ventures Deals, Exits and Fund Raised Data.
6 Little-Known Startups Where Jeff Bezos Has Invested Millions
Jeff Bezos is not only the world's richest man, he's also a very smart investor. That's especially true when he invests in startups. Over the past few years, he's put money into several new companies that turned out to be phenomenally successful, including Airbnb, Uber, General Assembly, MakerBot, and Lookout. Where is Bezos putting his money these days? Into a handful of companies you've probably never heard of. But chances are you will, especially now that they have the Amazon founder's money and smarts backing them. The personal finance site GOBankingRates has done the research and identified 15 companies Bezos has poured money into over the last decade. [ Inc. ]
Checkout Jeff Bezos Investment Deals Activities.
Airbnb acquires Danish startup used to book meeting spaces for just a couple hours or days
Aibnb has acquired Gaest.com, a Danish platform for renting meeting spaces for short periods of time, the company announced. The acquisition marks Airbnb's first big move into office spaces, where it will compete with heavy-weights like the $47 billion WeWork. Gaest.com will remain a separate app for the time being. [ Business Insider ]
Checkout 15K+ Venture Capital Data on our platform.
This Startup Thinks It Can Solve Global Inequality With...a Video Game?
If you're living paycheck to paycheck, you're unlikely to quit your job to start a company, even if it's a billion-dollar idea. To quote from a recent paper by Lynnise E. Pantin, director of Boston College Law School's Entrepreneurship and Innovation Clinic, "Entrepreneurship is a compelling solution to wealth inequality, but wealth inequality can be an impediment to success in entrepreneurship." [ Inc. ]
Checkout Y Combinator's Deals, Exits and Fund Raised Data.
Checkout 15K+ Venture Capital Data on our platform.
The Predictive Index brings in $50M to help businesses create winning teams
Holly Maloney, a managing director at General Catalyst, led the deal and will take a board seat alongside Kirk Arnold, an executive-in-residence. The firm says the round is the largest first check they’ve ever written a company. Predictive Index declined to disclose the valuation. [ Tech Crunch ]
Checkout General Catalyst's Deals, Exits and Fund Raised Data.
Full Q&A: Attorney Laura Wasser on making a “TurboTax for divorce”
On the latest episode of Recode Decode, Recode’s Kara Swisher spoke with divorce attorney Laura Wasser, whose past clients have included Kim Kardashian, Johnny Depp, and Angelina Jolie. Wasser charges her normal clients $850/hour for her services, but those who can’t afford that rate can check out the online divorce company she has started, It’s Over Easy.
“People are shopping online,” she said. “People are dating online. People
are banking online. Why wouldn’t they want to get divorced online?” [ Recode ]
Checkout 15K+ Venture Capital Data on our platform.
How you could invest in every single private fund strategy
Should you have been able to invest in Uber? What about a lower-middle-market buyout fund? What about getting exposure to the burgeoning universe of alternative investments in general with the same ease of buying into an S&P 500 index?
A few hundred dollars invested in Uber's seed funding would now be worth millions. Such a ludicrous return being off-limits to all but those deemed eligible for such funding seems quite unfair. On the other hand, how many investors would have lost that money completely by backing early competitors to Uber that have since flamed out? [ Pitchbook ]
$1B+ Market Map: The World’s 308 Unicorn Companies In One Infographic
There are 308 private companies around the world valued at $1B+ as of 1/23/2019, all featured on our real-time unicorn tracker. These companies are collectively worth as much as $1,046B and have raised a combined total of over $256B.
Last year, 111 new companies joined the global unicorn club — a 56% increase from the 71 new unicorns in 2017. [ CB Insights ]
The top VC deals & investors in cannabis in 2018
Thanks to a joint effort by venture capitalists and a few US state legislators, investment in cannabis startups hit an all-time high in 2018. (There, the pot puns are out of the way.)
With every election cycle, an increasing number of US states have legalized either medical or recreational marijuana. In November, Michigan became the 10th state in the US to give a green light to recreational use, and Missouri and Utah approved medicinal use. Marijuana is now legal to some extent in 33 states, plus Washington, DC. Globally, Canada grabbed headlines in October when it became the second nation in the world (after Uruguay, which approved it in 2013) to fully legalize recreational pot. [ Pitchbook ]
How Much ARR Can a CSM Manage?
How much can a customer success manager manage? I’d heard the wisdom of $1-2M in ARR per year and around 80 accounts. But I hadn’t come across any data. Last summer, Gainsight posted the results of their survey on the topic. The truth is most CSMs manage between $2-5M in ARR and somewhere between 10-500 accounts. But it varies by segment. [ Tomasz Tunguz ]
Startups Find It Easy To Let Alexa Speak On Their Behalf
Amazon isn’t waiting for you to buy an Echo anymore. Nowadays, its voice assistant, Alexa, is coming for the tech products you already own.Having made it as easy as a code grab for third parties to use Alexa SDKs, Amazon’s aggressive strategy to expand our reliance on its virtual assistant in our daily lives is paying off. [ Crunch base ]
Suburban software firm raises $65 million, plans IPO
Vistex is the biggest Chicago-area software company you've likely never heard of. That's about to change. The Hoffman Estates-based company, which makes sales and marketing software, raised $65 million from Accel-KKR, a big Silicon Valley private-equity fund. The investment, the company’s first outside capital, is a stepping stone to eventually taking Vistex public, Shah says. (To the extent people recognize his name, it's because he bought the penthouse at Chicago's Trump Tower five years ago for $17 million.) [ Chicago Business ]
E897: Obvious Ventures James Joaquin: brings operator expertise to fund #worldpositive startups
Obvious Ventures Co-founder & Managing Director James Joaquin brings operator expertise to VC, funding #worldpositive startups & helping mission-focused founders execute; shares early days pioneering online photo, teaming up with Ev Williams, insights on investor bad behavior, positive crypto potential, & staying focused on realizing a sustainable & healthy planet
Vangst just raised $10 million to plug more people into the fast-growing cannabis industry
People are increasingly interested in finding a way to participate in the cannabis industry, and for good reason. It’s growing like a weed (yes, we said it). According to a San Francisco-based research company, Grand View Research, the global legal marijuana market is expected to reach $146.4 billion by the end of 2025. [ Calcalis tech ]
ConsenSys Ventures Looks Back on 2018
ConsenSys Ventures, the early-stage VC arm of ConsenSys, was officially formed in September 2017. 2018 was a rollercoaster ride for the Ethereum community, including the investing side. We got excited about scalability and privacy, stayed far away from ICO’s, saw the beginnings of more formal SEC regulation in the U.S., and ended the year with renewed confidence that the Ethereum community is growing stronger by the day. We also saw the entrance of serial entrepreneurs from web 2.0 into the web 3.0 world, the attention of big tech companies like Facebook, Google, and Amazon turn to the blockchain space, as well as tons of other diverse groups beginning to explore, develop, and adopt blockchain and smart contract technology. [ Medium ]
Meituan to invest $1.7 billion in push to digitize merchant partners
Chinese lifestyle services giant Meituan announced this week that it would invest RMB 11 billion (around $1.7 billion) this year to help merchants upgrade their operations and drive the growth of China’s “Delivery Economy,” a term that refers to the country’s on-demand services boom. [ Tech node ]
The Risky Business of Raising a Series B Round
Liz Fleming - Principal at Adara Ventures Liz Fleming and UserZoom Co-Founder and CEO Alfonso de la Nuez discuss the risky business of raising a series B round.
Six big things: Meet Joe Montana, marijuana maven
When Joe Montana was winning Super Bowls with the San Francisco 49ers and becoming a global icon of the 1980s, the marijuana industry wasn't exactly a place for legitimate investment. But times change. It now seems like fully legal cannabis will someday come to America, and maybe sooner rather than later. [ Pitchbook ]
[VC Unlocked] How to Innovate Like a VC
Singapore's Insignia Ventures targets 'third wave' tech innovation
Venture capital fund Insignia Ventures Partners is concentrating on startups that offer specific services or products in the "third wave of tech innovation" in Southeast Asia, says the chief executive of the Singapore-based fund.
© 2016 Venture Pulse Inc. All Rights Reserved.
36 Laight Street, New York NY 10013.
