Garena Rebrands as Sea After Raising $550 Million in New Funding
Garena has rebranded as Sea Ltd. after Southeast Asia’s most valuable startup secured $550 million in funds to step up a battle with Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba and other players in Indonesia. The eight-year-old startup backed by Tencent Holdings Ltd. landed a clutch of new investors in its latest funding round, including some of the region’s wealthiest families. They include GDP Venture, led by Martin Hartono, the son of Indonesia’s richest man, and JG Summit Holdings Inc., founded by Philippine billionaire John Gokongwei. [ Bloomberg ] Seeing Through The FogI was talking to my friend Simon yesterday and he observed that the essential skill of entrepreneurs and early stage VCs is to “be able to see through the fog of an emerging market and pick out the winning idea.” And of course, I agree with that. It is something that we have done pretty well at USV over the years. But how do you do that? Is seeing through the fog a skill that can be learned? I think seeing through the fog can be learned but it takes time and practice. Some people are innately good at it and they seem to be able to do it naturally.But I was not that person. It took me years to be able to do it well and I think there are a few things that helped me a lot. [ AVC ] Is PayPal Co-Founder Max Levchin Making The Next Credit Card Killer?He's the visionary entrepreneur behind some of the top names in tech – PayPal, Yelp, Slide and others. As a board member, he's helped steer Yahoo and Evernote. Now, Max Levchin's latest venture, the financial technology company Affirm, is seeking to bring more accountability and transparency to the banking industry through what he calls “fair and honest financing.” [ Forbes ] Two in five people said they’d be interested in owning an autonomous flying carOne day we’ll all be jetting around in flying cars. Or that’s what Google co-founder Larry Page hopes will happen anyway. The billionaire is an investor in Kitty Hawk, the flying car startup that showed the world its aerial jetski in action last month. Uber also has plans to bring flying cars to U.S. airspace by 2020, which the company shared at a conference it held in April to discuss its big sky vision of operating a network of aerial taxis. But will anyone actually want to ride in one of these weird, dangerous looking things? Turns out a lot of people would. [ Re/Code] Go Ahead and Date Your Digital AssistantWhen Siri is asked whether she has a boyfriend, the iPhone's digital assistant is usually quick to deflect the question with a quip about drones always trying to pick her up. For Minori Takechi, founder of Vinclu Inc., that's a missed opportunity. Takechi is the creator of Hikari Azuma, a miniskirt-wearing avatar. She can hold a basic conversation and wake you up in the morning by turning on the lights. Hikari will message you at work and greet you when you return home. She'll also set you back about $2,700. [ Bloomberg ] Credit Karma: Believe the hype for ‘artificial narrow intelligence’By giving away free credit scores to more than 60 million people, Credit Karma upended the paid credit report market. And by offering free tax returns this year — at the same time H&R Block and IBM Watson were bragging about AI-powered tax filings — the company stormed the $8.9 billion tax preparation industry. Bold disruptions like this matter, but Credit Karma’s effort to quietly assemble the massive trove of information underpinning each of these moves may be even bolder. [ Venture Beat ] Confide CEO Jon Brod on the White House, bad press, and what’s next for his secure messaging appThursday night, at a StrictlyVC event in San Francisco, I sat down with Confide cofounder and president Jon Brod to talk with him about his decidedly topsy turvy 2017. Though his three-year-old messaging app was the belle of the ball at the start of the year — Wired, the Washington Post, and Axios were among others to note it was a hit with frustrated White House staffers — its positive momentum was abruptly thwarted by security researchers who published a report saying the app wasn’t living up to its claims. [ Tech Crunch ] Dropbox ANZ’s Country Manager Charlie Wood departs to launch new startupAfter nearly three years of service, Dropbox Australia and New Zealand’s Country Manager and Managing Director Charlie Wood has departed from the cloud-storage company to launch his own startup, ‘CheckIn Safe’. Announcing his departure via social media over the weekend, Wood said last Friday would mark his final week at the company, following a decision he made earlier this year to leave the global company to start his own business based in Sydney. [ Startup Daily ] The Pope inspired a venture capitalist to launch a startup accelerator at the VaticanThe great contradiction at the heart of the Silicon Valley’s self-image is that it helps the world while becoming fabulously rich. The record, to say the least, is mixed. Facebook, Google, and Apple undoubtedly benefit millions of peoples’ lives while generating enormous, unprecedented wealth (for some). Yet the human toll—lost jobs, exploited contractors, massive concentration of wealth at the expense of the lower and middle class, and shuttered newspapers and small companies—are just as real. This doesn’t touch on more unsavory practices such as a wage fixing cartel by Apple, Google and others that depressed workers’ incomes, as well as outright deception by companies such as Theranos. [ QZ ] Meet the venture capitalist who funds female tech entrepreneursIt’s a line from the famous musical “My Fair Lady”: “Why can’t a woman be more like a man?” In Silicon Valley these days, the question is often the opposite: Why can’t a man be more like a woman? Women are not only underrepresented in the Silicon Valley workforce, but when they pitch ideas for startups, they can have a hard time getting male investors to pay attention. Shelly Kapoor Collins is listening. [ SF Chronicle ] Beyond the diversity reportThere was once a time when everyone knew in their hearts that the tech industry was super white and male-dominated but didn’t have the stats to back it up. Now that the likes of Facebook, Apple, Twitter, Google, Amazon, Netflix and, most recently, Uber, have released their reports, the stats are out there. And what a lot of people thought about the industry’s lack of diversity turned out to be true. Since the first diversity data came out in 2013, thanks to a Freedom of Information Act request, followed by willing disclosures by many well-known tech companies, very little has changed. [ Tech Crunch] Fintech platform Stake wants to make investing in US stocks as easy as online shoppingThere are a few particularly popular niches within the Australian fintech space, with online small business lenders to platforms allowing consumers to find and negotiate the right home loan particularly hot areas. Another is investment, with offerings popping up to target a breadth of consumers. From the likes of Acorns, which is gathering up a user’s ‘loose change’ and investing it for them, through to Brickx allowing users to invest in property brick by brick, and Stockspot using AI to help better invest its customers’ money, the choice for the consumer is vast. A BuzzFeed would-be is paving the way for startups in CambodiaDid you know Cambodia has its own BuzzFeed? Want Your Kids to Build the Next Airbnb, Snapchat, or Uber? Teach Them This SkillDespite positive developments in the movement to provide formal instruction in codingfor kids in major American cities like New York, San Francisco, and Chicago, most schools still don't offer such courses. This is unfortunate, because having a solid understanding of how technology works -- and not just knowing how to consume digital content -- will be crucial to kids' ability to succeed in the digital economy we live in today. [ INC ] |