Uber’s Stock Price Plunged After CEO Travis Kalanick ResignedUber is less valuable without Travis Kalanick as CEO than it was with him at the helm, according to some of the ride-hailing company's biggest investors. After T. Rowe Price wrote down the value of its Uber stock by 5% in May, other mutual funds slashed the valuation of their own stakes following Kalanick's resignation in June, new disclosures show. Vanguard, whose $7.5 billion U.S. Growth Fund owns shares in Uber, cut the value of its position by 15% in June, the first time the fund giant has marked down the taxi startup's valuation in the three years it has owned it. The Hartford also lowered the value of its Uber stock by 15% in the three funds that hold it, as did the $2.8 billion Principal Global Multi-Strategy fund, which is overseen in part by Wellington Management. [ Fortune ] Reddit raised $200 million in funding and is now valued at $1.8 billionReddit has raised $200 million in new venture funding and is now valued at $1.8 billion, according to CEO Steve Huffman. The new funding round, the company’s largest ever, should expedite a number of internal product and business efforts, including a redesign of its homepage and its first foray into user-uploaded video, Huffman added in an interview with Recode. The money comes courtesy of a number of well-known Silicon Valley investors, including firms like Andreessen Horowitz and Sequoia Capital, and individual investors like Y Combinator President Sam Altman (also a board member) and SV Angel’s Ron Conway. It also includes money from the hedge fund Coatue, investment firm Vy Capital and mutual fund giant Fidelity. [ Recode ] A computer predicted the success of Etsy, Spotify, and other major startups 8 years ago — and it's just generated a new listIn 2009, Ira Sager of Businessweek magazine set a challenge for Quid AI's CEO Bob Goodson: programme a computer to pick 50 unheard of companies that are set to rock the world. The domain of picking "start-up winners" was — and largely still is — dominated by a belief held by the venture capital (VC) industry that machines do not play a role in the identification of winners. Ironically, the VC world, having fuelled the creation of computing, is one of the last areas of business to introduce computing to decision-making. [ Business Insider ] Hot Spot for Tech Outsourcing: The United States For years, American companies have been saving money by “offshoring” jobs — hiring people in India and other distant cubicle farms. Today, some of those jobs are being outsourced again — in the United States. Nexient, a software outsourcing company, reflects the evolving geography of technology work. It holds daily video meetings with one of its clients, Bill.com, where team members stand up and say into the camera what they accomplished yesterday for Bill.com, and what they plan to do tomorrow. The difference is, they are phoning in from Michigan, not Mumbai. [ NY Times ] Former Twitter engineering guru Mike Abbott is leaving Kleiner Perkins
Mike Abbott, a top engineer at Twitter before landing at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers five years ago, is leaving the venture capital firm, according to sources close to the situation. Abbott is a high-profile departure for the firm, which is seeking to attract new blood by bringing in well-known operating executives from digital companies. Kleiner confirmed the departure after an inquiry from Recode. [ Recode ] Meatless burger maker Impossible Foods lands $75M in fresh fundingImpossible Foods, the Bay Area startup aiming to replace meat with its now-patented plant-based substitute, plans to announce Tuesday that it has raised $75 million in new funding, in the form of a convertible note. The lead investor is Singapore-based investment company Temasek, with Bill Gates, the Open Philanthropy Project, Khosla Ventures and Horizon Ventures also participating. The move comes as the company is expanding from gourmet restaurants into fast casual burger joints, including last week's addition of Bay Area chain Gott's. Why it matters: The company would like to some day offer not just ground meat, but alternatives to fish, chicken, steak, eggs and cheese. And that will take some serious cash. [ Axios ] Kleiner Perkins Shuts Down Its Seed Venture Fund Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers shut its seed investing program, a two year-old effort to get the venture capital firm back into the potentially lucrative field of early-stage startup investing. All three partners who ran the $4 million KPCB Edge program, Anjney
Midha, Roneil Rumburg and Ruby Lee, departed in recent weeks, a spokeswoman for the firm said. There are no immediate plans to hire new early-stage experts to replace the trio. Instead, existing partners at Kleiner Perkins will evaluate and invest in seed deals as part of their daily duties, she said. M&A could be key to unlocking Snap’s success [datagraphic]As millions of Snap shares locked up since its IPO start to trade freely this week, CEO Evan Spiegel and company could feel even more pain from a share price that has already sunk by more than 50% since its March high of $27.09. However, as investors consider exiting their positions, it’s important to point out that Snap has made some very promising acquisitions since its debut on the New York Stock Exchange less than six months ago. Seed funding slows in Silicon ValleyThe bloom is off seed funding, the business of providing money to brand-new startups, as investors take a more measured approach to financing emerging U.S. technology companies. Seed-stage financing has been sliding for the last two years, with the number of transactions down about 40 percent since the peak in mid-2015, data show. Dollar investments in fledgling companies have also declined, although less dramatically, dropping more than 24 percent over the same period. The slowdown comes despite an explosion of interest by wealthy individuals and foreign investors looking to park money in the next big thing. And it has potentially big implications for Silicon Valley. [ Reuters ] VR Is the Fastest-Growing Skill for Online FreelancersAs the world's tech giants invest heavily in virtual reality, the relatively few workers who specialize in the nascent field are seeing big benefits. Demand for online freelancers with VR expertise grew far faster than for people with any other skill last quarter. Billings on VR projects grew more than 30-fold from the same period a year earlier, according to U.S. data provided by Upwork Inc.'s website that connects freelancers with employers. [ Bloomberg ] The first thing Travis Kalanick did after leaving Uber was sail to Tahiti on a yachtTravis Kalanick took a glamorous vacation in the wake of his departure from Uber. After resigning last month, the former Uber CEO sailed to Tahiti on a yacht owned by IAC chairman Barry Diller, according to Recode's Kara Swisher. Kalanick was joined by other famous guests, including Anderson Cooper, Recode reported. [ Business Insider ] |