Slack Fund invests in 6 enterprise startupsTeam communications chat app Slack today announced its Slack Fund invested in six new startups, including meeting assistant Clara and SaaS management service Epistema. The size of each investment was not disclosed. Since the fund was created two years ago it has provided early-stage financial support to nearly 40 businesses making services for Slack. [ Venture Beat ] ‘Live Work Work Work Die’ author Corey Pein shares the secrets of tech success: Be lucky and ruthlessCorey Pein moved to Silicon Valley in 2015, hoping to sell a company and get rich — and, along the way, he would write a book about the subject. “Honestly, I was expecting to walk into some easy money,” Pein said the on the latest episode of Recode Decode, hosted by Kara Swisher. “I have an Ivy League degree, I’m a white man, I was wearing a hoodie, I thought I had everything that I needed to have. There were stories coming out all the time about these ridiculous startups which were getting funded, and I thought, ‘How hard could it actually be?’ It was harder than I thought.” [ Recode ] Amid Transition, Eric Schmidt’s Innovation Endeavors Raises $333.5 Million For Third FundEric Schmidt is a busy bloke. He may have stepped down as Alphabet’s executive chairperson at the end of 2017, but, among other things, he continues to chair the U.S. Department of Defense’s Defense Innovation Advisory Board, runs a STEM fellowship in partnership with the Rhodes Trust, and invests in startups both as an individual and through his venture capital fund, Innovation Endeavors, for which he’s the cofounder and anchor LP. [ Crunchbase ] Adyen confirms an IPO in Amsterdam, valuing the payments giant at $7B-$11B For some context, Adyen last confirmed its valuation publicly back in 2015, when it raised funding from Iconiq, the investment firm that manages funds from Mark Zuckerberg’s family and other high-net-worth tech leaders, at a $2.3 billion valuation. In other words, it’s a big jump, reflecting the company’s growth over the last couple of years. Adyen to date has raised $266 million in outside funding, with other investors including Index (its largest shareholder), Felicis, Temasek and General Atlantic. [ Tech Crunch ] Scooter Startups Have Launched a Revolution. Can They Control It?Just after 7 a.m. on a recent weekday morning, Alexander Berg pulled his van — bright green, with the word “LimeBike” emblazoned on the side — over on a corner on the edge of San Francisco’s Chinatown. Berg, a thin, cheerful 31-year old in a hoodie, pulled on a pair of black gloves and threw open the back of the van, which was filled with electric scooters. “We’ll do three here,” he said. [ Bloomberg ] Venture capital firms are running to hire their first female general partnersTop-tier venture capital firms are moving women into the upper ranks as general partners amid increased pressure to diversify as claims of widespread sexual harassment continue to resound through Silicon Valley. New Enterprise Associates became the latest firm on Wednesday to add to the wave when it elevated Carmen Chang, a well-connected former lawyer who leads NEA’s China practice, to the general partner level. Chang is easily qualified, but the move also helps NEA — one of venture capital’s biggest firms — remove a particular stigma: NEA has never before had a woman in the senior investing rank at the firm. [ Re/Code ] The national security implications of Chinese venture capitalists are overblown Washington — as Washington does — is barreling towards a new reform plan designed to protect American innovation from overseas investors (which should really just be read as the Chinese these days). Earlier this week, congressional committees passed a measure designed to strengthen CFIUS, the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S., which we have written extensively about on TechCrunch. The bill would expand the powers of the committee to review transactions in more contexts, beyond its current mandate of looking only at changes in controlling interests. [ TechCrunch ] Here Is Where CEOs Of Heavily Funded Startups Went To School Cyber Investing Summit 2018: Funding for Startups PanelLeading venture capitalists discuss investing in cybersecurity startups Moderator: Katie Gray, In-Q-Tel Speaker: Bob Ackerman, AllegisCyber Speaker: Ron Gula, Gula Tech Adventures Speaker: Bruce Taragin, Blumberg Capital Speaker: Dov Yoran, Cisco Security Business Group BAT invests in Chinese venture capital fund in quest for new innovative productsHow [and why] I invest in startups #106 Maryanna Saenko - Impact InvestingMaryanna is a Venture Capitalist at DFJ with a Masters in Material Science from CMU. She previously was an investment partner at Airbus Ventures, where she was responsible for leading early-stage deals in aerospace and deep technology companies. Uber’s raising up to $600M in a secondary round at $62B valuation, Q1 sales grew to $2.5B New Zealand startup Aquafortus signs licensing deal worth US$40 million with Texas companyVenture Capital and the Search for a Post-Brexit Tech HubMay.23 -- Idinvest Partners Managing Partner Benoist Grossman and Balderton Managing Partner Bernard Liautaud speak to Bloomberg's Brad Stone about the future of venture capital in Europe at Bloomberg's Sooner Than You Think in Paris. Melbourne Accelerator Program reveals 2018 cohortCarnegie Mellon and Innovation Works hold ‘venture fair’ for Pittsburgh AI and robotics startupsProfessors Soule, Strober, and Dean Levin: Are we there yet? Diversity, Work, and Family in 2018The Well-Funded Startups Driven To Own The Autonomous Vehicle Stack SafetyCulture raises $60 million Series C round led by Tiger Global ManagementPlatform.sh raises $34 million to simplify cloud deployment Here’s who owns everything in Big Media todayQuit Genius, helping smokers quit, picks up an extra $1.1 million in seed |