Silicon Valley investor Reid Hoffman says companies should "embrace chaos""Sometimes the biggest risk is not taking risk," said Reid Hoffman, one of Silicon Valley's most high-profile investors, and co-author (with Chris Yeh) of a new book called "Blitzscaling: The Lightning-Fast Path to Building Massively Valuable Companies" (Currency). Hoffman was an early investor in Facebook and is a co-founder of Linkedin. He is also a partner at the venture capital firm Greylock. [ CBS News
] Forerunner Ventures just closed a $360 million fund, tripling the size of its last effortOne of its very first checks, in fact, went to Dollar Shave Club, which sold to Unilever for $1 billion in 2016. Roughly one month later, Wal-mart spent $3.3 billion to
acquire another of its startups, the web retailer Jet.com. Meanwhile, last year, a third investment, the menswear brand Bonobos, sold for $310 million, again to Wal-mart. [ Tech Crunch ] Brand management platform Frontify raises $8.3M led by Blossom CapitalFrontify, the Swiss startup that’s built a “brand management platform,” has raised a chunky $8.3 million in Series A funding. Leading the round is Blossom Capital, the new London-based venture capital firm
co-founded by ex-Index and LocalGlobe VC Ophelia Brown. Frontify’s previous seed investors include Doodle co-founder Myke Naef, former Googler Thomas Duebendorfer, and Cédric Waldburger of Tenderloin Ventures. [ Tech Crunch ] Why Arielle Zuckerberg and Y Combinator's Jessica Livingston Invested in This Coding StartupY Combinator founding partner Jessica Livingston and Arielle Zuckerberg, Mark Zuckerberg’s younger sister who works on early-stage investing, are backing Juni Learning, a startup offering online one-on-one computer
science instruction, with a small, $790,000 angel round of funding. Y Combinator partners Adora Cheung and Tim Brady and GSV AcceleraTE managing partner Deborah Quazzo also invested. [ Fortune ] Why Peter Thiel is backing a tiny start-up waging war against the global superbug crisis
Online Logistics Startup BlackBuck Gets $27.3 Mn In Funding, Adds Sequoia As A New InvestorBlackBuck, an online marketplace for logistics transactions, has raised $27.3 M, thereby marking the entrance of Sequoia Capital as an investor in the Bengaluru-based startup. [ inc42 ] Recent departures hint at turmoil at Quartet Health, a mental health startup backed by GVBacked with nearly $87 million in venture capital funding from GV, Oak HC/FT and F-Prime Capital, Quartet Health was founded in 2014 by Arun Gupta, Steve Shulman and David Wennberg to improve access to behavioral healthcare. Its mission: “enable every person in our society to thrive by building a collaborative behavioral and physical health ecosystem.” [ Tech Crunch ] Check out Quartet Health's major investor - Tencent to Invest $317.6M in Bilibili Shares, Expands Overwatch League InfluenceChinese tech giant Tencent Holdings has entered into a share purchase agreement with video sharing platform Bilibili. The agreement will see Tencent purchase 25,063,451 Class Z ordinary shares at a purchase price of $12.67 per share, bringing the total investment to roughly $317.6M.[ Esports Observer ] Microsoft invests in Grab to bring AI and big data to on-demand servicesMicrosoft has made a strategic investment in ride-hailing and on-demand services company Grab as part of a deal that includes collaborating on big data and AI projects. Under the agreement, Singapore-based Grab will adopt Microsoft Azure as its preferred cloud platformAzure cloud computing service. Microsoft and Grab didn’t disclose financial terms. [ Tech Crunch ] How a Ugandan prince and a crypto startup are planning an African revolutionCrypto and blockchain enthusiasts have been railing for years against the centralized world of banks, but many have been doing so from the privileged vantage point of developed countries. But what if blockchain technology turned out to be most revolutionary in emerging economies? Research over 15K+ Venture Capital Investors on our platform. |