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He's back!

I found myself thinking about Michael Arrington the other day.

Specifically, at a time when barely an hour can go by without a high profile media figure being accused of harassment or assault towards women, I found myself thinking how much Mike – a Pando investor, who Sarah fired from our board in 2012 - dodged a bullet.

He probably didn't feel that way back in 2013... [ Pando ]

How Data Will Transform The Future Of Angel Investing

Early-stage startup investing can have a lot to do with gut feelings, and little to do with data. Angel investors face the near-impossible task of figuring out what will take off before hardly anything has been proven, leading to intuition-based decision-making.
[ Forbes ]

Here’s How Andreessen Horowitz & Union Square Ventures Are Betting On Blockchain

We took a closer look at these top VCs' blockchain investments, which range from private enterprise blockchains to cryptocurrency hedge funds.

This year’s blockchain craze has pushed a huge amount of new money into cryptocurrencies, private blockchain projects, and companies holding initial coin offerings (ICOs). As of now, the total market capitalization of cryptocurrencies stands at more than $340B — a huge leap from where it started the year at $18B. [ CB Insights ]

WeWork doubled its big corporate client base this year, which generated $250 million in revenue

Big businesses that lease co-working space at WeWork generated $250 million this year in revenue. These companies make up 25 percent of WeWork’s total $1 billion annual revenue as well as 30 percent of new monthly revenue, according to WeWork.

And the number of corporate or enterprise customers — those with 1,000 or more employees — has doubled from last year to over 1,000. [ Recode ]

How to Get Your Mind to Read

Americans are not good readers. Many blame the ubiquity of digital media. We’re too busy on Snapchat to read, or perhaps internet skimming has made us incapable of reading serious prose. But Americans’ trouble with reading predates digital technologies. The problem is not bad reading habits engendered by smartphones, but bad education habits engendered by a misunderstanding of how the mind reads. [ NY Times ]

This founder explains how not taking investor money let his startup build a product that 750,000 users love

• Bryant Chou is the CTO of Webflow, a Y Combinator startup that hasn't taken any investment beyond a modest seed round. 
• Chou says that Webflow has slowly built itself into a profitable business, and expects to do $10 million in revenue this year. 
• Webflow is a visual website development tool that's spread through word-of-mouth. [ Business Insider ]

10 startups that died in 2017 — despite $1.7 billion in funding

Where there's life, there's death, and Silicon Valley is no different. 

For every thriving billion-dollar unicorn, there are endless numbers of start-ups that have passed onto the other side — laying off their engineers with their matching, branded t-shirts; closing down their game rooms filled with ping-pong tables; and leaving heartfelt goodbye notes for customers on their soon-to-be defunct websites.

As 2017 comes to a close, it's time to take a tally of some of the best-funded startups to shut their doors this year. Altogether, these companies raised $1.695 billion in venture capital funding. But it's now basically all gone, and investors can no longer hope to break even via an initial public offering or by having the companies acquired. [ Business Insider ]