No Images? Click here According to new data from Second Measure, Airbnb has officially passed all major hotel brands (with the exception of Marriott) in U.S. sales. The company owns 19% of the U.S. hotels market, compared to 11% for HomeAway and 70% for all other hotel brands combined. Airbnb is also growing much more quickly than the industry overall - it tripled sales in the past three years compared to 11% growth for hotel chains. news 📣 Lyft's debut 📈 In one of the most-anticipated IPOs of the year, Lyft debuted on the Nasdaq this Friday, raising $2.3B at a $24B valuation. Investors welcomed Lyft to the public markets - the company priced at the top of its expected range ($72) and closed the first day of trading up ~9%. At the time of the IPO, Lyft's largest shareholders were Rakuten, GM, and a16z, though a number of angel investors, early-stage VCs, and advisors have stakes worth $100M+. Uber acquires Careem 🚘In other ride-hailing news, Uber announced that it's paying $3.1B to acquire Careem, the largest player in the Middle East. Careem has 30M users across 90 cities, and was last valued at $2B in a private funding round in October. The acquisition will likely close in early 2020, pending regulatory approval. Uber's international expansion has been a major point of differentiation from Lyft, which has primarily focused on North America. Apple announcements 💳Apple held an unconventional launch event this week, unveiling a set of subscription services featuring premium content. The revamped Apple News+ will feature articles from 300+ digital magazines, Apple Arcade is a gaming subscription, and Apple TV+ will offer original shows from celebrities like Oprah and Steve Carell. Most controversial is the company's new Apple Card, a virtual & physical credit card backed by Goldman Sachs. Media acquisitions 🎙️In tech-related media news this week, Robinhood announced the acquisition of MarketSnacks, a daily newsletter and podcast with millennial-friendly finance news (check it out here!). This marks Robinhood's first-ever acquisition, and the price was not disclosed. Spotify also made yet another acquisition in the podcasting space, snapping up true crime and mystery podcast network Parcast for a rumored $100M. WeWork reports massive losses 💰WeWork announced 2018 financials this week, with mixed results - while the company doubled revenue to $1.8B, it had a net loss of $1.9B. Though WeWork now has more than 400,000 members, occupancy has fallen slightly and average revenue per user continues to drop. While this may be concerning for most startups, WeWork has deep pockets - the company has raised more than $10B from SoftBank and is reportedly sitting on $6B in cash. 🦄 Unicorn alert! Direct-to-consumer mattress company Casper raised a $100M Series D at a $1.1B valuation. Casper brought in more than $400M in revenue last year (though the company isn't profitable), and is reportedly in the process of preparing for an IPO. This funding round will be used to open new brick-and-mortar stores and expand internationally. what we're following 👀 A look at how Instagram made a houseplant species famous (and caused its price to soar). Another high-profile VC is taken down by the college admissions scandal. A new, self-reported database of female VCs shows where women are investing. Working at a startup? Check out AngelList’s primer on terms you may see in an equity offer. Another consumer fintech company came out of stealth this week - Matador, which aims to help users grow their money through investing with friends. Like Robinhood, Matador offers zero-commission trades via an iPhone app. But Matador also has some special features - uninvested cash (up to $10,000) makes 2.5% interest, and users see a social feed of what their friends are buying and selling to encourage conversation and learning. Matador announced $9M in funding from Greylock and Accel along with its launch this week. We’re increasingly seeing early-stage companies raise substantial funding pre-launch, especially in highly regulated spaces where there may be extra hoops to jump through (like fintech) - but this is a riskier bet for investors to make. What do you think about Matador, and what are your favorite consumer fintech apps? Let us know! Are you a student entrepreneur looking to work on your company over the summer? Check out the Contrary Capital Accelerator! Contrary is a nationwide, student-led VC firm that is hosting a summer program in SF from June through September. 100% of the companies in last year's program raised follow-on capital, and 80% did so from top-tier funds. Apply here! jobs 🎓 Commerce Ventures - Associate (SF) Cerebral - Full Stack Engineer (SF) Mira - Product Lead (SF) Slack - BI Analyst (SF) Plastiq - Product Manager (SF) Carrot - Product Engineer (SF) Flexport - Global Ops Associate (LA) BCG Digital Ventures - Strategy & Insights Analyst (LA) Greenspring Associates - Analyst (Owings Mills) CozyKin - Growth Lead (NYC) Chainalysis - Product Writer (NYC) HQ Trivia - Product Manager (NYC) Uppercase - Retail Real Estate Lead (NYC) the dtx company - Product (NYC) Medium - Corporate Development (NYC, SF) Founders Intelligence - Business Analyst (London) internships 📝 Algorithmia - Sales & Marketing Intern (Seattle) Touchdown Ventures - MBA Intern (SF) Bleacher Report - PM Intern (SF) SelfMade - Communications Intern (SF) Twitch - Data Analyst Intern (SF) KiwiCo - Product Design Intern (Mountain View) Honey - Social Media Intern (LA) Snap - Brand Marketing Intern (LA) Store No. 8 - Brand Mgmt Intern (Hoboken) Talkspace - MBA Analytics Intern (NYC) Girlboss - Partnerships Intern (NYC) Parsley Health - Member Experience, Events, Social Media Interns (NYC) Swell - Product Dev Intern (NYC) Dataminr- Marketing Intern (NYC) WeWork - Real Estate Intern (NYC) Goby - Social Media/Comm Intern (NYC) horse of the week 🐴 Meet Chico's Junior, a four-year-old bay Oldenburg gelding. He lives at the Stanford Red Barn. While Chico's often gets bored when doing dressage, he loves to jump. He is successfully competing at 1m45 level (as illustrated by this action photo). Unlike most horses, he refuses to eat apples. His favorite trick is to jump out of the field and run back to the barn. |