Leena Rao is currently a Senior Editor for TechCrunch.
She recently finished graduate school at the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University, where she studied business journalism and videography. From 2004 to 2007, she helped lead Congresswoman Carloyn Maloney’s community outreach and relations efforts in New York City. She graduated from Columbia University in 2003, where she was the captain of the women’s varsity tennis team. She has also contributed technology content for Oprah.com.
Disclosure: My husband, Suneel Gupta, was previously an employee of Groupon. We hold stock in Facebook. We also have investments in several mutual funds, some of which are technology-focused. And I hold a miniscule amount of shares in AOL, TechCrunch’s parent company.
My husband sits on the advisory boards of Adaptly and ToyTalk, and is a shareholder of both companies.
On this week’s Ask A VC episode, Index Ventures partner Danny Rimer joined us in the studio. Rimer has been in the venture industry for over 11 years so he had plenty to share on how VC has changed, and the differences in the venture world in Europe and the U.S.
Rimer, who has led the firm’s investments in Etsy, Nastygal and many others, also talked to us about the future of ecommerce and how… → Read More
WibiData, the enterprise data management startup co-founded by Cloudera founder Christophe Bisciglia and Aaron Kimball, has raised $15 million in a Series B funding led by Canaan Partners with participation from existing investors, including NEA and Google Chairman Eric Schmidt. → Read More
Uncovet, a startup that wants to be the recommendation engine for indie designer clothing and accessories, has raised $1.3 million from Javelin Venture Partners, Siemer Ventures, and L.A. angel investor Paige Craig. → Read More
This week on TechCrunch TV’s Ask A VC show, we have Mayfield Fund Managing Director Navin Chaddha in the studio. As you may remember, you can submit questions for our guests either in the comments or here and we’ll ask them during the show. → Read More
The idea of a VC having its own news aggregator was a bit outlandish in 2007. But Y Combinator was in an unusual position in those days anyway. Startup incubators had been a highly visible part of the dot-com crash, and Silicon Valley was still skeptical of the concept nearly a decade later. So YC set out to be something different — a community of hackers building companies on their own terms. → Read More
It’s that time of the week for CrunchWeek, the show where a few of us writers chat up the most interesting stories from the past seven days.
Ryan Lawler, Drew Olanoff (clad in his Google Glass), and I discussed all things Google I/O, including Larry Page’s keynote, Google+’s new photo features, and the latest Google Glass apps and more. We also chatted about Square’s new hardware, Stand, which… → Read More
This week, we hosted Accel Partners’ Rich Wong in the studio for our Ask A VC show.
Wong, who has invested in Angry Birds (Rovio), Dealer.com, Mobilespaces, Atlassian, MoPub, talked about where he sees the next wave of disruption in mobile technologies. He believes mobile security is a huge opportunity mobile, especially at the enterprise level. → Read More
Luvocracy, a recently launched, Pinterest-like social marketplace where people can buy products recommended by friends and other tastemakers, has raised $11 million in funding from Kleiner Perkins, Google Ventures, Marissa Mayer, Ali Pincus, Jim Lanzone, Tony Robbins, CrunchFund, RPM Ventures and XG Ventures. Kleiner Perkins partner Bing Gordon is joining Luvocracy’s board. → Read More
Marqeta, the startup that helps businesses nationwide attain the Starbucks loyalty Card “pay-in-advance for your coffee” model, is announcing $14 million in new funding from Greylock IL (an affiliate fund of Greylock Partners), Granite Ventures, new investor Commerce Ventures, and a number of leading new angel and unnamed strategic investors. → Read More
EdgeSpring, an enterprise business intelligence and analytics startup, is emerging from stealth and announcing $11 million in Series A funding from Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Lightspeed Ventures. → Read More
This week on TechCrunch TV’s Ask A VC show, we have Accel Partners’ Rich Wong in the studio. As you may remember, you can submit questions for our guests either in the comments or here and we’ll ask them during the show. → Read More
At an event in San Francisco at Blue Bottle Coffee, Square debuted a stand built specifically for the iPad, which turns the device into a card-swiping register. Hardware has always been a part of who we are and who we want to be, says Jack Dorsey, CEO and co-founder of Square. “We wanted to build software and hardware that matches,” he says. → Read More
Online legal services platform Rocket Lawyer has raised another $15 million in new funding, we’ve confirmed with the company. We’re told that the funding was raised from a “strategic investor,” who is not being named at this time. Rocket Lawyer previously raised $40 million in capital from August Capital, Google Ventures and Investor Growth Capital (IGC). → Read More
Grotech Ventures, the Virginia-based VC firm behind LivingSocial, HelloWallet and others; is announcing the raise of its eighth fund, Grotech Ventures II (“GV II”), with $225 million in committed capital. The firm says the fund was oversubscribed by more than 10 percent, and was raised from both existing and new limited partners. GV II bringsGrotech’s total capital under management to $1.3… → Read More
For generations in the past, parents have carefully put together “baby books” that capture the first years of a baby’s life in photos, hand prints and more. My mother created one for me, and it’s something that I treasure. But in the world’s digital age, the photos and memories of our babies are captured most often on mobile phones. Any paper is stored in a file cabinet or thrown away. And there… → Read More
Matrix Partners just announced the close of Matrix X, the venture firm’s tenth early-stage technology-focused fund. As Fortune’s Dan Primack reported in a scoop in April, the firm raised $450 million for this fund. → Read More
Cloud storage company Box has acquired HTML5 document embedding service and Y Combinator alum Crocodoc, both companies announced in a press briefing today. Financial terms of the deal, which was a cash and stock transaction, were not disclosed; however, Box CEO and co-founder Aaron Levie said that it was a successful exit for investors. Crocodoc has raised a little over $1 million funding from Y… → Read More
After losing mobile product head and Facebook Home team member Charles Jolley to Battery Ventures, Facebook is facing another departure from a previous Home staffer. Draper Fisher Jurvetson announced today that Facebook’s head of product for Android, Bubba Murarka, has joined the firm as General Partner and Managing Director. → Read More
Online payments startup WePay is announcing the launch of Veda, an intelligent social risk engine that leverages social media data as well as traditional business data to catch merchant fraudsters. → Read More
Square has made another key hire today — Demetrios J. Marantis will be leading the company’s international government, regulatory and policy work. Marantis most recently served in President Barack Obama’s Cabinet as the Acting United States Trade Representative, and was the U.S.’s chief trade negotiator. → Read More
Shopping search engine TheFind is debuting a more personalized search feature today. Personalized search sifts through the millions of online products available to give you personal results based on a combination of both your Facebook “Likes” and past shopping searches and clicks on TheFind.com. → Read More
After a brief hiatus for TechCrunch Disrupt, Ask A VC is back this week with two all-star guests in the investing world. First up we have Freestyle Capital’s Dave Samuel. Later in the week, Redpoint Partner Chris Moore will be joining us in the studio. As you may remember, you can submit questions for our guests either in the comments or here and we’ll ask them during the show. → Read More
In this week’s Ask A VC episode, we sat down with Index Ventures partner Mike Volpi.
Volpi, who makes investments in both enterprise software and consumer internet companies, serves on a number of boards, including Path, Sonos, Lookout, Hortonworks, Soundcloud, Big Switch Networks, Zuora, Foodily, and Storsimple. We asked Volpi what his biggest challenge is as the board member of a startup, and… → Read More
It’s no secret that the amount of time that tech companies are spending in Washington, D.C., is at a high. And money spent on lobbying has also been reaching peaks for a number of well-known technology giants, including Facebook. In the first quarter of 2013, Facebook spent $2.45 million on lobbying efforts, a 277 percent increase from $650,000 a year earlier. In the fourth quarter of 2012… → Read More
Peer-to-peer lending platform Lending Club is announcing a huge new investor today: Google. Google and existing investor Foundation Capital have put $125 million in Lending Club, which was valued at $1.55 billion in the round. As part of this investment Google will take an observer seat on the Lending Club Board alongside existing Board members including Kleiner Perkins’ Mary Meeker, ex-chairman… → Read More
VC firm First Round Capital has steadily expanded its The Dorm Room Fund from Philadelphia, to New York. And today, the firm is heading west with its latest Silicon Valley and San Francisco Bay Area-based initiative, which is a $500,000 fund run by an all-student investment team to invest purely in student-run startups in the area. You can find out more about the Bay Area Fund here. → Read More
After bringing on a new global business lead from Google, Square is making another key executive hire today. The payments company is announcing that Alex Petrov, a former PayPal exec, will be Square’s Vice President of Partnerships. → Read More
Asana, the high-profile productivity startup that’s trying to redesign the workplace around tasks (instead of email), is tackling the scale of its productivity app with a new announcement today.
Last year, Asana announced premium plans, which allowed larger teams larger than 30 members to use the cloud-based app. Co-founder Justin Rosenstein says that there has been rapid adoption of Asana in… → Read More
Back in 2011, PayPal debuted PayPal Access, a payments identity technology that would allow you to carry your payments identity to various retailers on the web. It’s essentially a cross between Amazon’s payments platform and Facebook Connect. Today, the payments giant is announcing a new name for the product, Log In With PayPal, and adding a number of new features including mobile support. → Read More
Design-focused retail site Fab has announced its new pivot, along with an acquisition and much more.
As we reported last week, Fab now has 12 million users and is continuing to grow at a fast clip after its initial pivot. Last year, the company saw $150 million in revenue, and revealed in February that sales were up by nearly 300% in January 2013 over January 2012. International is also a huge… → Read More
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