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.
AngelList’s Naval Ravikant joined us in the TechCrunch TV studio for our Ask A VC series, where we put VCs in the hot seat. Ravikant talked about the currency of Silicon Valley, which he says is deals shared, talent referred, and acquirers introduced. He explains that AngelList, a service he co-founded that matches early-stage startups with investors, puts these transactions online. We also… → Read More
Web hosting giant Rackspace is acquiring Web app error tracking startup Exceptional Cloud Services and its subsidiaries to enhance its toolset for developers deploying and managing applications in the cloud. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. → Read More
Ask A VC is back this week with Google Ventures’ general partner Karim Faris. 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
Maveron, the VC firm founded by Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz and Dan Levitan, is doubling down on seed investments. The firm, which has offices in both Seattle and San Francisco, has been making a few seed investments sporadically over the past few years, but with today’s announcement, Maveron is committing to making at least 12 seed investments per year. → Read More
Wanelo, the hot social ecommerce startup that is reportedly raising new funding at a valuation north of $100 million, joined us in the TechCrunch TV studio to talk about how the company is NOT a Pinterest for products to buy, the company’s fast growth, and, of course, whether the startup is raising new cash. → Read More
Demandbase, a company that develops B2B marketing software, has raised $15 million in new financing led by Scale Venture Partners with participation by existing investors Sigma Partners, Altos Ventures, Costanoa Ventures, Sutter Hill Ventures and Adobe Systems. This brings the company’s total funding to $33 million. → Read More
Simpler, a new startup that wants to disrupt employee onboarding, is launching today and announcing $1.25 million in funding from Andreessen Horowitz, Kleiner Perkins, Khosla Ventures, SV Angel, Data Collective, AngelPool, Kenny Van Zant, Alex Bard, Gary Benitt, Elad Gil, Sid Henderson and Formation8. Simpler is in private beta, and companies can sign up here. → Read More
Silicon Valley venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins is creating a new presence in L.A., announcing a partnership today with the University of Southern California’s Viterbi School of Engineering and United Talent Agency (UTA) to create a startup accelerator. → Read More
Fast growing enterprise network security company OpenDNS is announcing a new investment this morning, raising an undisclosed amount of Series B funding from Sutter Hill Ventures. New managing partner and former Juniper Network Systems executive Stefan Dyckerhoff is joining the company’s board. While OpenDNS is not releasing the exact amount of the funding, founder and CEO David Ulevitch tells us… → Read More
This past week, TechCrunch TV was honored to host an intimate roundtable discussion of Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg’s new best-selling book Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead. → Read More
We sat down Foundation Capital General Partner Paul Holland and one of participants in the firm’s Young Entrepreneurs Program, which offers MBA hopefuls and graduate students an opportunity to essentially act as a VC. We were lucky to meet Theresa Johnson, a fourth-year PhD candidate in the Dept. of Aeronautics and Astronautics at Stanford. → Read More
According to Israeli publications The Marker and Calcalist, IT software giant CA Technologies will purchase Israeli app deployment and management company Nolio. The acquisition price has been reported between $40 and $42 million. → Read More
Welcome back for the last segment of our roundtable discussion of Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg’s new best-selling book Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead.
We concluded the series with a discussion about how women can be our own worst enemies when supporting each other in the workplace. Sandberg writes in the last chapter of the book, “It is the painful truth that one of the obstacles… → Read More
In this week’s Ask A VC, Comcast Ventures’ Managing Director Michael Yang sat in the hot seat to talk about his passion for digital healthcare, and much more. → Read More
Welcome back for part three of our four-part roundtable discussion of Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg’s new best-selling book Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead.
In this segment, we first tackled the topic of finding a mentor to help steer your career path. In Lean In, Sandberg argues that many women go about seeking mentors in all the wrong ways, and says that asking outright “Will you… → Read More
Last March, Zynga announced its ambitions to create a web and mobile platform for social games. Zynga.com is a destination for both the company’s own games as well as for third-party developers who want to leverage Zynga’s social feed and users. In September, Zynga debuted its first third-party games. And today, Zynga is rolling out a number of changes to Zynga.com, namely how you sign in. → Read More
Payments startup Stripe is announcing a new partnership with Parse, a mobile app development platform. The company is also revealing that its payments platform is being used by Lyft, Exec, SideCar, OrderAhead, Sesame and Postmates to enable payments in their mobile applications. → Read More
As we mentioned yesterday, we took an in-depth look at Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg’s new book Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead with a number of Generation Y women who are part of the Silicon Valley’s rising new guard.
You can watch the first segment of the conversation, where we addressed fear and its effect on our careers here. It was a four-part discussion in all, and we’ll be… → Read More
There has been a lot of buzz about Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg’s new book Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead, which made its chart-topping debut in bookstores on March 11th.
But we at TechCrunch wanted to hear from a different perspective… → Read More
Ebay is debuting a new fee structure and incentives for sellers today in an effort to remain the most competitive commerce platform next to e-commerce marketplace Amazon. For the first time, eBay is launching free listings for both non-stores and stores on the platform, as well as simpler pricing. → Read More
In 2011, Kleiner Perkins debuted its plans for a summer internship program to place top engineering talent from colleges at the firm’s portfolio companies. The benefit is two-fold: students get to work at the startup level, are mentored and startups get access to young engineering talent that could become full-time after graduation. Last year’s fellows program was a success, says the firm, and… → Read More
One of the problems with fashion magazines is that they lack the element of personalization and curation that is entering the online fashion industry and retail world. Kendall Herbst, a former fashion editor at InStyle and Lucky magazines is hoping to change that with a new fashion startup launching today. YC-backed StyleUp is a daily personal fashion recommendation service for women that takes… → Read More
One of the main problems with buying designer clothing off of eBay and other auction sites is that there is really no guarantee that the item you are purchasing is actually what it appears to be. Despite a crackdown by eBay on counterfeit designer goods, the site still has a problem with fakes (though eBay will refund you if an item is fake). YC-backed Lollipuff is an auction site that fully… → Read More
Disrupt alumnus Dropbox made the second in a series of super-savvy, super-early stage acquisitions today, picking up hyped-up email management app Mailbox in an acquisition that we’re calling “DropMail.”
We had been hearing that Mailbox was raising money, piquing the interest of Andreessen Horowitz among others, which is why today’s news that the company sold to the harmoniously named Dropbox… → Read More
Menlo Ventures Managing Director Shawn Carolan stopped by the studio for our Ask A VC series. → Read More
After undergoing a round of layoffs in January, Lockerz, the social commerce and photo sharing service, is shutting down its photo sharing API (a.k.a. Plixi). Plixi founder Rodney Rumford tweeted the news this morning. → Read More
After debuting its in-store mobile payments technology PayPal Here in the U.K. two weeks ago, the payments giant is announcing another set of news around the product: an iPad app. Not only is this the first iPad app for PayPal Here, but it’s actually the company’s first native app for the tablet ever. → Read More
After a brief hiatus for SXSW, Ask A VC is back this week with MkII Ventures’ Ron Palmeri. As you may remember, you can submit questions for our guest either in the comments or here and we’ll ask them during the show. → Read More
PayPal is acquiring mobile app development studio Duff Research today. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. → Read More
LA-based GRP Partners is adding a new partner to its ranks for the first time in the past six years with the addition of former Hautelook CMO Greg Bettinelli. At GRP, Bettinelli will focus on investments in ecommerce, marketplaces and consumer applications. → Read More
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