As a fourth generation venture investor, Adam Draper was pretty much predestined to work with startups. The son of Tim Draper, the founder of global VC firm Draper Fisher Jurveston, Adam has made it his mission to do everything in his power to help entrepreneurs bring their ideas to life — without relying on his family name to do so. After taking the plunge as an entrepreneur himself, co-founding… → Read More
BDC Venture Capital, the leading major investment firm for accelerators in Canada, announced today that it would add its financial and expert support to ongoing Canadian Technology Accelerator programs being run in the U.S. by the Canadian government. The programs, spread across various major tech hubs including Boston, Philadelphia, New York and San Francisco, give Canadian startups the U.S. face… → Read More
Today, gaming console and software company OUYA announced that they have closed a $15 million round led by Kleiner Perkins, and with participation from the Mayfield Fund, NVIDIA, Shasta Ventures and Occam Partners. This marks one of the largest institutional investments to go to a project that had its humble beginnings on Kickstarter.
OUYA is a company that launched back in 2012 on Kickstarter… → Read More
After 19 months of working with our founder, Michael Arrington, on setting up CrunchFund, MG Siegler has moved on to a similar role at a firm that continues to make waves in the venture world, Google Ventures. In a post on his own blog today, Siegler discussed the move, saying that he had been speaking with its team and managing partner, Bill Maris, for a few months now. He called the move a… → Read More
Those who know in the Valley know the name Sam Pullara. Whether it was his time as a repeat entrepreneur and technical founder, or stints as an EIR at some of the Valley’s most premier venture capital firms, or his time as a lead technologist at two of the largest tech companies in the Valley (most recently at Twitter), Pullara has occupied nearly every seat at the table throughout his career. → Read More
One of the common themes that we’re hearing from investors during Disrupt NYC has been that the areas that are ready to be disrupted might not be anywhere close to the sometimes sexier-appearing consumer space. Joe Lonsdale, co-founder of Palantir Technologies and current partner at Formation 8, discussed some of his thoughts on what will be and should be disrupted by way of technology. The… → Read More
Today at TechCrunch Disrupt NY, Ashton Kutcher took the stage with Guy Oseary to talk about their A-Grade fund. Arrington started right away about a rumor that the fund is raising money at a $100 million valuation. The two partners confirm the rumors, saying that they are raising “enough money.” It means that financial institutions and companies will invest a certain amount of money in… → Read More
Today at Disrupt NY, Ken Lerer and Ben Lerer took the stage to talk about Lerer Ventures and their respective entrepreneur stories. One thing that caught the attention of the audience is when Ken Lerer talked about gun control and a new StopTheNRA.com website. “We are going to launch StopTheNRA.com,” Ken Lerer said. The site should be up in about two weeks. They already own the domain… → Read More
Fred Wilson, legendary New York venture capitalist and partner at Union Square Ventures, is the latest VC to highlight his interest in startups that help move money, “an area that is still very much up for grabs,” in his opinion. “Money is information, like bits,” he said today, giving currency a spin that puts it in a continuum with the many blogging and content companies that his firm has… → Read More
Rocket Internet, the Samwer brothers’ Berlin-based incubator that runs a vast global empire of e-commerce startups, is picking up a new, sizeable investor in Brazil. The Cisneros Group, the Latin American media powerhouse that owns TV, digital, and other assets, is investing up to $20 million in Mobly, a Brazil-based home furnishings site. Victor Kong, chief digital officer of the Cisneros Group… → Read More
Bill Gurley, a general partner at one of Silicon Valley’s top tier venture firms Benchmark Capital, said that the late-stage market is the “most frothy” he’s ever seen since the late 1990s. Even though Facebook, Groupon and Zynga shares are still all underperforming relative to where they debuted at in their IPOs, growth-stage investors are still pouring capital into… → Read More
Chris Dixon, the entrepreneur-turned angel investor-turned general partner at VC firm Andreessen Horowitz, today said that he believes the 3D printing movement has the potential to revolutionize manufacturing and that it is an area where he would like to make multiple investments in the future. In contrast, he described startups in areas like social networking facing “general fatigue”. Earlier… → Read More
Chris Dixon joined our co-editor Eric Eldon this morning at Disrupt NY 2013 to discuss his move out to San Francisco for a job at Andreessen Horowitz. One of the areas that interests him the most is the much-hyped Bitcoin space. The reason why Dixon is so interested is because it solves many problems for those who have tried to start a financial company in the past. He said: “There’s… → Read More
People won’t stop talking about Google Glass, and rightfully so. Ever since the epic parachute-hangout demo, the Valley has been buzzing about the future coming of what is arguably one of the biggest potential advancements in computer interfaces since the iPhone. Lately, the buzz has been bubbling as Google employees, early adopters (Scoble just posted his detailed review), tech bloggers, and… → Read More
SV Angel, one of the Valley’s best-known early-stage firms, says it’s starting to look heavily at health startups that take a “software-first approach” towards human biology, medical research and patient care. The firm has always had a list of six to eight “megatrends” that it invests prolifically in. Right now, those are big data, social commerce… → Read More
“In The Studio” ends April by welcoming Tim Sullivan, the CEO of MicroVentures, a San Francisco-based crowdfunding venture firm that connects retail angel investors with startups. While the venture industry itself continues to undergo a long series of shifts, contractions, and market corrections, the larger trend of crowdfounding — ranging all the way from the Kickerstarters of the world to… → Read More
Today SoftBank Capital, the NY-based venture arm of Japan’s largest wireless provider Softbank Corp., has strengthened its ties to Japan even further, announcing that Yahoo Japan will be injecting $20 million into SoftBank’s early-stage Technology Fund ’10.
The $20 million investment and partnership will help U.S. startups at any point in their development, from early-stage companies who need… → Read More
For those startups in newer areas like robotics, artificial intelligence and augmented reality who complain that VCs are too focused on consumer internet companies, help is at hand: Genesis Angels is a new VC that has raised a fund of around $100 million, with a large chunk coming from co-founder and serial investor Kenges Rakishev, which it plans to use for early stage investments in emerging… → Read More
“In The Studio” this week hosts a special guest who doesn’t typically go on camera that often. As a result, I decided to make this particular episode of the show longer to capture my entire discussion with Greylock’s David Sze. For anyone who follows the ins and outs of venture capital, Sze’s name looms large. By now, most everyone knows of Greylock’s impressive run over the last decade, a firm… → Read More
Last month, we posted a bit of a rumor: that Finland’s Supercell — likely the most lucrative iOS gaming company in the world — had raised about $100 million in funding in a round led by Index Ventures, Atomico Partners and Institutional Venture Partners. Now we have confirmation today that the deal did happen, according to a flashy Forbes feature. The tiny Helsinki-based company… → Read More
Breakout Labs, a Peter Thiel-backed effort that supports startups doing cutting-edge research that might still be too risky to get traditional venture backing, just put capital into another two companies. They’re funding a Siri-like natural language processing startup called SkyPhrase and another biotech company called Stealth Biosciences, which is creating “nanostraws” that make… → Read More
Productivity app Evernote today is announcing that it is teaming up with Honda and the Japanese carrier Docomo to launch the Evernote Accelerator, a month-long mentorship program based at Evernote’s HQ in Redwood City for developers and small startups from around the world that are making apps using Evernote’s APIs. The move is a step ahead for Evernote in its strategy to build out its business… → Read More
Chile’s not the only South American country with a serious startup accelerator program anymore. Brazil’s Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation said today that it’s willing to invest up to $78 million in 100 local and foreign startups that apply for a new “Start-Up Brasil” program. The idea is to lure both domestic and foreign talent to build tech companies… → Read More
Songza, a free streaming music service that has expert-made playlists and runs on the web and various touch screen platforms, raised $3.8 million according to a SEC filing. While Amazon has long been an “unconfirmed” investor listed on AngelList, it parlayed its investment in the earlier Aime St vehicle into Songza. In late 2011 the startup closed what was reportedly a ‘seven-figure’ round of… → Read More
Bitcoin’s record highs and the ensuring surge in hacking attempts and thefts may be grabbing headlines. However, beneath the chaos, Silicon Valley’s best-known venture firms are finally starting to make real bets around the crypto-currency. → Read More
“In The Studio” rolls on this week by welcoming a long-time Valley operator, founder, angel investor, venture capitalist, and now general partner at one of the first “super angel” funds.
Charles Hudson, now a partner with SoftTech VC, has sat on every side of every table in the startup world. With stints as an operator at Google, as an investor with In-Q-Tel (the CIA’s venture capital arm), and… → Read More
Wandera, a startup that offers enterprises a cloud-based solution to reduce the costs of mobile data through compression and better management, is announcing that it has closed $7 million in funding. The Series A round comes entirely from Bessemer Venture Partners, and is in addition to a seed round Wandera quietly raised last year from angels including Klaus Hommels and Alex Zubillaga. Wandera… → Read More
Back in November, rumblings of a Series A Crunch took hold and speculation began about the number of seed-funded companies destined to close. Fast forward a few months and we are now seeing lists of companies that may be imminent victims of the crunch. While these are purely speculative, the information can prove valuable for corporate development teams, recruiters and those in search of… → Read More
John Frankel, founder and partner at FF Ventures, has a steady hand on the pulse of innovation. He’s invested in companies like 500px, Appy Couple, and Moveline, to name a few, and while he doesn’t see a Series A crunch on the horizon, he does see the pace of innovation rapidly heating up.
After all, his firm as led seven investments in new companies since December 1, most notably in companies… → Read More
Editor’s note: Derek Andersen is the founder of Startup Grind, a 40-city community bringing the global startup world together while educating, inspiring, and connecting entrepreneurs. There are few people whose impact on entrepreneurs and business in general you hear about as frequently as Clayton Christensen. Clay’s body of work includes co-founding a publicly traded company, being… → Read More
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