Connie Loizos
Silicon Valley Editor
The Latest from Connie Loizos
It might be time for companies in San Francisco to call employees’ bluff
Spend any amount of time in New York, and you’ll feel it. Manhattan and Brooklyn are teeming with activity. It’s electrifying to be there after years spent relatively locked down. The ques
This Yale alum wants to build a telemedicine platform expressly for Alzheimer’s disease
Nikhil Patel is the kind of founder who investors adore. He’s a brainiac who, before studying computer science at Yale, spent three years in high school working as a research associate at the Un
Big funds ‘screwing with Series A market but not seed market’ says veteran VC Mike Hirshland
Mike Hirshland is enjoying 2022. Despite the market’s zigs and zags, he has spent much of his time this past summer in Rhode Island, where relatives from afar have gathered on and off for an ext
Making sense of the market right now with Danny Rimer of Index Ventures
If you’re feeling confused about the state of startup investing, join the club. Public company shares have been relentlessly hammered in recent months amid rising fears of a recession, yet start
Startups race to build a crypto-native, consumer-friendly messaging platform for web3
There’s no shortage of headlines about the onset of “crypto winter.” Amid a growing pile of bankruptcies, one of the buzziest startups in the business, the NFT marketplace OpenSea, a
Ev Williams calls it quits as CEO of Medium
Another CEO is stepping back from the company he launched. This time, it’s famed serial entrepreneur Ev Williams, who said today that he is relinquishing his full-time role with Medium, an onlin
Sequoia wants to invest $1 million in your idea, then teach you how to really sell it
The investment firm Sequoia Capital has no shortage of internal programs for the founders it backs. The idea is to help its startups not merely by sheer dint of their affiliation with Sequoia but by h
Things get messy for Elon Musk with report about new twins he shares with Neuralink exec
Last month, Insider published an explosive report about a former SpaceX flight attendant who accused SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk of propositioning her for sex in 2016 and to whom the company paid
Frederic Court of London-based Felix Capital on working with, and fending off, American VCs
Last month, at the same time that the London-based venture firm Felix Capital was announcing that it has closed its fourth and newest fund with $600 million in capital commitments, we had a separate c
The VC who helped incubate Discord has quietly spun up an autonomous contact center startup
Customer service is a huge industry. Meanwhile, across many sectors, employees remain hard to find, so it’s no surprise that a lot of startups have emerged to help companies offer a better exper
Juul, the e-cig maker started at Stanford, watches its US market share get vaporized
It’s almost Shakespearean. Juul, the e-cigarette company that took the U.S. by storm five years ago — and which was valued at its peak at $38 billion — is about to get kicked out of
SoftBank Group International’s new CEO is leaving, just five months after being appointed
If SoftBank investors were already feeling shaken by the conglomerate’s poor performance this year, a news release out of the company tonight isn’t exactly going to assuage their concerns.
Accel is rolling out a new, $4 billion late-stage fund, just as certain rivals lose momentum
Accel, the 39-year-old venture firm, just pulled a major power move. It announced, via a simple blog post, that it has just closed a new, global, late-stage fund with $4 billion in capital commitments
A field guide for startup board members in an up-and-down market
Brad Feld, a venture capitalist of 25 years and author of several books, has just republished a book that first came out in 2013 and to which Feld, with the help of co-authors Matt Blumberg and Mahend
Wow, Facebook really knows how to give someone a send-off!
So much for that touching goodbye post to Sheryl Sandberg that Mark Zuckerberg posted just 9 days ago, when after a 14-year run at Facebook — now Meta Platforms — Sandberg said she was resigning f
The case for down rounds
Media outfits reported earlier this week that the crypto lending platform BlockFi is looking to raise roughly $100 million in fresh funding in a round that would value the company at about $1 billion.
Lots of sellers, fewer buyers, in markets for startup shares
There’s a lot of confusion in the private market right now. On the one hand, venture firms are still announcing new funds on a daily basis. They’re hosting catered sushi brunches. On the o
Boldstart Ventures has two new funds to plug into teams with an idea and little else
Boldstart Ventures, a seed- and early-stage venture firm that markets itself as a “day one partner for developer-first, crypto-infrastructure and SaaS founders,” has closed on two new fund
The death knell for SPACs?
It was a tough day for special purpose acquisition companies, or SPACs, which had already fallen out of favor after roughly 18 months in the limelight. First, Senator Elizabeth Warren announced today
Report: Substack, the highly hyped newsletter platform, has ditched plans for a Series C
Substack, the five-year-old newsletter platform that has aggressively positioned itself as a disruptive force in media, has abandoned efforts to raise a Series C round, The New York Times is reporting