Connie Loizos
Silicon Valley Editor
The Latest from Connie Loizos
Hacker George Hotz, long a frenemy of Elon Musk, signs on for 12 weeks at Twitter
A lot has been made of Twitter’s shrinking workforce, which is reportedly at 2,300 people, down from the 7,500 employed by the company when new owner Elon Musk took control. While we posited tha
Drive Capital’s investors reach a fork in the road
Drive Capital was founded by two former Sequoia Capital Partners looking to start anew in the Midwest. But investors in the Columbus, Ohio-based firm have had a bumpy ride of late, and according to ou
The exodus at Twitter may have been the plan all along, maybe?
When Peter Clowes last updated his LinkedIn profile, he listed his role as “Layoff Survivor” at Twitter. Yet Clowes, a senior software engineer who joined the company in the spring of 2020
Jack Selby of Thiel Capital is using a new VC fund to invest in Arizona startups
Jack Selby, a former PayPal exec and the longtime managing director of Thiel Capital who attracted some attention years back for his low-key largesse, has a new, $110 million venture fund that he inte
BoomPop gains traction by designing high-end off-sites for a remote-first world
There’s nothing sexy about corporate retreats. But BoomPop, a 26-person, San Francisco-based outfit that the startup studio Atomic launched in 2020, is managing to infuse some pizazz into the lo
Bling Capital has $212M to invest across two new funds — and two coasts
Ben Ling, a prolific angel investor turned venture capitalist, has never put a lot of stock in the need for a new, decentralized internet. It’s why the firm he founded almost exactly four years
MadKudu lands $18M led by Felicis for its lead scoring platform
It’s hard to get ahead when you’re just trying to stay afloat. But startups weathering the downturn with fewer employees and a smaller budget are finding ways to survive and move forward b
Crypto VC David Pakman on FTX: An ‘entirely avoidable tragedy’
If you want to better understand exactly how big a deal it is that the cryptocurrency exchange FTX just imploded, you could do worse than talk with David Pakman, an entrepreneur turned venture capital
Outgoing YC President Geoff Ralston: The market is changing; YC’s terms are not
Last week at Web Summit, we were asked to interview outgoing Y Combinator President Geoff Ralston about the past, present and future of the popular accelerator program. We covered a lot of ground duri
Formula 1’s Toto Wolff, accused of running his team remotely, leans into software even more
Toto Wolff, the 50-year-old Austrian chief executive, team principal and part-owner of the Mercedes Formula 1 team who was recently described by The New Yorker as someone who might breeze “past
‘CZ’ Zhao on why Binance bet big on Twitter despite Musk’s machinations
It’s hard to imagine committing to invest $500 million in someone’s vision for a company only to watch that individual almost immediately try to distance himself from it. But Changpeng 
These founders landed early checks by being savvy about social media
At TechCrunch Disrupt, three founders credited their early success in raising venture capital to their use of social media platforms.
Why ‘generative AI’ is suddenly on everyone’s lips: It’s an ‘open field’
If you’ve been closely following the progress of Open AI, the company run by Sam Altman whose neural nets can now write original text and create original pictures with astonishing ease and speed
Chris Sacca on climate investing right now: The opportunity ‘almost feels unfair’
Today, for a series of climate-related conversations organized by the global venture firm SOSV, we interviewed famed investor Chris Sacca, whose investment firm Lowercarbon Capital is managing $2 bill
Top VCs have expanded into broader asset managers; is the model sustainable?
Last week at TechCrunch’s annual Disrupt event, this editor sat down with VCs from two firms that have come to look similar in ways over the last five or so years. One of those VCs was Niko Bona
Some new venture firms are going really, really (really) niche
There are big, overarching top-down trends, and there are little-bitty baby trends that have a way of growing into bigger ones. A big trend right now, for example, centers on certain firms that passed
Ask the professor: Wharton’s Mori Taheripour on how to negotiate the right way
Mori Taheripour teaches negotiations at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, where she has taught undergraduates, MBA students and executive MBA students how to have better business c
Matrix Partners, long an investor in software infrastructure, has some questions about web3
Antonio Rodriguez, who joined Matrix in 2010 after a Matrix-backed company he cofounded was sold to Hewlett-Packard, told us last week that Matrix just raised its biggest fund in roughly 20 years. It&
As the market cools, aggressive Tiger Global looks to raise a fund that’s half the size as its last
In recent years, assets under management at the investment firm Tiger Global have exploded. Now the firm is taking stock and winnowing down its operations, per a new investor letter first seen by Axio