Connie Loizos
Loizos has been reporting on Silicon Valley since the late ’90s, when she joined the original Red Herring magazine. She is currently the Silicon Valley Editor of TechCrunch. She’s also the founder of StrictlyVC, a daily e-newsletter and lecture series.
Crunchbase profile →Featured Picks from Connie Loizos
Latest from Connie Loizos
-
Workday acquires the team behind Pattern, a young startup founded by ex-Googlers
The team behind Pattern, a two-year-old, Redwood City, Calif.- based startup, has been quietly acquired by Workday, the financial management and HR software vendor that went public in 2012 and now boasts a market cap of $20.9 billion. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Pattern CEO Derek Draper, who announced the acquisition to his network on LinkedIn, declined to comment further. As part… Read More
-
This ambitious founder wants to find high-paying biz dev jobs for one million Americans
Rahim Fazal grew up in government housing. He worked, as do many students, at McDonald’s during high school. He didn’t go to college. These aren’t the kinds of details that might excite a recruiter at a big tech company, yet Fazal has done just fine, including co-founding SVAcademy in San Francisco. Read More
-
K9 Ventures sticks to its knitting, closing its third fund with $42 million
K9 Ventures, a nine-year-old, seed-stage venture firm that has become renowned in Silicon Valley circles for working closely with budding startups at the paper napkin stage, has closed its third fund with $42 million. The firm’s founder and its sole general partner, Manu Kumar — a serial entrepreneur with a PhD in computer science from Stanford — tends to invest less than… Read More
-
What was Benchmark thinking?
Yesterday, Benchmark, the powerful venture firm and a major Uber shareholder, filed a lawsuit against the company’s recently ousted CEO Travis Kalanick in a remarkable move. The suit seeks to remove Kalanick from the board, while eliminating three additional board positions that it says Kalanick sought (and won) approval for last year, partly by withholding crucial information from… Read More
-
A new study shows a 60 percent drop in requests from US companies for foreign workers
According to new research just published by the data science team at Hired, a jobs marketplace for tech workers, Donald Trump’s efforts to push an America-first philosophy is having a measurable impact on how comfortable tech companies feel in seeking out foreign-born workers. Read More
-
Roivant, which creates companies around abandoned drugs, just raised $1.1 billion from SoftBank
Roivant Sciences, a three-year-old, Basel, Switzerland-based company aiming to one day be a giant holding company for dozens of independent biopharmaceutical companies, has raised $1.1 billion in equity led by the SoftBank Vision Fund — making it the latest in a string of enormous bets by SoftBank, and putting the young outfit more squarely on the radar of the tech world. Read More
-
Rothy’s, whose ballet flats are all over Facebook and Pinterest, has raised $7 million in funding
You’ve likely seen them plastered across your social media accounts, if not on someone’s feet in San Francisco, where the company is based: attractive women’s flats in bright red with black soles, or bright red with pink stripes and blue detailing, or a gray camo pattern with a red sole. Rothy’s, available online only at the company’s site, suddenly seem to be… Read More
-
On managing outrage in Silicon Valley
I hate sexism; it can’t be eradicated fast enough. I’m frustrated that there’s still far too little diversity in Silicon Valley. Yet a newer form of discrimination is starting to greatly alarm me, and that’s discrimination against anyone with a point of view that’s deemed offensive to the tech majority. You know already what I’m talking about: people are… Read More
-
In its push to compete in Southeast Asia, WeWork is pouring a (brand-new!) $500 million into the region
Less than two weeks ago, WeWork took the wraps off a new massive round of funding — $500 million from the Chinese private equity firm Hony Capital, the Japanese internet giant SoftBank, Greenland Holdings, and China Oceanwide. Now, the company is announcing that it’s pouring that exact amount — $500 million — into expanding into Southeast Asia and Korea. Interestingly… Read More
-
Auris Surgical Robotics, founded by superstar Fred Moll, has quietly closed on a ton of money
Auris Surgical Robotics, a 10-year-old, San Carlos, Ca.-based surgical robotics company that was founded by serial entrepreneur Frederic Moll, has quietly raised $280 million in Series D funding led by Coatue Management. The company had previously raised at least $184 million from investors, shows Crunchbase. Its other backers include Mithril Capital Management (cofounded by Peter Thiel and… Read More
-
Mamoon Hamid is heading from Social Capital to Kleiner Perkins
Mamoon Hamid, a longtime partner at U.S. Venture Partners who went on to co-found Social Capital with Chamath Palihapitiya in 2011, is reportedly moving on to Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. Read More
-
NextView Ventures just sealed up its third fund with $50 million
Back in December, we reported that NextView Ventures, one of the few seed-stage venture firms in Boston, was looking to raise at least $50 million for a third fund, per an SEC filing that was processed at the time. Today, the firm says it has closed the fund with exactly that amount in capital commitments. Read More
-
This outfit wants startups to trade equity for patents from big tech players
Aqua Licensing is a four-year-old patent advisory and transaction firm that typically works behind the scenes, helping companies sell their patents. But it has a new proposal for venture-backed startups that are in fundraising mode: it wants them to give big tech companies some of their equity in exchange for patents that the companies no longer use but could prove useful for the startups. Read More
-
Impossible Foods just raised $75 million for its plant-based burgers
Impossible Foods, the six-year-old, Redwood City, Ca.-based company known for its “juicy” meatless burgers, quietly announced $75 million in funding late last week, led by Temasek, with participation from Open Philanthropy, as well as earlier investors Bill Gates, Khosla Ventures and Horizon Ventures. Read More
-
Sawyer, a software platform for kid classes, raises $6 million, including from the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative
Sawyer, a two-year-old startup that aims to become the OpenTable of children’s activities, has raised $6 million in new funding led by Advance Venture Partners. Others that contributed to the round include Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, 3311 Ventures, Female Founders Fund and earlier backer Collaborative Fund, as well as unnamed investors from the company’s $1.5 million seed round. Read More
-
Reddit just raised a new round that values the company at $1.8 billion
Reddit, the 12-year-old, San Francisco-based online discussion platform that has long called itself the “front page of the internet,” just closed its biggest round ever, from a whole lot of investors, reports Recode. Andreessen Horowitz, Sequoia Capital, Coatue Management, Vy Capital, Fidelity, Sam Altman and Ron Conway all chipped into the $200 million financing. Read More
-
A race is underway to repair our hearing — with medicine
One in eight people in the US aged 12 years or older has hearing loss in both ears. With any luck, some of this hearing loss will be fixable soon — but not with hearing aids or implants. Scientists think the mix of human genetics and single cell expression profiling has brought us to the point where medicine can help fix hearing. Read More
-
In the murky world of ICOs, this young founder aims to lead the way
When it comes to initial coin offerings, or ICOs, there’s plainly a lot that investors still don’t understand. Though start-ups and founders have raised more than $1 billion so far 2017 by selling customized virtual currencies to anyone willing to buy them, it’s been unclear whether and which tokens might eventually be categorized as securities; how ICOs impact… Read More
-
The IPO market in 2017? Underwhelming so far, underscores a new survey
The IPO market isn’t looking much more vibrant than last year, underscores a new survey. That could be discouraging for those who hoped a blah year would lead to a booming one. In fact, unless the fall is an especially active time for IPOs — and it might be — 2017 may well serve as one of the less memorable years in recent history. Read More
-
Canaan Partners just closed on $800 million — its biggest fund (by a lot)
It’s a years-long trend with no end in sight: venture firms are raising record amounts, owing to growing and sustained fascination from endowments, pension funds, family offices and others who see the sweeping, tech-driven changes all around — from self-driving cars, to new plant-based foods, to far more targeted drugs — and want to be part of that evolution. Read More
Message Us