Connie Loizos
Silicon Valley Editor
The Latest from Connie Loizos
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
A look at the nine teams that just presented at Pear’s latest demo day
TechCrunch has been covering the demo days of the seed-stage venture firm Pear VC since 2015. (There we are in the front row in 2016, surrounded by investors, typing away.) A few things have remained
Indigov lands more funding to connect besieged lawmakers and their oft-frustrated constituents
Republican lawmakers are facing growing anger over the deadliest mass shooting at an American school in nearly a decade yesterday, with many of their constituents expressing frustration over their rep
Sequoia Capital plays Nostradamus (again)
Sequoia Capital, the storied, 50-year-old venture firm, has become known over the years for using sweeping memos to warn the founders in its portfolio about market shifts after the shift has become so
Pear, now nearly 10 years old and with numerous hits, looks to close its biggest fund by far
Pear, a Palo Alto, Ca.-based venture firm that we’ve been tracking since its outset in 2012, looks to be raising a fourth fund that’s targeting $410 million in capital commitments, shows a
Why founders should start talking now to bankers and potential buyers
Founders have gotten the memo that the ground is shifting under their feet right now. What to do about it is the question. Already, teams are making plans to scale back their spending to preserve capi
Tusk Venture Partners just closed its third fund with $140M, double its predecessor fund
Tusk Venture Partners, the now six-year-old, New York-based early-stage venture firm co-founded by longtime political strategist Bradley Tusk and former Blackstone director Jordan Nof, has closed its
A dive into Haun Ventures with the firm’s first deal lead, Sam Rosenblum
Sam Rosenblum never imagined he would work at a crypto-focused investment firm. A Southern California native who spent a “large portion of my life outdoors in the sun, playing sports and hanging
A venture firm gets rewarded for selling at the market top
It used to be that venture capitalists couldn’t sell their stake in a portfolio company before it sold or went public without raising questions about the outfit’s prospects. As startups be
Tiger Global, hit by $17B in hedge fund losses, has nearly depleted its latest VC fund
Tiger Global is having a year. According to a new report from Financial Times, the low-flying-yet-seemingly-ubiquitous 21-year-old outfit has seen losses of about $17 billion during this year’s tech
Bonobos co-founder Andy Dunn is taking public his secret battle with bipolar disorder
Andy Dunn, the co-founder and former CEO of the men’s clothing company Bonobos, has something new to sell: his life story. It might just save another life. In “Burn Rate,” hitting bo