cowboy ventures

Consumer tech is bound for a comeback among unicorns, but maybe not just yet

Cowboy Ventures predicts that "given the hard shift to enterprise," we can "hope and expect more exciting consumer unicorns will be born in coming years."

Welcome back to the Unicorn Club, 10 years later

Since 2013, there were 532 companies that joined the Unicorn Club.

10 years on, Aileen Lee feels the unicorn’s legacy is far from over

From which metrics she thinks it's a good idea to focus on to her favorite memorabilia, the creator of the "unicorn" moniker, Aileen Lee looks back on ten years of this very special creature.

Charting the last 10 years of the unicorn era

We've witnessed an incredible unicorn stampede over the last 10 years.

10 years since the term ‘unicorn’ was coined, we’ve almost come full circle

From a handful of billion-dollar startups to a stampede to an aging cohort — what an insane, fun, and wild decade it has been.

Cowboy Ventures goes bigger with $260M across two new funds, including an opportunity fund

Cowboy Ventures, the now-10-year-old, Bay Area-based seed-stage focused fund founded by renowned investor Aileen Lee, has closed on two new funds totaling $260 million in capital commitments. The outf

A lot of fintechs ‘have to fix their business models,’ say VCs who invest in fintech

In recent years, working for, or banking with, a traditional financial institution was decidedly uncool. Far cooler was working for or banking with one of the many fintech startups that seemed to thum

Hone raises $30M to grow its corporate learning platform

One of the co-founders of FanDuel has raised $30 million to fund a startup — Hone — that’s providing a platform for “enterprise-scale,” exec-level learning and developmen

Coming out of COVID, investors lose their taste for board meetings

Two weeks ago, longtime venture capitalist Chris Olsen, a general partner and cofounder of Drive Capital in Columbus, Ohio, settled into his seat for a portfolio company’s board meeting. It turn

How to Raise First Dollars in a Difficult Market: The Venture Perspective

Raising venture capital is rarely an easy lift for startups, but 2022 is turning out to be a more challenging year than we’ve seen for some time. As venture capital continues its slowdown after an a

Sarah Guo joins the wave of women leaving venture jobs to launch their own funds

Sarah Guo is the latest woman to depart their position at a venture capital firm with plans to launch one of their own. On Tuesday, Guo announced on Twitter and LinkedIn that she is stepping down from

Mutiny, which personalizes website copy and headlines using AI, raises $50M

Advertising, particularly online advertising, isn’t a surefire way to bolster business. A report from ecommerce analytics platform Glew drives the point home: In 2015, 75% of retailers that spen

Arcol aims to do for building design what Figma did for UI design

The company is building web-based tools that can turn a 2D sketch into a 3D representation so that someone can design anything from a small building to a skyscraper.

Passbase gets $10M as it refocuses its ID verification tools on crypto

Digital identity startup Passbase, which offers SDKs for running remote identity checks, has raised $10 million in Series A funding as it dials up attention on crypto compliance — touting tools

Aileen Lee and Rachel Carlson walk through Guild Education’s early pitch deck

You can't raise more than $370 million on a good idea alone. But you can raise a seed round worth a few million from Aileen Lee with that and a few other critical ingredients.

Hone, a human-powered platform for leadership training, nabs $16 million

As the Great Resignation builds, corporations and organizations are looking for bigger and better ways to retain talent. One of the most popular ways to do that, right now, is to offer to employees be

Independent worker network Contra goes commission-free as it secures new NEA-led capital

Contra provides tools for independent workers to build a professional identity and manage their work from inquiry to project scope discussion to signing a contract to getting paid.

Technical interview platform Byteboard spins out of Google’s Area 120, takes on new funding

Byteboard, a service designed to replace the pre-onsite technical interview part of a company’s hiring process with a web-based alternative, will be spinning out of Google, TechCrunch learned an

Aileen Lee and Guild Education’s Rachel Carlson will share how to get to yes on Extra Crunch Live

Aileen Lee is one of the most prestigious and successful venture capitalists of the past decade. Before starting her own firm in Cowboy Ventures, Lee was a partner at KPCB for more than 12 years. Her

Extra Crunch roundup: RapidSOS EC-1, how to prep for an M&A exit, inside Genki Forest

In a four-part series, Managing Editor Danny Crichton tells the story of RapidSOS, the company that processes more than half of all 911 calls made each year in the U.S.
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