It’s been a tough year for tech startups globally. These struggles have manifested in layoffs, down rounds and complete shutdowns caused by current market conditions, utter mismanagement or fraud. This August, SoftBank sued one of its portfolio companies, IRL, a social media platform poised to become an event organizing alternative for Gen Zs, for fraud. Earlier…
One of Silicon Valley’s most prominent investment firms will face government scrutiny over its investments in China. Sequoia Capital has received a polite but pointed request from Congress to enter into more detail on how it will prevent further U.S. investment dollars from advancing Chinese interests. Sequoia announced in June that it would be splitting…
Flanks, a company that has developed an API for automated wealth management services, secured Series A capital of $8 million to democratize wealth management in Europe. Earlybird Venture Capital led this round, and was joined by existing investors JME Ventures & 4Founders Capital. Scalapay cofounder Raffaele Terrene and Upvest CEO and co-founder Martin Kassing participated…
Last year’s techwide reckoning continues. The tech industry has seen more than 240,000 jobs lost in 2023, a total that’s already 50% higher than last year and growing. Earlier this year, mass workforce reductions were driven by the biggest names in tech like Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Yahoo, Meta and Zoom. Startups across many sectors also…
Venture capitalist Marc Andreessen posted a manifesto on the a16z website, calling for “techno-optimism” in a frenzied, 5,000-word blog post that somehow manages to re-invent Reaganomics, propose the colonization of outer space, and unironically answer a question with the phrase “QED.” Andreessen’s vision of techno-optimism could seem inspiring: he imagines a Libertarian-esque world where technology…
The global venture capital landscape looks quite depressing at this point in time, but fortunately, we’re seeing new and encouraging signs of life in select markets. Europe is one such market, given that the value of venture deals on the continent has been steadily crawling higher this year. Latin America, new data indicates, could be…
Good morning! We have lots of good stuff for you this Tuesday, so let’s dig right in. Up first, we surveyed six investors who are placing bets on AI. We wanted to know how startups should begin building tools for AI; whether startup-focused AI work is defensible; and how tech companies are thinking about monetization….
Everyone more or less agrees that 2023 is going to be effectively written off in VC-land, as the feeding frenzy of the last few years leaves everyone exhausted, valuations flattened or crashed, and exit market remain more or less closed. VCs appear to be using this period to get their house in order for the…
Moving from one country to another is difficult in many ways, not the least of which involves starting over financially. Nova Credit, which started out as a graduate research project out of Stanford University about seven years ago, was founded to help immigrants overcome the obstacles of applying for things like apartments or loans with…
Conditions appear to be shifting favorably for India’s Swiggy. The food delivery startup — backed by SoftBank, Prosus and Accel — saw its paper valuation slashed by more than a half this year as investors marked their holdings largely in response to the dwindling market conditions. The startup, valued at $10.7 billion in a funding…