Latest from Connie Loizos
FTC Chair Lina Khan on startups, scaling, and ”innovations in potential lawbreaking”
FTC Chair Lina Khan was the youngest person appointed to her position when she assumed the job in 2021. But once her term ends in September — after which she’ll…
Carta’s valuation to be cut by $6.5 billion in upcoming secondary sale
Carta, a once-high-flying Silicon Valley startup that loudly backed away from one of its businesses earlier this year, is working on a secondary sale that would value the company at…
A venture capital firm looks back on changing norms, from board seats to backing rival startups
Last month, one of the Bay Area’s better-known early-stage venture capital firms, Uncork Capital, marked its 20th anniversary with a party in a renovated church in San Francisco’s SoMa neighborhood,…
The ups and downs of investing in Europe, with VCs Saul Klein and Raluca Ragab
When it comes to the world of venture-backed startups, some issues are universal and some are very dependent on where the startups and its backers are located. It’s something we…
Foursquare, the location-focused outfit that in 2020 merged with Factual, another location-focused outfit, is joining the parade of companies to make cuts to one of its biggest cost centers –…
Human composting and timber marketplaces: Talking ‘industrial’ VC with investor Dayna Grayson
While the venture world is abuzz over generative AI, Dayna Grayson, a longtime venture capitalist who five years ago co-founded her own firm, Construct Capital, has been focused on comparatively…
xAI, Elon Musk’s OpenAI rival, is closing on $6B in funding and X, his social network, is already one of its shareholders
xAI, Elon Musk’s 10-month-old competitor to the AI phenom OpenAI, is raising $6 billion on a pre-money valuation of $18 billion, according to one trusted source close to the deal.…
Rippling’s Parker Conrad on the company’s new round, new SF lease and, also, its newest critic
Last week, TechCrunch broke the news that the workforce management software outfit Rippling was on the cusp of closing a new, $200 million round of funding at a hefty $13.4…
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HR startup Rippling is in discussions to raise at a $13.4B valuation, up from $11.25B
Late-stage HR tech startup Rippling is raising new capital. The company’s new round, which has not yet closed, would inject $200 million into Rippling with another $670 million worth of shares being sold by existing stockholders, according to two people familiar with the deal. This will be Rippling’s Series F…
Mahbod Moghadam, who rose to fame as the co-founder of Genius, has died
Mahbod Moghadam, the controversial, never-boring co-founder of Genius and Everipedia, as well as an angel investor, passed away last month at age 41 owing to “complications from a recurring brain…
IVP’s Eric Liaw talks Klarna controversy, sticky successions, and why the great valuation reset doesn’t really matter
When IVP recently announced the closing of its 18th fund, I called Eric Liaw, a longtime general partner with the growth-stage firm, to ask a few questions. For starters, wringing…
GGV Capital is no more, as partners announce two separate brands
The VCs who long ran GGV Capital have settled on two new brands, roughly six months after announcing they would split their U.S. and Asia operations.
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Bumble’s new CEO talks about her critical mission: to spice things up at the company
The bigger concern for Bumble is user fatigue. People aren’t downloading dating apps as enthusiastically as they once were, which means less subscription revenue.
Marissa Mayer’s startup just rolled out photo sharing and event planning apps, and the internet isn’t sure what to think
When Marissa Mayer co-founded a startup six years ago in Palo Alto, California, expectations were sky high for the former Yahoo CEO and early Google employee. When that startup, Sunshine,…
VC Arjun Sethi talks a big game about selling his company-picking strategies to other investors; he says they’re buying it
Arjun Sethi speaks with the confidence of someone who knows more than other people, or at least knows that sounding highly confident can shape perception. Either way, when he tells…
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VC Trae Stephens says he has a bunker (and much more) in talk about Founders Fund and Anduril
Last night, for an evening hosted by StrictlyVC, this editor sat down with Trae Stephens, a former government intelligence analyst turned early Palantir employee turned investor at Founders Fund, where Stephens has co-founded two companies of his own. One of these is Anduril, the buzzy defense tech company that is…
Family tragedy for former YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki
It’s every parent’s worst nightmare. Earlier this week, the 19-year-old son of former YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki, was found dead at UC Berkeley of an apparent drug overdose, according to…
A peek inside Alphabet’s $7B growth-stage investing arm, CapitalG
Almost a year ago, Alphabet’s growth stage venture arm, CapitalG, named partner Laela Sturdy as its new head, just as the unit’s founder, David Lawee, stepped down. Few were surprised…
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How VCs can assess and attract winners in a landscape that’s now crowded with AI startups
Felicis, the 16-year-old Bay Area-based early-stage venture firm, has a reputation for investing globally. Indeed, firm founder Aydin Senkut — who spent a handful of years at Google as a product manager in its earlier days — was born in Turkey and talks often of the hustle he sees in…
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Mamoon Hamid and Ilya Fushman of Kleiner Perkins: ‘More than 80%’ of pitches now involve AI
Last week, at a StrictlyVC event in San Francisco, we sat down with Mamoon Hamid and Ilya Fushman, two longtime VCs whose paths first crossed as children in Frankfurt, Germany, and who were brought in to reboot the storied venture firm Kleiner Perkins roughly six years ago. They’ve seemingly accomplished…
VCs Elad Gil and Sarah Guo on the risks and rewards of funding AI: ‘The biggest threat to us in the short run is other people’
Last week, at our first StrictlyVC evening of the year, prominent AI investors Elad Gil and Sarah Guo joined us in San Francisco to talk about how they think about…
Y Combinator President Garry Tan publishes a menacing tweet before deleting it, apologizing: ‘Die slow motherf*ckers’
Garry Tan, whose success in Silicon Valley has likely inspired many of the founders he mentors, is once again attracting attention for his posts on the social platform X. On…
TechCrunch’s newsletters are changing — here’s what you need to know
We know your time is precious, so beginning next week, we’re going to make it a lot easier for you to read our best stuff.
Earlier today, Forbes reported that venture capitalist, operator and entrepreneur Keith Rabois is returning to Khosla Ventures (KV), the Silicon Valley outfit where he cut his teeth as a full-time…
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Carta exits secondary trading following credibility hit
Roughly 72 hours after a prominent startup customer complained that Carta was misusing information with which it was entrusted — scaring many of Carta’s tens of thousands of other customers in the process — Carta is exiting the business that landed it in trouble with the customer. Carta co-founder and…
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Carta, the cap table management outfit, is accused of unethical tactics by a prominent startup
Carta, an ambitious 14-year-old Silicon Valley outfit, has gone through numerous iterations over time, originally inviting investors, startups and employees to use its software to manage their cap tables and later aspiring to evolve into a “private stock market for companies,” as founder Henry Ward once told TechCrunch. As he…
Insights from former Finnish PM Sanna Marin on Russia, women’s leadership, and AI
Earlier this month, at the Slush tech conference in Helsinki, this editor had the opportunity to sit down with Sanna Marin, the popular former prime minister of Finland who became…
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The convicts of Silicon Valley, 2023 edition
Silicon Valley can be a place of great power and riches, but the smallest thing can bring it crashing down. From deepfaked phone calls with bankers on the line to mountains of lies that grew out of control, these once-darlings of Silicon Valley were no match for the law. Here’s…
A first look at nine new IndieBio NY companies that will present to VCs next month
It was pure coincidence, but months before the pandemic took hold around the world, IndieBio — a startup accelerator devoted to startups using biology to solve large problems — expanded…
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Seed-stage investors react to higher hurdles for Series A funding
The hurdle for Series A funding is a lot higher than it was a year ago — and investors in seed-stage companies are having to respond. They don’t have much choice if they want their startups to survive. When the market abruptly turned in the spring of 2022, late-stage companies…