All kinds of teams are raising venture funds these days, so don’t be surprised to see more investors from corporate venture firms decide to create their own outfits, too. They might look to Counterpart Ventures for inspiration. Founded by Patrick Eggen and Joe Saijo, the three-year-old, San Francisco-based outfit just closed a $110 million fund […]
Kevin Ryan’s AlleyCorp is giving these physicians $100 million to invest in healthcare
Kevin Ryan — the New York-based investor and entrepreneur who first rose to prominence as CEO of the early online ad business DoubleClick — could have launched or joined a traditional venture firm many years ago. Instead, he has launched one company after another with largely his own capital at the outset to get them […]
VC Peter Relan helped launched Discord; now he’s “brewing” up two new incubators
Peter Relan is not exactly a household name, but he has seen a lot over the course of his career and enjoyed a fair amount of success. A Stanford grad who logged time at Hewlett Packard and Oracle before becoming the CTO of the ill-fated, bubble-era company Webvan, Relan has, in more recent years, become […]
Should Mark Zuckerberg be scared of Peter Thiel?
Unless you’ve been in a cave over the last week, you’ve likely read a review or some discussion about The Contrarian, a new book about billionaire investor Peter Thiel by longtime Bloomberg Businessweek features editor and tech reporter Max Chafkin. It isn’t surprising. Thiel has become an increasingly powerful figure in the U.S., and Chafkin […]
Latin America finds a champion in SoftBank Group International CEO Marcelo Claure
Since first announcing it was planting a stake in the ground in the region in early 2019, SoftBank — from its own balance sheet, it says — has plugged more than $5 billion into the region, and it expects that number to top $8 billion by year’s end.
SEC Regional Director Erin Schneider talks SPACs, Coinbase and what startups could do better
Schneider shares insight into her personal thinking about a range of issues including crypto lending, SPACs, NFTs and what startups can do to stay out of regulators’ cross hairs.
Microsoft now more focused on ‘killing Zoom’ than Slack, says Stewart Butterfield
“I do feel like that preoccupation has shifted. I think Microsoft believes that in order to kill Slack, they’re going to have to kill Zoom first.”
VC Mark Suster: “The bet we’re making now is on founder skills,” not customers or products
We recently caught up with longtime VC Mark Suster of L.A.-based Upfront Ventures, which last raised both an early-stage fund and a growth stage fund several years ago and, according to regulatory filings, is in the market right now, though Suster couldn’t discuss either owing to SEC regulations. We did talk about a wide range […]
SEC Regional Director Erin Schneider is joining us at Disrupt
If ever there was a time when working at the Securities and Exchange Commission was a dull affair, that’s no longer true. The federal agency that’s responsible for protecting investors and maintaining fair and orderly functioning of our securities markets is busier than ever, thanks to the rise of SPACs, cryptocurrencies and new rules around […]
SoftBank’s Marcelo Claure is coming to Disrupt next week
SoftBank has been on a tear in Latin America. The Japanese investment conglomerate just announced it has launched its second Latin America-focused fund with a $3 billion capital commitment from the company that may grow as the fund explores “options to raise additional capital,” according to SoftBank. The vehicle follows hot on the heels of […]