Prive, a months-old, San Francisco-based startup founded by two former Uber product managers, just raised $1.7 million in pre-seed funding to create what it describes as a far more customizable e-commerce subscriptions platform for D2C brands. The round was co-led by Patrick Chung and Brandon Farwell at XFund and Ben Ling from Bling Capital, with […]
Andreessen Horowitz just rolled out a $400 million fund that’s expressly for seed deals
Andreessen Horowitz is begun to announce new funds almost as routinely as some startups have begun announcing follow-on rounds. After announcing a third biotech fund in February 2020 that’s currently investing $750 million; a pair of new funds totaling $4.5 billion last November; and, most recently, a new $2.2 billion crypto-focused fund, the firm is […]
The SEC and the DOJ just charged this startup founder with fraud, saying he lied to Tiger and others
Today, both the U.S. Department of Justice and the Securities and Exchange Commission charged Manish Lachwani, cofounder of a mobile app testing company Headspin, with fraud. The SEC says he violated antifraud provisions, and the civil penalties it’s seeking include a permanent injunction, a conduct-based injunction, and to bar him for serving as a corporate […]
Fika Ventures nearly triples its assets under management: ‘It’s definitely a crazy time’
Fika Ventures is a five-year-old, LA-based seed-stage fund that has been funding mostly business-to-business startups, as well as fintech companies and a sprinkling of healthcare IT startups — as long as they don’t involve hardware or FDA approval. The firm’s investors apparently think it’s doing a decent job. After raising $41 million for its debut […]
Stewart Butterfield and Bret Taylor are coming to Disrupt
When Salesforce acquired Slack at the end of last year for almost $28 billion, the deal seemed on its face to make sense, given that the coronavirus pandemic accelerated already growing demand for tools that enable people to work remotely and that roughly 90% of Slack’s enterprise customers already used Salesforce. Today, the question is: How well are things going? […]
Lux Capital’s Deena Shakir is helping judge Startup Battlefield at this year’s Disrupt
Deena Shakir is a partner at Lux Capital, where she looks to invest in technologies that are streamlining analog industries while also improving lives and livelihoods. Among the companies she has backed, for example, are Shiru, which is leveraging computational design to create enhanced proteins to help feed the world; and AllStripes, which aggregates and […]
Arianna Simpson of a16z on Yield Guild Games, the firm’s newest bet on crypto + gaming
As one of four general partners at Andreessen Horowitz who are now investing the venture firm’s third crypto fund, a $2.2 billion vehicle, Arianna Simpson is very focused on how to return that capital and much more to the firm’s limited partners. Toward that end, she has been more focused of late on startups that […]
Fontinalis Partners, the early mobility-focused VC firm, rolls out a third fund
Fontinalis Partners, a 12-year-old, Detroit-based venture firm that was among the earliest early-stage venture outfits to focus squarely on mobility, has collected $104 million in capital commitments for its third and newest fund. Investors in the vehicle include Ford Motor Corp., whose executive chairman, Bill Ford, cofounded Fontinalis and continues to help manage the fund. […]
MobileCoin closes on $66 million in equity in Series B round
MobileCoin, a cryptocurrency business that counts founder Moxie Marlinspike of the encrypting messaging app Signal as its earliest technical advisor, has raised $66 million in Series B funding from a long list of investors, including Alameda Research, Berggruen Holdings, BlockTower Capital, Coinbase Ventures, Marc Benioff’s TIME Ventures, Vy Capital, and earlier backers General Catalyst and […]
Felicis Ventures grows along with its returns, gathering up $900 million across two new funds
Fifteen years ago, Aydin Senkut, a former Google exec, was an outsider in venture circles that didn’t take seriously his ambitions to become a top VC. Now, his firm, Felicis Ventures, is announcing $900 million in capital commitments across two new funds — a $600 million early stage fund and a $300 million opportunities-type fund […]