Latest from Connie Loizos
Featured Article
All VCs say they are founder friendly; Detroit’s Ludlow Ventures takes that to another level
VCs Jonathon Triest and Brett deMarrais see their ability to read people and create longstanding relationships with founders as the primary reason their Detroit-based venture firm, Ludlow Ventures, is celebrating its 15th year in business. It sounds silly, attributing their longevity to what’s sometimes called “Midwestern nice.” But is it…
Vinod Khosla, the Sun Microsystems co-founder turned prominent investor, talks about how AI is changing tech and the risks of government regulation.
Government & Policy
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, 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…
Venture
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,…
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 –…
Venture
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…
AI
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.…
Enterprise
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…
Featured Article
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, 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…
Venture
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…
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.
Featured Article
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.
Startups
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,…
Venture
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…
Featured Article
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…
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…
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…
Featured Article
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…
Featured Article
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…
AI
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…
Startups
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…
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…
Featured Article
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…
Featured Article
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…
Government & Policy
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…
Featured Article
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…
