Many Americans learned through Lending Club that they can refinance their credit card debt online; now, the lending marketplace is hoping they’ll start refinancing their automotive loans using its platform, too. Indeed, though automotive lending is a massive market, car refinance is far smaller owing to a lack of awareness, suggests Lending Club CEO Scott Sanborn, with whom we […]
Entrepreneurs
Watch: Marc Andreessen on Twitter, Secondary Sales, Pulling the Plug, and More
On Thursday night, at a StrictlyVC insider event, I interviewed famed entrepreneur-investor Marc Andreessen, whose most recent headline-grabbing maneuver (intentionally or not) was to take a Twitter break one week ago. I talked with Andreessen about why he has had enough of the social media platform for now, along with a lot of other things. For […]
SurveyMonkey CEO Zander Lurie: IPO, Yes; 2017, Not Likely
On Thursday night, at a StrictlyVC event at SurveyMonkey in Palo Alto, this editor sat down with CEO Zander Lurie to learn more about the direction of the 17-year-old company, known for the roughly 90 million surveys that the outfit and its customers create for their various constituents each month (and whose average order volume is $300, says Lurie). I was particularly interested in Lurie, […]
True Ventures Just Led a $12 Million Investment in Still-Stealth Brava
If you’re curious to learn about the latest investment out of San Francisco-based True Ventures, you’ll have to be patient. Though the firm is disclosing that it has led a whopping $12 million Series A round in new startup Brava, details about the startup are scarce. What we do know: Brava is a new IoT company that […]
NFX Guild Just Introduced 13 Buzzy Young Startups to Investors
The young Bay Area accelerator NFX Guild hosted its third “demo day” yesterday at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, and the attendees were a veritable who’s who of venture and angel investing. It wasn’t necessarily a surprise that roughly 200 top investors were sitting elbow to elbow to see the presenting companies. NFX […]
At Pear Demo Day in Palo Alto, 13 Companies to Watch
As dozens of Teslas baked in the sprawling Palo Alto parking lot of a local law firm yesterday, 100 top investors packed into a high-ceilinged meeting room. There, they listened as 13 startups deliver four-minute presentations about why they’re worth watching. The companies — all of them roughly six months old or younger, and all led by current college students […]
AngelList Deals Will Soon Be Private (and Other Updates You’ll Want to Know)
Earlier this week, we sat down with Naval Ravikant, cofounder of five-year-old AngelList, a popular platform that matches startups with early-stage investors. Three million people, including 50,000 accredited investors, have created profiles on AngelList since its founding, and AngelList now uses that information to pair startups with capital, pair startup employees with employers and, more […]
Naval Ravikant on China Money into Silicon Valley: This Trickle Could Become a Tsunami
AngelList, the online platform that matches startups with early-stage investors, has grown by leaps and bounds since its 2010 founding — and so have its ambitions. In fact, the company, which already bills itself as both the biggest seed-stage firm in the world, and the world’s largest hiring platform for startups, also aims to become the biggest venture fund in […]
VC Charlie O’Donnell on Building Up Community, Cheaply
Brooklyn Bridge Ventures, a nearly four-year-old, seed-stage venture firm that’s solely run by founder and general partner, Charlie O’Donnell, just closed its second fund with $15 million, up from an $8.3 million debut fund in early 2014. Yesterday, we talked with O’Donnell about what the process was like, whether the New York venture scene will be impacted by the $3 billion […]
Several Key Rothenberg Ventures’ Employees Have Left the Firm
Several high-level employees at the early-stage venture firm Rothenberg Ventures have recently left, we’ve learned. Among them is Tommy Leep, a partner and the head of Rothenberg’s San Francisco office, who left last month after spending two-and-a-half years with the firm. (A former product manager at Intuit, Leep spent the previous two years as “chief connector” […]