Much has been written about the ambitions of AltSchool, a San Francisco-based startup that’s aiming to change the way that school children learn. Its big idea, broadly, is that personalized learning is far more effective than the standardized education that most students are stuck with today. As important, personalized learning is scalable, believes AltSchool, which […]
Entrepreneurs
A Startup That Pays Cash to Buy Homes Now Offers Money-Back Guarantee
Opendoor, a two-year-old, San Francisco-based startup is a swing-for-the fences type of bet during a time when the most ambitious startups are suddenly less fashionable than they once were. That’s not crimping the company’s style. In fact, Opendoor, which is on a mission to make it simple to buy and sell houses online, just added another layer of uncertainty onto its […]
For Peter Thiel, Revenge on Gawker May Have Been a Dish Best Served Cold
According to a Forbes report published last night, billionaire investor Peter Thiel has been quietly funding the case that Hulk Hogan (whose real name is Terry Bollea) has brought against the online news organization Gawker. Bollea has won for now. A Florida jury awarded Bollea $140 million in March over a sex tape that Gawker published in 2012. And […]
For Online Lenders, It’s Suddenly Touch and Go
A year ago, privately held online lenders like Prosper, SoFi and Avant looked all but certain to go public at the same unicorn valuations their venture investors had assigned them — if not higher. They were seemingly reshaping the student, consumer and small business lending business. The market they’re chasing is enormous: The U.S. consumer […]
Cyan Banister Has a New Startup, and It’s Looking for Seed Funding
Cyan Banister realized long ago that Zivity, a subscription-based online community of artistic glamour and pin-up photography that she founded in 2007, was never going to be a highly profitable endeavor. That’s okay with her, too. In an interview last week, Banister — known for the many angel investments she and husband Scott Banister have […]
A Strange New Battle Begins Over Who Owns Cruise Automation
A strange new battle over valuable startup equity took another step forward late yesterday afternoon. Jeremy Guillory, a Bay Area mechanical engineer, has filed a cross-complaint against 2.5-year-old Cruise Automation and its longtime CEO, Kyle Vogt. At issue: Guillory says that the self-driving car company — which developed an autopilot system for existing cars and is […]
Ground Delivery Robots — Passing Fancy or Next Wave?
“Every failed on demand startup will reappear as a successful robotics driven business in five to 10 years.” So tweeted Jeremy Conrad, founding partner of the San Francisco-based hardware fund Lemnos Labs, one recent afternoon. Conrad apparently means what he tweets, having investing in Marble, a new, San Francisco-based ground-delivery robot that will focus on […]
Luma, a Sleek WiFi Router, Raises $12.5 Million from Accel and Amazon
Finally, companies have begun to recognize a long overlooked opportunity to develop a next-generation router that looks sleek and is far more user-friendly than the networking hardware of yesteryear. Some contenders are the established companies themselves, including Asus, D-Link and Netgear, all of which have now have bells and whistles like parental controls, the ability […]
Longtime Tesla Motors CIO Jay Vijayan Has Formed Stealth Startup
Jay Vijayan, who spent four years as the Chief Information Officer of Tesla Motors, and who served as its VP of IT and business applications for a year before that, left the company in January to form his own Bay Area startup. Vijayan isn’t talking yet about that company. (StrictlyVC reached out to him last […]
Is Tony Fadell in Nest’s Way?
Last week, we witnessed something fairly remarkable. A major Alphabet executive — Nest Labs CEO Tony Fadell — publicly shamed the cofounder and employees of Dropcam, the connected camera company that Nest had acquired in 2014 for $555 million. In an article in The Information, Fadell said that he didn’t think Dropcam cofounder and CEO […]