Michael Levit knows a thing or two about China. As an executive vice president at the e-commerce services company Vendio, he stayed with the company for six months after Alibaba agreed to acquire it in 2010. (It marked the Chinese conglomerate’s first U.S. acquisition.) Levit says it was long enough to develop a consumer shopping project called Dealio that […]
Firm Dynamics
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 […]
Fallen VC Ifty Ahmed Claims Former Employer, Oak, Owes Him Tens of Millions of Dollars
In May of last year, Ifty Ahmed was accused by federal regulators of conning his former employer — the venture capital firm, Oak Investment Partners — out of $65 million. Now, Ahmed suggests, Oak is doing the conning, and he says the stakes are even higher. You might remember Ahmed’s sensational story. According to his […]
Chris Moore of Redpoint Ventures: The Market Feels “In Flux”
Chris Moore is an increasingly rare breed. At the founding of Redpoint Ventures 17 years ago, Moore joined as an associate and — unlike today’s associates who often are cycled in and out of venture firms — he was made a partner. Since then, Moore has led deals in numerous companies that have gone on to sell for sizable amounts, including Auditude, acquired […]
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 […]
CRV Comes Out Against Trump in New Statement
The U.S. presidential elections are fast approaching, and a growing number of VCs who’ve historically shied from making taking sides publicly, are tweeting, talking with reporters, and blogging about who they are backing and why. The early-stage venture firm CRV, formerly known as Charles River Ventures, is taking things a step further, having just published a […]
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 […]
At Rothenberg Ventures, the Rise and Fall of a Virtual Gatsby
Rothenberg Ventures, the four-year-old, San Francisco-based seed-stage venture firm, may be on the brink of implosion, say several sources close to the firm. We reported yesterday that several high-level employees had parted ways with Rothenberg, including its director of finance and the head of its SF office, who happen to be father and son (Tom and Tommy […]
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” […]
Pejman Mar Raises $75 Million for Second Fund, Rebrands as Pear
Likability, intuition, and a strong work ethic is a potent combination in any business, and many in Silicon Valley think seed-stage investors Pejman Nozad and Mar Hershenson have all three in spades. They “complement each other,” says investor Alfred Lin of Sequoia Capital, who invested in the Series A round of DoorDash, the restaurant delivery company, after they seeded it. Indeed, the […]