Hi, happy Monday, everyone! We’re on the beautiful campus of MIT today, in between a few on-stage interviews. We’ll be traveling for much of tomorrow, so you might be receiving the low-calorie version of StrictlyVC, but we’ll be back in full swing by Wednesday.:) Top News in the A.M. It’s time for bitcoin traders to batten […]
Politics
Why Do We Even Care About Peter Thiel’s Politics?
Peter Thiel is supporting Donald Trump, and it’s time to for Silicon Valley to take sides. Is it for Peter Thiel or against him? Relatedly, should Y Combinator president Sam Altman resign if he can’t bring himself to fire Thiel as a part-time partner? These were actual questions posed publicly yesterday, I’m sorry to note. […]
The SEC Gets the Case It’s Been Waiting for in Silicon Valley
Not so long ago, Theranos was flying high, its claims that it was upending the medical diagnostics business largely accepted by the public. Behind the scenes, however, some employees were growing wary of those claims, with at least one eventually reaching out to regulators to report the company’s failure to report its questionable test results. […]
In Supreme Court Rulings, Startups Win
Yesterday, the Supreme Court made life a lot better for venture-backed startups, whether they know it yet or not. In a case called Octane, the justices ruled 9-0 that the U.S. Circuit Court for the Federal Circuit — where every patent appeal in the country eventually winds up — had imposed overly restrictive standards for companies […]
Can Jack Hidary Hack New York’s Mayoral Race?
Jack Hidary is a wealthy tech entrepreneur who wants to be mayor of New York City and is running as an independent. At first blush, he seems to have much in common with New York’s billionaire mayor Mike Bloomberg, a Democrat turned Republican turned independent. But Bloomberg spent $73 million of his own money to […]