Tired of being monitored by your company while wanting to dish with colleagues about said company? Or maybe you’re curious about what people with similar work experience are making at other companies? Blind, a two-year-old app founded in South Korea and newly available in the U.S., may be just the thing for you. Its big […]
DCM
Quick Chat with DCM’s Jeff Lee
By Semil Shah Jeff Lee joined the venture firm DCM as a principal last year after running his own business for the previous four years. We caught up with him recently to see how things are going, and what insights into DCM — a 19-year-old firm that invests in the U.S., China, and Japan — […]
Yik Yak: The Startup in Twitter’s Rearview Mirror
Yik Yak, an app that acts like a local bulletin board, allowing users within a 1.5-mile range to post to it anonymously, hasn’t received nearly as much press as other anonymous apps, including Whisper and Secret. It’s seeing much more user pick-up, though. As of last night, Yik Yak was the 27th most downloaded free […]
Made in Japan: Osuke Honda on the Evolving Startup Scene
Osuke Honda is having a good week. In 2010, the DCM partner bet on Kakao Talk, Korea’s biggest messaging app, and on Wednesday, Kakao acquired Korea’s second biggest Internet company, Daum Communications, which was already public. Now the combined company, Daum Kakao, is expected to list on the Korean stock exchange in a couple of […]
StrictlyVC: March 19, 2014
Good Wednesday morning! We know some of you didn’t receive yesterday’s email; we’re not sure why but here’s a link with our apologies in case you missed it. —– Top News in the A.M. The hedge fund Fortress Investment Group, along with venture firmsBenchmark and Ribbit Capital, are buying a stake in Pantera Bitcoin Partners, a hedge fund that buys and […]
Google Glass Meets Healthcare in Augmedix
It’s early days for Google Glass, and an almost absurd minefield of challenges lie ahead of it. But that’s not stopping a small number of startups from springing up around healthcare-related applications that can arguably cut costs, provide doctors more time with patients, and improve health outcomes. Augmedix — a 20-month-old, San Francisco-based startup that’s announcing […]
DCM Reboots with a New Fund and Three Fewer GPs, Including Dixon Doll
In case you haven’t noticed, the global, early-stage venture firm DCM has been killing it in recent years. Since 2009, 15 of its portfolio companies have exited, many through highly successful IPOs. For example, DCM owned 20 percent of the China-based online retailer VIPshop when it went public in 2012 with a market cap of […]
Will Alibaba Draw VCs Back to China?
Although the American financial press seems preoccupied with Twitter’s impending IPO, Alibaba’s IPO could be an even bigger story. The China-based e-commerce juggernaut, which could go public as early as the first quarter of 2014, racked up revenues of $1.38 billion for the quarter ended in March, and analysts estimate that the company could be worth anywhere […]