Elevate, a venture-backed company that uses big data to assess loan applications from people with low credit scores, has been called out as a predatory lender, including in Fortune last year. One reason among others is that the APR on some of its loans is a stunning 349 percent. Yet the company’s predecessor, Think Finance, […]
Sequoia Capital
Longtime Facebook VP Mike Vernal Joins Sequoia Capital
Mike Vernal, a Facebook VP who has spent the last eight-plus years at the company, most recently leading its search, profile, local and developer platform product groups, is leaving the company to become a venture capitalist at Sequoia Capital. Before joining Facebook, Vernal spent nearly six years at Microsoft, first as a product manager and […]
How Goguen’s Suit Hurts Sequoia
The Friday before last, we told you that longtime Sequoia partner Michael Goguen had been slapped with a stomach-turning complaint. At its crux, it accused him of breaching an agreement he’d made to pay $40 million to a woman he’d known for years. Apparently, after paying her $10 million, Goguen concluded that he was within […]
VC Michael Goguen’s Counter-Complaint Calls Accuser an “Exotic Dancer” Looking for a “Payday”
Michael Goguen, the longtime venture capitalist who was asked to leave Sequoia Capital following a stunning breach of contract complaint, yesterday filed a counter complaint in San Mateo County Court that proposes the accusations against him are a myth. In reaction to claims that Goguen sexually and emotionally abused a woman named Amber Laurel Baptiste […]
VC Michael Goguen Hit with Explosive Lawsuit
Michael Goguen, a longtime partner at Sequoia Capital who joined the tony Sand Hill Road firm roughly 20 years ago, has been named in an extraordinary breach of contract lawsuit that accuses him of sexually mistreating a woman he met in 2001, then refusing to honor a financial arrangement they made in more recent years to […]
Everwise, A Mentoring Matchmaker, Raises $8 Million
Everwise, a New York-based company whose online service connects executives willing to volunteer their time with people looking for mentorship — from new entrepreneurs, to budding sports coaches, to people looking to rise through the ranks of Fortune 500 companies — is taking the wraps off the bigger business that it’s been quietly building over […]
The Obstacle to Becoming a VC is Financial, Not Gender, Inequality
Start you own venture firm. That’s the advice that one of the industry’s first women VCs, Kathryn Gould, gave to other women, and it came to mind yesterday as I watched an interview given to journalist Emily Chang this week by longtime Sequoia Capital investor Michael Moritz. As you’ve likely heard by now, Chang asked […]
Piazza, Backed By Sequoia and Others, Looks to Next Round
You might not be familiar with the 25-person, Palo Alto, Ca.-based startup Piazza, but plenty of engineering and other STEM students are aware of it. The online platform where students and instructors come together to learn and teach was first conceived by founder and CEO Pooja Sankar, who as a first-year student at the Stanford Graduate […]
Thumbtack Take Its Own Investor, Google, Head On
At a StrictlyVC event in San Francisco last week, Charles Hudson of SoftTech VC sat down with Sequoia Capital partner Bryan Schreier and Marco Zappacosta to discuss Thumbtack, an online marketplace for hiring workers that Zappacosta co-founded soon after graduating from Columbia University in 2007. Thumbtack is interesting for numerous reasons, including the amount of […]
One of Craigslist’s Biggest Threats to Date: VarageSale
It’s accepted wisdom that nothing and no one can destroy Craiglist, the San Francisco-based local classifieds marketplace whose success has continued unhampered for roughly 20 years, despite many newer entrants with far snazzier technologies. VarageSale might just be different. At least, the 50-person, Toronto-based outfit is gaining enough traction that last month, Sequoia Capital and […]