DIRS.INFO The most relevant business & tech news

☆ $3 billion customer-management startup Podium laid off 12% of staff
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-02 | by ( Rosalie Chan | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

The $3 billion customer-management startup Podium laid off 12% of its staff Thursday. The $3 billion customer-management startup Podium laid off 12% of its staff Thursday. Podium, based in Lehi, Utah, has raised $201 million from venture-capital firms including Accel, IVP, and Summit Partners, according to PitchBook. The company, which helps businesses communicate with their customers, had about 1,300 employees, according to PitchBook. Affected employees learned they were laid off through email or when they were no longer able to access their work tools.

☆ Andreessen Horowitz's buzzy tech publication Future is shutting down
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-01 | by ( Rob Price | Melia Russell | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +12 min

A source familiar with Andreessen Horowitz's content strategy confirmed to Insider that Future is shutting down. An Andreessen Horowitz spokesperson declined to comment on the record. Joe LonsdaleIn this new climate, many tech and venture firms' media strategy has shifted from glorified marketing to a more full-fledged editorial operation. In 2021, an army of more than two dozen marketers at Andreessen Horowitz doubled down on this approach. Disclosure: Melia Russell's husband is a former employee of Andreessen Horowitz.

☆ VC firm IVP warns startups to 'surgically pare down expenses' with a looming recession. Here's the deck it shared with execs.
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-24 | by ( Melia Russell | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

In a new presentation, the VC firm IVP tells startup leaders to batten down the hatches. Insider has exclusive access to the firm's deck, titled, "Thriving in a Bear Market: A CFO's Guide." That has ripple effects for venture-backed, private companies that rely on outside investment to operate and grow. In the first half of 2022, venture firms raised $83 billion in new funds — the highest amount over a six-month period for the industry, according to a recent report by Silicon Valley Bank. "The market environment is definitely going to favor companies with real market differentiation," Vashee said.

☆ DeepL, a hot AI translation startup pioneered by a former Googler, is closing in on a round above $100 million led by Netflix-backer IVP near a $1 billion valuation
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-16 | by ( Callum Burroughs | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Translation startup DeepL is closing in on a new funding round led by US giant IVP, sources say. DeepL previously sold a portion of its business to US investor Benchmark. Like Google Translate, DeepL offers a free translation service powered by artificial intelligence. A small test run by Insider indicates that DeepL is, at least in some cases, more intuitive than Google. DeepL previously sold a 13.6% portion of its business to US fund Benchmark and Btov Partners in 2018, according to reporting by Slator.

☆ After FTX's collapse, VCs across industries are finally admitting to crypto's failures — and they're preparing for 'more blows to come'
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-14 | by ( April Joyner | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +8 min

Investors stuck to crypto startups they considered "safe bets," but FTX's failure challenges that idea. Crypto startups held yacht parties through the summer and into early fall at events such as NFT.NYC and Messari Mainnet. "The whole crypto space is a high-leverage space, and it's susceptible to cascading failures." The events of the past week are unlikely to whet risk-averse LPs' appetite for crypto, investors told Insider. Even so, several investors who have backed crypto startups told Insider that despite the industry's recent travails, they remain believers in the technology.

☆ Tiger Global, Coatue, and other hedge funds tried to upend venture capital. It backfired and now they're 'licking their wounds,' VCs say.
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-11 | by ( Darius Rafieyan | Melia Russell | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +10 min

New investments by Tiger Global and Coatue fell 60% and 67%, respectively, this year. "They're licking their wounds," said Nihal Mehta, a founding partner at Eniac Ventures, whose portfolio includes the marketing-tech startup Attentive, a crown jewel of Tiger Global and Coatue's portfolios. Speaking to founders, Mehta hears crossover funds come up less and less in conversation, and partners at some crossover funds tell him they're pulling back from new deals, though crossover funds haven't disappeared altogether. Crossover funds found themselves with billions of dollars in deployed capital and few exits in sight. Last month, Tiger Global and Coatue both revealed they are seeking to raise new funds earmarked for early-stage startup deals.

☆ A Voyager investor says the FTX meltdown puts the bankrupt crypto lender's bailout in jeopardy, with $1.3 billion of customer assets on the line
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-10 | by ( April Joyner | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

FTX US, led by Sam Bankman-Fried, was set to buy the assets of the bankrupt crypto-lender Voyager. Bankman-Fried tweeted Thursday that FTX US, which is a separate company from FTX, was "100% liquid." FTX US' bailout was set to offer some relief to Voyager's customers, who faced the complete loss of their crypto assets, with claims of about $1.8 billion in total. Furthermore, some FTX customers had reported issues making withdrawals from their accounts, raising concerns about FTX's liquidity. On Thursday, Bankman-Fried estimated that FTX only had 80% available in liquid assets of the roughly $5 billion in assets customers withdrew on Sunday.

☆ Sequoia Capital took a $213 million bath on FTX after the crypto exchange imploded. That's not that bad, VCs say.
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-10 | by ( Melia Russell | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +6 min

FTX investor Sequoia Capital has marked down its position to $0 as the crypto exchange crumbles. Sequoia Capital now views its $213.5 million investment in FTX as worthless as the crypto exchange teeters on the brink of collapse after an eleventh-hour deal to salvage the business fell apart. "Somehow Sequoia capital turned a FTX write down to zero into a humblebrag. It invested $150 million into FTX through its third growth fund, which Sequoia said totaled less than 3% of that fund's capital commitments. In its letter to investors, Sequoia said it does "extensive research and thorough diligence" on every investment it makes.

☆ Cribl: 2022 Top Startups for the Enterprise
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-07 | by ( Cnbc.Com Staff | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +1 min

Co-founders Clint Sharp, Dritan Bitincka and Ledion Bitincka left their jobs at data sleuth Splunk to start Cribl in 2017 with the goal of making data observability — a broad enterprise concept that focuses on the health and state of an organization's data — a possibility for any firm. The company gives customers control and visibility over their data through accessible consumption pricing, a model that allows customers to pay according to the amount of services used. In May 2022, Cribl closed a $150 million Series D funding round. The company is valued at $2.5 billion. Today, Cribl products are utilized by companies including 7-Eleven, Domino's, New Balance and Shutterfly.

☆ Monte Carlo: 2022 Top Startups for the Enterprise
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-07 | by ( Cnbc.Com Staff | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +1 min

Companies and their data analytics teams have more information to work with than ever before, but how do they know the data flowing through pipelines and across enterprise stacks is reliable? That's a question that led to the birth of the "data observability" niche, and has helped to turn some startups quickly into big companies, such as Databricks, and also pushed fellow "Top Startups" company Monte Carlo to a billion-dollar plus valuation. Founded by two executives who previously worked in customer experience and data security, Monte Carlo helps companies ensure that the increasing flow of data isn't only secure, but is available across an enterprise in real-time, leading to improved customer understanding and prevention of costly mistakes. Monte Carlo customers include companies across many sectors of the economy, from JetBlue to Affirm , Autotrader, Compass , Asics, GoodRx , and Shipt. Investors include some of Silicon Valley's largest VC firms, including Accel, GGV Capital and IVP.

☆ For the first time in years, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter are 'weak' and VCs are eager to back alternatives, they say.
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-28 | by ( Darius Rafieyan | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +6 min

VCs see an opportunity to back the next big social network and take on existing giants. "Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, they're weak, and they're just losing that edge," one investor said. And there may be room for even more young social media companies to rise. For her, identity verification and responsible content moderation are non-negotiable in any new social platform that she backs. "There is a sense of decline for some of these large social media platforms," Lee said.

☆ Here's how generative-AI startup Jasper raised $125 million in Series A funding from Insight Partners and became a unicorn
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-18 | by ( Stephanie Palazzolo | Emilia David | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Jasper uses artificial intelligence to create content from marketing copy and blog posts to images. The Texas startup has raised $125 million in Series A funding, led by Insight Partners. The startup runs on GPT-3, an AI model from its fellow generative-AI company OpenAI. For instance, in addition to online blog posts and marketing content, Jasper can feed user-generated content back into the model to refine its output over time. The startup also trains its model on content that users "favorite" or copy onto clipboards to improve quality.

☆ Exclusive: How Pigment, a business-planning startup, raised $65 million in Series B funding from IVP and Meritech Capital without a pitch deck
▼ + stars: | 2022-09-28 | by ( Stephanie Palazzolo | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Pigment's cofounder shared how the team raised $65 million in Series B funding without a pitch deck. That inspired her to cofound Pigment, a startup based in France that recently raised $65 million in Series B funding from IVP and Meritech Capital. The capital was an extension of a Series B round in late 2021. Pigment — which competes against software companies like SAP, Oracle, Workday, and Anaplan — raised $73 million in Series B funding led by Greenoaks in November. Crespo told Insider that the company hadn't been planning to raise additional funding but was contacted by IVP and Meritech, which had heard about Pigment from customers.

Search resuls for: "IVP"

13 mentions found