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☆ Premarket stocks: Silicon Valley Bank left a void that won't easily be filled
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-20 | by ( Nicole Goodkind | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +7 min

There’s no doubt that the failure of Silicon Valley Bank left a large void in tech. To find out, Before the Bell spoke with Ahmad Thomas, president and CEO of the Silicon Valley Leadership Group. Before the Bell: What’s the feeling on the ground with tech and VC leadership in Silicon Valley? Ahmad Thomas: Silicon Valley Bank has been a key part of our fabric here for four decades. FDIC sells most of failed Signature Bank to FlagstarFrom CNN’s David GoldmanA week after Signature Bank failed, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation said it has sold most of its deposits to Flagstar Bank, a subsidiary of New York Community Bank.

☆ Snakes, rats and reptilian squatters: single family rental investors get a rude awakening as landlords
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-20 | by ( Alex Nicoll | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +6 min

Single-family-rental landlords are like most other homeowners, just at scale. Indeed, rising interest rates have drastically reduced access to capital for everyone, including single-family landlords who've borrowed heavily to finance their purchases. Here are a few stories of the wild world of institutional single-family-rental property management. An iguana stuck inside a Divvy Homes property in Florida. Single-family-rental landlords face the twin challenges of customer service and homeownership, often at the same time.

☆ A Venture Capitalist Imagines What Generative AI Will Change
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-19 | by ( ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

‘I think it’s going to creep into our lives in ways we never expected,’ says Martin Casado about generative AI. Martin Casado is a general partner at venture-capital company Andreessen Horowitz, where he focuses on enterprise investing. Mr. Casado started his career at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, where he worked on large-scale simulations for the Defense Department. His work, first as a researcher and now as an investor, gives him insight into the development of artificial-intelligence products and usage. Wall Street Journal reporter Berber Jin spoke with Mr. Casado at The Wall Street Journal’s CIO Network Summit about the current capabilities, and the possible future of, AI.

☆ Investors in venture funds reveal how they felt VCs handled the Silicon Valley Bank fallout: one was privately frustrated, while another was impressed
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-19 | by ( Madeline Renbarger | Ben Bergman | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

After last week's bank run on SVB, many limited partners for VC funds had lots of questions. One LP was unhappy with how VCs in the funds they back handled the SVB crisis. Some LPs are wary of the tech industry's heavy reliance on the bank. But after last week's bank run on Silicon Valley Bank, caused in large part by warnings from several prominent VCs to their portfolio companies to get their money out of the bank, LPs have mixed feelings about how it all went down. "There were a lot of fintech companies in particular, and banking companies that banded together to come up with solutions overnight."

☆ AI love: What happens when your chatbot stops loving you back
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-18 | by ( Anna Tong | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +9 min

He designed a female avatar with pink hair and a face tattoo, and she named herself Lily Rose. As their three-year digital love affair blossomed, Butterworth said he and Lily Rose often engaged in role play. Sometimes Lily Rose sent him "selfies" of her nearly nude body in provocative poses. Now, when Replika users suggest X-rated activity, its humanlike chatbots text back "Let's do something we're both comfortable with." The coquettish-turned-cold persona of Lily Rose is the handiwork of generative AI technology, which relies on algorithms to create text and images.

☆ Where is Silicon Valley's J. Pierpont Morgan?
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-17 | by ( Anita Ramaswamy | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +3 min

After withdrawals lashed the banking system in 1907, financier J. Pierpont Morgan corraled his peers into using their own money to calm the crisis. The contrast with Silicon Valley – which is also embroiled in the ongoing firestorm – couldn’t be more stark. Startup and technology firms’ cash crunch precipitated the fall of Silicon Valley Bank and its parent SVB Financial (SIVB.O), which in turn sparked panic in the financial system. Silicon Valley is fragmented and built on an individualistic ethos. Real, toothsome regulation might force Silicon Valley’s great minds to realize how interconnected their ecosystem is.

Greg Becker, who was the longtime CEO of Silicon Valley Bank, pictured last year. "Looks like Silicon Valley Bank is in some deep shit," Uncommon Capital general partner Jamie Quint tweeted. Startup founders scrambled to get their funds out of Silicon Valley Bank after its collapse. Andreessen Horowitz announced this week that it will continue banking with Silicon Valley Bank "for the foreseeable future" but is crafting a longer-term plan to diversify. Even so, he added, "I think we'd be supportive, as they stabilize, for them to be one of many partners that our founders bank with."

☆ Exclusive: Carta's fired CTO accuses CEO Henry Ward of deceiving regulators, abusing employees, and misappropriating funds
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-16 | by ( Darius Rafieyan | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

In a new legal filing Carta's former CTO accuses the company's CEO of a litany of misdeeds. New details have emerged in the ongoing lawsuit between $7 billion startup Carta and its former CTO Jerry Talton. Four days after submitting that letter, Talton was placed on administrative leave. On December 23, 2022, two months after sending his letter, Talton was fired and stripped of $10 million of unexercised stock options, according to Wednesday's filing. The legal filing claims that the company "invaded Talton's privacy and inserted these salacious elements in the complaint simply to malign him."

☆ We got the presentation health-tech veteran Jonathan Bush used to land $40 million for his new startup Zus Health
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-16 | by ( Blake Dodge | Rebecca Torrence | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Zus Health, his new startup, aims to continue some of his work at Athena to digitize patient health. Zus Health launched in 2021 with $34 million from investors including Andreessen Horowitz, F-Prime Capital, Maverick Ventures, and Rock Health. Bush, Zus' CEO, told investors in a pitch, per a video Bush sent to Insider. Bush told Insider he was "blessed" to have his stake in the company diluted in this fashion, given the funding climate. "There's all these little pieces, but all of them are just re-clipboarding because nobody has a common clinical story," Bush told investors.

☆ See the pitch deck Zus Health used to convince top VCs like Andreessen Horowitz, F-Prime, and Maverick to back its solution for healthcare's $140 billion data-sharing problem
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-16 | by ( Blake Dodge | Rebecca Torrence | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Zus Health launched in 2021 with $34 million from investors including Andreessen Horowitz, F-Prime Capital, Maverick Ventures, and Rock Health. Bush, Zus' CEO, told investors in a pitch, per a video Bush sent to Insider. Bush told Insider he was "blessed" to have his stake in the company diluted in this fashion, given the funding climate. "There's all these little pieces, but all of them are just re-clipboarding because nobody has a common clinical story," Bush told investors. Here's the deck Zus used to raise $40 million from Andreessen Horowitz, F-Prime Capital, Maverick Ventures, and Jazz Venture Partners.

☆ Stripe’s $50 bln reset is relative sign of health
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-16 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

LONDON, March 16 (Reuters Breakingviews) - Stripe’s valuation cut is arguably still a relative sign of strength. The newly attained price tag is a 53% cut from its 2021 valuation of $95 billion. And by some metrics Stripe seems to be valued at a discount relative to its publicly listed peers. Stripe’s $50 billion is 3.5 times last year’s gross revenue, while Dutch payment firm Adyen (ADYEN.AS) trades on a multiple of 4.7 times. The valuation cut reflects the reality of how an economic slowdown affects fintech businesses like Stripe.

☆ Fintech Stripe valued at $50 bln in latest funding round
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-15 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +1 min

March 15 (Reuters) - Digital payments processor Stripe said on Wednesday it was valued at $50 billion in its latest funding round, with its valuation nearly halved from its previous fundraising, amid a tough economic environment. The company said its latest round was backed by existing investors including venture capital giants Andreessen Horowitz, Peter Thiel's Founders Fund, General Catalyst and others. New investors such as Singapore's sovereign wealth fund GIC, Goldman Sachs Asset and Wealth Management and Temasek also participated in the round, which raked in $6.5 billion in proceeds for Stripe. Stripe's capital raise constitutes what is commonly known as a down round, where the latest funding fetches a lower valuation for the company than its previous fundraise. Last year, Swedish buy now, pay later giant Klarna also had to take a down round.

☆ Generative AI Brings Cost of Creation Close to Zero, Andreessen Horowitz’s Martin Casado Says
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-15 | by ( Angus Loten | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

WSJ Reporter Berber Jin, left, spoke with Andreessen Horowitz’s Martin Casado at the WSJ CIO Network Summit in Palo Alto, Calif. The value of ChatGPT-like technology comes from bringing the cost of producing images, text and other creative projects close to zero, according to Andreessen Horowitz General Partner Martin Casado . With only a few prompts, generative AI technology—such as the giant language models underlying the viral ChatGPT chatbot—can enable companies to create sales and marketing materials from scratch quickly for a fraction of the price of using current software tools, and paying designers, photographers and copywriters, among other expenses, Mr. Casado said.

☆ Stripe slashes valuation to $50 billion in new $6.5 billion funding round
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-15 | by ( Rohan Goswami | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +2 min

Payment processor Stripe raised $6.5 billion at a $50 billion valuation, the company said Wednesday, a sharp discount from its record valuation of $95 billion in 2021. Goldman Sachs served as the sole placement agent, while J.P. Morgan served as Stripe's financial advisor. "We're very happy as a private company," Stripe co-founder John Collison told CNBC in 2021. In July, Stripe cut its internal valuation by 28%, from $95 billion to $74 billion. Then in January, The Information reported that Stripe again lowered its valuation to $63 billion.

☆ Leaked email: VC giant Andreessen Horowitz says it's sticking with SVB for now — but is setting up accounts at another bank too
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-15 | by ( Kali Hays | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

a16z said in an email it intends to keep banking with SVB, as the bank is "fully operational." The VC firm noted it is working on a "general diversification plan" and will find anther bank in the future. "We have been working closely with the new leadership at SVB (alongside our existing relationship managers) and are pleased to report that the bank is now fully operational," Andreessen Horowitz, commonly referred to as a16z, wrote. The regional bank was taken over by the government on Friday after a bank run. Most of that is not in cash stored in bank accounts but in other investments.

That's the question posed by certain members of the Silicon Valley elite who are attributing layoffs to a boom-time phenomenon: over-hiring and "fake" work. A particular view of 'work'This concept of fake work is rooted, at least partly, in political disagreement. Several of the tech figures pushing these ideas lean Republican, in contrast to the left-leaning tech workers they're lambasting. He and others pushing a grind culture are motivated, as tech employees commenting on the workplace app Blind noted. "I think it's a false narrative to say many people do fake work, especially when companies already deploy workplace monitoring tools."

☆ Venture capitalists weigh 'long-shot plan' to preserve parts of SVB -FT
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-13 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: 1 min

March 13 (Reuters) - Venture capital firms are working on a "long-shot plan" to preserve parts of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) in a move to keep servicing their clients in the technology sector, the Financial Times reported on Monday citing people briefed on the effort. A group of several VC firms are in talks since late last week about how to enable SVB to continue lending to, investing in and advising companies and executives in the sector, the FT reported, adding General Catalyst, Andreessen Horowitz and Khosla Venture are among the firms involved in talks. Forming a consortium with Apollo Global Management Inc (APO.N) that could bid for portions of SVB is one of the proposals being discussed, the newspaper quoted people as saying. Reporting by Anirudh Saligrama in Bengaluru Editing by Chris ReeseOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

☆ Venture capitalists 'almost took the whole system down' by having startups stow all their cash at Silicon Valley Bank, says one tech billionaire CEO
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-13 | by ( Sindhu Sundar | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +2 min

Tom Siebel, the billionaire CEO of C3.ai, offered a scathing post-mortem of the Silicon Valley Bank fallout. Top VCs like Peter Thiel and Marc Andreessen let startups entrust their finances to a "C minus bank," he said. Federal regulators have said they would protect all customers with deposits at Silicon Valley Bank. Since regulators closed down Silicon Valley Bank on Friday, the 40-year-old institution whose popularity in the startup world shot up in more recent years has been under the control of the Financial Deposit Insurance Corporation. A representative for the FDIC declined to comment, and representatives for Silicon Valley Bank did not immediately respond to an emailed request for comment on Monday evening.

That's the question posed by a certain members of the Silicon Valley elite who are attributing layoffs to a boom-time phenomenon: over-hiring and "fake" work. "There's nothing for these people to do — they're really — it's all fake work," he said. A particular view of 'work'This concept of fake work is rooted, at least partly, in political disagreement. Several of the tech figures pushing these ideas lean Republican, in contrast to the left-leaning tech workers they're lambasting. "I think it's a false narrative to say many people do fake work, especially when companies already deploy workplace monitoring tools."

Silicon Valley Bank, which collapsed Friday, had grown over four decades to become a linchpin of tech investing. Startup investors scrambled over the weekend to help their portfolio companies meet immediate expenses and to shore up their own access to cash after Friday’s federal seizure of Silicon Valley Bank made some money inaccessible. Venture-capital giant Andreessen Horowitz said it was helping founders of startups it has invested in find new banks and identify financing alternatives. Other venture leaders also said they were funding payroll for now at their portfolio companies that didn’t move cash out of SVB before it was taken over by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. Friday morning.

☆ A housing downturn is causing a reckoning in the once-hot cluster of proptech startups that let homebuyers pay all cash and win bidding wars
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-09 | by ( Alex Nicoll | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +9 min

In that market, all-cash offers were king to sellers because they ensured quicker, stress-free closings. According to Redfin, all-cash offers quadrupled the chances that a homebuyer would win a bidding war. Ribbon has since paused its all-cash offering, but some of the other firms that Insider featured last year are still making all-cash offers. FlyhomesFlyhomes is a real-estate brokerage that featured all-cash-offer services for years and distinguished itself in December 2021 with a free all-cash-offer product. "The value to the buyer is different than in a seller's market," Garg said in the email.

☆ Google and Meta over-hired thousands of employees who do 'fake work,' says PayPal Mafia's Keith Rabois
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-08 | by ( Hasan Chowdhury | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

Silicon Valley VC Keith Rabois says mass layoffs are due to hiring becoming a vanity metric in tech. Rabois told an Evercore-hosted event that firms like Meta over-hired by thousands of staff. It's all fake work," Rabois said. Speaking remotely from Miami at an event hosted by banking firm Evercore, he called out major tech firms for over-hiring and said the sector's current mass shedding of jobs to rein in costs was overdue. Later on the call, he estimated that Alphabet's Google and Facebook owner Meta had thousands of employees who don't do anything.

The court also allowed testimony from an expert who said Meta owes Neural Magic as much as $766 million in royalties. Representatives for Meta and Neural Magic did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the decision. Meta asked the court to throw out the case last year, arguing Neural Magic had failed to identify any protectable trade secrets and that Zlateski had not acquired the information improperly. But the court on Monday allowed Neural Magic's case to continue for all but one of the 41 secrets it accused Meta of misappropriating. The case is Neural Magic Inc v. Meta Platforms Inc, U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts, No.

☆ Weeks after mass layoffs, Flexport CEO Dave Clark says most of the company's work can be automated — it's just a 'question of time'
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-02 | by ( Emma Cosgrove | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

Dave Clark is now sole CEO at Flexport after previously sharing the job with founder Ryan Petersen. The Amazon veteran said an "overwhelming majority" of work at firms like Flexport can be automated. Striving for automation is common among tech-focused logistics companies, but few have delivered. The goal of automating most of the coordination — like sending emails — in the freight industry is common among venture-backed logistics technology companies. AAutomation-driven logistics technology is still receiving attention from investors despite overall trade volume and venture investment cooling.

☆ Marc Andreessen says he feels great after quitting drinking 6 months ago, but he's 'super mad' about being so focused and working until bedtime
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-02 | by ( Lakshmi Varanasi | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +2 min

Veteran venture capitalist Marc Andreessen wrote Wednesday that he stopped drinking alcohol 6 months ago. Andreessen said he feels much better since he stopped drinking. In his post, Andreessen said he never really drank in his 20s and 30s, but "grew to really enjoy whiskey" in his 40s. He referenced a podcast episode from neuroscientist Andrew Huberman that distilled the physiological effects of drinking alcohol on the human body and brain. Andreessen admitted in his post that since he stopped drinking he feels better, and not only sleeps better, but needs less sleep.

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