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☆ 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."

☆ ‘I am personally sticking with SVB.’ Prominent tech figures pledge support for bank
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-16 | by ( Catherine Thorbecke | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +3 min

CNN —After a rollercoaster week for Silicon Valley Bank’s customers, some prominent voices in the tech world are now publicly saying they will keep their money with the embattled lender – and they’re urging others to do the same. It also comes after the regional bank’s saga sent shockwaves across global financial markets. The push to continue doing business with Silicon Valley also highlights the unique relationship between the tech lender and the startup community, and their mutual dependence on each other. The bank has worked with nearly half of all US venture-backed tech and health care companies. But not everyone shares the desire to stay loyal to the bank after its implosion.

☆ The tech industry avoided an ‘extinction-level event,’ but it’s not unscathed
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-13 | by ( Catherine Thorbecke | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +7 min

CNN —For much of the weekend, Silicon Valley scrambled to find a way through what one prominent tech investor described as an “extinction-level event for startups” after the collapse of a top lender in the industry. “You can feel the collective *sigh*,” Ryan Hoover, a tech founder and investor wrote on Twitter Sunday. SVB’s collapse also risks changing how the world, and prospective recruits, think of Silicon Valley. The bank worked with nearly half of all venture-backed tech and healthcare companies in the United States. President Joe Biden emphasized in remarks Monday that “no losses will be borne by the taxpayers” related to the government’s intervention for Silicon Valley Bank.

Powering AI Dungeon's text-generation software was the GPT language technology offered by the Microsoft -backed AI research lab OpenAI. The high cost of training and "inference" — actually running — large language models is a structural cost that differs from previous computing booms. Many entrepreneurs see risks in relying on potentially subsidized AI models that they don't control and merely pay for on a per-use basis. Companies making the foundation models, semiconductor makers, and startups all see business opportunities in reducing the price of running AI software. "Latitude is going to continue to evaluate all AI models to be sure we have the best game out there."

☆ More than 110 VC firms, led by General Catalyst, are banding together in support of Silicon Valley Bank
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-11 | by ( April Joyner | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

More than 110 venture capital firms have signed a statement in support of Silicon Valley Bank. "Silicon Valley Bank has been a trusted and long-time partner to the venture capital industry and our founders," a joint statement from more than 110 firms reads. Hemant Taneja, the CEO of the VC firm General Catalyst, which led the effort to organize support for SVB, tweeted the statement on Friday evening. Alongside General Catalyst, 12 other firms signed the initial statement, including Accel, Greylock, Kleiner Perkins, Lightspeed Venture Partners, and Upfront Ventures. Some VC firms, including Founders Fund, Y Combinator, and Union Square Ventures, advised their portfolio companies to pull the bulk of their funds out of the bank.

☆ Israeli cyber security firm Wiz raises $300 mln, valued at $10 bln
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-27 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: 1 min

JERUSALEM, Feb 27 (Reuters) - U.S.-Israeli cyber security startup Wiz said on Monday it raised $300 million in a private funding round that values the firm at $10 billion. The late stage round was led by Lightspeed Venture Partners and existing investors Greenoaks Capital Partners and Index Ventures. Since its founding three years ago, Wiz, which focuses on cloud security and has 650 employees globally, has raised $900 million from investors, including Sequoia Capital, Insight Partners, Blackstone and G Squared. It said it plans to open new offices in Austin, Dallas and Washington D.C. Reporting by Steven Scheer Editing by Ari RabinovitchOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

☆ Business Technology Chiefs Question ChatGPT’s Readiness for the Enterprise
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-15 | by ( Angus Loten | Chris Bedi | ) www.wsj.com time to read: +7 min

Yet some business-technology professionals are uneasy about integrating it into the enterprise stack, citing concerns over its use of online data and security risks. But at the moment, ChatGPT “should be used with caution in an enterprise business setting,” she said. Newsletter Sign-up WSJ | CIO Journal The Morning Download delivers daily insights and news on business technology from the CIO Journal team. For now, Mr. Schmidt said, generative AI capabilities should be reserved for writing corporate boilerplate—product or service announcements, or other promotional materials. For enterprise information-technology, “ChatGPT use cases might be a smaller universe than people are imagining,” he said.

☆ Returns from top venture firms NEA, DCM, and Khosla have been dismal over the past 2 decades, according to filings from California's largest pension fund, CalPERS
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-15 | by ( Ben Bergman | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

CalPERS is the US's largest public pension plan, managing the retirement accounts of 1.5 million California employees and retirees. Unlike many other financial institutions, VC funds are not required to show their return on investment in startups. The CalPERS fund's $75 million bet in 2001 on a venture fund managed by the Carlyle Group lost money. A $25 million investment in DCM's 2000 fund had a 1.9% IRR. Its $260 million investment in two Khosla Ventures funds in 2009 yielded an IRR of 11.8% for the early-to-midstage fund and 6.9% for the seed-stage fund.

☆ Here's a look at 14 fintech startups that are tackling healthcare's money problems
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-13 | by ( Samantha Stokes | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +2 min

A new wave of startups are tackling financial issues within the healthcare space. Here are 14 fintech-healthtech startups that have raised money from VCs. "If you're thinking about building fintech that really helps the average consumer, a big piece of the wallet is healthcare spend," she told Insider in an interview. From the employee-benefits platform Budgie to the wellness credit card Ness, Insider has compiled a list of startups building at the intersection of fintech and healthtech. Check out Insider's list of 14 startups at the intersection of fintech and healthtech.

☆ Exclusive: Carta settles lawsuit with former female executive who claimed gender discrimination and illegal retaliation
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-07 | by ( Darius Rafieyan | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

Carta, facing allegations of discrimination and retaliation, had been scheduled to go to court in February. A lawsuit brought by former Vice President of Growth Emily Kramer alleging gender discrimination and illegal retaliation was settled on February 6 in California Superior Court, according to a court filing. While the Kramer case has now been settled, Carta is still involved in other legal disputes and facing complaints of gender discrimination. Carta's "No assholes policy"According to the lawsuit, Kramer was recruited by Carta CEO and co-founder Henry Ward in 2018 to serve as Carta's head of marketing. As part of her job, Kramer led the company's high-profile campaign to raise awareness about the gender equity gap in Silicon Valley.

☆ ChatGPT introduced AI to the masses and it's already affecting us
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-02 | by ( Magdalena Petrova | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +2 min

ChatGPT is part of a growing field of AI known as generative AI. Funding for generative AI companies reached $1.37 billion in 2022 alone, according to Pitchbook. "Generative AI is very different. But generative AI still faces a number of challenges, including developing content that is inaccurate, biased or inappropriate. Watch the video to learn more about how generative AI like ChatGPT works and what the technology may mean for businesses and society as a whole.

☆ Exclusive: 3 of Carta's top executives filed complaints about gender discrimination and retaliation in a matter of months
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-25 | by ( Darius Rafieyan | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +7 min

Three former employees filed complaints alleging gender discrimination at Carta. In a statement she told Insider that she was not fired and did not leave the company due to any gender discrimination issues. "I do not feel that I experienced any gender discrimination or any unfair or sexist treatment during my employment at Carta," she said in the statement. Shortly after Johnson's firing, Carta's chief technology officer, Jerry Talton, filed a complaint with Carta's board expressing concerns about her termination and about larger issues of gender discrimination and retaliation at the company. Carta's internal investigationFollowing Talton's complaint, Carta hired the white-shoe law firm Paul, Weiss to investigate the claims, a person familiar with the matter said.

☆ Lawsuits over Stability AI's Stable Diffusion could threaten the future of AI-generated art
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-25 | by ( Asia Martin | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +7 min

Stability AI, the startup that makes the popular AI art tool Stable Diffusion, faces two lawsuits. The company's most well-known product is the controversial Stable Diffusion (also known as DreamStudio to users). Enter text into a search bar, and Stable Diffusion will, for a lack of a better word, draw an image to match, right on the spot. What's old is new againStability Diffusion released Stability AI in August, a time when the generative-AI market was starting to heat up. Mostaque's tweet added that Stability AI would offer "opt outs" and use alternate datasets and models with content licensed under the more-permissive creative-commons copyright process.

☆ How VC Moritz Baier-Lentz went from being one of the world's best professional gamers to the new head of Lightspeed's gaming practice
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-18 | by ( Madeline Renbarger | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

Moritz Baier-Lentz is joining Lightspeed Venture Partners as a partner to lead its gaming practice. Before becoming a top gaming investor, he was the top global professional "Diablo II" player. But he ditched his competitive gaming career for a more traditional career path in business. Lightspeed Venture Partners' newest partner Moritz Baier-Lentz has been a prominent gaming investor for years, orchestrating deals for big banks like Goldman Sachs and backing startups in the gaming space as an early-stage venture investor at BITKRAFT Ventures. Baier-Lentz put his gaming career on pause to go to college and then went on to work as a data manager for IBM.

☆ The CTO of Carta alleged 'problems with the culture' at the $7 billion startup. Now the company's suing him, accusing him of corporate espionage and inappropriate sexting.
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-11 | by ( Darius Rafieyan | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

The lawsuit accuses Talton of secretly recording a company executive and sharing it with a former employee that was threatening to sue the company. The suit doesn't elaborate on the problems alleged and a spokesperson for the company declined to answer Insider's questions on the matter. Lindauer was copied on the email, seemingly by mistake, cluing company executives into the fact that Talton possessed surreptitious recordings of company executives. The company demanded, through Talton's attorney, that he turn over any recordings or transcripts of company executives. The lawsuit also accuses Talton of inappropriate "sexting" and contains sexually explicit text messages obtained through a forensic review of his work laptop.

☆ Pitch Decks That Advertising Tech Startups Used to Raise Millions
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-10 | by ( Business Insider | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +19 min

Check out these pitch decks that they've used to sell their vision and raise millions from private equity and VC investors. Blocking ad fraudAdtech startup Lunio, announced a $15 million Series A funding round in September 2022. In May 2022, the software-as-a-service startup raised a $30 million Series B round, led by Insight Partners. Marketing in the metaverseAnima, an augmented-reality startup, raised a $3 million funding round from investors in Janury. He raised $50 million in Series D after closing a $34 million Series C last year, bringing its total raised to $100 million.

Insider asked more than 40 top fintech investors to nominate the most promising fintechs. Here are the 61 most promising fintechs. Insider surveyed 43 investors — including those from Bain Capital Ventures, Lightspeed Venture Partners, and QED Investors — about the most promising fintechs to watch. Global fintech funding dropped to $20.4 billion in the second quarter, falling 46% from last year, according to data from CB Insights. Check out the 61 fintechs identified as most promising by top investors.

☆ Think long-term, grab land, watch your runway: Here's how European VCs are advising their founders ahead of a looming recession
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-29 | by ( Tasmin Lockwood | Callum Burroughs | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

Sequoia's iconic 2008 'R.I.P Good Times' presentation still rings true for some investors. Good Times" presentation from 2008. "Because people are so programmed with the whole RIP Good Times thing, the nuance gets lost sometimes." Magda Lukaszewicz, principal at Balderton, echoed this – even if it takes companies longer to achieve said goals. Sequoia's "RIP Good Times" ends on a bleak note: Get Real or Go Home.

☆ The fintech reckoning is upon us. Here’s what to expect next year
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-28 | by ( Hugh Son | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +9 min

Many fintech companies — particularly those dealing directly with retail borrowers — will be forced to shut down or sell themselves next year as startups run out of funding, according to investors, founders and investment bankers. Other private companies with a reasonable path to profitability will typically get funding from existing investors. The frenzy peaked in 2021, when fintech companies raised more than $130 billion and minted more than 100 new unicorns, or companies with at least $1 billion in valuation. "20% of all VC dollars went into fintech in 2021," said Stuart Sopp, founder and CEO of digital bank Current. "The competitive landscape shifts the most during periods of fear, uncertainty and doubt," said Kelly Rodriques, CEO of Forge, a trading venue for private company stock.

☆ 4 college friends turned $1 million into a New York venture-capital empire backing tech's hottest unicorns. Here's how they did it.
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-29 | by ( Darius Rafieyan | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +8 min

Founded as the side project of four college friends, Eniac Ventures has become a major player in VC. They named the firm Eniac Ventures, after the first electronic computer, developed at the University of Pennsylvania's engineering school, where the four had met. What started as the side hustle of four college buddies has become a powerhouse of the venture-capital industry, backing some of tech's hottest unicorns. And Eniac has invested alongside some of the biggest names in venture, including Y Combinator, Lightspeed Venture Partners, and New Enterprise Associates. Vasen met the Eniac partners at an event they hosted for prospective founders at a Chinese restaurant in San Francisco.

☆ Kraken exec Ankur Ranshid just exited the high-profile crypto exchange. Here's why he left, and exclusive details on his new a16z-backed gig's $200 million funding round.
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-16 | by ( Morgan Chittum | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Matter Labs announced a $200 million Series C round, led by Blockchain Capital and Dragonfly. Kraken, which has a reported valuation of $10.8 billion, is trying to fill C-suite-level roles such as chief product officer, chief commercial officer, chief technology officer, and a chief compliance officer, Forbes reported last month. (The firm, however, told Insider in an email that the only existing vacant C-suite positions were chief product officer and chief compliance offer. Matter Labs' $200 million raiseFounded in 2018, Matter Labs is best known for developing a scaling protocol, or zero-knowledge rollup called zkSync. Matter Labs says nothing about the company's funding round or executive appointment has changed following this news.

☆ In a tech downturn, breakout stars of venture capital are going abroad to hunt for funding. Here's why.
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-14 | by ( Melia Russell | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +9 min

The flow of capital motivated more investors to split from established firms and raise their own funds, but it hasn't always been easy. For years they've gone abroad to raise capital from limited partners, mostly wealthy individuals and family offices. This isn't new territory for international investors. He continues to use his personal wealth to back startups and venture funds mostly stateside, including Sequoia Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, and Brianne Kimmel's Worklife Ventures. Even those with ties to international investors may struggle to raise funds as fears of a global recession escalate.

☆ 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.

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

Dremio is an open lakehouse platform aiming to reinvent SQL — a core language used to manage data — and simplify data structure. Founded in 2015 in Santa Clara, California, the company allows data teams to save time pulling insights and makes data engineering easier. With Dremio, users have the ability to access analytics and business intelligence on their data lakehouse with the same functionality as data warehouses. The company announced that it closed a $160 million Series E funding round in January 2022, which doubled its valuation to $2 billion. Insight Partners, Norwest Venture Partners, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Redpoint, Cisco and Sapphire Ventures are among Dremio investors.

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