Sam Blond is leaving Founders Fund, as well as the profession of venture capitalist, just 18 months after he joined the storied Silicon Valley firm.
For now just immense gratitude to FF and all the incredible people and… — Sam Blond (@samdblond) March 4, 2024Before joining the VC firm, Blond was best known as the former Chief Revenue Officer at Brex.
Brex is not a Founders Fund portfolio company, although Founders Fund is an investor in one of Brex’s biggest competitors: Ramp.
We hope to have the opportunity to work with him again,” Founders Fund spokesperson Erin Gleason tells TechCrunch.
But this is the second splashy departure of a Founders Fund partner over the past couple of months.
Apple Watch Series 9 and Apple Watch Ultra 2 sales will be halted again in the U.S. starting at 5 PM tomorrow, January 18, due to the rejection of a bid by Apple to have the sales ban paused throughout its appeal of an ITC decision that found its blood oxygen feature infringe on patents by medical tech company Masimo.
Meanwhile, Apple has another route available to avoid a halt: U.S. Customs said earlier in the week that it would consider a software update that disabled Apple Watch blood oxygen sensing features to put the devices beyond the scope of the ITC ban, which means the company could effectively keep selling them if it pushes a firmware update to turn off all the pulse oximetry stuff.
Apple’s appeal will still continue, however, and this doesn’t mean they won’t eventually win that, which would allow for a resumption of sale with the blood oxygen features included.
It’ll be interesting to see what happens tomorrow when that 5 PM ET deadline hits.
For those keeping track, this means the current Apple Watch models have now been removed from sale, resumed sales, and are pending another sales stoppage, all in under a month.
