The study (“Unicorn Founder DNA Report) by Defiance Capital of 845 unicorns and 2,018 unicorn founders set out to look at the “DNA” of unicorn founders, concentrating on the US and UK (no EU/European) from 2013 to 2023, to define the common traits of these kinds of founders.
During the last decade, all top Seed funds were generalist funds, and the market for Seed funds is highly fragmented.
Only 34% of unicorn founders had worked at an elite employer prior to founding a unicorn, suggesting a McKinsey or similar background is not a prerequisite to success.
Dorffer, who intends now to produce a podcast with many of the unicorn founders surveyed, said: “The stories that are coming out show crazy determination.
As a female founder, you have to work twice as hard and take twice as many meetings to raise the money.
Thankfully, there’s a new wave of startups entering the arena: UK startup Anima is a “care enablement” platform that operates almost like a combination of Slack, Salesforce and Figma, but for healthcare clinics and hospitals.
Anima, a graduate of Y Combinator’s Winter 2021 batch, launched in September 2022 and is now used in 150 NHS clinics in England.
The startup’s software lets clinic staff process and file healthcare documents, but adds in a higher degree of automation compared to legacy systems.
In the U.S., Memora Health has raised $80.5 million, and NexHealth, which is post-Series C, has raised $177.2 million to date.
I trained as a doctor at Cambridge, and I’m a self-taught software engineer who wrote a lot of the code for Anima.
TipTop, the new app from Postmates’ founder and CEO, now lets you buy devices with trade-ins and cashTipTop, the startup that offers instant cash for electronics, is launching TipTop Shop: a way for users to purchase and trade in devices.
TipTop Shop builds on the success of TipTop Cash, which was released late last year.
It lets people get instant payouts for electronic devices like smartphones, iPads, cameras, game systems and more.
People can buy new, open-box and refurbished devices through cash and trade-ins.
Unlike on platforms like eBay and Facebook Marketplace, consumers aren’t buying products on TipTop from other consumers, as the devices are owned by the startup itself.
Telegram founder Pavel Durov said that the company expects to hit profitability next year with eyes on going public in the future.
While Telegram is not looking to raise a mega round, the company is open to investment in exchange for smaller equity.
The company also offers ad solutions for one-to-many channels and plans to launch ad revenue sharing with channel owners this month.
Durov told FT that ad solutions currently are limited to certain geographies and the company mandates agencies to spend between €1mn and €10mn.
Apart from these solutions, Telegram has also experimented with blockchain-based projects through the TON foundation.
The U.S. government announced Tuesday sanctions against the founder of the notorious spyware company Intellexa and one of his business partners.
This is the first time the U.S. government has targeted specific people, in addition to companies, with sanctions related to the misuse of commercial spyware.
These sanctions will impact Dilian and Hamou specifically, but they will also send a message to other people involved in the spyware industry.
“If I’m a mercenary spyware company, I should be getting really worried,” added Scott-Railton.
And earlier this year, the U.S. government announced that the State Department could impose visa restrictions to people believed to have been involved or facilitated the abuse of commercial spyware around the world.
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.
It’s no surprise that after ten years, Parachute, the home lifestyle brand, stands as the dust settles from the direct-to-consumer boom.
Founded by Ariel Kaye in 2012, Parachute has developed a loyal customer base because of its high-quality bedding, towels, and robes.
Naturally, TechCrunch wanted to see what it has been like managing the DTC boom these past few years and brought Kaye onto our podcast Found to chat about it.
“From the moment we launched, we just kept hearing, ‘I’ve been waiting for a brand like this,” she told us.
She learned to manage logistics, hire a team, and find a network of other entrepreneurs who could support her during the highs and lows of — wait for it — being a solo founder.
In a 758-word letter, content of which was reviewed by TechCrunch, Raveendran claimed that the shareholders violated several “essential” local rules.
Raveendran claimed in the letter that the extraordinary general meeting lacked the minimum quorum and failed to win majority support for proposed resolutions.
Raveendran claimed the EGM was convened without adhering to the procedures set out by law and only 35 of Byju’s 170 total shareholders attended, representing around 45% ownership in the company.
The rights issue resets the startup’s valuation, once at $22 billion, to about $25 million.
“Our rights issue has seen an overwhelming response.
The participating shareholders — whose combined ownership in Byju’s exceeded 60% — also passed the resolution to reconstitute the board of Byju’s.
“At today’s Extraordinary General Meeting shareholders unanimously passed all resolutions put forward for vote.
Late last month, Byju’s launched a rights issue where it sought to raise about $200 million at a massively discounted rate.
Raveendran told shareholders earlier this week that the rights issue had been fully subscribed and requested all existing investors to participate and maintain their ownership.
“[…] I understand that participating in this rights issue may seem like a Hobson’s choice.
Beleaguered electric trucking company Nikola has sold the Badger electric pickup truck assets it was once supposed to build with General Motors.
Embr now owns the intellectual property associated with the Badger pickup truck, as well as the assets related to Nikola’s abandoned off-road and personal water craft vehicles.
News of the deal to sell the Badger program comes at an odd time.
But it revealed the Badger pickup in February 2020, just a few months before it went public in a merger with a special purpose acquisition company.
Worthen said Nikola is clawing back 500,000 of those shares Milton gave Sparks as part of the deal.
