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Mike Ghaffary joins Canvas Ventures as fourth General Partner

by Steven Loeb, March 11, 2019

Ghaffary was formerly the CEO of Eat24 and general partner at Social Capital

With investments in companies like Transfix, Zola, Kinetica, Figure Eight, Platform9, Future Advisor, Gabi and Roofstock, early stage venture capital firm Canvas Ventures has already made a name for itself in the industry, despite being relatively young. On Monday, the firm, which was spun out of Morgenthaler Ventures in 2013, announced that Eat24 CEO Mike Ghaffary is joining the firm as its fourth General ...

Early stage firm Ridge Ventures raises $130M fourth fund to invest in enterprise companies

by Steven Loeb, July 24, 2018

This is the first fund raised by the firm since changing its name from IDG Ventures USA last year

Venture capital fundraising is riding high right now. According to the Dow Jones VentureSource 2Q’18 U.S. Venture Capital Report, 159 venture funds raised $17.74 billion in the second quarter of this year, for a three year high. That represented growth of 9 percent in the number of funds, and 100 percent growth in the amount raised, from the first three months of ...

Cloud Apps Capital Partners raises $87M second fund

by Steven Loeb, June 11, 2018

The firm focuses exclusively on investing in the global cloud business application market

The cloud has had a profound effect on the business and technology sectors. By cutting down the cost of hardware, and giving companies a simpler, more effective way to store their data, it has led to an explosion of innovation around the world. That revolution has only really begun, though, and there is a ton of opportunity for younger companies ...

GVR Fund closes $18.3M fund to invest in virtual, augmented and mixed reality companies

by Steven Loeb, February 15, 2018

The fund is also changing its name to GFR Fund to avoid confusion over its areas of investment

Virtual, augmented and mixed reality are some of the most exciting spaces in tech right now, offering some really interesting advances and experiences, though perhaps without some of the overhype brought on by artificial intelligence and machine learning. Investors are taking notice, with over $2.5 billion invested in 2017, and over $1 billion of that coming in Q4 of last year ...

Science raises $75M for its first venture fund

by Steven Loeb, February 2, 2018

Science, which has deployed an incubator model, will use the fund to follow on with its companies

When former MySpace CEO Mike Jones launched Science in 2011, he purposely skewed away from the traditional venture model, instead deciding to become something of an incubator. That meant creating and developing its own business ideas in-house. Since then it has seen some big successes, most notably Dollar Shave Club, as well as DogVacay and EVENTup, but one thing it wasn't ...

Masha Drokova launches new early stage firm Day One Ventures

by Steven Loeb, January 23, 2018

Only four out of 153 startups in 2017 had a female founder

To say that venture capital is male dominated would be a massive understatement. As of October 2017, among the top 100 venture firms, only eight percent of partners are women, up from 7 percent a year and half before, according to the Crunchbase Women in Venture report. That number is much lower when it comes to female founders; of 153 VC firms ...

Kickstart Seed Fund raises $74M for largest ever seed fund in Utah

by Steven Loeb, January 17, 2018

The Salt Lake City-based firm invests in companies that provide tools to small businesses

Outside of Silicon Valley, there are few areas that have also become synonymous with tech investing: New York, Los Angeles, Boston and Seattle, among others, but there are also numerous, less talked about ecosystems all over the country. These generally occur in small cities. One of the most notable up and coming areas is Utah, and specifically Salt Lake City ...

Sequoia Capital reportedly looking to raise $5B new fund

by Steven Loeb, December 21, 2017

SoftBank's $100B Vision Fund, along with unicorns staying private longer, are driving larger funds

Earlier this year, SoftBank Group and Saudi Arabia’s sovereign-wealth fund partnered to create what is known as the "Vision Fund," by far the largest fund ever raised with a whopping $100 billion. Now, what once were astronomical figures are relatively quaint in comparison. As a result, the VC space might be entering a new age of venture capital: the mega-mega ...

Seed stage VC firm YL Ventures raises $75M third fund

by Steven Loeb, May 4, 2017

The firm invests in Israeli B2B software companies, in sectors like VR/AR, drones and cybersecurity

There wasa total of $7.9 billion raised by VC firms, across 58 funds, in the first quarter of this year, a drop of 24 percent from Q1 2016. That was due to fewer so called "mega-funds," or those over $250 million. Instead it was the smaller funds, those investing in the earlier stages, that made up the majority of the funding ...

Freestyle Capital raises $90M, promotes Jenny Lefcourt

by Steven Loeb, April 11, 2017

Lefcourt, who joined in 2014, is now an equal partner with founders Dave Samuel and Josh Felser

It's no secret that venture capital is overwhelmingly male. A study from CrunchBase last year found that, among the top 100 VC firms, only 54 out of 755 partners were women (In this case a "partner" meant someone who was able to directly invest), equaling just 7 percent. Only a little over a third of those firms had one partner who was ...

Jay Z launches his own venture firm called Arrive

by Steven Loeb, March 6, 2017

Arrive will focus on early-stage startups, helping them with branding and marketing

Editor's note: Our Splash Health, Wellness and Wearables event is coming up on March 23 in San Francisco. We'll have Mario Schlosser, Founder & CEO of Oscar Health, Brian Singerman (Partner, Founders Fund), Steve Jurvetson (Draper Fisher Jurvetson), J. Craig Venter (Human Longevity), Lynne Chou (Partner, Kleiner Perkins), Michael Dixon (Sequoia Capital), Patrick Chung (Xfund), Check out the full lineup and register for tickets before they jump! If you want to invest as little as $2500 in our startup ...

LA-based VC firm Fika Ventures raises $40M seed fund

by Steven Loeb, February 15, 2017

The firm will make 30 investments, with initial checks of $250k to $1M

Editor's note: Our Splash Health, Wellness and Wearables event is coming up on March 23 in San Francisco. We'll have Mario Schlosser, Founder & CEO of Oscar Health, Brian Singerman (Partner, Founders Fund), Steve Jurvetson (Draper Fisher Jurvetson), J. Craig Venter (Human Longevity), Lynne Chou (Partner, Kleiner Perkins), Michael Dixon (Sequoia Capital), Patrick Chung (Xfund), Check out the full lineup and register for tickets before they jump! If you’re a healthcare startup and you’re interested in being part ...

Oakland-based Better Ventures raises $21M for second fund

by Steven Loeb, January 5, 2017

The early stage firm invests in companies that have a social or environmental impact

Editor's note: Our Splash Health, Wellness and Wearables event is coming up on March 23 in San Francisco. We'll have Mario Schlosser, Founder & CEO of Oscar Health, Brian Singerman (Partner, Founders Fund), Steve Jurvetson (Draper Fisher Jurvetson), J. Craig Venter (Human Longevity), Lynne Chou (Partner, Kleiner Perkins), Michael Dixon (Sequoia Capital), Patrick Chung (Xfund), Check out the full lineup and register for tickets before they jump! If you’re a healthcare startup and you’re interested in being part ...

Bill Gates launches new $1 billion fund to save the earth

by Steven Loeb, December 12, 2016

Breakthrough Energy Ventures is backed by Jack Ma, Reid Hoffman, Vinod Khosla and others

Editor's note: Our Splash Health, Wellness and Wearables event is coming up on March 23 in San Francisco. We'll have Mario Schlosser, Founder & CEO of Oscar Health, Brian Singerman (Partner, Founders Fund), Steve Jurvetson (Draper Fisher Jurvetson), J. Craig Venter (Human Longevity), Lynne Chou (Partner, Kleiner Perkins), Michael Dixon (Sequoia Capital), Patrick Chung (Xfund), Check out the full lineup and register for tickets before they jump! If you’re a healthcare startup and you’re interested in being part ...

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