Andreessen Horowitz, a venture capital fund behind the likes of Facebook, Instagram and Groupon, has tapped David George as its newest general partner and its first top dealmaker focused on late-stage deals. George joins from General Atlantic, where he’d backed consumer internet, enterprise software and fintech startups as a principal since 2012. “Andreessen has always…
Atomico, the European venture capital firm founded by Skype’s Niklas Zennström, sometimes feels like it’s on a perpetual hiring and promotions spree, even if a number of partners have also departed over the years. Most recently, in November Sophia Bendz, the former Spotify Global Director of Marketing, promoted to Partner. Bendz had already spent two…
Salesforce has been using the notion of trailblazers as a learning metaphor for several years, since it created a platform to teach customers Salesforce skills called Trailhead. Today, the company announced the availability of myTrailhead, a similar platform that enables company to create branded, fully-customizable training materials based on the Trailhead approach. It’s worth noting…
Quip, the dental care startup, is releasing a new product aimed toward kids. Similar to the electric toothbrush it makes for adults, the kids’ brush features a timer that pulsates every 30 seconds and automatically turns off after two minutes. The main differences between the brush for kids and one for adults is the non-slip…
Hardware, as the saying goes, is hard, but today a startup has raised some money for a manufacturing service that it believes can make the prospect of starting and running hardware businesses a little easier. Fictiv, which positions itself as a kind of AWS for manufacturing — providing a platform both to design components and…
Shortly after launching on Android, Opera has announced plans to roll out its cryptocurrency-oriented browser to iOS. This means that you’ll soon be able to use the app on your iPhone and iPad devices. The so-called Opera Touch will be specifically designed for surfing the decentralized web (more commonly known as Web 3.0) and interacting…
Google’s one-year-old cybersecurity venture Chronicle today announced its first commercial product, called Backstory, a cloud-based enterprise-level threat analytics platform that has been designed to help companies quickly investigate incidents, pinpoint vulnerabilities and hunt for potential threats. Network infrastructures at most enterprises regularly generate enormous amounts of network data and logs on a daily basis that…
One of China’s top live streaming companies YY bought a stake and obtained the right to purchase a majority share in Bigo last June, and now the other shoe has dropped after YY fully acquired the Singapore-based startup behind live streaming app Bigo Live and short-video service Like. That’s according to an announcement YY made…
Last month, Coinbase’s acquisition of blockchain analytics startup Neutrino was criticized because of the founders’ ties to a controversial surveillance technology company called Hacking Team. Today Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong said in a blog post that employees of Neutrino who had previously worked at Hacking Team will transition out of Coinbase, instead of joining its…
The 500 Startups Japan crew is going independent. The VC firm announced a $30 million fund in 2015, and now the follow up is a new $45 million fund called Coral Capital. Helmed by James Riney and Yohei Sawayama, just like 500 Startups Japan, Coral will essentially continue the work the U.S. firm made in Japan,…
