Quinn Li, who’s been with Qualcomm Ventures since 2005, early last year took over as vice president and head of the corporate VC. In his previous post as managing director, Li manages and served as a board observer for such investments as A123 Systems, AMEC, InvenSense, Siimpel and Tela Innovations. Now as head of Qualcomm […]
The Village, a new San Francisco early-stage fund with many well-known tech entrepreneurs and other luminaries as investors, announced itself in a Medium post in late September with scant details. LPs in the fund, which has not disclosed a target amount or how much money has been raised to date, include Jeff Bezos, Mike Bloomberg, […]
Funds from IVP, Landmark Partners and Sofinnova Ventures are at the top of a mid-decade portfolio of venture funds at the San Francisco Employees’ Retirement System. The portfolio is made up of 2002 to 2007 vintages with a balanced mix of small, mid-tier and larger funds and a diverse approach to investing. Half of the […]
Revenue recognition rule ASC 606 has been described as the most significant change to corporate finance and accounting in the 15 years since Sarbanes-Oxley Act. Trouble is it’s hardly front-and-center for many venture investors, or the portfolio companies they fund. The regulations, from the Financial Accounting Standards Board, will standardize how companies recognize revenue from […]
If you travel 100 miles south of San Francisco, you will come to Salinas Valley, the hometown of author and Nobel Prize winner John Steinbeck. He wrote of the “long narrow swale between two ranges of mountains” and how “the Salinas River winds and twists up the center until it falls at last into Monterey […]
Agtech funding rebounded in the first half of the year with several large deals lifting dollars deployed, but deal volumes tumbled from a year ago. The first half of 2017 saw $4.4 billion invested globally, a rise of 6 percent from the same period a year ago, according to AgFunder, an online investment marketplace. The […]
Funds from TLV Partners, ARCH Venture Partners and True Ventures head up an emerging portfolio of newly minted venture funds at the University of Texas Investment Management Company. The portfolio is made up of 2015 to 2017 vintages and favors small and mid-tier funds with an early-stage approach to investing. About a third of the […]
Shasta Ventures launched Shasta Camera Fund, which will make seed and pre-seed investments from its $320 million fifth fund, which closed last year. The specialty fund’s name belies its true intent. Although Shasta is no stranger to backing camera technology — having 10 years ago first invested in Eye-Fi, a maker of wi-fi-enabled memory cards for digital […]
Initial coin offerings took the summer by storm, with more than $1.5 billion raised from April through August. Reactions have been extreme and varied: Some digital-currency enthusiasts have declared that ICOs will replace venture funding altogether, even as China banned all token sales. For venture investors, digital-token offerings present opportunities and challenges. They open the […]
Payal Kadakia is part of a small but growing cadre of entrepreneurs: women CEOs or founders whose companies’ valuations are in the hundreds of millions or approaching $1 billion. The 34-year-old co-founder and former chief executive of exercise-membership company ClassPass has raised nearly $140 million in venture funding from such firms as Temasek Holdings, GV, […]