When news broke this morning that Airbnb had supposedly raised a $117 million Series C, the only possible response was: Damn, that’s a nice chunk of change, and one in line with expectations. However, it appears that, in all the anticipation over another major round, the gun has been jumped.
When we reached out for comment, Airbnb gave us the following statement of denial:
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TechCrunch points us to a delightful discovery: “Marijuana Majority,” a cunningly named campaign that attempts to convince the American public that tokers aren’t all lazy longhairs and shiftless teenagers and rakish rappers, thereby making it safe for average Joes to come out in favor of decriminalization. On the website, you’ll find a long list of prominent individuals of all stripes who’ve expressed some kind of support for legalizing it.
It comes complete with ready-t0-share image macros, which you can post to your Facebook wall like a little thinking-of-you card for the stoners in your life. Read More
I’ll Take Stingy for $5, Alex We’ve heard of venture capitalists who drive a hard bargain when it comes to their term sheets, but not so much when they drive off Sand Hill Road. So we were dismayed to learn that a VC at a very prominent 36-year-old venture capital firm asked the non-profit(!) meetup group Hacks/Hackers, which brings together journalists and technologists, to waive a $5 attendance fee for an event. To put that number in context: the firm has more than $400 million under management.
Hacks/Hackers has a very welcoming attendance policy and routinely waives fees for students so that no one gets shut out. But if your portfolio’s aggregate revenue teeters up into the billions, just pry your hands off the fiver, dude. Read More
“You don’t want your analytical efforts to be obvious because voters get creeped out.” Data mining in politics is harder than it looks. [New York Times]
It’s “20 under 20″ time once more! If you’ve just gotten to freshman year and you absolutely hate it and you’ve already got a good idea for something you’d like to do instead, the Peter Thiel Foundation probably wants to see your application. [TNW]
Late Friday afternoon, Gawker’s Adrian Chen released the results of his epic trollhunt: “Unmasking Reddit’s Violentacrez.” You’ll no doubt be shocked to learn that he’s pretty much as expected. [Gawker]
It sounds like the whole matter has been one long headache for Reddit HQ, but it doesn’t seem to have made so much as a dent in Alexis Ohanian’s confidence in the world-improving powers of the Internet. [The Verge]
Sprint has agreed to sell a majority stake to Japanese telecom SoftBank–pending regulatory approval, of course. [Dealbook]
Has Microsoft finally stumbled onto a good idea? The company is launching Xbox Music, a streaming music offering 30 million songs strong. [New York Timess]
As residents of Silicon Alley (a clever knockoff of California’s original Silicon Valley), we don’t have much room to mock other cities around the country for attempting to claim a piece of the tech pie all for themselves. But we couldn’t help but notice in a Wall Street Journal real estate feature that Los Angeles–despite the fact that it’s already well-known for being the entertainment capital of the world–is still trying to make “Silicon Beach” a thing. SMH. Read More
Minority Report is a guest column by Sarah Kunst, who does business development and product at fashion app Kaleidoscope. She’s a black, non-engineer female in tech, but plans to IPO anyway.
Few founder origin stories capture the nerd mind like “Hacker as dropout.” From Bill Gates at Microsoft to Box’s Adam Levie, and of course a little-known CEO named Zuck, the allure of leaving the dorm room behind to rake in billions seems irresistible.
Recently, this middle finger to the establishment of higher education has been codified by billionaire rabble rouser Peter Thiel. This past Sunday, for the second time in three months, the New York Times found cause for a close examination of the virtues of Mr. Thiel’s 20 under 20 Fellowship as a way for exceptional teenagers to pass college and collect $100,000 to spend on changing the world. Granted, participants aren’t your typical undeclared freshmen at State College U. Rather, they’ve already exhibited Mensa-level intelligence, with a work ethic to match.
What doesn’t coordinate quite as well? Their social lives. A recent night saw several Thiel fellows–all under legal drinking age–at a San Francisco house party described by one attendee as “tech hippies doing drugs and sitting in a cuddle pile.” Read More
Thrive Capital, the New York-based venture capital firm helmed by 26-year-old Josh Kushner*, announced today that it has successfully raised a $150 million fund for early and later stage startups. The news comes almost a year to the day after Thrive announced a $40 million raise from investors like Princeton University. The fresh $150 million comes from a slew of some of the same investors, including Princeton, Wellcome Trust and Hall Capital Partners. Read More
Back in May, when the Facebook IPO still seemed the like largest driver of wealth creation this side of the Gold Rush, Peter Thiel opted to sell only half his position in the social network, restricted somewhat by a lockup agreement requiring early shareholders to hold on to some of their stock.
However, financial documents filed today with the Security and Exchange Commission show that Mr. Thiel rushed to sell “nearly all” of his shares once the lockup expired by last Thursday, netting $395.8 million last week. That’s in addition to the $638 million he made in May selling 16.8 million shares during the IPO, which brings Mr. Thiel’s total earnings to more than $1 billion and counting.
Not bad for a $500,000 investment made in 2004, especially considering public shareholders have watched the stock’s value drop almost 50 percent from the misguided IPO price of $38 per share. Read More
Minority Report is a guest column by Sarah Kunst, who does business development and product at fashion app Kaleidoscope. She’s a black, non-engineer female in tech, but plans to IPO anyway.
Fortune magazine’s annual Brainstorm Tech summit is the Lincoln of conferences (the motor company is also a sponsor so kudos to them for nailing their demographic). Not the too-rich-for-its-own-good Bentley like Davos or the flashy Porsche that is TED. Rather, Brainstorm Tech brought together a lot of guys from Ivy League schools who work for companies with giant market caps and little buzz. They’re there to listen, network, and cut deals in one of the many hospitality tents at the Aspen Institute.
The listening part was easy as the speakers were relevant and quippy. Peter Thiel and Eric Schmidt went all Hunger Games for the crowd, trading blows on stage during dinner in what felt more like a sporting match than a debate about the future of technology. (You’ll have to excuse me if you already heard about their exploits, it takes a girl awhile to adjust back down to sea level.) Read More
The situation on Alyssa Vance’s couch would have been best described as a cuddle puddle—a tangle of hair-petting and belly-stroking and neck-nuzzling, seven people deep. It was Friday night in late June in the living room of her one-bedroom apartment at The Caroline, a “white-glove service” building in Chelsea. Ms. Vance, a transgender former Google intern with the lips of a Renaissance statue, sat somewhere near the middle next to her girlfriend, Alice. Snuggling up on either end were a neuroscience Ph.D. from Columbia, a Yale grad student in applied mathematics, and a redhead in from Berkeley who “sells drugs on the Internet.” Across the room, a row of white chairs laid out expressly for Ms. Vance’s 21st birthday party stood abandoned in favor of the handsy human octopus.
The Observer hovered near the drinks table. Next to us, a ponytailed programmer from Morgan Stanley nibbled on a family-sized Trader Joe’s chocolate bar as we both stole glances at the pile-on. Read More
