Latest from Leena Rao
The idea for subscription billing startup Zuora was born in Marc Benioff’s office. In 2006, K.V. Rao, then a WebEx senior engineer, was meeting with Benioff and Salesforce CMO Tien…
Many of us suffer the same problem–as our professional networks grow, we can’t keep track of each person’s details, including jobs, personal interests, kids, news and more. Amy Chang, the…
There are VCs, and then there are classic VCs. It was 1980, and 30 year old Dave Marquardt was a young, hot shot VC at Technology Venture Investors looking for…
While Tinder has made quite a few romantic matches, the hot new dating app has long had ambitions of connecting people beyond love and attraction. Tinder wants to be the…
I thought hard about this post, but time didn’t make it any easier to write. After five-and-a-half years at TechCrunch, I’ll be joining Google Ventures as an operating partner. I…
It was 1998, and Stanford Business School student Jenny Lefcourt and her fellow female co-founder wanted to raise money for an e-commerce-meets-retail idea they had around weddings. They were thrilled…
Takealot, a South African e-commerce site, has raised a whopping $100 million from Tiger Global Management. The company is still relatively young, launching in 2011, post the acquisition of an…
Media & Entertainment
Brit + Co. Doubles Down On E-Commerce, Launches Etsy-Like Marketplace For Makers
There’s no shortage of e-commerce companies betting on content as a way to engage with consumers and increase transactions. And we’re also starting to see content companies turn on e-commerce…
Snapdeal, one of the larger online e-commerce companies in India, has raised $100 million from Temasek, BlackRock, Myriad, Premji Invest and Tybourne. This follows a $133 million round of funding…
IBM’s Watson group has announced a new acquisition today — artificial intelligence company Cognea. IBM confirmed the acquisition via a blog post. Cognea developed a cognitive computing and conversational artificial…
“I thought I had to be a guy to be an engineer,” she told me as she was siting in the Square offices nearby her home in the Tenderloin, only…
Kayak co-founder Paul English is revealing more details about his Boston-based startup incubator, Blade. The new company has raised $20 million in new funding from Accel and General Catalyst (both…
A few months ago, we reported on the pending launch of Timeful, a new startup that wants to be an intelligent time manager. Although still in stealth, the company is…
It’s no secret that as our population grows, buses, trains and other transportation infrastructure in cities are becoming more congested. Public transportation departments use qualitative date from surveys, and video…
Cloud-based enterprise network security company OpenDNS has raised $35 million in Series C funding from Greylock Partners, Sequoia Capital, Sutter Hill Ventures, Glynn Capital, Cisco, Evolution Equity, Lumia Capital, Mohr…
GGV , the backers of US and Chinese tech companies like Alibaba, Pandora, Qunar, Zendesk and Tudou, has raised $620 million for its fifth venture capital fund. GGV Capital V is…
Darby Smart, a do-it-yourself crafting startup, has raised $6.3 million in Series A funding led by Maveron, with participation from Forerunner Ventures, CAA Ventures and existing investors.
Twitter is bringing on a new head of corporate development–Rishi Garg. Garg joined the company from Square, where he headed corporate development for the payments company.
In this week’s episode of Ask A VC, Google Ventures’ Rich Miner joined us in the studio to talk about Android’s massive growth, and more. Miner, who was the co-founder…
Back in February, Re/code reported that Jawbone was nearly finished raising a $250 million round of funding led by Rizvi Traverse Management, the investment firm that has backed Twitter, Square,…
Real estate marketplace Zillow announced Q1 earnings this afternoon, with revenue for the quarter increasing by 70% to a record $66.2 million from $39 million in the first quarter of…
Communications platform for mobile and web apps and Disrupt SF 2013 winner Layer has raised $14.5 million in Series A funding from Homebrew, AME Cloud Ventures (Jerry Yang’s investment vehicle),…
On stage at Disrupt NY today, Sequoia partner and Square board member Roelof Botha set the record straight around those rumors that the payments company was in acquisition talks with…
TheRealReal, an online consignment store for luxury goods, has raised $20 million in Series C funding from DBL Investors, Canaan Partners, InterWest Partners, eVentures, Greycroft, and Expansion Capital. This brings…
Recruiting great technical talent is a challenge for small startups, later stage companies and even public tech companies. SV Angel and one of the firm’s new startup, People.co, is launching…
Prosper.com, a peer-to-peer lending marketplace in the U.S., has raised $70 million led by Francisco Partners, a private equity firm with Institutional Venture Partners (IVP) and Phenomen Ventures participating. This…
Apple has acquired LuxVue Technology, a stealthy company that had been working on micro-LED, screen technologies, we’ve heard from sources close to the transaction. The company had raised $43 million…
Applying to preschool in San Francisco is not that different from when you may have applied to college 15 years ago. You have to complete a bunch of applications either…
We’ve heard that design-focused e-commerce site Fab is planning another round of layoffs. At an internal meeting today, sources tell us that the company said it would be making a…
Education is one of the last industries that is still going through massive change and disruption with the introduction of technology. In particular, we’ve seen the rise of iPads, the…