Six months after acquisition, SoFi is shutting down Zenbanx
In an email sent to Zenbanx customers, the company announced that it will close all accounts at the end of next month.
Back in February, SoFi took its first step toward adding checking and credit cards to its suite of financial services through its acquisition of Zenbanx.
Then last month, the company applied for a bank charter with the hopes of using Zenbanx’s tech stack and personnel for the introduction of its own SoFi-branded online bank.
However, while the banking charter application is pending, it didn’t make sense for SoFi to continue offering services under its current structure.
When Zenbanx was acquired by SoFi in February, we promised to keep our customers and applicants apprised of any changes to the Zenbanx account.
In conjunction with our partner Wilmington Savings Fund Society (WSFS), we’ve made a decision to close accounts, effective August 31, 2017 at 12AM ET (“Account Close Date”).
Here at SoFi, we are working to build out an expanded line of revolutionary consumer financial products including a new account to be launched in the near future.
We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause you.
You have our assurance there will be no changes in the Terms and Conditions of your Zenbanx Account between now and the Account Close Date.
If earning interest on the funds in your Zenbanx Account is important to you, we encourage you to close your account before this date.
An Open Letter to Chris Sacca, Dave McClure, Travis Kalanick, and All of Silicon Valley
This is an open letter, after two weeks of reading about sexual harassment scandals.
Thanks so much for your multiple apologies.
It continued with a piece in the tech website The Information in which women working in Silicon Valley described sexual harassment from Binary Capital co-founder Justin Caldbeck (who now also faces a lawsuit from a former employee).
That was followed almost immediately by a New York Times piece in which no less than 24 female entrepreneurs described being sexually harassed.
The first is, the three VCs named are all leaving or “taking a step back from” their jobs.
All this along with Fowler’s accusations added up to a company that was not going to make as much on its IPO as investors were hoping, and that’s why they stepped in to force Kalanick out.
And most VCs–especially those with the big funding startups need to go from scrappy newcomer to world domination–are white men.
With those VCs’ financial support and counsel, those white men who get backing are more likely than anyone else to become super-wealthy entrepreneurs, and of course the first thing most super-wealthy entrepreneurs do is turn around and become VCs.
Both McClure and Sacca go to lengths to explain how many startups they’ve funded that had women and/or people of color at the helm.
It could bring about real change, Silicon Valley.
Tech veterans set up $100M fund to turn India’s top startups into unicorns
Tech veterans set up $100M fund to turn India’s top startups into unicorns.
Initially a $100 million fund — half of which is committed already — the duo told TechCrunch that they aim to help cover the funding gap for India’s most promising tech firms.
“We believe that we need companies that are marathon runners built to scale and speed [by] entrepreneurs who want to leave a legacy,” Nilekani, whose personal fortune is estimated at over $1 billion, explained in an interview.
Erik (HASH) Hersman/Flickr The Fundamentum Partnership is looking to Series B and C stage deals.
The founding partners suggested that they may do just two or three deals per year in order to pick out the “exceptional” startups that can benefit from both capital and mentoring.
Beyond supplying money, those backers are said to be motivated by helping startups directly.
The investment thesis is fairly vertical agnostic, with Nilekani and Aggarwal saying the team is looking for companies, and founders, that they believe can grow quickly and benefit from hands-on mentoring rather than targeting any specific business segments.
“We are going to use tech as the underlying theme and look at industries where consumption is going digital,” Aggarwal said of the broad focus.
“Many of those sectors disrupted including retail and transportation.
Featured Image: NOBUHIRO ASADA/Shutterstock
Amazon completes its acquisition of Middle Eastern e-commerce firm Souq
Amazon completes its acquisition of Middle Eastern e-commerce firm Souq.
Amazon has completed its acquisition of e-commerce firm Souq.com, which was first announced at the end of March and sees the U.S. retail giant enter the Middle Eastern market.
The deal is officially undisclosed, but sources previously told TechCrunch that Amazon is paying around $650 million.
Bloomberg previously reported that Amazon was in discussions over an investment at a valuation in excess of $1 billion but, amid rivalry from Emaar’s ambitious Noon.com project and others, an acquisition agreement was reached.
The two companies said today that they have completed an initial integration that allows customers to log into Souq.com using their Amazon account credentials.
Next up, they plan to integrate products and services between the two sites to leverage their respective scale.
In an announcement, Souq.com in particular spoke of the potential to integrate with Amazon’s global seller and customer base to boost its business.
“It is an exhilarating time for the e-commerce industry in the region.
Together with Amazon, our goal is to offer our customers the widest product selection, great prices, improved delivery times and first-rate customer service,” Souq.com CEO and co-founder Ronaldo Mouchawar said in a statement.
Back to the Middle East, the Souq.com deal gives Amazon a firm footing in a growing and competitive e-commerce space.
When even due diligence can be biased
Sexual abuse, harassment and misconduct are the most egregious and violently awful signs of a pervasive problem that the industry is in the midst of struggling to address.
But that struggle plays out in a number of ways.
In it, the authors examined the ways that investors pose different questions to the men and women they’re vetting for potential investment dollars… and the ways that those questions and their responses impact financing.
Both men and women expressed the bias against women founders.
Every prevention question posed to an entrepreneur meant $3.8 million less in funding for their companies FOR EACH QUESTION.
The research that formed the core of the study consisted of the authors observing initial due diligence between 140 investors (40 percent of whom were women) and 189 entrepreneurs at TechCrunch Disrupt New York.
Still, male-led startups raised five times more funding than companies led by women.
Women are starting more companies.
Why not see how this plays out in venture capital?
Klein’s call for more, better data, is a good start.
Start-up investor Dave McClure steps down, says ‘I’m a creep’
Start-up investor Dave McClure steps down, says ‘I’m a creep’.
But apologies aren’t enough without meaningful actions and change.
McClure declined to comment for this article.
He retweeted the 500 Startups statement, then on Saturday published a blog post entitled “I’m a creep. “I made advances towards multiple women in work-related situations, where it was clearly inappropriate.
His demotion was spurred by a complaint in November 2016 by entrepreneur Sarah Kunst.
In 2014, when Kunst was discussing a possible job at 500 Startups, McClure sent her a Twitter message during a conference they were attending.
In November 2016, she contacted a friend, one of McClure’s colleagues, about the incident.
In an interview with USA TODAY, Kunst said the experience was “sadly all too common in the tech and investing community.”
McClure, in the blog post, apologized to Kunst for “my inappropriate behavior in a setting I thought was social, but in hindsight was clearly not.
How an ex-Googler and entrepreneur paid for university by tutoring — then built an app to help others
How an ex-Googler and entrepreneur paid for university by tutoring — then built an app to help others.
He went to King’s, paying the nine grand a year — but he didn’t take out a student loan.
It’s built by three old friends Scoodle is an app that connects tutors to students.
Students can search for tutors, book and pay for lessons, and message them, all through the app, while it gives the tutors control over how they manage their students and create group lessons. “However, non-conventional learning is picking up a lot.
For example, a lot of students are learning foreign languages and getting tutors to help them get into medicine. “We’ve known each other for a long time, probably 10-15 years now.
(Jeilani also declined to name the investors the company is talking to.) ‘My values and faith are a lot of who I am’ After Ismail Jeilani graduated, he went to work for Google, working as an account strategist in Ireland. “The network from the ex-Googlers network is amazing, it’s genuinely incredible,” he said at the time.
Mendel.ai nabs $2 million to match cancer patients with the latest clinical trials
Mendel.ai nabs $2 million to match cancer patients with the latest clinical trials.
He was tired of losing patients to cancer.
He was tired of messy medical records.
Losing both patience and too many patients, Galil decided to create an organized and artificially intelligent system to match those under his care with the best diagnostic and treatment methods available.
He called his new system Mendel.ai after Gregor Mendel, the father of modern genetics science, and has just raised $2 million in seed funding from DCM Ventures, Bootstrap Labs and Launch Capital to get the project off the ground.
“A lung cancer patient, for example, might find 500 potential trials on clinicaltrials.gov, each of which has a unique, exhaustive list of eligibility criteria that must be read and assessed,” says Galil.
“As this pool of trials changes each week, it is humanly impossible to keep track of all good matches.” Mendel.ai seeks to reduce the time it takes and thus save more lives.
The company is now integrating with the Comprehensive Blood & Cancer Center (CBCC) in Bakersfield, Calif, which will allow the center’s doctors to quickly match their patients with available clinical trials in a matter of minutes, according to Galil.
“This is the difference between someone dying and someone living.
It’s not a joke,” Galil told TechCrunch.
The 10 Largest NYC Startup Funding Rounds of May 2017
The 10 Largest NYC Startup Funding Rounds of May 2017.
Armed with some data from our friends at CrunchBase, I broke down the 10 largest rounds in New York during the month of May.
To maintain a focus on tech-enabled startups, real estate and biotech companies were excluded.
Reaching more individuals in a single month than every other tech-focused organization in NYC combined, AlleyWatch is the highway for technology and entrepreneurship in New York.
There are a number of options to reach this audience of the world’s most innovative organizations and startups at scale including sponsoring a piece like this, which will be read by the vast majority of movers and shakers in the NYC entrepreneurial universe.
Find out more here.
To maintain a focus on tech-enabled startups, real estate and biotech companies were excluded.
Reaching more individuals in a single month than every other tech-focused organization in NYC combined, AlleyWatch is the highway for technology and entrepreneurship in New York.
There are a number of options to reach this audience of the world’s most innovative organizations and startups at scale including sponsoring a piece like this, which will be read by the vast majority of movers and shakers in the NYC entrepreneurial universe.
Find out more here.
Mike’s and Kevin’s Week in Tech: Streaming Music and Harassment in Venture Capital
Mike’s and Kevin’s Week in Tech: Streaming Music and Harassment in Venture Capital.
Farhad is off this week, so Kevin Roose, a Times business columnist, filled in.
Half my Twitter feed was filled with people lauding it, so I decided to sign up for Tidal, the streaming music service owned by Jay Z, to listen to the album.
Kevin: I believe the technical music industry term for what happened to you is “playing yourself.” But you’re not wrong — the entire business model of music streaming services is wild, as evidenced by the fact that even Spotify, the most successful streaming service in existence, lost more than $600 million last year.
Kevin, tell me what I should do.
Mike: Sorry, all full.
I actually think 2018 might be the year we see American antitrust regulators start going after some of these companies for anticompetitive practices, especially when it comes to the advertising market.
For those who haven’t been paying attention, this saga broke open about a week ago, when The Information reported that six women had accused Justin Caldbeck, a venture capitalist at Binary Capital, of inappropriately using his position as a potential investor in their companies to sexually harass or hit on them during business meetings or conversations.
Is it possible women may feel more empowered now to speak out against bad actors?
Mike: Ah, Kevin, you’re becoming just as cynical as I am.
Sex for Funding? Silicon Valley Reeling After 24 Female Entrepreneurs Speak Out
Silicon Valley Reeling After 24 Female Entrepreneurs Speak Out.
Emboldened, perhaps, by the fact that sexual harassment at Uber actually had consequences, 24 female entrepreneurs who sought funding from Silicon Valley venture capitalists have told The New York Times and tech site The Information in some detail about the routine sexual harassment they faced and the sexual favors they were expected to offer in exchange for that funding.
She and others also recounted experiences similar to those described by female engineers at Uber: Complaints to the VCs’ employers did them no good at all.
The company accepted Caldbeck’s resignation.
Earlier today Teo also resigned from Binary.
The three Binary partners are not the only VCs uncomfortably in the spotlight over harassment.
500 Startups told the time that McClure was no longer in charge of day-to-day operations because of these disclosures, and that he was receiving counseling.
This last item seems to bring things full circle, because back in July 2012, McClure publicly challenged women who were upset at the funding imbalance between men and women founders to do something about it by providing funds to female startups themselves.
What he failed to recognize in his claim that women are at least partly to blame for our own non-presence in Silicon Valley is the general discrimination and demeaning behavior that women who do stick it out there have to live with daily.
Whatever McClure may think, that’s everyone’s problem, not just women’s.
GeekWire 200 June update: Funding rounds give Pacific NW startups summer momentum
GeekWire 200 June update: Funding rounds give Pacific NW startups summer momentum.
Numerous startups in Seattle and Portland are putting to work investment dollars they have landed over the last few months, shooting them up the GeekWire 200 list of privately held Pacific Northwest startups, presented by EY.
Other movers at the top include Vacasa, up a single spot to number eight, and K2, the enterprise technology company, which jumped back into the top 10 this month.
It may not be long before Rover.com graduates from the GeekWire 200 via an IPO, but for now it continues to climb up the list, cracking the top 20 after moving six spots to number 19.
In March, Rover acquired DogVacay, its biggest competitor in the online dog-sitting marketplace.
Seattle startup Highspot just completed a $15 million fundraising round this month, and it is up 10 spots to number 126 on the GeekWire 200.
School may be out for summer but that hasn’t slowed down Portland-based Lumen Learning, which rose 10 spots on the list to number 165.
Here are some of the other big movers this month: Nine startups made their debut on the GeekWire 200 or returned to the list in June.
If your Pacific Northwest startup isn’t among the companies on that larger list, you can submit it for inclusion here, and our algorithm will crunch the numbers to see if your company makes next month’s GeekWire 200.
And, just a reminder, if you value resources like these, be sure to check out our list and map of out-of-town tech companies with Seattle engineering outposts as well as our list of startup incubators, co-working spaces and accelerators in the region, and our GeekWork job board.
Is Blockchain Disrupting The Way Startups Raise Funds?
Is Blockchain Disrupting The Way Startups Raise Funds?.
Popular cryptocurrency forum BitcoinTalk.org is currently teeming with ICO and presale announcements for a variety of coins.
Today -Vitalik’s Ethereum and smart contracts innovation have built the foundation for startups to raise funds through ICO’s (Photo by John Phillips/Getty Images for TechCrunch) Smart contract platform startup DCorp is also currently running its currency presale where interested investors could acquire DCorp’s own DRP currency tokens and become shareholders of this cryptoprojects venture fund.
Ether – the currency token of blockchain platform Ethereum – is considered as the next major cryptocurrency.
Smart contracts Despite the ether’s flash crash, the Ethereum platform is considered to be the next major development in blockchain.
It’s built to be a transactional platform.
Smart contracts could also be used to enforce investment and loan agreements.
Funding through ICOs ICOs work similarly to initial public offerings but shares are in the form of cryptocurrency tokens.
Ethereum jumpstarted its own funding through a presale of ether in 2014.
For startups, the combination of smart contracts and currency tokens available on one platform promise to be a fast, secure, and transparent way to secure funding.
Male and Female Entrepreneurs Get Asked Different Questions by VCs — and It Affects How Much Funding They Get
Male and Female Entrepreneurs Get Asked Different Questions by VCs — and It Affects How Much Funding They Get.
We observed Q&A interactions between 140 prominent venture capitalists (40% of them female) and 189 entrepreneurs (12% female) that took place at TechCrunch Disrupt New York, an annual startup funding competition.
We found evidence of this bias with both male and female VCs.
Examining comparable companies, we observed that entrepreneurs who fielded mostly prevention questions went on to raise an average of $2.3 million in aggregate funds for their startups through 2017 — about seven times less than the $16.8 million raised on average by entrepreneurs who were asked mostly promotion questions.
TechCrunch Disrupt entrepreneurs who were asked mostly prevention questions but gave mostly promotion responses went on to raise an average of $7.9 million in total funding.
Conversely, those who responded to mostly prevention questions with mostly prevention answers went on to raise an average of only $563,000.
The experimental results reinforced our findings from the field: Entrepreneurs who were asked promotion questions received twice as much funding as those who were asked prevention questions.
Angel investors allocated an average of $81,113 to startups in the prevention question, promotion answer condition — 1.6 times larger than the $52,369 average allocated to those in the prevention question, prevention answer condition.
Armed with the knowledge that promotion has advantages over prevention, informed entrepreneurs can recognize question orientation and frame their responses to benefit their startups.
Our findings suggest that the gender gap in funding is not likely to narrow simply because more women are becoming VCs.
12 startups get special grants from IT-BT dept
12 startups get special grants from IT-BT dept.
BENGALURU: To promote and support young minds, the IT-BT Department has announced grants worth Rs 3.18 crore to 12 startups in the state.
These 12 startups are specialised in a wide range of specialities, skills, and industries, such as agriculture, biotechnology, security, communications, robotics and the like.
They have been selected carefully on the grounds of the application of the technology, practicality, feasibility and innovation.
The startups are part of the Idea2PoC (proof of concept), a scheme being implemented by the Karnataka Startup Cell, Department of IT, with each company receiving an initial funding of Rs 50 lakh each.
The Idea2PoC is a part of India’s first multi-sector startup policy launched by the state government in 2015.
It aims to encourage and discover brilliant innovators in the state who need early stage funding to help in commercialising their innovation and research.
Further, funding will be released in tranches against the achievement of project milestones with timelines.Priyank Kharge, IT&BT Minister, said, “The state is filled with young and talented people.
These 12 startups were chosen because they have the potential to make a difference.” Gaurav Gupta, Principal Secretary to Government, Department of IT, BT and Science and Technology, said, “Bengaluru is the IT hub of the country, however, we now see that start-ups in the field of agriculture, biotechnology, security, communications, robotics, gaming and the like are springing up rapidly.
This holistic support system to develop and launch their creative ideas will in turn enhance the potential of the state.” The state is targeting start-ups in new and emerging technologies such as animation, artificial intelligence, big data and virtual reality.
The head of one of San Francisco’s most famous startup farms is no longer running his firm after being accused of sexual harassment
The head of one of San Francisco’s most famous startup farms is no longer running his firm after being accused of sexual harassment.
The founding partner of 500 Startups, Dave McClure, is no longer in charge of the startup incubator’s day-to-day operations, after being accused of “inappropriate behavior with women,” The New York Times reported.
In its story, the New York Times named one particular woman, Sarah Kunst, who told the paper McClure harassed her after she talked with him about a job at 500 Startups.
McClure did not dispute the account, according to the Times.
“After being made aware of instances of Dave having inappropriate behavior with women in the tech community, we have been making changes internally,” 500 Startups told the Times.
Tsai wrote in a statement published Friday that she took over the role a few months ago, a detail that the company had not previously announced.
In addition, he’s been attending counseling to work on changing his perspectives and preventing his previous unacceptable behavior,” Tsai wrote.
The website still listed Tsai as a managing partner and McClure as a general partner as of Friday afternoon.
Many of the businesses that work with 500 Startups are early in their development, when the entrepreneurs that created them might be more desperate and eager for funding — and potentially more vulnerable to behavior that exploits an imbalanced power dynamic.
Justin Caldbeck, a co-founding partner of Binary Capital, resigned last week following a similar report in The Information.
This Hot Database Startup Just Snagged $50 Million in Funding
Kinetica, a startup that builds databases that harness fast graphical processing chips to perform everyday business applications, now has $50 million in new funding.
The San Francisco company is banking that increasing numbers of mainstream computing jobs will run on Nvidia (nvda, -1.21%) graphical processing units (GPUs), which until recently were used primarily for video games and animation.
Now a handful of startups including Kinetica, Sqream, and MapD are building databases that use GPUs to parse all sorts of data, including the sort of information normally processed by traditional relational databases from Oracle (orcl, -0.12%) and Microsoft (msft, +0.82%), but also messy, free-form data thrown off by sensors in the field and social media streams.
Jonathan DeMent, program director for IBM Power Systems & OpenPower Innovation group is a fan.
Some large IBM (ibm, -0.19%) customers are using IBM Power servers, which pair that company’s Power processor with an Nvidia GPU, for large complex supply chain tasks. “If it’s pouring rain in Atlanta and there are not enough umbrellas in the stores, there’s a disruption.
The goal is to have a real-time view of all that’s happening,” DeMent said, adding that the system can be queried quickly and process changes fast to meet changing demands.
Kinetica grew out of work that Vij and his Kinetica co-founder Nima Negahban did at the United States Army Intelligence and Security Command and the National Security Agency creating a system to track and capture terrorists in real-time.
The $50 million in Series A funding was led by Canvas Ventures and Meritech Capital Partners, with contributions from new investor Citi Ventures and existing backer Ray Lane of GreatPoint Ventures.
That brings total funding, including seed money from Lane, to $63 million.
Real estate site Redfin files for IPO
The timing of the filing implies that Redfin is likely to debut in late July or early August.
Because of the JOBS Act, most companies can wait until 15 days before their investor roadshow to reveal their filing.
Almost all of them take advantage of this.
This was a long time coming for Redfin, which got its start in 2004.
Since then, the company has raised at least $167 million in venture funding.
Greylock Partners is the largest shareholder with a 12.4 percent stake, followed by Madrona Ventures with 11.4 percent, Tiger Global at 10.5 percent and Draper Fisher Jurvetson at 10.2 percent.
Redfin makes money by taking a 1 to 1.5 percent commission off home sales facilitated by their site.
The company brought in $267.2 million in revenue last year, a significant increase from $187.3 million in 2015 and $125.4 million in 2014.
Losses were $78 million for 2016, down from $132.5 million in 2015.
Redfin’s first quarter of 2017 was in the red for $52.8 million, up from the $29.5 million loss in the same quarter of last year.