Billionaire investor Peter Thiel may have been trying to drum up more support for Republican candidate Donald Trump this morning at the National Press Club in Washington. But a 15-minute long speech he delivered sounded more like a plea to Americans to understand what’s so wrong with this country, rather than a case for Trump. His pitch: American is broken, and there’s nothing… Read More
Wish, a San Francisco-based e-commerce mobile app that’s taken off in the U.S. and Europe by selling watches, clothing and other items extremely cheaply, is raising a new round of funding, a new filing shows. (The research company CB Insights spied the filing first.) Neither the size of the round nor the valuation are included, but the filing shows that Series F investors coming into… Read More
Earlier this week, the Swartz Center for Entrepreneurship, a “hub for entrepreneurship” in the center of Carnegie Mellon University’s Pittsburgh campus, was officially launched in an event attended by upwards of 600 students, alums, and professors. They’ll have even more to celebrate when construction on the 300,000-square-foot business school where it’s being… Read More
Earlier this year, Kristen Koh Goldstein merged two of her companies, three-year-old Scalus and six-year-old BackOps into a new company called HireAthena, a back-office-as a service startup that also sells fully automated workflow software. From the start, the company has aggressively marketed itself to both customers and employees who are women, and it’s smartly playing up to them… Read More
Many Americans learned through Lending Club that they can refinance their credit card debt online; now, the lending marketplace Lending Club is hoping they’ll discover that it’s possible to refinance their credit card debt online, too. Though automotive lending is a massive market, car refinance is far smaller owing to a lack of awareness, suggests Lending Club CEO Scott… Read More
Eero, a two-year-old, San Francisco-based maker of a smart wireless routing system, is asking employees to help one of their colleagues after his special-needs son was burned in a fire set by some of his same-age peers. According to a report in Fox News, the 10-year-old was placed in an induced coma earlier this month after being lured into a shack near his Kerrville, Texas home, doused… Read More
Last week, I sat down with IPO pro Lise Buyer to talk about the Bay Area ecosystem for a Sirius XM radio show that’s broadcast from Wharton’s San Francisco campus. Buyer was the host and I was the guest, but because the IPO market is top of mind for so many in the startup industry right now, I asked if I could turn the table for a few minutes on Buyer, who is best known for helping… Read More
