Can you build “Silicon Valley” companies outside of the Valley?
The big debate among tech circles has always been if it’s possible to build a “Silicon Valley” company outside of the Valley. Is Silicon Valley a physical place or a state of mind? Can upstart ecosystems in New York, Los Angeles, Toronto, or Seattle churn out tomorrow’s billion dollar tech companies? Considering a large proportion of Version […]
What excites us in consumer healthcare IT?
Last December, we published our thoughts on the healthcare market in a VentureBeat article: “The health-tech booster shot: bringing health care into the 21st century.” That was December 2013, and digital health funding for the year exceeded $19B with 195 venture deals (where over $2M was raised). These numbers were up 39% compared with 2012, and […]
Introducing our latest investment: Dwellable, mobile-first vacation rentals
Sometimes, you need to wait a long time for the chance to invest in an outstanding founder. I met Adam Doppelt five years ago. He’s the co-founder of Urbanspoon, the popular restaurant review site and app. He also co-founded Cubeduel, a site that lets you rank your co-workers and Strangeberry, a digital media startup that […]
The rise of the female founder
We’re all too familiar with the very real gender gap within the tech community. Women are underrepresented as engineers, management, investors, and founders. A commonly cited statistic is that only 7 percent of U.S. venture capital deals go to women founders and CEOs. Business Insider recently crunched the numbers behind 26 of the top venture […]
The Hardware Renaissance is gaining speed
As I’ve written before, I’m bullish on hardware. Yet even I was blown away by how far the hardware renaissance has come over the past year. Version One recently spent a few days at Solid, Tim O’Reilly’s new conference that focuses on the intersection of hardware and software, where I led a panel on scaling […]