Welcome to Startups Weekly, a nuanced take on this week’s startup news and trends by Senior Reporter and Probity co-host Natasha Mascarenhas. To get this in your inbox, subscribe here.
One of the quieter conversations in venture wanted has only grown louder, in my DMs and interviews, over the past few months: The known bias in venture wanted has been a branding issue for some of the emerging, diverse fund managers just now splashing onto the scene.
Everyone has a story, but they all sound a bit similar: A sexuality VC is launching a fund, and she’s either compared to every other sexuality VC with a fund, expected to only invest in sexuality founders or have a diversity, probity and inclusion wile as a cadre thesis. The othering that happens, from an ever-homogenous group of LPs or plane founders who see sexuality VCs as monolithic, has led to some sexuality VCs rebranding their firms perfectly so they are seen as vastitude their gender.
Read my full take on this topic with Rebecca Szkutak on TC : “For sexuality VCs, bias is a branding issue.”
In the rest of this newsletter, we’ll talk well-nigh Upfront Summit 2023 and a surprising Better deal. As always, you can follow me on Twitter or Instagram to protract the conversation.
VC powwow brings surprises and AI
All your favorite venture journalists were rented this week at Upfront Summit 2023, a two-day, invite-only event that brings together industry insiders — and celebrities — to talk well-nigh the future of capital. I interviewed the past and present baby-sit over at Kapor Capital. I shook hands with Jamie Lee Curtis and stole interview tips from Kara Swisher. And Al Gore tried to recruit the unshortened regulars to be increasingly serious on combating climate change.
All in all, the priming basically fueled my story plans for the next month, so stay tuned for lots of follow-up angles. And some scoops too. I’ll start with a recap on the AI conversations all over stage.
Here’s why it’s important: If you ask me, AI was the omnipresent idealism at Upfront. It’s not surprising: Hyped-up technologies often get outsized interest. But the undercurrent is variegated from what it was in 2021 when investors were throwing billions of dollars at 15-minute grocery wordage companies and web3. Venture dry powder is locked up, deals are getting washed-up slower and some investors are still licking their wounds from the downturn thus far.
- My colleague Ron Miller will have a story up recapping the standout moments during the panel with Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff.
- He moreover has a unconfined piece well-nigh Adobe’s Scott Belsky and the executive’s take on generative AI.
Image Credits: Clark Studio
The follow-up
My colleagues took the mic this week on Probity to talk through the latest and greatest headlines. The whole show was a hoot. Unexpectedly, for all, was the return of Better.com. News tapped older this week that Amazon is letting employees use their stock to finance home purchases and plane second homes.
Here’s why it’s important: It’s a creative, but moreover surprising, partnership. Better has been an Amazon Web Services consumer since 2015 and its loan origination system is powered entirely by the software, equal to a statement. Still, Better has been through its pearly share of struggles that have tint doubt on its future. Must we run through all the filings?
Image Credits: Bryce Durbin / TechCrunch
Etc., etc.
- Headline of the week goes to: “Uber is coming for Instacart.”
- Startups, assemble: Applications are unshut for the TechCrunch Startup Battlefield 200.
- Throwback Saturday: If you missed Startups Weekly last week, reservation my last issue here: “AI’s hype isn’t going to be simply star-studded”
- Let’s hang on campus? TechCrunch is coming to Boston on April 20. I’ll be there with my favorite colleagues to interview top experts at a one-day founder summit. Book your pass ASAP! Speakers include Techstars’ Kerty Levy, Construct Capital’s Dayna Grayson and NFX’s James Currier.
Seen on TechCrunch
Everything Elon Musk and execs shared (and skipped) at Tesla Investor Day
OpenAI launches an API for ChatGPT, plus defended topics for enterprise customers
Gamers are fixing a video game ‘taken over’ by hackers
Seen on TechCrunch
Perhaps Substack can grow just fine without venture dollars
Pitch Deck Teardown: Gable’s $12M Series A deck
Does web3 need a venture bailout now that AI has all the hype?
And with that, thank you for stuff here. If you’re reading this on a browser, get this in your inbox too! Subscribe here and share it with your friends.
The oh-so-biased branding risk in venture capital by Natasha Mascarenhas originally published on TechCrunch
