Queen Substance: Chief, venture, recycled gold
Week of October 22, 2018
“’Restore connection’ is not just for devices, it is for people too. If we cannot disconnect, we cannot lead. Creating the culture of burnout is opposite to creating a culture of sustainable creativity. This is something that needs to be taught in business schools. This mentality needs to be introduced as a leadership and performance-enhancing tool.”
— Arianna Huffington, co-founder of Huffington Post and Founder & CEO of Thrive
SOFTBANK’S CLOUDED VISION
You may have heard of Softbank’s $93 billion global Vision Fund, which writes casual nine and ten figure checks. Some of its biggest investment takedowns include $9 billion in Uber and $4 billion in WeWork. Now SVF’s biggest source of capital — to the tune of $45 billion — Saudi Arabia, is under mounting international scrutiny for the alleged state sanctioned murder of Washington Post journalist and Saudi critic, Jamal Khashoggi. Saudi Arabia has denied Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s involvement while calling the death a “tremendous mistake.”
Earlier this month, the Crown Prince said he would match his initial multi-billion dollar investment if Softbank raised a second fund. But there is concern that this money would be shunned by the Valley. In protest, to Khashoggi’s death, prominent companies like Google, JPMorgan and Uber, have pulled out of a major state-run investment conference in Riyadh this week. Softbank’s CEO Masayoshi Son has remained silent on the incident and whether his company would attend the conference.
⚡5.5% of managerial posts at Softbank are held by women.
THE VALLEY’S XX PROBLEM
The startup world has an odds problem. Only 1 out of 50 companies that receive venture money have a female founder. Women make up 33% of the tech workforce but only hold 9% of their respective companies equity. The latest odd — 1 in 5. That is the amount of women who have been through Y Combinator incubator program that say they’ve been sexually harassed or assaulted by an investor. YC, conducted the survey with Callisto, a non-profit it funded that is devoted to ending sexual harassment. In a blog post, YC restated its “zero-tolerance policy for inappropriate behavior.”
⚡27% of the founders in Y Combinator’s winter 2018 batch were women.
WHO RUNS THE WORLD? GIRLS.
Twenty-five. That is how many Fortune 500 companies have a female CEO. A new start-up thinks those numbers are pretty shitty — and so do we. Chief, has raised $3 million, to launch a private network to help women at the VP level and above shatter glass ceilings. The founders, Carolyn Childers and Lindsay Kaplan, who were both VP-level execs at tech companies, believe women supporting women will lead to professional advancement. Chief is looking to take on groups like, YPO a global network of 25,000 CEOs with 90% male membership base. Chief, which has an annual cost of $5,000, will launch with a class of 200 New York-based women. Primary Venture Capital and Flybridge Capital Partners led the round.
⚡46% of U.S. workers are women.
…AND NOW FOR A QUICK FUNDING ROUND-UP
- Softbank, has led a $111M investment into Loggi, a Brazilian same-day delivery logistics service. The Series D investment by the firm’s Vision Fund follows similar deployments of cash in the vertical, including Doordash (led $535M series D) and China-based Manbang (led $1.9B PE round).
— First Round Capital filed paperwork with the SEC that it is raising $220 million across two new funds. Fund 7, would be the Philly-based early stage Fund’s largest to date. This year alone, First Round invested in 31 companies and had two notable exits: Ring and Birchbox.
— Grin, is the latest scooter company looking to get a piece of the billion dollar valuations of competitors Bird and Lime. The Mexico-City based electric scooter company has raised $45.7 Million to expand across Latin America.
⚡On average, female founders receive $935,000 in funding and male-founded companies receive $2.1 million.
As a vampire, you need to be good at sinking your teeth into things (well, humans) in order to survive. The same can be said for entrepreneurs. While Nikki Reed, just played a vampire in the Twilight series, her biggest role yet is playing entrepreneur IRL. In 2017, Reed co-founded Bayou with Love, a sustainable line with Morgan Bogle to create “a lifestyle brand that would mirror” her own eco-friendly ways. The company’s namesake is a homage to the bayous of her husband — and fellow Hollywood Vamp — Ian Somerhalder’s hometown in Louisiana.
The brand’s latest collection is a jewelry line in collaboration with Dell. Yes, as in the computer company. Dell approached Reed to help repurpose its e-waste which includes gold and silver from old motherboards. So is it time to go dumpster diving for gold? To put it in perspective, the waste from cell phones sends $60 million worth of gold and silver to landfills each year. Dell created an extraction process to remove these precious metals from old devices that is 99% more sustainable than extracting from the earth.
The Bayou with Love x Dell range is comprised of dainty stone bands and delicate stud earrings. We are quite partial to the three sapphire stone pinky ring and its price-tag of $160.
Learn more about Reed and Bayou (and check out her baller pantsuit) in this interview with Brit & Co. CEO Brit Morin — whose crafty ways we featured here.
It finally feels like fall in NYC and that means working on the weekends, so here’s to Selfie Sundays!
THE MATRIARCHY
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