Raising venture capital for the serious entrepreneur

It’s hard not to like Randi Zuckerberg. She smiles a lot. She looks you in the eye. And even in an artificial setting–say, sitting across a conference table surrounded by publicists and journalists with recording devices capturing her carefully chosen phrases–she manages to seem both natural and unflinchingly on point. And yet, the 30-year-old former Facebook marketing director and budding media mogul–and, it almost goes without saying, big sister of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg–has made a lot of people very angry. advertisement advertisement She’s fine with that. “Sometimes it’s better to elicit passion from people than just to elicit a lukewarm response,” she told Co.Create on a recent visit to New York to promote Start-Ups: Silicon Valley, the reality show she produced for Bravo that’s premiering on November 5. “I talk to a lot of brands about social media and I always tell brands you can’t let the … [Read more...] about Friends Are Swell. But Randi Zuckerberg, Producer Of Bravo’s “Start-ups: Silicon Valley,” Wants Ratings

“Sunshine is the gift of the gods,” Masayoshi Son cheerily told a crowd of investors on the morning of October 3, 2018. He was in greater Noida, India, giving a speech about solar power. The day was hot, in the mid-90s, and for Son, CEO of the Japanese telecom conglomerate SoftBank, particularly bright. His visions for SoftBank—to be at the vanguard of technology and AI investing—had captivated the global capital world. “As long as you have the land and sunshine . . . I will give you free electricity,” he said. Son had committed to investing as much as $100 billion in Indian solar infrastructure. The free power would come 25 years from now. advertisement advertisement Meanwhile, nine and a half time zones away, Adam Neumann, cofounder and CEO of WeWork, the fast-growing global office-leasing player, was in New York celebrating a series of recent milestones: becoming New York’s largest private landlord; committing the company to … [Read more...] about WeFail: How the doomed Masa Son-Adam Neumann relationship set WeWork on the road to disaster

Long before there was Uber, 21-year-old Logan Green traveled to Zimbabwe. There, he encountered impromptu fleets of vans that shuttled people around Harare’s chaotic streets. Inspired, he returned to the United States and launched a company called Zimride in 2007. It used Facebook to connect riders and drivers for long-distance trips. advertisement advertisement John Zimmer had nothing to do with the launch of Zimride, despite the fact that it echoes his name, but when he heard about it, it resonated. Zimmer had become obsessed with the idea of ride sharing in 2006 after hearing one of his professors at Cornell give a lecture on green cities. Can you imagine, Zimmer asked a schoolmate over beers, “this future where these pods would come to your doorstep, and they’d get people around, and you wouldn’t have to drive?” A friend introduced the two dreamers, and before long Zimmer quit his job as an analyst at Lehman Brothers to join Zimride. Their … [Read more...] about Lyft To Uber: The Race Is On