Right now, there are no plans to open source it, but we might integrate into our Chrome Plugin so you can pull up a company’s funding, investors, and also get a sense for how full their website is of marketing gibberish. Stay tuned.
Call for startups: Indian fintech companies
We are working on a market map of Indian fintech companies. If this is you, submit your company here to get in front of our research analysts.
Fame, fortune, and fintech glory awaits you.
It’s all bad. Really really bad.
Tonight is El Presidente Trump’s first address to a joint session of Congress. Here’s a heatmap that shows Americans are pretty much dissatisfied with everything.
I’m excited to announce that Brad Katsuyama, the hero of Michael Lewis’ bestseller, Flash Boys, and CEO of IEX will be joining us at The Future of Fintech Conference.
IEX won stock exchange status from the SEC last June and as the Forbes article in the blurb highlights, Katsuyama is one of Wall Street’s biggest contrarians.
IEX has received more than $100 million of investment from the likes of Steve Wynn (of Wynn Resorts), Bill Ackman, David Einhorn, and Spark Capital. Interestingly, Wynn has actually said he will move Wynn Resorts over to IEX (currently on Nasdaq).
This is a reminder that prices go up by $1000 tomorrow (on March 1st). Use the discount code NLFintech17here to get $1000 off today.
Slack-a-mole
Michael Muse, director of operations at ManagedbyQ, penned an interesting essay (check out The Blurb) looking at the true cost of Slack and how it disrupts productivity due to the listening cost it puts on users.
He attempts to quantify this impact (we like data-driven) and calculates that it costs people over 1 hour of productivity per day. It’s an interesting view on the negative ROI of Slack.
Big tech’s big bets
We analyzed the private market activity of the five largest US tech companies by revenue — Google, Amazon, Facebook, Microsoft, and IBM — and their associated venture arms. From 2012-2016, the top five US tech companies invested in 420 private companies, led by Google (Alphabet), which backed 333 startups through its various venture arms.
Breaking: Diligent, thoughtful company grows methodically
Last week, when it became apparent that Uber’s culture was a turd wrapped in poo, a bunch of folks reached out to us asking why Silicon Valley doesn’t care about HR or something of that ilk.
It’s difficult/incorrect to paint all of Silicon Valley with a broad brush and bucket them with Uber or Zenefits before them. The reality is that companies with healthy cultures that build good products and make customers happy are boring AF. As my mom would say, there is no masala there.
When trying to figure out where culture issues are likely to crop up, I do think famous startup philosopher Startup L. Jackson may provide a good indicator of where to look.
For a full list of companies that will be present, check out the CB Insights MWC 2017 collection on our platform.
Enterprise knowledge management done right
We’ve launched a way for clients to collaborate within their teams as well as with their business units, startup founders, and other partners right on CB Insights.
Whether it is creating and discussing a market map or creating a workspace for diligence on a startup, Collections aka our CRM for Innovation is a game changer. You can learn more about how it gets you out of the email, PPT, and Excel collaboration nightmare here.
San Francisco Chronicle. Thomas Lee (@bytomlee) reports on special charters for fintech firms that would allow the firms to be recognized as special-purpose banks and cites CB Insights investment data.
Livemint. Sayan Chakraborty writes about online freight aggregator Blackbuck’s new round of financing and cites CB Insights data on investment to Indian startups.
P.S. Last week, we released our 2016 Global CVC report. Next Thursday, we’ll be diving deeper into the trends within the space during our Corporate Venture Capital briefing. Sign up here.
