Uber scandal

Hi there,

Everyone has quit a job cuz they were overpaid, right?

Block by block

From American Express to Deloitte to Goldman Sachs, major financial services firms have made investments in bitcoin and blockchain startups. To illustrate how activity has trended, we updated our timeline of each firm’s first investment into the space.

No stick Kalanick

So this weekend Susan J. Fowler, a former site reliability engineer at Uber, penned a post about why she left the company due to harassment. It is well worth a read (see The Blurb).

While tech Twitter and beyond are loudly calling for change at Uber and there have been renewed calls to #deleteuber, will this really impact Uber?

The company has been like teflon to-date with scandal after scandal getting the outrage machine going but then folks forget and going back to using the app.

Is this time different?

Of course, the question of whether Uber is a ponzi scheme of ambition remains.

Funding failure

We look at 108 of the most well-funded startup failures of all time.

The reasons for failure are varied, but a few common threads do emerge such as the inability to generate sustainable revenue, bad product-market fit, and losing to competitors.

__________

Join 200k+ marketers on eMarketer Daily for your down-low, daily briefing on the latest digital marketing, advertising, and media trends. Stay ahead of the curve with reputable, industry-standard research right in your inbox. Every morning. Rise and shine.
__________

Engineering life

We looked at funding trends to private synthetic biology companies, in addition to deal share distribution by stage. In 2016, equity funding to synthetic biology companies saw a 31% increase from $986M in 2015 to nearly $1.3B in 2016.

The rise of MFA

We identified 9 cybersecurity startups to watch that are working on multi-factor authentication (MFA). The companies on our list are all early-stage startups (seed – Series A) and have all raised at least $100K.

The Industry Standard

CB Insights data is the most trusted by those in the industry and the media. A few recent hits.

Forbes. Adrian Bridgwater (@abridgwater) writes about the French startup scene and cites CB Insights investment data.

Entrepreneur. Patrick Henry (@questfusion) on why some startups succeed and why most fail with a reference to CB Insights research on startup failure.

Seeking Alpha. Donovan Jones (@venturedeal) reports on MuleSoft’s IPO filing and refers to CB Insights valuation data.

E27. Kevin McSpadden (@kevinmcspadden) writes about Asian fintech activity and cites data found in the CB Insights 2016 Global Fintech report.

Hope you had a terrific Tuesday.

I love you.

Anand
@asanwal

P.S. How many fintech unicorn CEOs can you fit into Lincoln Center in NYC? Find out at The Future of Fintech.

P.P.S. A reminder that we’re working with The New York Times to rank the top venture capitalists. Submit your portfolio and board of directors data to the CB Insights Editor by this Friday February 24th.