Back in January, Blackstone — the investment firm whose assets under management surpassed a jaw-dropping half a trillion dollars earlier this year — quietly began piecing together a new, growth equity platform called Blackstone Growth, or BXG. Step one was hiring away Jon Korngold from General Atlantic, where he’d spent the previous 18 years, including ... Matchstick Ventures, a seed-stage firm that says it invests in “rapidly growing, yet underserved startup ecosystems,” announced this week that it has raised $30 million for its second fund. That’s a lot more money than the firm’s $5 million seed round. This time, Matchsetick says it will write initial checks of around $500,000, and in ... Streaming services have made music ubiquitous, driving more exploration by consumers who don’t have to pay for each song or album individually. Musicians are correspondingly able to find their own niche of fans scattered around the world. (This is the third installment of our EC-1 series on Kobalt Music Group and changes in the music ... Learn from top VCs at TechCrunch Disrupt. ... Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines. ... Postmates is expected to unveil its IPO prospectus this month. ... “We were so low that people would take advantage of us. People we knew well would just lie to us. One of my favorites was a company we did an enormous amount of work for and really helped save. We then went to see the CEO and he said, ‘I really love you guys but ... Automattic, the company behind WordPress.com, WooCommerce, Longreads, Simplenote and soon Tumblr, is now worth $3 billion. But its founder and CEO Matt Mullenweg has a bigger goal. He wants to make the web better, more open and diverse. With the rise of social networks and closed platforms, Automattic’s mission statement has never sounded so important. ... In the last year alone, nine new funds have closed on an aggregate $200 million to invest in pre-seed startups. ... French president Emmanuel Macron announced in a speech ahead of France Digitale Day that the French government has convinced institutional investors to invest more heavily in late-stage VC funds and asset managers in one way or another. Institutional investors have committed to investing $5.5 billion (€5 billion). “We’ll have €2 billion that will go in ...
Posts Tagged ‘venture capital’
Want to crush competitors? Forget SoftBank, Blackstone suggests; it can write $500 million checks, too
Matchstick Ventures raises $30M to back startups in the northern U.S. and the Rockies
How Kobalt is betting on music’s middle class and DIY stars
At TechCrunch Disrupt, insights into key trends in venture capital
The cult of the founder and Silicon Valley’s lack of moral authority
Readying an IPO, Postmates secures $225M from private equity firm GPI Capital
Finding sustainable success with Blackstone CEO Stephen Schwarzman
How Automattic wants to build the operating system of the web
Afore Capital raises second pre-seed venture capital fund
Macron announces €5 billion late-stage investment pledge from institutional investors