Friday, November 13, 2020
Post-COVID tech-leveraged economy may be more difficult for some workers, Fed Chairman says
NextView Ventures closes its fourth fund with $89 million
NextView Ventures, a Boston-based venture capital fund, has raised an $89.6 million fund, according to SEC filings. The firm’s fourth fund, its largest to date, is oversubscribed, with early documents indicating a $70 million goal. The NextView Ventures team did not immediately respond to request for comment.
NextView Ventures was launched in 2010 by Rob Go, a former partner at Spark Capital; Dave Beisel, who clocked time at Venrock and Masthead Venture Partners; and Lee Hower, a former investor at Point Judith Capital. Melody Koh joined as a partner three years ago, and most recently, the fund brought on former journalist Leah Fessler as an investor.
The fund, which has offices in New York as well as Boston, invests in consumer and software-as-a-service enterprise startups at the pre-seed and seed stage. Its portfolio includes Ellevest, an investing platform for women; Grove Collaborative, a sustainable goods subscription platform; and ThredUp, which has confidentially filed for IPO. In April, NextView launched a virtual accelerator for startups to build a more robust pipeline for deal flow. The firm invested $200,000 for an 8% equity stake in a number of pre-seed and seed startups focused on “the everyday economy.”
More Boston coverage
Despite the pandemic, Boston’s startup scene has continued to attract record numbers in venture capital volume. In fact, according to PitchBook data, Boston-area startups raised more private capital during summer 2020 than they did in summer 2019, suggesting that the pandemic has been a boon to startups in aggregate.
More recently, my colleague Alex Wilhelm and I wrote about how the Boston area is growing its demographic footprint in venture capital. In Q3 2019, New England drove 9.3% of U.S. venture deals, and 10.3% of U.S. venture dollars. In Q3 2020, those numbers were 9.3% of U.S. venture deals, and 12.7% of U.S. venture dollars. The percentage change is notable, especially amid volatile times.
NextView’s new fund is yet another signal of the city’s ability to attract institutional investment. Its previous fund was raised in 2017 at a $50 million close.
AI services company C3.ai files for IPO, reports revenue of $157M in the fiscal year ending April 2020, up 71% YoY, and a deficit of $293M at the end of July (Tiernan Ray/ZDNet)
AI services company C3.ai files for IPO, reports revenue of $157M in the fiscal year ending April 2020, up 71% YoY, and a deficit of $293M at the end of July — The software-as-a-service company that has been using masses of GPUs to run deep learning programs plans to list under the ticker “AI.”
Ticketmaster's UK wing fined ~$1.6M by the UK ICO after a report found they failed to put appropriate security measures in place prior to their 2018 data breach (Shoshana Wodinsky/Gizmodo)
Ticketmaster's UK wing fined ~$1.6M by the UK ICO after a report found they failed to put appropriate security measures in place prior to their 2018 data breach — Ticketmaster's UK wing has been fined £1.25 million pounds (roughly $1.6 millions) following an investigation …
Facebook plans to use machine learning to sort its moderation queue prior to human review, prioritizing viral and potentially severe content first (Kyle Wiggers/VentureBeat)
Facebook plans to use machine learning to sort its moderation queue prior to human review, prioritizing viral and potentially severe content first — Facebook says it's using AI to prioritize potentially problematic posts for human moderators to review as it works to more quickly remove content that violates its community guidelines.
What Tulsa and other cities are doing to woo remote workers away from Silicon Valley
Thursday, November 12, 2020
Chicken Dinner dreams maybe short lived as Govt not looking to lift PUBG Ban in India
PUBG Corporation announced a new version of the PUBG Mobile that is being prepared for launch in the Indian market. The new game dubbed PUBG Mobile India comes two months after it was banned along with 118 other apps by the Indian government over security and privacy concerns. However, the latest report indicates that the obstacles faced by the South Korean developer to re-launch the game in India are far from over.
According to a report by The Times of India, government sources have indicated that unless PUBG Corp. addresses the security and privacy concerns of the Indian government, “it will be difficult to grant any relaxation” to the popular battle royale game.
PUBG Mobile India: The comeback plan
In its detailed plan for reviving PUBG Mobile in India, PUBG Corp. stated that the new version of the game will release with tailor-made customizations that are specific to the Indian market. Its parent company Krafton Inc. also recently inked a deal with Microsoft for using the Azure cloud service to store users' data in an attempt to ensure personal data protection.
It is currently unknown as to when PUBG Corp is planning to release PUBG Mobile India in the country but previous reports have indicated that the developer is preparing to launch a marketing campaign during the Diwali festival in India. To this effect, the profile and cover picture of Youtube and Instagram handle of PUBG Mobile India has been updated to display the new logo with a “coming soon” tag.
PUBG Mobile India is set to release sometime soon and will feature customized content including a virtual simulation training ground, clothed characters from the start, green hit effects and restriction settings on game time to inculcate healthy gaming habits in younger players.
Apart from this, PUBG Corp. has also revealed that it is establishing an Indian subsidiary and will hire over 100 employees to boost the esports ecosystem and game development in India. The company also plans to engage more with PUBG Mobile players in the country and esports organizations to collaborate and increase its presence. Moreover, the revival of PUBG Mobile will also see the company host exclusive events and esports tournaments in India as PUBG Corp. is investing over 100 million USD in India to amplify the Indian esports ecosystem.
With the news of PUBG Mobile coming back to India, popular PUBG Mobile players are ecstatic but it's left to be seen when the game is finally available to play in the country.
#IndiaWelcomesPUBGMobile ❤ https://t.co/dxwmRADPlX
— MortaL (@Mortal04907880) November 12, 2020Its coming back !!#IndiaWelcomesPUBGMobile ❤
— Animesh Agarwal (@8bit_thug) November 12, 2020
https://ift.tt/38JTE2Z
Twitter Says It Labelled 300,000 'Misleading' US Election Tweets
iPhone 12 Pro Max Teardown Video Shows Its Battery Size
Mark Zuckerberg Defends Not Suspending Ex-Trump Aide Bannon From Facebook
Redmi Note 10 4G Tipped to Come With 6,000mAh Battery
Nokia 8000 4G, Nokia 6300 4G Feature Phones Launched
Alibaba's Ant Group IPO Said to Be Halted by Chinese President Xi Jinping
WandaVision Release Date Confirmed, Premieres a Month Later Than Expected
Amazon's Inferentia Chip to Handle Some Alexa Voice Assistant Services
Russian cryptocurrency payment network A7 expands to Africa, as Moscow builds an alternative payments system amid western sanctions after its Ukraine invasion (Financial Times)
Financial Times : Russian cryptocurrency payment network A7 expands to Africa, as Moscow builds an alternative payments system amid weste...
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The first project we remember working on together was drawing scenes from the picture books that our mom brought with her when she immigrate...
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Sohee Kim / Bloomberg : South Korean authorities are investigating a data leak at e-commerce giant Coupang that exposed ~33.7M accounts; ...
