Lead Edge is increasingly steering its 700+ investors away from VC deals

Mitchell Green worked variously in investment banking, as an analyst with Bessemer Venture Partners, and for a hedge fund backed by Tiger Management before striking out on his own in 2011. Going it alone was seemingly the right move. Green now manages money for more than 700 individuals who have co

Queer-founded brand discovery platform Famm launches a LinkedIn for the LGBTQ+ community

Famm, the discovery platform for queer-owned brands, was created by BIPOC queer married couple Cat Perez and Marianna Di Regolo to help users find LGBTQ-owned businesses. Now it’s launching a new social networking app for LGBTQ+ professionals and business owners to connect and collaborate. 

Google pushes back against federal supervision of its payment arm

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau announced Friday that it was placing Google's payment arm under federal supervision. In response, Google filed a lawsuit seeking to block the move. Such supervision would subject Google to the same inspections that the bureau conducts with major banks a

As YC retreats from Africa, alumni launch accelerators to fill the gap

The influential accelerator Y Combinator made a splash in Africa in 2020 when it shined its light on the market and began to accept startups from the region into its cohorts. The move was huge: in this nascent market, startups especially rely on programs like these to find their feet and connect wi

New York's top VCs under 30

The next generation of New York City investors are already making their mark in the Big Apple.  They come from big-name venture firms like Female Founders Fund and Lerer Hippeau and smaller ones like Chai Ventures. They work in areas like growth, consumer, and health. They canoe, hike, and pl

The four startups from YC’s Fall batch that enterprises should pay attention to

Notable Silicon Valley startup accelerator Y Combinator held a Demo Day for its inaugural Fall cohort this week. The 95 startups in this latest batch looked quite similar to recent YC cohorts in the sense that it includes many AI startups. If I did my math right, 87% of the startups in this batch

As Australia bans social media for kids under 16, age-assurance tech is in the spotlight

Age assurance, an umbrella term that refers to technologies for verifying, estimating, or inferring an internet user’s age, is being thrust into the global spotlight thanks to a blanket ban on social media use for people under 16 in Australia. The law, which is expected to come into force in

Paytm sells PayPay stake to SoftBank for $279.2 million

Paytm has agreed to sell its stake in Japanese payments firm PayPay to SoftBank for $279.2 million, as the Indian firm sheds non-core assets following a bruising regulatory clampdown earlier this year. The sale of Paytm’s stake in PayPay, which it received through acquisition rights six year

If you can make this AI bot fall in love, you could win thousands of dollars

Ever wondered if you could get an AI bot to fall in love with you? Now you have the chance.  Freysa.ai is a team of anonymous developers building a series of increasingly meta challenges designed to influence how humans think about AI safety. The third challenge is starting sometime in the n

Snyk hits $300M ARR but isn’t rushing to go public

Several factors might make you think Snyk, the developer security startup most recently valued at $7.4 billion, would be going public soon. It was drafting an IPO prospectus in January 2024 with potential plans to file within months, The Information reported. The firm also hit $300 million ARR rec

Instagram locks out developers of third-party consumer apps

A change to Meta’s developer tools is impacting third-party consumer apps that had previously integrated with Instagram. Among those affected by the changes are the Match-owned dating apps Tinder and Hinge, which had allowed their users to link their Instagram profiles to their accounts to di

Hopeful hearts and other startup news

Welcome to Startups Weekly — your weekly recap of everything you can't miss from the world of startups. Want it in your inbox every Friday? Sign up here. The week after Thanksgiving is usually rich in announcements, and this year was no exception. Blame it on the holiday season, but we would

a16z-backed Toka wants to help US agencies hack into security cameras and other IoT devices

U.S. government agencies legally hack into cell phones or emails all the time: think of the FBI wiretapping a suspected drug lord or the NSA monitoring emails for terrorism plots.  But now there's rising interest in hacking other kinds of devices people use, like Wi-Fi-connected security came

Meta unveils a new, more efficient Llama model

Meta has announced the newest addition to its Llama family of generative AI models: Llama 3.3 70B. In a post on X, Ahmad Al-Dahle, VP of generative AI at Meta, said that the text-only Llama 3.3 70B delivers the performance of Meta’s largest Llama model, Llama 3.1 405B, at lower cost.