Sketch, maker of popular design tools, just landed $20 million in Series A funding from Benchmark in its first outside round

You’ve probably noticed: design has become central for many businesses that might have once considered it an afterthought. Indeed, with sales and marketing so thoroughly optimized at this point — and companies wondering how else to trounce the competition — there’s now a race afoot for numerous startups looking to become the Salesforce of design. […]

View More Sketch, maker of popular design tools, just landed $20 million in Series A funding from Benchmark in its first outside round

Airtable CEO Howie Liu on the continued importance of getting a “unicorn” valuation

When in 2015, Slack raised money at a $1 billion valuation, founder Stewart Butterfield spoke candidly about why it was important to him, and why if Slack wasn’t assigned a valuation north of that number at that point in time, Slack wouldn’t raise anything. Said Butterfield, speaking to Fortune, it “means that we’re a part […]

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Contentful raises $33.5M for its headless CMS platform

Contentful, a Berlin- and San Francisco-based startup that provides content management infrastructure for companies like Spotify, Nike, Lyft and others, today announced that it has raised a $33.5 million Series D funding round led by Sapphire Ventures, with participation from OMERS Ventures and Salesforce Ventures, as well as existing investors General Catalyst, Benchmark, Balderton Capital and Hercules. In […]

View More Contentful raises $33.5M for its headless CMS platform

Docker has raised $92 million in new funding

Docker, the company that did more to create today’s modern containerized computing environment than any other independent company, has raised $92 million of a targeted $192 million funding round, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The new funding is a signal that while Docker may have lost its race with Google’s […]

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Upwork pops more than 50 percent in Nasdaq debut

Upwork, the rebranded merger of oDesk and Elance, debuted on Nasdaq this morning, after dropping its S-1 about four weeks ago. Shares opened at $23.00, which represents a 53% jump — shares were priced at $15 before the opening bell by investors, a significant uptick from the company’s revised projection of $12 to $14, which […]

View More Upwork pops more than 50 percent in Nasdaq debut

Benchmark is staying focused, targeting $425M for ninth fund

The firm’s upcoming fund will not include longtime Benchmark general partners Mitch Lasky and Matt Cohler.

View More Benchmark is staying focused, targeting $425M for ninth fund

Benchmark and Tiger double down on going public

In an ecosystem enthralled with private capital and delayed public debuts, Bill Gurley has been something of a maverick. The former dot-com equity analyst and long-time partner at Benchmark has pushed hard for companies to go public and “grow up,” including at his portfolio company Uber, where he was formerly a board member. Earlier this […]

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Computer vision researchers build an AI benchmark app for Android phones

A group of computer vision researchers from ETH Zurich want to do their bit to enhance AI development on smartphones. To wit: They’ve created a benchmark system for assessing the performance of several major neural network architectures used for common AI tasks. They’re hoping it will be useful to other AI researchers but also to […]

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Benchmark’s Mitch Lasky will reportedly step down from Snap’s board of directors

Benchmark partner Mitch Lasky, who has served on Snap’s board of directors since December 2012, is not expected to stand for re-election to Snap’s board of directors and will thus be stepping down, according to a report by The Information. Early investors stepping down from the board of directors — or at least not seeking re-election […]

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Good Eggs raises $50M and eyes West Coast expansion

Good Eggs, the food delivery service that promises “absurdly fresh” groceries and meal kits, has raised $50 million in new funding. That looks like a big turnaround from 2015, when the company had multiple rounds of layoffs, shut down operations outside of San Francisco and brought on Bentley Hall (an executive from Plum Organics and […]

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Timescale is leading the next wave of NYC database tech

Data is the lifeblood of the modern corporation, yet acquiring, storing, processing, and analyzing it remains a remarkably challenging and expensive project. Every time data infrastructure finally catches up with the streams of information pouring in, another source and more demanding decision-making makes the existing technology obsolete. Few cities rely on data the same way […]

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Benchmark just funded Chainalysis, the crypto intelligence company that helped crack the Mt. Gox case

When the virtual currency exchange Mt. Gox collapsed into bankruptcy in 2014 following the disappearance of hundreds of thousands of bitcoins and tens of millions of dollars, those who lost money were understandably furious. For a small group of people, however, the theft — likely masterminded, we now know, by a Russian cybercrime suspect who […]

View More Benchmark just funded Chainalysis, the crypto intelligence company that helped crack the Mt. Gox case