Posts by lucidcapitalism

(Wall Street Journal) British legislators are set to approve a draft of an extensive new social-media bill that could see the chief executives of major tech firms held criminally liable if they don’t protect children from certain content online. As the U.K. moves closer toward enacting new legislation that technology companies say is too restrictive,…

(Reuters) Sequoia Capital has lowered management fees in its two recently-launched venture funds as it braces for a slower investment environment, partner Alfred Lin said on Thursday. The changes in fee structure, communicated to investors in December, allow limited partners (LPs) who committed capital to Sequoia’s crypto and ecosystem funds launched early last year to…

(The Information) the increasingly bloodied market for tech startups is strengthening the hand of one group of investors: the wealthy individuals and institutions that put money into venture capital funds. These limited partners are seeking better terms, such as guaranteed access to startup deals, reductions in the fees they pay the VC firms and even…

(Bloomberg) Most corporate retirement plans are awash in fossil-fuel investments. But that could start to change this year as a new US rule comes online and employee pressure builds for more climate-friendly options. Starting on Jan. 30, a Department of Labor rule will take effect that explicitly allows fiduciaries to consider climate change and other environmental, social, and…

(TechCrunch) The latest Crunchbase data shows that Black startup founders in the United States raised around $264 million out of the total $33.6 billion in venture capital allocated in Q4 2022. That’s an uptick from the $178 million — or 0.43% — the group raised in Q3. In total, U.S. Black founders raised an estimated $2.254 billion…

(Techcrunch) There isn’t much hope that 2023’s fundraising environment will be better for startups than last year’s. It seems likely that it will get worse before it gets better — even at the earliest stages, which have largely been insulated thus far. But for burgeoning companies capable of building business models that reflect current conditions and rely less on…

(Bloomberg) The start of the year is a boon for the data-minded in the climate and energy world: We get the full wrap on the prior year’s investment flows and indicators, and a raft of outlooks on the year ahead. Earlier this week, Bloomberg Green’s Eric Roston neatly summarized the climate numbers to watch in 2023 . I have…

(GreenBiz) The amount of energy wasted over the whys and wherefores of corporate ESG disclosure is a travesty. It also begs the question: Why does that intense level of public discussion suddenly vanish when it comes to refining the antiquated methods that corporations use to account for their greenhouse gas emissions reductions? Read more here.

(The Information) There’s no better way to avoid flack for a slew of bad venture capital investments than simply erasing evidence of those deals—right? That’s apparently what a handful of VC partners decided in 2022, a year many will remember for the collapse in startup valuations and several unforgettable blow-ups. In between marking down the…

(The Atlantic) The dramatic, multidimensional implosion of Meta; the nuclear train wreck of Elon Musk’s Twitter; the momentous labor uprising against Amazon—it wasn’t just an unusually disastrous year for America’s biggest tech companies. It was a reckoning. The tech giants that have shaped our lives, online and off, over the course of the 21st century…