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The Myth of the Young Startup Founder

Ian Hathaway

In February 2004, Mark Zuckerberg famously launched Facebook from his Harvard dorm room at the age of 19. Economists Pierre Azoulay, Benjamin Jones, Daniel Kim, and Javier Miranda, analyzed administrative government data on the founders of all U.S. businesses that were started during a recent eight-year period (2007-2014).

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Why the NYC startup scene needs Sean Parker

This is going to be BIG.

Parker made a huge dent in the web as co-founder of Napster, then built Plaxo up to 20 million users. He spotted Facebook in 2004 and Spotify in 2009. or would he have been convinced to take a financing round? Companies going for the long ball aren't discovered--they're juiced up to go for the homerun, with financing.

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Joseph Lee, CEO of Kairous Capital, Shares His Cross-Border Investment Philosophy for the Asia Pacific Region

AsiaTechDaily

Register Joseph Lee has a strong track record in the finance industry throughout his career to date. Between 2006 and 2015, I joined one of the leading Islamic banks in the world, Kuwait Finance House, as the pioneering team to set up its Private Equity Division in Asia.

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Keep It Under Your Hat: Valuation Caps and the $650 Million Sale of MySpace for $125 Million

Gust

Entrepreneurs and investors who have spent any time dealing with convertible debt seed financing transactions are likely to have encountered the subject of valuation caps. The cap is irrelevant if the next equity financing is at a valuation below the cap amount.)

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As the head of Helios’ new VC arm, Wale Ayeni sees value in frontier markets

TechCrunch

This appointment comes a month after Ayeni left the International Finance Corporation (IFC), the private sector arm of the World Bank Group, where he led venture capital investments across Africa, the Middle East and Central Asia for over 5 years. The firm manages funds totaling $3.6 and later with Qualcomm.

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Has a startup finally found one of food science’s holy grails with its healthy sugar substitute?

TechCrunch

the founders of a young company hailing from Cambridge, England addressed a crowd of celebrities, investors and entrepreneurs at Y Combinator’s August Demo Day promising a revolution in food science. “Conventional cane sugar is heavily heavily water intensive,” said Supplant co-founder Tom Simmons in an interview.

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This Week in VC – Scott Painter, CEO of Zag & TrueCar

Both Sides of the Table

He’s personally led more than 50 financing rounds. Scott’s first big foray into industry-changing companies came with CarsDirect, an IdeaLab company where he was the initial founder & CEO. Based in Palo Alto and founded in 2004 by PayPal alumni. Offers two products: Palantir Government and Palantir Finance.

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