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Sequoia Heritage, Stripe and others invest $200M in African fintech Wave at $1.7B valuation

TechCrunch

The investment is the largest-ever Series A round for the region, and it values Wave at $1.7 Four big-name backers jointly led the round — Sequoia Heritage, a private investment fund and a subsidiary of Sequoia; Founders Fund; payments upstart Stripe; and Ribbit Capital. ” Going up against incumbents. Wave , a U.S.

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End-to-end operators are the next generation of consumer business

TechCrunch

Roger Lee is a general partner at Battery Ventures, based in Menlo Park, CA, who focuses on investments in software and consumer tech, including online marketplaces. He focuses on consumer internet, online marketplace and software investments. Contributor. Share on Twitter. More posts by this contributor. Justin Da Rosa.

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The Rising Stakes in SaaS

Tomasz Tunguz

Over that 20 year period, annual SaaS investment has increased 20x, peaking in 2014 at $7B. Incumbent client/server technologies have lost their market dominance to new incumbents. Since then, many major categories of software have been saasified. Venture capitalists have financed many of those businesses.

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The Top 6 Posts of 2016

Tomasz Tunguz

Valuations there fell from their highs in 2014. The Hottest Startup Sectors In 2016 - published on January 3rd, this post reviewed the patterns of investment in startups, and in particular, the sectors where investors were increasing their investment the fastest.

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What goes up must come down

TechCrunch

In September, he co-invested in a Seattle startup called Far Homes that was founded by Redfin alums and is focused on “buying and selling real estate in foreign markets,” as reported by GeekWire. I’m sorry that we don’t have enough sales to keep paying you.”. Image Credits: Kuzma / Getty Images. Weekly News.

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Quickly Unpacking Microsoft’s Acquisition Of GitHub

Haystack

After being installed in 2014 as Microsoft’s new CEO, Nadella has turned around the Seattle ocean liner on a new course after the Ballmer regime. As expected, many developers didn’t love the news that some of their work would be concentrated in the hands of a tech incumbent. They’re probably not far off from the truth.

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Data-driven iteration helped China’s Genki Forest become a $6B beverage giant in 5 years

TechCrunch

Hundreds of startups dot the landscape, and the amount of money being raised and spent on innovating around the country’s industrial heft is mind-boggling. But Tang wasn’t satisfied and eventually sold ELEX Technology to a publicly listed company for about $400 million in 2014. Tang would walk away with a few important lessons.