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The Big One: Investors react to VC firm's collapse
Venture capitalists and others in the investment community were loath to blame economic conditions for the collapse of Boston-based venture-capital firm OpenView Venture Partners, which this week told its limited partners it will be winding down operations.
In fact, some said it's an opportunity for another later-stage VC fund to take its place, BostInno reports.
Partners and others at OpenView have not responded to multiple requests for comment and have said nothing publicly about why OpenView decided not to move forward with another fund.
VC leaders said worsening economic conditions were unlikely to be why OpenView decided to abandon its latest fund and part ways with its investment team.
OpenView’s $570 million, seventh fund — 25% larger than its previous fund — fell short of its initial target of $800 million.
“VC and startups is a tough business in the best of days and recently, it's certainly been even more challenging," Ari Glantz, executive director of the New England Venture Capital Association, told BostInno. "But the biggest obstacle facing venture-capital firms in this environment has been fundraising, and OpenView raised a substantial new fund earlier this year, so I’d be hard pressed to peg the recent developments to market conditions.”
READ MORE: Investors react to Boston VC firm's collapse: 'Omen' or 'opportunity'?
Startups to Watch
- Software company Rhythms, which is designed to help teams handle their work cadences, raised a $26 million seed round. The startup is the latest project of serial entrepreneur Vetri Vellore, who sold his previous startup, goal-setting software company Ally.io, to Microsoft in 2021, Seattle Inno reports.
- Katy Hearn, co-founder of Alani Nu, is launching Sesh, a fitness platform centered around women. The fitness influencer, now with 1.7 million followers on Instagram, built the startup to offer virtual one-on-one training and eight-week challenges to users. Alani Nu, which sells energy drinks and supplements, saw 2,900% growth in annual revenue from 2020 to 2022, growing from $3 million to $90 million, KY Inno reports.
- X-Energy, a startup that engineers small nuclear reactors, has raised an additional $80 million for its Series C round, which now totals $235 million. The investment will help X-energy continue to develop its Xe-100 tool, a high-temperature, gas-cooled reactor, DC Inno reports.
- SupportPay, a child-support payment platform created to reduce complex financial interactions between parents that are divorced or separated, raised $3.1 million in funding. The online and mobile app allows parents raising a child apart to organize, pay and track child support, alimony, schedules and shared expenses under a single tool, Charlotte Inno reports.
- Black Paper Party, known for its holiday wrapping paper, gift bags, cards, ornaments and other holiday gear featuring African American families, raised $250,000 from investor Barbara Corcoran on a recent episode of "Shark Tank." The company projects it will hit $1.1 million in revenue this year and is available at Walmart, Target, Macy’s and elsewhere, Cincy Inno reports.
Why the OpenAI fiasco was a 'failure of board governance'
LinkedIn co-founder and former OpenAI board member Reid Hoffman did not mince words in his criticism of the startup's other board members and their decision to oust, then reinstate, its CEO Sam Altman.
"I think it's a failure of board governance," Hoffman said at the Fortune AI Brainstorm conference in San Francisco Tuesday. "It's pretty obvious, in a way, and boards are composed of people making decisions, and maybe there's information to come out that we get to see, but I do think that it's pretty well resolved that Sam is an amazing CEO."
Despite its failures, Hoffman said the structure of OpenAI is fine to leave intact. OpenAI is a for-profit company owned by a nonprofit foundation. The board of the foundation is responsible for hiring and firing the CEO in line with its mission of developing AI safely for the benefit of humanity. He pointed to other examples of functioning organizations with a similar structure, like Mozilla, the developer of the Firefox web browser, which is a for-profit company controlled by a nonprofit foundation.
READ MORE: Reid Hoffman says OpenAI fiasco was a ‘failure of board governance’
Weird and wired: Android users' fight for blue bubbles isn't so easy
In a continuous battle to bring Apple's iMessage to Android users, Beeper Inc. has taken another swing at the most valuable company in the world.
Last week, Palo Alto, California-based Beeper launched Beeper Mini, a messaging app that allows users to access iMessage capabilities, including the blue chat bubbles. A few days after the launch, Apple managed to block the app's access to its servers. Now, Beeper Mini is up and running (again) but not to the same extent, Eric Migicovsky, Beeper co-founder and CEO, told Bay Area Inno.
"It's been a bit chaotic," Migicovsky said, as the company is working to restore Beeper Mini’s capabilities. Instead of receiving messages via phone number, users will now access them by an email corresponding to their Apple ID. Migicovsky said the company is working to get phone number registration back.
In Apple’s original statement about Beeper Mini, the Cupertino, California-based tech titan said by blocking the app, the company was taking steps to protect its users' privacy.
READ MORE: Beeper's iMessage-like app is back, but not like before
