Melia Russell
Business Insider
San Francisco, CA, United States
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Past articles by Melia:
Startup studio Fractal created 130 companies in 3 years. Founders say the deal structure has led VCs to 'blacklist' them.
Fractal gave aspiring entrepreneurs an idea for a startup and $1 million to build it. Those founders are now struggling to raise venture investment. → Read More
Silicon Valley is bracing for a 'Darwinian moment for startups' in late 2023
After a COVID-era boom, the data shows a dire situation for startups raising money in Silicon Valley. The worst may be yet to come. → Read More
He was employee No. 8 at Stripe. Now, he's taking on Salesforce and AWS with $50 million in new funding for his startup Render. Here's the pitch deck it used.
Render is taking on the "big three" cloud providers — Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud — with a user-friendly approach. → Read More
Some venture capitalists were probably a bit too hopeful about hitting fundraising goals this year
Insight Partners and TCV are reportedly scaling back the size of huge venture funds. Other VCs are also making adjustments amid the current market. → Read More
Scoop: The founders of PopSugar raise $33 million for their second VC fund, and launch a bespoke investment bank to advise startups on M&A
Brian and Lisa Sugar are also seeding a new boutique investment bank to advise startups on the sale of their business. → Read More
A startup 'mass extinction event' has begun. You can't see it clearly yet, but it's going to be bad.
Startup failures are rising from artificially low levels. A capitulation event in the next year is possible, where a large number of startups fail. → Read More
What 'Ted Lasso' gets wrong about venture capital
This season of "Ted Lasso" saw the free-spirited publicist Keeley Jones start a venture-backed PR agency — one of the more puzzling subplots. → Read More
The decision to split Sequoia Capital into 3 entities puts to bed any questions of a power struggle at the VC powerhouse
Sequoia is splitting into three entities: Sequoia Capital in the US and Europe, HongShan in China, and Peak XV Partners in India and Southeast Asia. → Read More
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is privately reassuring developers using the company's tech that it won't compete with them beyond ChatGPT
A blog post detailing Sam Altman's meeting with developers in London reveals some of OpenAI's secrets and plans for the coming year. → Read More
Exclusive: Fractal, a New York venture studio, is laying off staff and will stop creating new startups
Fractal now plans to focus on its current portfolio of more than 130 companies and has initiated layoffs for staff who supported startup creation. → Read More
Tech executives are jumping ship to venture capital amid mass uncertainty. For VC firms, the talent pool has never been better.
"It was a great time to go into VC," says Tamar Yehoshua, Slack's former chief product officer and the newest venture partner at IVP. → Read More
The Seed 100: The best early-stage investors of 2023
Our third-annual Seed 100 list identifies the best seed venture capitalists and angel investors based on data. → Read More
Seed 30: The best women early-stage investors of 2023
The Seed 30 is our annual list of the women who are the best seed venture capitalists and angel investors, based on data. → Read More
Serena Williams raised a $111 million venture fund a year ago. Now she's the No. 4 female seed investor.
In a short time, Serena Williams has vaulted to the top ranks of early-stage investors and founders say she uses her network to open doors for them. → Read More
Andreessen Horowitz is exploring investing in early-stage VC firms to juice deal flow
Andreessen Horowitz is in talks to invest in other VC firms, and has been courting up-and-coming fund managers at events in San Francisco and LA. → Read More
How Kleida Martiro went from associate to partner at Glasswing Ventures in 4 years by going all in on AI
Martiro joined the firm as one of its first employees in 2019 and is a rising star investor focused on AI and large language models. → Read More
Check out the pitch deck that Ukraine startup Fuelfinance, which aims to help finance teams replace Excel with better tools, used to raise $1 million from a war zone
Fuelfinance, a tiny bookkeeping startup in Ukraine, is taking on giants like Microsoft and Pilot with its approach to the financial back office. → Read More
OpenAI has its tentacles in hundreds of companies. Here's how it's making them more productive.
Startups like Superhuman, Notion, and Duolingo are OpenAI's customers that access its large language models to power their apps. → Read More
Inside OpenAI CEO Sam Altman's fixation on death and the apocalypse
Sam Altman, the OpenAI cofounder and CEO, is a known "doomsday prepper" who has expressed fears of nuclear war, pandemics, and out-of-control AI. → Read More
He's played chess with Peter Thiel, sparred with Elon Musk and once, supposedly, stopped a plane crash: Inside Sam Altman's world, where truth is stranger than fiction
With the success of ChatGPT, Altman has turned into a household name. And he's just getting started. → Read More