Betterment gets a boost: Consumer financial services company Betterment announced $100M in new financing this morning, led by Swedish growth-stage firm Kinnevik with participation from previous investors, at a valuation of $700M. The funding follows a record-setting year for investment in fintech companies: $13.8B in total VC investment in 2015, which represents a 106% jump over 2014. Wearable tech: “We are only in the third inning.” At least that’s what KPCB’s Wen Hsieh, Rouz Jazayeri and Paul Yeh have to say about the state of wearable tech. In the next six innings, we can expect to see a new suite of breakthrough components to meet the market demands around feature set, form factor and battery life, followed by a burst of innovation in software and services. How effective are global accelerators? The Global Accelerator Learning Initiative (GALI) released a report on global accelerator performance yesterday in collaboration with seed-stage acelerator Village Capital. GALI assessed the highest and lowest performing Village Capital programs around the world in an effort to understand how the differences across accelerator programs influence venture performance. Introducing new ways to access CrunchBase Data Uncover new opportunities, discover industry trends, and build powerful apps using the Daily Excel Export or API. |