Madeline Renbarger

1 week ago | newcomer.co | Madeline Renbarger |Jonathan Weber

Tariff turbulence continued this week and VC’s are divided. We have commentary from Mark Suster, Joe Lonsdale, Brad Gerstner, Paul Graham, and more, along with a new tech stock index from Nate Silver. We also make our case for why Trump fealty is bad for Silicon Valley. Plus, the top AI models are surpassing human benchmarks, per Stanford. The Main ItemThe financial markets this week showed what they think about our mad king and his love of tariffs — and chaos.

2 weeks ago | newcomer.co | Madeline Renbarger

Greetings on this not-so-happy Friday for the markets and the global economy. We’re looking at early-stage fintech startups this week and the news isn’t all gloomy, though Klarna and Chime can’t be happy. Read on for bits about OpenAI & SoftBank, Elon Musk’s potential step-back, the TikTok tick-tock, and what the likes of Shaun Maguire and Ryan Petersen are saying about tariffs.

1 month ago | newcomer.co | Madeline Renbarger

It’s been a tough few years for the venture capital industry. The lack of exits and a limited supply of hyper-scale startups means most of the big firms are clamoring to invest in a few likely winners, while other startups languish in limbo. We’re starting to see the exit market thaw a little, bringing hope for more cash distributions, but many investments remain illiquid.

1 month ago | newcomer.co | Madeline Renbarger

The Main ItemWe’re finally hearing some good news about how VCs and LPs are going to get paid. Google’s announcement this week that its acquisition of cybersecurity startup Wiz is on again, at a sweetened $32 billion, marks the biggest acquisition ever of a venture-funded company and is a huge victory for Wiz’s early VC backers led by Index Ventures’ Shardul Shah, Sequoia’s Doug Leone, Cyberstarts’ Gili Raanan, and Greenoaks’ Neil Mehta.

1 month ago | newcomer.co | Madeline Renbarger

The Newcomer Podcast hits the road! We’re recording this episode on the ground from two different tech conferences, the flashy new HumanX summit in Las Vegas and the now-veteran status South By Southwest in Austin. We cover how the attendees diverge, with more consumer-tech making a showing at SXSW and the new guard of AI business leaders heading over to HumanX (with a few exceptions).