SA国际传媒

Welcome to the SA国际传媒 News Weekend Update. An email form of this post went out Saturday morning. Happy reading!

It鈥檚 hard to say no, but we should all do it more. No one will stay mad at you for wanting a life outside of work.

That was a lesson Erin Bury, the CEO of Willful, told me this week while we chatted for聽Proust Goes Tech. The idea struck a chord with me, and I鈥檓 guessing might with many of you, too. Bury鈥檚 found success in creating a list of different ways to say no that she can use to get out of certain events. I find comfort in deleting the Twitter application. Often.

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With that bit of keep-yourself-sane advice out of the way, let鈥檚 get into some of the news that the team published this week, from聽tech鈥檚 trust gap聽to a聽plant-powered new venture capital fund.

Starting with some trends in startupland, Alex wrote about聽why companies are pursuing IPOs sooner rather than later聽just days after聽Cloudflare shared its plans to go public in September. I tackled how聽VCs offer more services than ever but miss an important focus, and Jason told us how despite global shifts, within the United States,聽venture capital dollars are mainly going to the same cities that they have forever.

Now let鈥檚 learn about the startups within these big ideas.聽DoorDash scooped up Square-owned Caviar for $410 million, showing its appetite for other food delivery services. WeWork聽snapped up yet another software company, making it worth our time to examine its acquisition strategy. Finally,聽Microsoft bought BlueTalon, its fourth known startup purchase of 2019.

Moving to startups that want to grow through funding, not acquisitions,聽Monday.com raised $150 million聽as its revenue more than doubled last year. Wish, an ecommerce startup,聽raised $300 million itself, and Clearbanc, a firm focused on investing in ecommerce startups while taking no equity,聽raised a $50 million Series B and a $250 million fund. Also,聽DataGrail raised some cash聽ahead of, and inspired by, the California Consumer Privacy Act.

Finally, to leave you with a quirky funding round (more in Last Week in Venture), I wrote about MyScoot which offers users to pay to attend parties and social gatherings in cities around India.聽Would you pay for friends?

For what it鈥檚 worth, no judgement here.

Until next time,