A big shout-out to our LPs.
Morning, folks. This week we’re super excited to announce our new LPs, Harry Campbell and Timothy Li! They have been incredibly supportive in our mission to bridge the gap of a lacking VC infrastructure within SoCal’s gleaming collegiate environments, and have officially joined hands with us to bring this dream to fruition. If you’re curious, you can learn more about them at the end of this newsletter.
On the note of news, there’s a bunch happening—Lockheed’s antitrust hurdles against the FTC, Bonfire’s new raise, and Snapchat’s cool new AR updates, just to give you a quick snapshot. Enjoy!
As always, if you have any ideas about how we could improve this newsletter, please email us at ops@crescentfund.vc – and if you like what you see, we’d love it if you could share this with others.
Sincerely,
The Crescent Team
*If you’re a student building something cool, want to join Crescent, or just want to chat, reach out to us at ops@crescentfund.vc.
- Featured This Week: Curbivore -
Hear from the leaders of the delivery and Food Tech World! Curbivore is coming to LA on 3/4/22! Curbivore will be bringing together leaders from the world of food delivery and technology, restaurateurs and retailers and the policy leaders that are in charge of it all.
Curbivore is an industry conference all about the curb and the community, specifically how commerce is moving to the curb and how businesses and government can embrace changing perceptions of the curb.
- from The Rideshare Guy
We’ve partnered with Curbivore and are offering the readers of this newsletter 50 free tickets to the conference. Get your free ticket here before they’re all gone!
Crescent Partner Highlights.
*ICYMI, here's what we talked about last week.
On Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs).
“I don’t get it, what’s the deal with pretend-ownership? How did we end up paying so much for JPEGs?” seems to still be the prevailing sentiment around the arcane concept of Non-Fungible Tokens. What underpins this sentiment is people’s confusion, or rather, skepticism towards the utility of NFTs.
When we try to gauge the value of NFTs, it gets a little wonky. Much like any artwork, you could argue the value of an NFT lies in how much artistic effort—time taken to bring the piece to life, uniqueness of style, etc.—the creator has put into creating the token. But the digital nature of NFTs paves way for the opposite argument, that since anyone can replicate any token by simply right-clicking and saving it, all of its uniqueness, and thus, its intrinsic value, disappears. Layer on others who believe NFTs serve no real-world uses, and the debate goes nuclear.
Given the recency of the NFT market, this debate is likely to continue for quite some time. The cool thing, though, is that there are founders out there who have keyed into this debate and decided to do something about it. This week, Crescent Partner Luca Traverso interviewed Tushar Mehrotra, the founder of The Blockwood Inc. Through Blockwood, Tushar is on a mission to help NFT creators add utility to their NFT collections and in doing so, make them more valuable by giving consumers tangible, real-world experiences.
Career Opportunities.
Check out the opportunities we've found over this week.
*If you want a job or listing featured in this newsletter, please reach out to us at ops@crescentfund.vc. See how we featured Coda’s growth fellowship.
Product Manager (Full-Time) - Keeper Tax
Software Engineer (Full-Time) - Pebble
Venture Analyst (Full-Time) - Stray Dog
Software Engineer (Internship) - Modern Treasury
Venture Analyst (Internship) - Anthos Capital
Growth Marketing (Internship) - Outer
Security Operations (Internship) - Gemini
Data Analyst (Internship) - HG Insights
Project Management (Internship) - The Trade Desk
Law (Internship) - Duffl
*See last week’s shortlist.
The Southern Californian Tech Landscape.
Here’s some stories on SoCal Tech we’ve been closely following.
*ICYMI, here's what happened last week.
The FTC is suing to block Lockheed Martin’s acquisition of Aerojet Rocketdyne in fear of Lockheed potentially claiming “a stranglehold on components needed by the rest of the industry”. Both companies have issued statements asserting their faith in the benefits of the transaction. Holly Vedova, the FTC Bureau of Competition Director, expressed concerns over possible anticompetitive outcomes as a result of this transaction.
Bonfire Ventures is in the process of raising $165M for its third fund, 65% higher than its previous. Bonfire investments center upon the unsung enterprise software, and include portfolio companies such as Playa Vista-based Chownow, a food ordering platform for restaurants, and Downtown-based Boulevard, an appointment booking software for salons and spas.
Santa Monica-based Snapchat ships updates for its AR Shopping Feature. These updates will provide users with real-time price and product information, and will accommodate both consumers and brands. “Augmented Reality is changing the way we shop, play and learn, and transforming how businesses tell their stories and sell their products,” says Snap chief busines officer Jeremy Gorman.
The Broader Tech Landscape.
Here's what's happening in the broader tech landscape.
*ICYMI, here's what happened last week.
Europe did very well in VC in 2021- here are six charts highlighting their year. European and Israeli startups saw a funding increase of 120% from 2020. Against pandemic headwinds, transaction count reached a record 10,583.
Walmart makes an investment in the vertical farming startup, Plenty. The move comes in tandem with the rising trend of bringing “farm produce closer to customers’ kitchen tables to boost freshness, limit waste, and promote sustainability.”
In an effort to expand into blockchain and crypto, Google Cloud hires a legion of blockchain experts. Customers of Google in the blockchain space include Dapper Labs, Hedera, and Theta Labs.
- Featured This Week: Meet our new LPs! -
Meet the guys who believe in our mission, and for whom we’re truly grateful.
Harry Campbell, Founder of The Rideshare Guy.
Once a full-time aerospace engineer and part-time Uber driver, Harry set out to write about his experiences in driving to help drivers better strategize for income. The Rideshare Guy has since become one of the top media outlets for rideshare drivers around the world and has helped hundreds of thousands of rideshare drivers.
Harry believes in our mission and wants to enable us in our quest to establish the strongest network of student partners across every node in the Southern California startup ecosystem. Thank you for your support Harry. We at Crescent are very fortunate to have you on board.
Timothy Li, CEO at Alchemy, Lecturer at USC.
“Put your money where your mouth is.” Tim is the CEO of Alchemy, an end-to-end, cloud-based SaaS solution for lending and the co-founder of Theecode, a development team. He is also a beloved lecturer at USC where he teaches classes on high-tech startups and FinTech, so investing in Crescent to him aligned perfectly with educating the next generation of tech founders.
We’re honored to have someone of Tim’s caliber on board, and believe that through both of us having skin in the SoCal game, we’ll be accomplishing great things together.
*If you’re interested in helping out Southern California student founders through advising or becoming an LP feel free to reach out to ops@crescentfund.vc.
Wow - what a week, but that is it from us folks. Thank you for tuning in and see you next week.
Signing off,
Crescent Fund