| Date | Title | Description |
| 13.03.2026 | Standard Kernel Secures $20M to Revolutionize AI Performance | Standard Kernel raised $20 million in seed funding. The company develops AI systems. These systems autonomously generate optimized GPU kernels. This technology significantly boosts AI workload performance. It targets current hardware ineffi... |
| 11.03.2026 | Standard Kernel Raises $20M in Seed Funding | Standard Kernel, a Mountain View, CA-based startup building AI systems that generate GPU software, raised $20M in Seed funding.
The round was led by Jump Capital, with participation from General Catalyst, Felicis, Cowboy Ventures, Link Vent... |
| 11.03.2026 | Standard Kernel: $20 Million Raised For AI Systems That Generate GPU Kernels To Optimize AI Workloads | Standard Kernel, a startup focused on automating low-level software optimization for artificial intelligence systems, announced that it has raised $20 million in seed funding. The round was led by Jump Capital with participation from Genera... |
| 01.12.2025 | Europe’s overlooked alpha: Growathon Ventures targets Venture’s biggest market failure | Growathon Ventures is launching as Europe's first women of colour (WOC) led VC fund, targeting €100 million to finance pattern-breaking founders who deliver excess returns, but receive only 0.02 per cent of European venture capital.
I spoke... |
| 15.10.2025 | Drata Expands Global Footprint, Bringing AI-Powered Trust Management to the Asia-Pacific Region | Company appoints new Regional Vice President in Sydney to fuel regional growth
SYDNEY, Oct. 15, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- Drata, the leader in AI-Native Trust Management, today reinforced its commitment to Asia-Pacific (APAC) as a fast-growing h... |
| 14.08.2024 | Fintech Tally Shuts Down as CEO Says Lack of Funding Doomed the Firm | Listen to this article
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Tally, a Fintech created to assist consumers in paying of their credit card debt, has shuttered its doors. In a blog post, Tally CEO Jason Brown said it was the end of Tally as they were una... |
| 11.08.2024 | Uplimit: AI-Based Enterprise Learning Company Raises $11 Million (Series A) | Uplimit, a leader in AI-based enterprise learning, announced that it has closed an $11 million Series A funding round to support its ongoing investment in delivering high-quality enterprise teaching and learning at scale. The funding from S... |
| 27.03.2024 | Boasting Highest Number of Unicorns in Europe, the U.K. Celebrates Startups with Limited-Time Statue in New York City | GREAT Britain and Northern Ireland campaign (GREAT), the United Kingdom government’s flagship international communications program, today announced the unveiling of The Ever-Changing Statue in New York City, a distinctive, 3D hologram insta... |
| 13.02.2024 | AI Leads New Unicorn Creation As Ranks Of $1B Startups Swells | 1 Share Email Facebook Twitter LinkedIn
Fewer startups became unicorns in 2023, but The Crunchbase Unicorn Board also became more crowded, as exits became even scarcer.
That means that 10 years after the term “unicorn” was coined to denote ... |
| 18.01.2024 | Welcome back to the Unicorn Club, 10 years later | Aileen Lee is the founder of Cowboy Ventures. She partners at the earliest stages with enterprise and consumer-oriented startup teams to build products customers love, and to help teams build aspirational companies. She has over two decades... |
| 24.01.2023 | Cowboy Ventures Raises $260M For Two Funds | Cowboy Ventures, a Palo Alto, CA-based early stage venture capital firm, raised $260M raised for two new funds.
The funds are:
Cowboy Fund IV, a $140M seed fund, and
its first “Mustang Fund”, a $120M fund for investing in breakout Cowboy po... |
| 23.01.2023 | Cowboy Ventures goes bigger with $260M across two new funds, including an opportunity fund | Cowboy Ventures, the now-10-year-old, Bay Area-based seed-stage focused fund founded by renowned investor Aileen Lee, has closed on two new funds totaling $260 million in capital commitments. The outfit garnered $140 million in commitments ... |
| 03.02.2021 | Edtech valuations aren’t skyrocketing, but investors see more exit opportunities | Less than a year after we put out an initial temperature check survey, it’s clear that specialist investors are even more bullish on edtech. Bears are hard to find right now: the sector, once undercapitalized, has brought in $10 billion in ... |
| 28.01.2021 | 13 investors say lifelong learning is taking edtech mainstream | The venture potential of a startup that caters to individual students — instead of a slow-moving, small-pocketed institution — has a bullish aura that attracts investors.
Add in a pandemic that forced many to embrace remote learning overnig... |
| 26.06.2020 | Who really benefits from reskilling? | Nearly 40 million Americans are unemployed, and a recent study that examined more than 66,000 tech job layoffs found that sales and customer success roles are most vulnerable amid COVID-19. In response, some quarters of Silicon Valley are a... |
| 20.04.2020 | Extra Crunch Live: Join Aileen Lee and Ted Wang for a Q&A now | Today’s a big day!
Extra Crunch Live Episode 1: Aileen Lee and Ted Wang airs in just a few minutes, at 1:30pm ET/10:30am PT. We could not be more excited to have such esteemed guests for the launch of this new speaker series for Extra Crunc... |
| 15.04.2020 | Extra Crunch Live: Join Aileen Lee, Ted Wang for Q&A on 4/20 at 10:30am PT/1:30pm ET | The startup world is going through yet another evolution. A few years ago, VCs were focused on growth over profitability. Now, making money is just as important, if not more, than sheer growth. And we’re in the midst of a global pandemic, w... |
| 01.04.2020 | Could Covid action spur climate action? Packaged food company Planet FWD thinks so. | Countless consumer goods companies are reeling from the impact of Covid-19, as shelter-in-place orders deter customers, supply chains buckle, and workers are sent home or laid off. Companies are being forced to radically rethink strategies ... |
| 23.03.2020 | Guidance For Startups/VCs From VCs Around The Globe During COVID-19 | Ed Zimmerman |
| 02.03.2020 | Understanding 2020’s early-stage fundraising market | Welcome to Equity on Extra Crunch, a semi-regular series of interviews between the Equity team, venture capitalists, and operating executives at the neatest startups. The goal of this irregular medium is to dig into topics that don’t fit in... |
| 20.02.2020 | The rise of the winged pink unicorn | Claire Diaz-Ortiz Contributor
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Claire Diaz-Ortiz is an angel investor and bestselling author of nine books that have been published in more than a dozen countries. An early employee at Twitter, she was called “The Woman Who ... |
| 07.01.2020 | 6 VCs explain why seed investors now favor enterprise startups | Hello and welcome back to our regular morning look at private companies, public markets and the gray space in between.
Today we’re digging into seed-stage companies, the vanguard of the venture market. In particular, we’re trying to underst... |
| 29.12.2019 | Wrapping Up CLT’s 2019: Q4 Deals in the Queen City | An exciting Q4 in the Carolinas has left many startups looking forward to a successful 2020. We thought the best way to ring in the new year would be to look back at the most noteworthy fundings, deals, exits, mergers, and acquisitions duri... |
| 25.09.2019 | London-based Passbase grabs €3.3M funding, aims to challenge fast-growing identity access management market | Just six months after their pre-seed round, Passbase, a London-based digital identity startup has raised $3.6 million (€3.3 million) led by Cowboy Ventures & Eniac Ventures, followed by Seedcamp and other European investors.
Their techn... |
| 19.06.2019 | Tally’s Jason Brown on fintech’s first debt roboadvisor and an automated financial future | Yesterday, Tally, the startup looking to automate consumers financial lives, announced it had raised a $50 million Series C round led by Andreessen Horowitz and with participation from Valley heavy hitters Kleiner Perkins, Shasta Ventures, ... |
| 17.04.2019 | Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff invests in $25M round for Naveen Jain’s microbiome startup Viome | (Viome Photo)
Viome, a wellness startup from entrepreneur Naveen Jain, has raised $25 million in funding from a crop of investors that includes Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff.
Jain said the new cash, which brings the Seattle-area startup’s tot... |
| 30.10.2018 | Emotional wellness startup Aura raises $2.7 million from Cowboy Ventures and Reach Capital | Aura, an app for emotional well-being, has raised a $2.7 million seed round co-led by Cowboy Ventures and Reach Capital, with participation from others.
When Aura first launched a couple of years ago, its bread and butter was short, three-t... |
| 08.08.2018 | Term Sheet — Wednesday, August 8 | FUNDING SECURED
Good morning, Term Sheet readers.
Paid Content You can't secure what you can't see From ExtraHop
Minutes later, chaos ensued, shares rose, and frantic reporters scrambled to figure out what was going on. Let’s deconstruct.
W... |
| 07.08.2018 | Cowboy Ventures Closes Capital For $95 Million Third Fund | 21 Shares Email Facebook Twitter LinkedIn
Cowboy Ventures has a new fund to work with, joining the ranks of a host of rival venture firms that recently closed fresh capital pools.
Back in 2013, in a post published by TechCrunch, Aileen Lee ... |
| 07.08.2018 | Cowboy Ventures just rounded up $95 million for its third fund | Cowboy Ventures, the early-stage venture firm launched in 2012 by longtime VC Aileen Lee, has lassoed $95 million in capital commitments for its third fund, up from the $55 million that it raised for its second fund and more than twice what... |
| 05.02.2018 | In “Brotopia,” sex parties are the least of Silicon Valley’s problems | Two years ago, Bloomberg TV journalist Emily Chang set out to write a book about gender discrimination in Silicon Valley. It wasn’t specifically prompted by that now-famous post of former Uber engineer Susan Fowler, wherein Fowler calmly re... |
| 24.01.2018 | Attention LA: Don’t miss this pitch day for female founders, happening in March | On Tuesday, March 13, some of the most well-regarded venture capitalists on the West Coast will converge in LA to hear pitches from women-led startups. The day is part of a growing series of events that was originally spearheaded by investo... |
| 12.07.2017 | Aileen Lee and Kirsty Nathoo at the Female Founders Conference
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Transcript | Aileen Lee is the founder of Cowboy Ventures.
Kirsty Nathoo is CFO and a Partner at Y Combinator. |
| 11.07.2017 | Abstract launches as the versioning system of record for design | Sales teams have Salesforce. Engineers have GitHub . But designers have always had slim pickings. Abstract, launching today, is a workflow platform and system of record built for designers to solve the debilitating frustrations of the desig... |
| 03.07.2017 | VC Aileen Lee just offered some very specific advice to female founders looking for funding | In May, at TechCrunch’s Disrupt event in New York, researchers from Harvard Business Review were in the audience, and they were taking notes. Using their findings, along with the help of a linguistic software program that scanned video tran... |
| 30.06.2017 | How to navigate the predatory jungle of Silicon Valley as a female founder | The conversation around sexual harassment is gaining momentum in Silicon Valley — and so it should. With Uber battling sexual harassment allegations and Binary Capital dealing with its dirty “open secret”, the narrative is taking a rough tu... |
| 30.06.2017 | How to navigate the predatory jungle of Silicon Valley as a female founder | We are excited to bring Transform 2022 back in-person July 19 and virtually July 20 - 28. Join AI and data leaders for insightful talks and exciting networking opportunities. Register today!
The conversation around sexual harassment is gain... |
| 29.06.2017 | Watch the Female Founders Conference Live Stream | The stream will begin at 2PM PST on June 29, 2017.
The world needs more women-led companies.
One way we will get there faster is by building a community where successful women can share their stories and advice for those who are in earlie... |
| 04.05.2017 | Female Founders Conference 2017 Speakers | We’re excited to announce the full speaker lineup for the 2017 Female Founders Conference on June 29.
FEMALE FOUNDERS CONFERENCE 2017 SPEAKERS:
Laura Behrens-Wu · Co-Founder & CEO, Shippo
Morgan DeBaun · Co-Founder & CEO, Blavity... |
| 10.02.2017 | Ex-Googler (and Cisco’s newest board member) Amy Chang on her leap into startups | Wednesday night, at a StrictlyVC event in San Francisco, venture capitalist Aileen Lee took the stage to interview Amy Chang, a former eBay product manager turned head of Google Analytics turned startup founder.
It’s a transition that has i... |
| 25.01.2017 | Term Sheet — Wednesday, January 25 | NEVERMIND!
Twelve hours ago, I was prepared to write a straightforward, borderline boring analysis of the AppDynamics IPO, slated for this morning. Then …a catalyst changed things. Specifically, Qatalyst Group.
Paid Content You can't secure... |
| 24.01.2017 | Cowboy Ventures adds longtime attorney Ted Wang as partner | Ted Wang has spent his career helping startups make important decisions, from Facebook, to Twitter, to Dropbox to Jet. He’s done it as a partner with the law firm Fenwick & West over the last decade. Now he’s betting his skills can tran... |
| 26.10.2016 | Brickwork Raises $5M Series A | Brickwork (www.brickworksoftware.com), the first software platform to bridge the experience gap between e-commerce and brick and mortar retail, today announced a $5 million Series A financing round led by Safeguard Scientifics (NYSE:SFE), w... |
| 26.10.2016 | Advancit Joins $5M Series A for Brickwork | Brickwork (www.brickworksoftware.com), the first software platform to bridge the experience gap between e-commerce and brick and mortar retail, today announced a $5 million Series A financing round led by Safeguard Scientifics (NYSE:SFE), w... |
| 26.10.2016 | Safeguard Scientifics Leads $5M Series A for Brickwork | Brickwork (www.brickworksoftware.com), the first software platform to bridge the experience gap between e-commerce and brick and mortar retail, today announced a $5 million Series A financing round led by Safeguard Scientifics (NYSE:SFE), w... |
| 09.09.2016 | Impact Unicorns: Can We Have Our Cake and Eat It Too? | The term “unicorn” was coined by Aileen Lee of Cowboy Ventures to describe private companies that have achieved a post-money valuation of $1 billion or more. Originally, these companies were scarce, magical and elusive. A... |
| 04.08.2016 | Homebase raises $6 million to make hourly work easier to manage for local businesses | From rising rents to online competitors, local stores and restaurants face enough challenges outside of their own doors that basic stuff like scheduling employees’ shifts and breaks should feel easy. But that process is still, too often, a ... |
| 19.05.2016 | Tally raises $15 million for app to make credit cards less expensive, easier to manage | San Francisco-based Tally Technologies raised $15 million in Series A venture funding to launch an app that promises to help people maintain good credit while avoiding fees, charges and other credit card affiliated pains. Shasta Ventures le... |
| 26.03.2016 | New unicorns will rise from the ashes of 2016’s funding downturn | We are excited to bring Transform 2022 back in-person July 19 and virtually July 20 - 28. Join AI and data leaders for insightful talks and exciting networking opportunities. Register today!
In what now looks like a halcyon afternoon back i... |
| 26.03.2016 | New unicorns will rise from the ashes of 2016’s funding downturn | In what now looks like a halcyon afternoon back in early October, I was moderating a panel of entrepreneurs and venture investors on the topic of how to raise series A funding. Very quickly, the conversation ran away from me. Instead of tal... |
| 05.03.2016 | Startups need to act like Mark Watney in The Martian, according to First Round Capital LP letter | We are excited to bring Transform 2022 back in-person July 19 and virtually July 20 - 28. Join AI and data leaders for insightful talks and exciting networking opportunities. Register today!
There’s a lot of doomsday talk these days in Sili... |
| 05.03.2016 | Startups need to act like Mark Watney in The Martian, according to First Round Capital LP letter | There’s a lot of doomsday talk these days in Silicon Valley. The end is near. The sky is falling. Or, as venture capitalist Chi-Hua Chien of Goodwater Capital recently quipped to me, “Pull out your raincoats or build a bomb shelter while th... |
| 27.01.2016 | Daily funding roundup - January 27, 2016 | Tarveda Therapeutics secured $38M; Branch Metrics received $35M investment; PitchBook raised $10M
CosmosID, a bioinformatics company focused on microorganisms and infectious diseases, today announced it has closed $6 million in Series B fun... |
| 16.11.2015 | Who Coined the Term Unicorn? | I first heard the word ‘unicorn’ being used in relation to startups early this year. Last week, after writing about Udacity’s baptism into the Unicorn Club, I figured it was time to find out how the word got its tech context. That is, how ‘... |
| 07.10.2015 | Fresh Food Vending Machine Developer Pantry Adds $1m to Seed Funding Round | Whether you forgot your lunch, got stuck at the office later than expected, or simply needed an afternoon sugar fix, we’ve all found ourselves slipping dollars into vending machines to score some less-than-healthy snacks.
So all hail the Sa... |
| 23.09.2015 | We've spotted some unicorns in Los Angeles | Companies like Snapchat, Honest, JustFab and SpaceX have all reached $1B valuations
(Vator Splash LA will be taking place on October 15. Speakers will include Adam Goldenberg Founder & CEO of JustFab; Brian Lee. Co-Founder & CEO of ... |
| 04.08.2015 | Daily funding roundup - August 4, 2015 | Zscaler secured $100M; Riffsy raised $10M; Pickingo raised $1.3M
FusionPipe Software Solutions Inc, a provider of advanced authentication and data security solutions, closed a pre-Series A seed financing. The value of the round, which Fusio... |
| 18.07.2015 | Welcome To The Unicorn Club, 2015: Learning From Billion-Dollar Companies | It’s been over a year since we wrote our original post sharing our analysis of the last decade’s most successful U.S.-based, venture-backed tech companies.
As we wrote in our original post – many entrepreneurs, and the venture investors who... |
| 31.03.2015 | Teledermatology company broadens skin conditions, adds Google Ventures as part of $15M Series A | Board certified dermatologists review cases and the patients receive a personalized, easy-to-follow treatment plan, which includes prescription information, regimen instructions, and condition-specific resources. It also includes dermatolog... |
| 12.02.2015 | The 8th Annual Crunchies Awards | The 8th Annual Crunchies Awards ceremony took place on February 5th at the Louise M Davies Symphony Hall in San Francisco.
In case you missed the chance to watch it online, you can watch it here:
Welcoming the winners
Showcasing and rewa... |
| 30.01.2015 | Fighting Sexism In Silicon Valley | Patricia Nakache Contributor
Patricia Nakache is a general partner at Trinity Ventures.
More posts by this contributor
Badass millennial women are supercharging startup investments
Defensible strategies for food tech entrepreneurs facing th... |
| 12.11.2014 | Kevin O’Leary: Shark Tank Is The Most Successful Venture Firm On Earth | Shark Tank is currently the #1 television show among families in the U.S. Perhaps that’s why co-host Kevin O’Leary felt emboldened to share something interesting about the show’s investments thus far. “At 33 Percent return, we’re the most s... |
| 08.10.2014 | Product Hunt Gets $6.1 Million Series A Funding From A16Z And Alexis Ohanian | Product Hunt, a community board where people can up vote tech products, officially announced the raise of $6.1 million in a Series A today, led by Andreessen Horowitz. Y Combinator partner and Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian took part in t... |
| 26.09.2014 | Aileen Lee’s Cowboy Ventures Is Raising A $55 Million Second Fund | Cowboy Ventures, the early-stage investment firm led by Aileen Lee, is in the midst of raising its second fund. According to an SEC filing, the firm is seeking to raise $55 million — which is up from the $40 million it sought the first time... |
| 25.09.2014 | Spruce Gets $2 Million In Seed From Kleiner Perkins, Baseline And Cowboy Ventures To Put A Doctor In The Palm Of Your Hand | There have been some great strides in telemedicine lately. This virtual way to see the doctor cuts down on commutes, wait time and potential costs associated with in-person visits. But most of what’s currently out there requires some sort o... |
| 24.09.2014 | Massdrop lands $6.5M for group buying among enthusiasts | Mayfield Fund leads investment in startup that's a lot like Ning meets Groupon
If you've ever asked a question online, such as, "Can you tell a baby's gender at 16 weeks?" or "What are the best desk top speakers?" - you'... |
| 13.09.2014 | Product Hunt Raises $6 Million From A16Z | Product Hunt, the aggregation site that many people consider a direct competitor to TechCrunch and other tech blogs due to its ability to surface new tech products and startups, has raised a hefty series A, we’re hearing.
We’ve heard that A... |
| 21.08.2014 | Product Hunt Raises $1 Million, Launches iOS App For Hunting On The Go | Product Hunt on Thursday announced it raised a seed funding round of $1 million and launched its iOS app.
The social network for tech products gained buzz earlier this summer as prominent investors, founders and reporters began to use the w... |
| 15.08.2014 | What Studying Students Teaches Us About Great Apps | Noah Lichtenstein Contributor
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Noah Lichtenstein is the founder and managing partner of Crossover, a diversified private technology fund backed by institutional investors, technology execs and professional athletes and enter... |
| 20.05.2014 | DocSend Goes Step Beyond Sharing With Document Analytics | Share Share on Facebook Share on Twitter LinkedIn Email Reprints
B2B document sharing services are nothing new, but DocSend, a San Francisco-based startup that launched out of TechCrunch Disrupt earlier this month, could change how you work... |
| 14.01.2014 | Do Pivots Matter? | Share Share on Facebook Share on Twitter LinkedIn Email Reprints
In late 2013 Cowboy Ventures did an analysis of U.S.-based tech companies started in the last 10 years, now valued at $1 billion. They found 39 of these companies. They called... |
| 14.01.2014 | What’s a pivot, really? Turns out, you probably don’t know | We are excited to bring Transform 2022 back in-person July 19 and virtually July 20 - 28. Join AI and data leaders for insightful talks and exciting networking opportunities. Register today!
There’s a sign on the wall but she wants to be su... |
| 02.11.2013 | Welcome To The Unicorn Club: Learning From Billion-Dollar Startups | Editor’s note: Aileen Lee is founder of Cowboy Ventures, a seed-stage fund that backs entrepreneurs reinventing work and personal life through software. Previously, she joined Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers in 1999 and was also foundi... |
| 26.07.2013 | Librato Closes $3.8M Series A Funding | Librato, Inc., a San Francisco, California-based provider of a monitoring data analytics service, closed a $3.8M Series A round of funding.
The round was led by Baseline Ventures, Harrison Metal and Cowboy Ventures, with participation from ... |
| - | Fundraising Advice for Female Founders | Aileen Lee is the founder of Cowboy Ventures.
Kirsty Nathoo is CFO and a Partner at Y Combinator. Transcript
Craig Cannon [00:00:00:00] - Hey, this is Craig Cannon. And you're listening to Y Combinator's podcast. Today's episode is a conv... |
| - | The Seed 25: The best female early-stage investors of 2021 | Jillian Manus, Caterina Fake, Stephanie Palmeri, Ann Miura-Ko, Marissa Mayer, and Aileen Lee. Cowboy Ventures; Floodgate; Structure Capital; Uncork Capital; Insider This story is available exclusively to Insider subscribers. Become an Insid... |
| - | Liveblogging: TC Disrupt em San Francisco – Dia 2 | Confira aqui o Dia 01 & Dia 03! Não deixe de conferir a nossa página especial, com todos os conteúdos da nossa Valley Mission 2013!
(inicia o painel ‘The Investor Perspective’: Aileen Lee – fundadora Cowboy Ventures, John Lilly – partne... |
| - | Почему сейчас компании лучше быть «верблюдом», чем «единорогом» | Коронавирусный кризис подкосил некоторых «единорогов». Стремительно выросшие в прошлые годы бизнесы по аренде жилья, автопрокату и оказанию других услуг вынужденно сократили штат или сильно упали в стоимости. На этом фоне в мире заговорили ... |
| - | Teledermatology company broadens skin conditions, adds Google Ventures as part of $15M Series A | Dermatology is a burgeoning specialty in telemedicine as companies see an opportunity to respond to long wait times for dermatologists. It’s interesting to see how companies are diversifying their approach. Spruce added anti-aging and sever... |
| - | Driving diversity: Nonprofit is on a mission to bring more Latinxs to the VC profession | Does the term “venture capitalist” conjure up images of corporate boardrooms populated with well-heeled, well-connected white men calling all the shots? If it doesn’t, it should. The lack of diversity, especially in Big Tech and VC firms in... |
