Techmeme
October 21, 2018, 7:35 PM

Top News

Fred Wilson / AVC:
Recent news serves as a reminder that operators in startups and venture capital should work to ensure their investors are not bad actors  —  I got an email from the CEO of one of our portfolio companies last week.  —  It asked a very basic question, but one that I don't recall being asked before:
The Information:
Sources: Facebook is stepping up efforts to buy a major cybersecurity firm and has approached several companies about an acquisition  —  In an effort to repair its tattered reputation around data protection, Facebook is stepping up efforts to acquire a major cybersecurity firm, according to four people familiar with the matter.
New York Times:
Sources: Saudis groomed a Twitter employee to spy on accounts of dissidents; he was investigated and fired in Dec. 2015 after Western intelligence warnings  —  Each morning, Jamal Khashoggi would check his phone to discover what fresh hell had been unleashed while he was sleeping.
Bloomberg:
Source: Plaid, which makes tools that let clients like Venmo, Coinbase authenticate accounts and see user balances, is raising $200M at a valuation of up to $3B  —  Plaid Technologies Inc. is in talks to raise $200 million and the valuation of the deal is rising as venture investors vie to bankroll the startup.
Dean Takahashi / VentureBeat:
SoftBank Group COO Marcelo Claure and Arm CEO Simon Segers talk about the present and future of Arm, IoT growth, while trying to dodge Saudi-related questions  —  SoftBank, one of the world's biggest tech companies and startup investors, believes we'll have a trillion connected devices by 2025.
More: CNN
Issie Lapowsky / Wired:
Interview with Brian Amerige, the former Facebook employee whose memo accusing the company of being a political monoculture led to fierce internal debate  —  AT ONE POINT this summer, Brian Amerige seemed destined to become the next James Damore.  —  Like Damore, the Google engineer who wrote …

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