Publicly-listed venture fund Draper Esprit acquired Funds I and II of Seedcamp, which in turn provided their investors with a 4x return ~> Seedcamp sells Funds I & II to Draper Esprit delivering 4x return to investors

“Friends & Family Rounds by SeedLegals is a super quick and simple new way to close your first funding round. All the legals in one super easy-to-manage workflow: Investor Agreement, Articles, Board Minutes, SH01 ready to file at Company House, issue share certificates to your new investors.. and away you go!” ~> SeedLegals

Saudi Arabia’s state-owned Public Investment Fund is poised to become one of the world’s biggest investors. But the fund is troubled by disappointing investments, including in Uber Technologies Inc., and has struggled to calculate its own value ~> Ill-Timed Uber Investment Roils a Giant Saudi Fund but it’s still ~> Saudi Fund Targeting Investment Returns of Up to 9% and this is how ~> How Saudi Arabia Is Building Its $2 Trillion Fund

A sovereign wealth fund of the United Arab Emirates is setting up shop in California, the latest Middle East investor to double down on an ambitious plan to turn oil money into tech money ~> An Abu Dhabi sovereign fund is doubling down on tech with more cash, more office space and more SoftBank

Social Capital’s latest move in democratising investment ~> Capital-as-a-Service: A New Operating System for Early Stage Investing and here’s TechCrunch’s take ~> Social Capital has started investing in startups, sight unseen

Talking of Social Capital: They evaluated nearly 3,000 companies during its private beta and committed to funding several dozen across 12 countries. An interesting byproduct of the data-oriented approach was that CEO demographics skewed 42% female and majority non-white. (For context, female founders received 2.19% of venture capital funding in 2016) ~> Social Capital Will Let Data Decide Where It Invests

Like the broader tech industry, venture capital has been reckoning in recent years with its lack of racial diversity. But the pace of change has been glacial, mirroring its better-documented issues with gender diversity ~> The (slowly) changing face of VC’s next generation

Companies run by women and those that improve the lives of women represent a largely untapped multi-trillion-dollar market ~> Meet 58 venture capital funds that are betting on women around the world

Salesforce has announced the launch of the Salesforce Impact Fund, a $50 million initiative aimed at supporting companies that use Salesforce technology and are working to address challenges in the areas of workforce development, equality, sustainability, and social sector impact ~> Salesforce Ventures Launches $50 Million Impact Investment Fund

Across Europe, a range of organisations are using technology for healthcare, to improve public services, drive political engagement and strengthen communities — a trend called digital social innovation ~> Number of European “tech for good” projects doubles in two years

Nearly all big tech companies have an artificial intelligence project, and they are willing to pay experts millions of dollars to help get it done ~> Tech Giants Are Paying Huge Salaries for Scarce A.I Talent

Tezos’s problems reveal divide on whether ICOs are investments or donations ~> Coin Offerings Are Hot, but What Are They?

E-commerce veteran Overstock.com is planning to sell up to 500 million digital tokens via an initial coin offering that will launch next month ~> Overstock.com to launch massive ICO while it will also be the first to offer dividends ~> A high-profile ICO is touting its latest invention: a dividend

Bitcoin may be looked at as a catalyst for the slow death of the firm ~> The Slow Death of the Firm

After years of single-minded expansion, Big Tech is bracing for a backlash. “It feels like the storm has already been bearing down on Silicon Valley as we speak,” one investor said. “Mantras that once mattered like ‘Don’t be Evil’ sound at best hollow or at worst hypocritical ~> Is the sun really setting on Silicon Valley?

A short history lesson ~> How Sand Hill Road Became the Main Street of Venture Capital

Peter Thiel: Silicon Valley’s monopoly on big growth tech companies is over

“Nadella’s gentle, compassion-first ethos is not extraordinarily radical. To different degrees, it’s mirrored in Apple CEO Tim Cook, Google CEO Sundar Pichai, and Uber’s new chief, Dara Khosrowshahi. From press accounts, all of these CEOs are listeners first, and are reported to be team players” ~> A new type of leader is emerging in Silicon Valley

The balance of power has dramatically shifted from investors to founders ~> Why Uber is the Revenge of the Founders

CB Insights crunched the data to see if there was a correlation between prior entrepreneurial experience — which they defined as having founded or co-founded a company — and VCs’ placement on the CB Insights 100 rankings ~> Do Ex-Startup Founders Make The Best Venture Capitalists?

What Venture Capital Can Learn From The Duke Basketball Recruiting Pipeline ~> The Innovation Blind Spot And How To Invest In The Right Ideas

“I’ve got bad news for aspiring fund managers. Fundraising is only getting harder” ~> Window Shopping

Fred Wilson: IPOs are back in favour 

Gil Dibner: Startups and the art of the “one thing” <~ This was my favourite thing I read this week 

Tomasz Tunguz ~> The Rising Stakes In SaaS

Hans Swildens: Six Secondary Venture Capital Observations in Q3

Charlie O'Donnell: Why You Shouldn’t Put VCs on a Pedestal

“Venture capital should come with a warning label” ~> Toxic VC and the marginal-dollar problem

Please consider tweeting this issue and recommending to your friends and colleagues, it will make my Sunday.

Feedback to neil@thenordicweb.com or @neilswmurray