From The Editor’s Desk: Hello From The New Crunchbase News Editor

Hi there. I’m the new managing editor here at Crunchbase News. 

I joined the team earlier this month and couldn’t be more excited to take on this role. It’s a job that lets me try on a few different hats: It’s one part editing and reporting, one part managing our growing team of journalists, and one part setting a new vision for the publication.

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I joined Crunchbase News after more than three years at the Silicon Valley Business Journal, where I also served as managing editor. Before that, I held various reporting and editing positions at SVBJ and other business publications, including the San Francisco Business Times.

In the coming months, I’ll be working closely with the team on our coverage of startups, venture capital and the private markets, and to determine how we can better serve you, our readers, through our data-driven reporting and analysis.

A few changes you may already have noticed:

• An earlier Crunchbase Daily: Starting today, you’ll receive the Crunchbase Daily, the flagship newsletter for Crunchbase, in your inbox earlier so you can start your workday with the VC and startup news and analysis you need to know.
• An updated daily briefing: Want to stay up to date on the latest news throughout the day? Starting next week, look for the Crunchbase News Briefing: A daily debrief of top VC and startup news stories, continuously updated by the Crunchbase News reporters and editors. 
• This column: Your Monday morning Crunchbase Daily will now include a column from me that previews the week ahead in startup and venture news, offers a quick recap of some of our best stories from the week before, and a few other musings and observations. 

Our top stories last week

Among our readers’ favorite Crunchbase News stories last week:

• Investors are pouring billions of dollars into edtech startups as millions of students around the globe log into their classrooms remotely, reporter Sophia Kunthara found when she did a deep dive into the Crunchbase database. For once, it’s not U.S. startups leading the way, with only $706 million of the $4.1 billion in venture dollars that went to education-related startups in the first half of the year going toward U.S. companies. The edtech sector does, however, continue a common trend in venture: More dollars are being packed into fewer deals.
• A few weeks ago, reporter Christine Hall noticed that New York-based venture firm Greycroft has been the lead investor or participant in many of the funding stories she’s written lately. She checked the numbers and sure enough: Greycroft made 29 investments in U.S. companies in the first half of this year, making it one of the busiest venture investors during a time when many VCs were pulling back. The firm is also raising a new fund. Hall called two of Greycroft’s partners to learn more about their investment strategy and outlook. Here’s what she found.

What I’m reading

Although more Black VCs have broken into the clubby world of Silicon Valley, they often struggle to gain recognition and traction in the traditionally exclusionary tech world. They also grapple with their role in keeping the door open for other minorities to get into the industry, a story in Bloomberg found. “You feel you have to be a model minority, the best Black person,” says Sydney Sykes, a former VC at New Enterprise Associates who now works for a startup. “If you mess it up, you ruin it not just for you but for everyone who looks like you.” [Black Venture Capitalists Confront Silicon Valley’s Quiet Racism | Bloomberg]

That’s a wrap

A final note: While I’ve covered plenty of startups as a journalist, this is my first stint actually working for one. Crunchbase News was started just over three years ago as the news division of Crunchbase. Like any young startup, our newsroom is very much still iterating—constantly improving and refining what we do. So I’d love to hear from you: What are you interested in reading more about? What could we be doing better? Drop me a line at mvanromburgh@crunchbase.com to share your thoughts.

Illustration: Dom Guzman