Vishal Persaud

Former SoftBank executive Marcelo Claure and serial entrepreneur and investor Paul Judge are in the throes of raising a new $200 million fund.The duo were deep in investing calls when they took a break to catch up with Business Insider. It’s been about a month since the Open Opportunity Fund announced that Claure was rejoining the fund — one he was instrumental in launching over three years ago while he was at SoftBank.The past year has been transitional for the fund since Claure and Judge bough…

Diversity, equity, and inclusion has been a hot topic of conversation lately — especially among billionaires who don’t see the need for it, DEI initiatives have been intensely scrutinized after the US Supreme Court struck down the use of affirmative action in college admissions last year, and that’s had ripple effects in the business world. There’s been an ongoing backlash against corporate DEI. And that’s manifested in DEI departments paring down and legal action, like the ongoing lawsuit again…

Three years ago, Allwyn Sequeira and his Highway 9 Networks cofounders set out to embark on what the startup calls the mobile cloud.At that time, Sequeira, the startup’s CEO, and cofounders, Debashis Basak, Serge Maskalik, and Sachin Thakkar, were veterans at cloud computing giant VMWare, and led the creation of several cloud-native platforms while at the company, the last of which led them to launch Highway 9 Networks. The startup is now coming out of stealth with a $25 million round led by May…

Defense technology and its coterie of investors were once a cottage industry within the enterprise software-driven venture capital world. But in recent years, that’s rapidly changing. Investors and startups are no longer wary of the uncertainties of building technology with governments as the main target customers. Concerns about bureaucratic red tape, longer investment return timelines, and moral opposition to the overlap between tech and war have somewhat dissipated. What has emerged is a tech…

Behind most startup founders is an early-stage investor who saw their potential, nurtured their ambition, and backed their ideas. These are not just check-writers but shrewd risk-takers, enthusiastic collaborators, and trend forecasters.The end of a record bull run in tech rebooted the startup landscape, and now early-stage investors are embracing the change. Founders have gone back to basics, staying lean and mean from the start and harnessing tailwinds of the artificial intelligence boom.“We a…

Marell Evans is the humble hustler solo venture capitalist of Miami’s burgeoning tech scene. And he’s just getting started.Evans is the founder of Exceptional Capital, which launched in 2022 among the many emerging VC firms that sprouted during the fundraising boom years. While many of Evans’ peers are now grappling with the difficulties of getting capital for their funds, he’s been able to buck that trend. Exceptional’s first fund, initially set at $30 million, has now increased to $50 million.…

The 60 top angel investors that back B2B startups

Nearly 40 years ago, Tom Cruise rode the streets of San Diego on a Kawasaki Ninja motorcycle, playing a hotshot Navy fighter pilot in the ’80s classic “Top Gun.“In those days, Miramar, a neighborhood in northern San Diego, was home to a US Naval Air Station that housed the fighter pilot training program featured in the movie. In its heyday, the station was nicknamed Fightertown USA. But the program has since moved to another station, and its legacy in San Diego is a faint, fond memory.In the pas…

Tier one multi-stage venture capital firms are inflating seed rounds with bigger checks in what may become a new normal for early-stage investing.

I finally caved and got solar panels. It turned out to be a huge mistake.