Ingredient Subscription Service Blue Apron Raises $3M To Help You Cook Fresh Meals
#SuryaRay #Surya 
Blue Apron, a startup that aims to help you cook new foods while taking a lot of the inconvenience and waste out of the process, announced today that it has raised a $3 million Series A. The company delivers fresh ingredients and instructions for up to three meals a week, for $9.99 per person per meal. When we wrote about the company last fall, it was only available in the Northeastern US. Now the company says that it delivers to 50 percent of the country (it hasn’t reached the West Coast yet) with 6,000 meals delivered each week. It has also added a vegetarian option. http://dlvr.it/2z8kh0 @suryaray
The #1 request I hear when talking to founders in San Francisco is: “We are hiring engineers. Know any?” We all know this is a big issue that’s only getting worse, and so do most of the investors. But, I’m now starting to hear this so often, I’m beginning to worry that all the conventional tactics simply won’t work. Early-stage startups that don’t start experimenting with new ideas to source, recruit, and close engineers and other technical hires may end up running out of money or never achieving the product traction they need to get to the next level. I don’t have data to support this, but my intuition is that technical talent is so fragmented right now, all options need to be reexamined and placed on the table. 
Snapchat, the impermanent messaging app that won “Fastest Rising Startup” at the 2012 Crunchies, has finalized a $13.5 million Series A round led by Benchmark’s Mitch Lasky. According to The New York Times, Snapchat is now valued between $60 and $70 million. 
Editor’s note: _Norman Winarsky is the Vice President of Ventures at research and technology development organization SRI International._ What have we learned over more than 65 years of invention and commercialization? There are several specific ways in which our venture processes stand in contrast to what is in vogue today. These are lessons that anyone in the business of innovation should consider. 
Scott Hartley, a venture capitalist at Mohr Davidow, decided to completely overhaul his investment strategy today after returning from a trip to New York. Hartley, who is originally from Palo Alto, spent a few days in New York for meetings and an interview on Bloomberg TV. When he unlocked his Sand Hill Road office today, he found that his colleague Abhas Gupta had cheerfully Bieberized his new desk on the other side of Mohr Davidow’s office. While at first he was shocked, with a little reflection, it sunk in that the mobile-social wave is over, and that while enterprise is cool, the next wave of disruption is Bieber. “I have a belief that ‘Tech is a Horizontal Enablement Layer‘ that disrupts traditional verticals,” he said. “First, we saw this with the Internet in the 90s, then with mobile as a dominant form factor, and social as a proxy toward authenticity. We believe that the next wave will include Bieber, and we are well positioned in this space.” His colleagues and the firm’s LPs, while stunned by this sudden pivot, were understanding and said they felt confident in Hartley’s abilities to identify the very best early-stage teams in this new Bieberification wave. “The question is how will Bieber disrupt traditional verticals,” he said. “We’re investors in RockHealth, pioneers in the digital health category, and we’re actively seeking opportunities in the vertical disruption Bieber is applying on Sand Hill Road.” He’s now working on partnering with Y-Bieber-cubator to source deal flow on companies that have evidence of Bieber-gagement and Bieber-tention. He added: If I was your VC, I’d never let you go I can scale you places you ain’t never been before Baby take a chance or you’ll never ever know I got money in my hands that I’d really like to blow Swag swag swag, on you 
At the 
Doug Ludlow, formerly the CEO of 
Social advertising startup 
