Highlights of the Week (January 14, 2022)

Elizabeth Holmes’s sentencing date is set for late September, in yet another bizarre twist regarding the court proceedings surrounding this case. The January 3rd conviction is just one piece of the precedent this case sets for Silicon Valley, where hyping up your product to investors approaches a thin line into defrauding them. This case, of course, makes for riveting television, as evidenced by the HBO documentary, The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley. Silicon Valley has made a killing for Hollywood producers, with shows like Mr. Robot, Silicon Valley, and Startup creating storylines around the infamous SV culture. Documentaries include not one but two films exposing the glamorous festival that never was, Fyre Fest, and a bro-culture breakdown of WeWork’s rise and fall. Based-on-reality dramas premiering this year include WeWork’s founder played by Jared Leto and Uber’s founder played by Joseph Gordon Levitt. Will you be watching?

Here’s what we watched unfold this week on the Daily Stack:

• After the hottest year on record (in global venture funding), what are the anticipated red hot investment sectors for 2022? We break them down here. 

• For Tuesday’s investor highlight, we spotlighted General Atlantic’s ambitious climate-focused fund, BeyondNetZero. Find out what climate initiatives tthe firm is backing here.

• We looked at the upstanding performance of enterprise software companies who have IPO’d recently. What factors contributed to their success over tech companies more generally? Check it out.

• Yesterday we revisited the business of basketball and the factors boosting valuations that have nothing to do with ticket sales in stadiums. See who’s scoring.