Daily Pulse: Google Ventures Finds Startups Hesitant to IPO, Finland Wants to Introduce Minimum Income, Beware the Great Banana Famine

Google Ventures has added 39 investments in 2015, but the fund is stepping away from seed investing, preferring to get involved at later stages, CEO Bill Maris said. The fund is also finding that "it's been a very choppy exit market." There have been a little over half as many health and tech IPOs so far in 2015 as over the same period last year. 

“I’m seeing actual companies that are, for reasons that are hard for me to understand, resisting to go public with all they’ve got.”
Bill Maris, CEO and president at Google Ventures

Author's note: Why would they when venture capital offers them sky-high valuations and way fewer obligations? (Google Ventures is one of the investors responsible for Uber's $60 billion valuation.) Google Ventures is also renaming itself GV this week, shedding the Google brand now that it lives under the Alphabet umbrella. Maris hopes that'll address the notion -- a misconception he says (paywall) -- that his fund only serves for Google to explore the competitive landscape and spot potential acquisitions.  

We're keeping a very close eye on Yahoo. A decision is expected anytime now on whether the company decides to spin off its Alibaba stake and generally what happens to the company, three years into a turnover that hasn't produced much to impress. 

“It’s not like (Marissa Mayer) took a great company and made it crappy. She took a crappy company and made it a little less crappy in some ways and a little more crappy in others.”
re/code

Australia could use GV's money. While Google Ventures says there's so much competition on the Silicon Valley venture capital front that it can't spend all it wants, Australian startups are badly lacking in funds. (And talent to hire.) Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull announced the country will spend AU$1.1 billion (US$800 million) to support innovation, entrepreneurship and scientific research.

Finland is drawing up plans to pay each resident €800 ($870) a month. Think of it as "flat welfare:" the universal minimum income would replace all existing social safety net features like unemployment insurance. The idea is to reduce the bureaucracy that helps determine who should get welfare and entice unemployed people to take even low-paying jobs. Here's why it could work.  

OPEC has ended production ceilings. “Everyone does whatever they want,” summed up Iranian Oil Minister Bijan Namdar Zanganeh. The countries, led by Saudi Arabia, agreed Friday in Vienna to get as much oil as they want out of the ground for the foreseeable future, which means the price glut is not ending anytime soon. And begs the question: Why is there even an OPEC still? 

“Lots of people said that OPEC was dead; OPEC itself just confirmed it.”
Jamie Webster, oil analyst for IHS Inc., to Bloomberg

Renault reportedly wants to relinquish some of its power over alliance partner Nissan. The automaker is going head to head with France, its largest shareholder, which wants to maintain ties with Nissan. 

If you can't meet the goal, lower the bar. More than a decade ago, Japan swore it'd reach 30% of women in business and public leadership by 2020. The country just quietly lowered its ambition to 7%...

The banana you know may be going bye bye. The variety we all eat -- the Cavendish banana -- is the victim of a disease spreading around the world. Another strain of the disease had sealed the fate of the Gros Michel banana, the fruit our grandparents used to eat. Monocultures are more profitable -- until they meet a worthy enemy. Ask the Irish. (By the way, we're also running out of chocolate, coffee and avocados. At least Chipotle carnitas are back.)

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Photo: Participants stretch before the 7th annual Michendorf Santa Run on December 6, 2015 in Michendorf, Germany. (Photo by Sean Gallup/Getty Images)

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