Eric Newcomer (born September 7, 1989) is an American journalist known for reporting on

Silicon Valley Silicon Valley is a region in Northern California that is a global center for high technology and innovation. Located in the southern part of the San Francisco Bay Area, it corresponds roughly to the geographical area of the Santa Clara Valley ...

and the startup industry. He is the founder of ''Newcomer'', a media outlet that covers startups and

venture capital Venture capital (VC) is a form of private equity financing provided by firms or funds to start-up company, startup, early-stage, and emerging companies, that have been deemed to have high growth potential or that have demonstrated high growth in ...

, which launched in 2020.

Personal life and education

Newcomer was born in

York, Pennsylvania York is a city in York County, Pennsylvania, United States, and its county seat. Located in South Central Pennsylvania, the city's population was 44,800 at the time of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, making it the List of cities in ...

, and raised in

Macon, Georgia Macon ( ), officially Macon–Bibb County, is a consolidated city-county in Georgia (U.S. state), Georgia, United States. Situated near the Atlantic Seaboard fall line, fall line of the Ocmulgee River, it is southeast of Atlanta and near the ...

. After graduating from Central High School in 2008, he attended

Harvard College Harvard College is the undergraduate education, undergraduate college of Harvard University, a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Part of the Harvard Faculty of Arts and Scienc ...

, where he graduated in 2012 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Philosophy. At Harvard, he served as associate managing editor for ''The Harvard Crimson'' and won awards for investigative reporting on a four-part series related to sexual assault at the university. In 2023, Newcomer married Sara Joe Wolansky, a multimedia journalist who he met while at Harvard. The two worked together at ''The Crimson.''

Career

While at Harvard, Newcomer had internships at the

South Florida Sun-Sentinel The ''Sun Sentinel'' (also known as the ''South Florida Sun Sentinel'', known until 2008 as the ''Sun-Sentinel'', and stylized on its masthead as ''SunSentinel'') is the main daily newspaper of Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and Broward County, an ...

and the

Tampa Bay Times The ''Tampa Bay Times'', called the ''St. Petersburg Times'' until 2011, is an American newspaper published in St. Petersburg, Florida, United States. It is published by the Times Publishing Company, which is owned by The Poynter Institute ...

. Later, he worked as a James Reston Reporting Fellow for

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of ...

. He was the first employee at The Information, joining as a reporter in 2013. In 2014 Newcomer joined

Bloomberg LP Bloomberg L.P. is an American privately-held financial, software, data, and media company headquartered in Midtown Manhattan, New York City. It was co-founded by Michael Bloomberg in 1981, with Thomas Secunda, Duncan MacMillan, Charles Zeg ...

as a technology reporter. While at Bloomberg, he published an article about then-

Uber Uber Technologies, Inc. is an American multinational transportation company that provides Ridesharing company, ride-hailing services, courier services, food delivery, and freight transport. It is headquartered in San Francisco, California, a ...

CEO

Travis Kalanick Travis Cordell Kalanick (; born August 6, 1976) is an American businessman best known as the co-founder and former chief executive officer (CEO) of Uber. Previously he worked for Scour, a peer-to-peer file sharing application company, and was th ...

that included a video of Kalanick arguing with an Uber driver. The article contributed to Kalanick’s resignation as CEO of Uber. In October 2020, he launched his own venture capital newsletter, ''Newcomer''. As of July 2022, Newcomer had over 1,900 paying subscribers. In 2023, Newcomer was one of many

Substack Substack is an American online platform that provides publishing, payment, analytics, and design infrastructure to support subscription-based content, including newsletters, podcasts, and video. It allows writers to send digital content directl ...

publishers who publicly announced personal investments in the company as a show of support. He also runs a weekly

podcast A podcast is a Radio program, program made available in digital format for download over the Internet. Typically, a podcast is an Episode, episodic series of digital audio Computer file, files that users can download to a personal device or str ...

containing top thought leaders in startups and venture capital. Past speakers on the podcast have included

Kara Swisher Kara Anne Swisher ( ; born December 11, 1962) is an American journalist. She has covered the business of the internet since 1994. As of 2023, Swisher was a contributing editor at ''New York (magazine), New York Magazine'', the host of the podcast ...

and

Emad Mostaque Mohammad Emad Mostaque (; born 17 April 1983) is a British-Bangladeshi business executive, mathematician, and former hedge fund manager. He is the co-founder and was CEO of Stability AI until 23 March 2024, one of the companies behind Stable Di ...

Cerebral Valley AI Summit

On March 30, 2023, Newcomer and voice-AI gaming startup Volley co-hosted an

artificial intelligence Artificial intelligence (AI) is the capability of computer, computational systems to perform tasks typically associated with human intelligence, such as learning, reasoning, problem-solving, perception, and decision-making. It is a field of re ...

summit in San Francisco. Speakers included

, Adam D’Angelo and other CEOs of AI companies and venture capital investors. Over 200 founders, investors, engineers and entrepreneurs attended the one-day Cerebral Valley AI Summit. Attendees included Databricks CEO Ali Ghodsi and MosaicML CEO Naveen Rao, who met for the first time at the event. Within months, Databricks acquired MosaicML for $1.3 billion. The event contributed to the popularization of the nickname " Cerebral Valley" for the neighborhood of

Hayes Valley, San Francisco Hayes Valley is a neighborhood in the Western Addition district of San Francisco, California. It is located between the historical districts of Alamo Square and the Civic Center. Victorian, Queen Anne, and Edwardian townhouses are mixed with h ...

, given after many AI startups established headquarters there.

References

External links

*Officia
podcast
1989 births American journalists Living people Harvard College alumni {{improve categories, date=June 2023