Eric Newcomer

Eric Newcomer (born September 7, 1989) is an American journalist known for reporting on Silicon Valley and the startup industry. He is the founder of Newcomer, a media outlet that covers startups and venture capital, which launched in 2020.

Early life and education
Newcomer was born in York, Pennsylvania, and raised in Macon, Georgia. After graduating from Central High School in 2008, he attended Harvard College, 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.

Career
While at Harvard, Newcomer had internships at the South Florida Sun-Sentinel and the Tampa Bay Times. Later, he worked as a James Reston Reporting Fellow for The New York Times. He was the first employee at The Information, joining as a reporter in 2013.

In 2014 Newcomer joined Bloomberg LP as a technology reporter. While at Bloomberg, he published an article about then-Uber CEO Travis Kalanick 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 publishers who publicly announced personal investments in the company as a show of support. He also runs a weekly podcast containing top thought leaders in startups and venture capital. Past speakers on the podcast have included Kara Swisher and Emad Mostaque.

Cerebral Valley AI Summit
On March 30, 2023, Newcomer and voice-AI gaming startup Volley co-hosted an artificial intelligence summit in San Francisco. Speakers included Emad Mostaque, 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, given after many AI startups established headquarters there.