Good Thursday morning! (By the way, is StrictlyVC the only one who didn’t go to the Bruno Mars show in Oakland last night? FOMO is real, people.)

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Top News in the A.M.

Ten things you might have missed at the second day of the Code conference.

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Wearable That Relies on Your Heartbeat Nears Series A Close

If things go its way, you may be hearing more about Bionym, if not using its product. The spin-off from the University of Toronto has been developing a wristband that distinguishes wearers by their heartbeat. The big idea: there’s no reason to use keys and pass codes and credit cards when we can be identified instead through our unique electrocardiography.

A lot of pieces have to fall into place for the wristband, called the Nymi, to work out. But because the potential also seems substantial, I asked company president Andrew D’Souza to walk me through what’s happening as the company prepares to dot the i’s and cross the t’s on a Series A round that it’s closing.

I know the company’s founders studied biometrics and cryptography at the University of Toronto. What’s the core technology here?

It’s a set of algorithms that helps identify you based on your unique ECG. This was a tech licensing company initially, but we realized the way this functionality should be put out in the world is through a wearable wristband.

Which still hasn’t been produced yet, is that right?

We’ll start the production efforts over the summer and expect to ship the first 10,000 [units] next fall.

How confident are you of that?

It’s a fair question. [The successful production of the Nymi] was the biggest risk for me in joining the company [last year]. But we bought in James Elson, who led the complete product development cycle for the AirHog, the best-selling radio-controlled helicopter in the world. He has shipped about 8 million units, spent a third of his career in China, and has all kinds of relationships and knows what to ask.

How is the Nymi designed, loosely?

It’s basically a polymer wrapped around a hard plastic puck that houses the electronics, like a Fitbit, which also has an enclosed puck. Jawbone’s UP band and Nike’s FueldBand use flex circuits, which introduce more manufacturing risk.

Something like 2.7 million people have already purchased wearable bands, most of them fitness trackers – and most of them Fitbits. Is there any concern over asking people to put another piece of hardware around their wrist?

No, we think the wearable market is where mobile was in the ’90s. Most of the devices sold so far have a single use case – like tracking steps, or notifying me when I get texts. Going forward, we’ll see platforms emerge. When Apple announces its iWatch, [it’s likely to be] a health-focused platform. Android Wear, [Google’s software platform for wearables] will [center] on context-aware, location-based services. We think there’s also an opportunity for an [identity-centric] personalized platform, and that there’s a market of people who will prefer it.

What about all the peripherals you’ll need for Nymi to work?

We’ve had phenomenal interest from Fortune 100 companies about building applications integrations into some of their products. We have an open SDK, so in the same way that people build apps on iPhones, we’re giving early access to key partners [to create related apps]. Essentially, we want to allow people to bypass whatever credential they use and use Bionym as a proxy for it, from laptops and smart phones to payment companies to home security.

More than 7,000 developers have signed up for the SDK – from college students to major corporations. That’s what we’re most excited about.

You’re accepting pre-orders at your site. Will you sell exclusively through the site or will people be able to order the Nymi through major retailers?

Amazon is essentially ready to start selling and other major retailers have reached out about listing us. But we’ve been hesitant to go to physical or digital retail until we know exactly why people are ordering our devices and who they are.

New Fundings

51Fanli, an eight-year-old, Shanghai-based rebate shopping guide platform, has raised $20 million in Series B funding led by SIG China, according to Chinese media reports. The company had previously raised $10 million in Series A funding from Qiming Venture Partners and Steamboat Ventures.

Apixio, a five-year-old, San Mateo, Ca.-based company that extracts and analyzes clinical unstructured and coded data for healthcare industry clients, has raised a $13.5 million Series C round from Bain Capital Ventures, along with numerous unnamed individual investors. The company has raised at least $22.6 million altogether, shows Crunchbase.

ARMO BioSciences, a 1.5-year-old, Redwood City, Ca.-based clinical-stage biotechnology company that’s trying to turn a drug licensed from Merck & Co. into a cancer treatment, has raised $30 million in Series B funding by NanoDimension. Earlier investors Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, OrbiMed and DAG Ventures also participated in the round, which brings the company’s total funding to $50 million.

Bindo, a six-month-old, New York-based company that’s come up with an iPad point-of-sale system and associated cloud-based payment platform for small merchants, has raised $1.8 million in seed funding co-led by Gary Vaynerchuk, East Ventures, and Metamorphic Ventures.

Coupang, a four-year-old, Seoul-based e-commerce company that offers goods ranging from fashion to produce, has raised $100 million in financing led by Sequoia Capital Global Equities and Sequoia Heritage, with participation by earlier investors Greenoaks Capital Management, Rose Park Advisors’ Disruptive Innovation Fund and LaunchTime. Others of the company’s earlier investors include Maverick Capital, Altos Ventures, Bill Ackman, Clay Christensenand others. The company is now valued at $1 billion-plus, it says. The company’s CEO tells Dealbook that more than 70 percent of its transactions are done on mobile devices.

Datalogix, a five-year-old, Westminster, Co.-based company that sells offline purchase data to giant publishers, has closed a $45 million round led by Wellington Management Company. Earlier investor investor Institutional Venture Partners joined the round, investing more than pro rata. The round is “incremental to the recently announced investment in Datalogix by Jim Breyer’s Breyer Capital,” says the company. (In April, the WSJ reported that Breyer had invested “a significant” amount in the company.) Datalogix has raised at least $111 million to date, shows Crunchbase.

ExtraHop, a seven-year-old, Seattle-based app management system, has raised raised $41 million in Series C funding led by Technology Crossover Ventures. Other participants in the round include earlier investors Meritech Capital Partners and Madrona Venture Group.

HackerOne, a 19-month-old, Bay Area-based security firm whose platform makes it easy for companies to report their bug tracking and process their flaw reports, has raised $9 million in funding led by Benchmark. TechCrunch has much more on the startup, which has ties to Facebook and Microsoft, here.

Matrixx Software, a 24-year-old, Mountain View, Ca.-based developer of online charging and subscriber policy management software, has raised an undisclosed amount of new funding led by Telstra Ventures. Earlier investors Swisscom Ventures, Innovacom, Greylock Partners, Adams Street Partners and Tugboat Ventures also participated in the round. Previously, the company had raised at least $33.6 million, shows Crunchbase.

MedCPU, a six-year-old, New York-based company whose real-time clinical decision support tool rides atop most hospital and ambulatory electronic medical records and “reads” the complete clinical information to deliver clinical care advice, has raised $9.3 million in Series B funding from investors that include Merck Global Health Innovation Fund, Easton Capital Investment Group and New Richmond Ventures. The company has raised at least $10.9 million to date, shows Crunchbase.

Message Bus, a nearly four-year-old, San Francisco-based application service that enables messaging across different email and mobile infrastructures, has raised $4 million in funding led by previous investor True Ventures. Other earlier investors North Bridge Venture Partnersand Ignition Partners also participated in the round, which brings the company’s total funding to $18 million, it says.

Neuway Pharma, a months-old, Bonn, Germany-based company that focuses on the preclinical and clinical development of therapeutics for treating orphan brain diseases, has raised $3.6 million in Series A financing led by Wellington Partners. The company is the first spin-off of the Life Science Inkubator in Bonn.

Newlans, an 11-year-old, Acton, Ma.-based fabless semiconductor company that makes a reconfigurable broadband analog signal processing architecture, has raised $5 million from Verizon Ventures to complete its Series B financing round. Intel Capital, with the participation of Paladin Capital and Lockheed Martin, had led the Series B, which initially closed with $15 million in February. The company has raised at least $23.9 million to date.

PatientPay, a nearly six-year-old, Durham, N.C.-based patient billing and payment services company, has raised $2.5 million in funding led by Mosaik Partners, a new, San Francisco-based firm that just held a first close on $15 million for its debut fund. PatientPay has raised $6 million to date.

Rodin Therapeutics, a year-old, Cambridge, Ma.-based biotechnology company that’s focused on creating therapeutics for neurological disorders, has raised $12.9 million in Series A funding led by earlier investors Atlas Venture and Johnson & Johnson Development Corporation. The company raised an undisclosed amount of seed funding from both firms last summer.

Standard Treasury, a year-old, San Francisco-based company that offers standard APIs that make it easier for businesses to transact with their banks, has raised $2.7 million in seed funding. Investors in the round include RRE Ventures; Index Ventures; Data Collective; SV Angel; Y Combinator; Jay Mandelbaum, a former chief operating officer of JP Morgan; and Gmail creator Paul Bucheit. The WSJ has much more here.

Swipely, a 4.5-year-old, Providence. R.I.-based company whose online software works with point-of-sale systems and terminals used by independent businesses to manage their credit card processing, reward programs and more, has raised $20 million in Series C funding. The Pritzker Group led the round; previous investors Shasta Ventures and First Round Capital also participated. The company has now raised $40.5 million altogether, shows Crunchbase.

XLV Diagnostics, a three-year-old, Thunder Bay, Ontario-based company that makes low-cost, next-generation digital mammography machines, has raised $3 million in Series A funding from the Boston-based Bernard M. Gordon Charitable Remainder Unitrust. The company had previously raised $600,000 in funding from the regional development organization FedNor and the Northern Ontario Heritage Fund.

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New Funds

Omron, a Japan-based manufacturer of control equipment, factory automation systems, electronic components, automotive electronics, ticket vending machines and medical equipment, is earmarking an estimated 3 billion yen ($29.1 million) for agricultural and life sciences startups over the next three years, reports the Nikkei.

Spark Capital, the nine-year-old, Boston-based venture capital firm, closed its first-ever growth capital fund yesterday with $375 million that was raised over “several” months. (Spark is also investing from a $450 million early-stage fund closed last year.) The head of the new fund is Jeremy Philips, formerly a managing partner of Occam Partners, as well as an executive at News Corporation. He tells Dealbook more about his team’s plans, including that they will be aiming to invest slugs of $15 million and $30 million in companies that already have roughly $1 billion in revenue but aren’t yet ready to go public. Bijan Sabet, a partner at Spark, tells Dealbook: “We’re planning on helping companies scale, whether they’re existing companies of Spark or not.”

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IPOs

Only two companies have set terms for upcoming IPOs in the past week, notes Renaissance Capital, calling it a reflection of “both fallen tech and biotech valuations and the typically lower volume around a holiday week.” More here.

Twitter’s shares rose nearly 11 percent yesterday, to $33.77, after Nomura Equity raised its rating to buy from neutral, with a price target of 43. Investors Business Daily notes that the shares are still 55 percent off their peak price of $74, reached roughly one month after the company’s November IPO.

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Exits

Apple finally announced yesterday that it has acquired the subscription streaming music service Beats Music, and Beats Electronics, which makes Beats headphones, speakers and audio software. As part of the acquisition, Beats co-founders Jimmy Iovine and Dr. Dre will join Apple, Iovine in a full-time capacity, Dr. Dre, whose real name is Andre Young, for “as much as it takes,” he said yesterday. Apple is acquiring the two companies for a total of $3 billion, including $400 million that will vest over time. The Beats brand will remain separate from Apple’s, and Apple will offer both Beats’s streaming music service and premium headphones, reports the New York Times.

Distimo, a five-year-old, Netherlands-based app analytics and data company, has been acquired by its direct competitor, App Annie, which has been looking to expand into Europe. As part of the transaction, App Annie announced a fresh $17 million in funding yesterday from earlier investors IDG Capital Partners, Greycroft Partners and Sequoia Capital; the company has now raised $39 million altogether. Distimo had raised an undisclosed amount of funding from Wellington Partners.

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People

Highly disturbing emails written by Snapchat cofounder Evan Spiegel during his (not-so-distant) college years were leaked to the media yesterday. Spiegel quickly issued an apology for the “idiotic emails,” saying they “don’t reflect my views toward women.” The media world has seemed to let the issue go.

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Job Listings

Spark Capital is hiring a team of six to eight people for its new growth fund. (See “New Funds.”) Time to invite a partner or two out for coffee?

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Happenings

VentureBeat’s MobileBeat conference is coming up in July in San Francisco. You can register for it here.

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Data

Mary Meeker‘s Internet trends presentation, 2014. (The gist: There’s no tech bubble. Also, people love using the Internet from their phones, and that’s only growing faster.)

What startup founders typically pay themselves, or should, according to their venture investors.

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Essential Reads

As promised Google has disclosed its diversity record, and it’s not good. Among the data released: 79 percent of the company’s leadership positions are occupied by men, 72 percent of whom are white.

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Detours

No, really? The Ice Diet?

What a hiring manager scans for when reviewing resumes.

Sixty years of nuclear energy (slide show).

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Retail Therapy

Inflatable hot tub, you look right up our alley.

Topanga Canyon, a “limited-edition, trail-foraged fragrance that takes you on a springtime hike through the coastal mountains of California,” and you only need your nostrils to get there.

Is it Friday yet? (Kidding!) Hope you have a great Wednesday, everyone.

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Top News in the A.M.

Alibaba just made a huge investment in an overseas postal agency.

A Federal Trade Communication report released yesterday is providing an unusual window into the system of commercial surveillance.

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Cybersecurity VC David Cowan on Hackers, Valuations, and What’s Hot Now

When the news emerged last week that Defense.net, a cloud service that defends data centers and applications from cyber attacks, was selling to publicly traded F5 Networks, some were surprised it was being swept up so soon. Its founder, Barrett Lyon, had started two other cyber security companies; it had been incubated at Bessemer Venture Partners just last year. Could it be that the market – spending for which is expected to hit $77 billion this year – is peaking right now?

Longtime cybersecurity investor David Cowan, a general partner at Bessemer’s Palo Alto, Ca., insists that’s far from the case. Rather, in a call yesterday, he said that Defense.net’s business is “an expensive one to build. There’s a reason there aren’t a lot of companies out there that provide this kind of business. I would have been happy to keep going, but I can understand why the team found it attractive to take a strategic multiple when it was offered.”

Here’s some more from that conversation yesterday, edited for length:

A lot of businesses complain that it costs more to safeguard their systems than deal with a breach. What are you seeing?

I wouldn’t say that companies would rather spend to remedy the breach rather than prevent it, but [there’s now an] awareness that breaches are inevitable, so part of any cyber plan has to be preparations for dealing with a breach. There are startups out there today that all they do is sell breach-response services to help companies prepare for that inevitability, though those aren’t particularly interesting to me because [they] don’t use a lot of technology to do it.

As we connect more things to the Internet, more things become vulnerable to attack, including heart monitors and other medical devices. Is that an area that interests Bessemer? Do you have a vertical approach?

We generally don’t have a vertical approach, but having said that, I do think the medical device vertical is pretty interesting. There’s a vast sea of medical devices out there and hospitals that are running on old Windows machines, many of which are no longer even supported by Microsoft. And those connected machines are likely swamps for malware. And nobody has any visibility into them. Companies that are going after I that . . . it’s an interesting vertical.

What’s one thing you’re seeing in cybersecurity right now that wasn’t possible until recently?

I invested in this company, Internet Identity, because they enable companies to do what no one has done before, which is to collaborate on cyber defense.

There’s a lot of collusion by attackers in the form of exchanges, [including] people buying and selling [personally identifiable information]. As a result, it’s easy for someone to ramp up quickly as a cyberattacker. But until 18 months ago, no one ever talked openly about security infrastructure outside of their company or government agency. It was viewed as terribly private and intimate.

Since then, there’s been a really a big shift in people’s understanding that the private and the public sector all need to work together to share cyberintelligence, so that if an attacker is identified in one place, all doors [will be] closed [to that person] in buildings everywhere. That requires a lot of technology . . .and that’s what Internet Identity has developed and built. It now supports 30 federal agencies and at least three of the world’s six most valuable technology companies, and everyone who joins the exchange gets the benefit of all that intelligence in real time on their own network. It’s kind of like the social network of cyber; you share and you get back [a lot], and once someone joins the exchange, he or she naturally wants to invites lots of friends into the exchange as well.

You say Defense.net’s sale wasn’t related to valuations. What’s happening out there, though?

There’s been a huge increase in the value and multiples for companies selling cloud services to enterprises [in recent years]. With a huge pullback this year in the public market, I think it’s fair to expect that the private markets will have to respond accordingly . . .generally, when the [public] market goes up, it’s a matter of weeks before the private market does the same. When it goes down, it’s a matter of months [before private markets follow suit].

New Fundings

Acquia, a seven-year-old, Burlington, Ma.-based startup whose software enables companies to build and maintain their Drupal-based websites, has raised $50 million in new funding, led by New Enterprise Associates. Split Rock Partners and existing investors North Bridge Venture Partners, Sigma Partners, Investor Growth Capital, and Tenaya Capital also participated in the round, which brings the company’s total funding to $118.6 million.

Aver Informatics, a four-year-old, Green Bay, Wi.-based company whose data management tools help hospitals and other health care providers simplify the process of billing insurance companies, has raised $8.5 million from Drive Capital and GE Ventures. The company has raised $11 million to date, shows Crunchbase.

DemystData, a four-year-old, New York-based software company that sells predictive analytics to financial services clients, has raised $5 million in Series A funding from a string of investors, including Arbor Ventures, SingTel Innov8, Notion Capital, P2P Equity Partners and Wonga founder Errol Damelin.

Distil Networks, a three-year-old, Arlington, Va.-based com pay whose cloud-based service protects from scraping and malicious bots, has raised $10 million in Series A funding led by Foundry Group and Bullet Time Ventures. Other participants in the round included ff Venture Capital, IDEA Fund Partners and Militello Capital. The company has raised $14 million to date.

Ecwid, a 5.5-year-old, Ulyanovsk, Russia-based e-commerce platform that helps small businesses create online stores, has raised $5 million in Series B funding led by iTech Capital, with participation from earlier investor Runa Capital.

Fundrise, a two-year-old, Washington, D.C.-based company that helps any resident (and not just accredited investors) invest in properties in their local market, has raised more than $31 million in its first round of funding led by Renren, the China-based social networking company. Other investors in the round include Collaborative Fund; L.A. developer Rising Realty Partners; the Ackman-Ziff Real Estate Group; executives of Silverstein Properties; and Richard Boyle, former chief of Loopnet, an online commercial real estate listing service.

Fyusion, a year-old, San Francisco-based stealth startup developing advanced 3D image processing technologies, has raised $3.35 million in funding led by New Enterprise Associates and UTEC, with participation from angel investors including Sun Microsystems co-founder Andreas Bechtolsheim and James Joaquin, the former CEO of Ofoto & Xoom.

Infinit, a two-year-old, Paris-based company whose app uses peer-to-peer technology to boost unlimited-size file sharing between two users, has raised $1.8 million in funding from Alven Capital and 360 Capital Partners. The company has raised $2.2 million altogether.

Jobaline, a 1.5-year-old, Kirkland, Wa.-based bilingual, digital marketplace for hourly jobs, has raised $7 million in Series B funding led by Trilogy Equity Partners. Founders Co-op, Madrona Venture Group and angel investors also participated in the round, which brings Jobaline’s total funding to roughly $11.3 million.

Lua Technologies, a three-year-old, New York-based mobile workplace collaboration software company, has raised a $7.5 million Series A funding round led by Abundance Partners. Individual investors Strauss Zelnick and Aaron Stone also participated in the round. The company has raised $10 million to date, shows Crunchbase.

Need, a 15-month-old, Dallas, Tex.-based online magazine and retailer for men “who hate to shop,” says TechCrunch, has raised $500,000 in seed funding from individual investors. The company has raised $615,000 altogether, shows Crunchbase.

Spark Therapeutics, a nine-month-old, Philadelphia, Pa.-based gene therapy company focused on helping people with rare, degenerative eye diseases, has raised $72.8 million in Series B funding led by Sofinnova Ventures. Brookside Capital, Deerfield, Rock Springs Capital, T. Rowe Price, Wellington Management, and two undisclosed dedicated health-care funds. The company’s total funding to date is $122.8 million. (The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, which spun out Spark last fall, committed $50 million to the venture at the time.)

SunFunder, a two-year-old, San Francisco-based crowdfunding platform for financing solar energy projects in rural villages, has raised a Series A round of undisclosed size led personally by investor Vinod Khosal, though as VentureWire notes, it recently filed paperwork showing it had raised $2.2 million of a $2.7 million round.

Thatgamecompany, an eight-year-old, L.A.-based video game development studio that has created three games for the Playstation Network, including an award-winning game called “Journey,” has raised $7 million in funding led by the China-based private equity firm Capital Today. Other participants in the round, which brings the company’s total funding to $12.5 million, include Benchmark Capital, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, and half a dozen other investors.

XCOR Aerospace, a 15-year-old, Mojave, Ca.-based maker of rocket-powered vehicles, propulsion systems and more, has raised $14.2 million in Series B funding led by Space Expedition Corporation of the Netherlands. The round also included many existing and new investors including board member Esther Dyson, Chicago Cubs co-owner Pete Ricketts, and numerous Silicon Valley entrepreneurs and early-stage investors.

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New Funds

San Francisco firm Mosaik Partners has held a $15 million close on its inaugural fund, reports VentureSource. Founding partner Miles Kilburn served as an EVP at Concord EFS, a payroll-processing company that merged with First Data in 2004. The firm’s other partner, Howard Mergelkamp, was a founding member of corporate ventures and advisory services at investment firm BlackRock. The firm’s LPs reportedly include investors from the payments and financial industries.

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IPOs

The IPO market is working as it should – for now, at least, argues PandoDaily.

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Exits

AngioScore, an 11-year-old, Fremont, Ca.-based company that makes scoring balloon catheters to treat cardiovascular and peripheral artery diseases, is being acquired for $230 million in cash and stock by medical device maker Spectranetics Corp. AngioScore had raised at least $30 million from investors, including Telegraph Hill Partners, Psilos Group,QuestMark Partners, Pelion Venture Partners, California Technology Ventures, and Innomed Ventures. In 2011, the company also raised $11 million from Saints Capital in San Francisco (though StrictlyVC doesn’t know if those were primary or secondary shares).

Asia Pacific Telecom, the Taiwanese mobile telecom operator, is selling itself to Apple’s supplier Foxconn Technology Group for a reported $390 million; the latter reportedly wants to expand its presence in Taiwan’s fledgling 4G telecoms market. Reuters has more here.

AtheroMed, a 7.5-year-old, Menlo Park, Ca.-based company that develops treatments for peripheral arterial disease, including an FDA-approved atherectomy catheter system, is being acquired for $115 million by Volcano Corp., a publicly traded company best known for its imaging technology. AtheroMed had raised at least $37.7 million from investors, shows Crunchbase, including US Venture Partners, Canaan Partners, The Vertical Group, and Kaiser Permanente Ventures.

Graphicly, a 4.5-year-old, Palo Alto, Ca.-based company whose online platform automates the self-publishing process by helping authors and publishers distribute and promote their digital content across various e-book marketplaces, is being acquired by its peer, Blurb, an indie book and magazine publishing platform. The move, says TechCrunch, is an acqui-hire. Graphicly had raised $10 million from investors, includingVenture51, 500 Startups, Dundee Venture Capital, Mercury Fund,Ecosystem Ventures, Techstars, and Northstar Ventures.

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People

Investor Marc Andreessen talks with Fast Company about his love of Twitter (among other things). Says Andreessen: “I’m an introvert when it comes to face-to-face conversations. But something that lets you talk to 83,000 people while you’re wearing your boxer shorts and drinking a glass of Scotch? What could be better?”

Venture capitalist Brad Feld thinks VCs should recycle their management fees. He explains why here.

Reputation.com founder Michael Fertik goes to astonishing lengths to burnish his online image in this mockumentary, which has some very funny moments. (Mike Judge, take note.)

Paul Hsiao has joined Canvas Venture Fund, the early-stage venture capital firm that spun out of Morgenthaler Ventures last year, as a general partner and founding managing member. Hsiao joins the firm from New Enterprise Associates, where he spent the last decade, focusing mostly on enterprise software and marketplace companies.

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Job Listings

ORIX Corporate Capital is looking for someone at the principal level to lead its venture lending practice in Washington, D.C. The 13-year-old company provides senior and subordinated loans to mid-and-late stage venture-backed companies.

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Happenings

All kinds of interesting news is emerging from this week’s Re/code conference, and it’s barely gotten underway. (If you aren’t there, you can stay up to date on Twitter via the hashtag #codecon.)

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Data

CB Insights looks at which venture capital firms have the strongest mobile portfolio based on ITunes App Store rankings. Check out its findings here.

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Essential Reads

Google has finally built its own car from scratch. And it looks like a gondola with wheels.

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Detours

Is Thomas Piketty’s math wrong?

Manhattan’s Billionaires’ Row is spreading south.

Team building for the self-employed!

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Retail Therapy

Thirty-seven things to do this summer in the Bay Area. (A great list worth bookmarking. Written for men, but notwithstanding some questionable advice about summer shoes and haircuts, useful for everyone.)

Good morning! Apparently, yesterday’s email was routed into some of your spam boxes. If you missed our interview with the savvy CEO of Ozon (Russia’s Amazon), here it is.

Also, apologies for not running a column this morning. Yesterday was busier than usual. StrictlyVC has also been steeling herself for an end-of-the-school-year field trip with hundreds of children today. (If the newsletter isn’t in your inbox on Tuesday, please send help.)

Wishing you a wonderful Memorial Day weekend!

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Top News in the A.M.

Alibaba is considering making an investment in the advertising technology firm AppNexus, according to The Information.

Google is closing in on a $1 billion deal for Skybox Imaging, a satellite company that specializes in recording very detailed landscape pictures and video, says TechCrunch.

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New Fundings

Assurex Health, a 7.5-year-old, Mason, Oh.-based company whose tests help clinicians to determine the best drugs for patients with chronic medical conditions, has raised $32 million, including $7 million in equity fromCincyTech, Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center and Cincinnati-based Allos Ventures, and a $25 million loan from Silicon Valley Bank. The company has now raised $73.1 million altogether, shows Crunchbase.

BitLit Media, a 1.5-year-old, Vancouver-based company whose app allows users to purchase an ebook of a print book they own, has raised an undisclosed amount of seed funding from BDC Capital; Three Angels Capital, a venture fund started by the founder of e-book company Kobo; and unnamed angel investors.

Brandwatch, a 6.5-year-old, Brighton, England-based social media analytics company, has raised $22 million in new funding led by Highland Capital Partners Europe. Earlier investor Nauta Capital also participated in the round, which brings Bandwatch’s total funding to $28 million.

Clariture Health, a nine-month-old, Nashville, Tn.-based health-care marketing service, has raised $1 million in seed funding from the Nashville investment firm The Martin Cos.

Dejero Labs, a 5.5-year-old, Kitchener, Ontario-based next-generation broadcast technology company, has raised $4.5 million from the Toronto-based investment firm Best Funds.

DoorDash, a year-old, Palo Alto, Ca.-based on-demand food-delivery startup with ambitions to evolve beyond food, has raised a $17.3 million Series A round led by Sequoia Capital. Earlier investors Khosla Ventures, Charles River Ventures, Pejman Mar Ventures, and Ted Zagat also participated in the financing, which brings DoorDash’s total funding to $19.7 million. TechCrunch has more here.

Factorli, a new, Las Vegas-based hardware incubator that looks to rival Highway1 in its ambitions to become a go-to place for hardware startups needing help in launching, has raised $10 million in Series A funding from the Vegas Tech Fund and Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh. Factorli was founded by Jen McCabe, who has been running the day-to-day operations of the Vegas Tech Fund and who previously worked at the Hsieh-backed consumer robotics startup Romotive.

Fanatix, a 2.5-year-old, U.K.-based mobile-first sports social network, has raised $500,000 in new angel financing ahead of a planned Series A round of funding in the fourth quarter of this year reports Forbes. The company has so far raised $3.5 million altogether.

Filament Labs, a year-old, Austin, Tx.-based patient-engagement platform, has raised $1 million in seed funding led by Mercury Fund.

iRhythm Technologies, a 7.5-year-old, San Francisco-based company that makes a lightweight heart monitor that can be worn continuously for weeks, has raised $17 million in Series E round funding led byNovo A/S. Earlier investor Norwest Venture Partners also participated in the funding, which brings the total capital raised by the company to roughly $122 million, shows Crunchbase.

Yoyo Holdings, a year-old, London-based company behind a mobile payment and customer-loyalty app, has raised $5 million in seed funding led by Imperial Innovations. Firestartr and a number of angel investors filled out the rest of the round.

Malauzai Software, a four-year-old, Austin, Tx.-based maker of mobile banking apps that are designed expressly for the customers of community financial institutions, has raised $6.48 million in Series C funding led by Wellington Management Company. Malauzai has raised $11.8 million altogether.

Nurix, a five-year-old, San Francisco-based company that develops small molecule inhibitors to treat degenerative diseases, has raised $25.1 million from earlier investors Column Group and Third Rock Ventures. The company has raised roughly $28 million to date.

Revolights, a 2.5-year-old, Emeryville, Ca.-bmaker of “smart” ring-shaped LEDs that attach to a bicycle’s wheels to lighten a rider’s path and make the bike more visible at night, has raised $1 million in Series A co-led bySierra Angels and Sacramento Angels. The round includes a $300,000 commitment that Revolights snagged from Robert Herjavec of Herjavec Group after appearing on the show “Shark Tank.”

Skyonic, a nine-year-old, Austin-based developer of carbon-capture technologies, has raised $12.5 million in funding from the energy deliver company Enbridge and previous backer ConocoPhilips. Skyonic has raised $187 million altogether to date, including from BP Ventures, Northwater Capital, Energy Technology Ventures, BlueCap Partners, and Cenovus Energy.

TheFamily, a year-old, Paris-based accelerator designed to support nascent technology companies, has raised $1 million from Index Venturesand angel investors.

TVTY, a 4.5-year-old, Paris-based company whose software tools help advertisers time their campaigns based on what’s happening on TV, has raised $4.5 million from Partech Ventures, 360 Capital Partners and business angels. The company has raised $6.8 million altogether.

Uber, the nearly five-year-old, San Francisco-based company whose mobile app makes it easy to connect with a driver for hire, is talking with investors about a round of roughly $500 million that could value the company at more than $12 billion, reports the WSJ. Possible investors, says the report, include BlackRock, General Atlantic, Technology Crossover Ventures, and hedge funds. Uber has so far raised roughly $300 million from investors.

Venus Concept, a 4.5-year-old, Toronto-based company that sells aesthetic medical devices for skin tightening and cellulite reduction, has raised $10 million from Longitude Capital.

Vive Unique, a 2.5-year-old, London-based booking site for handpicked home rentals around the world (it also handles insurance, property management, housekeeping, etc.) has raised roughly $5.9 million from Smedvig Capital.

WholeWorldBand, a 5.5-year-old company whose music platform and mobile app combines audio and video to create a virtual studio where musicians can connect and complete unfinished tracks, has raised $8.4 million in Series A funding led by Balderton Capital and International Investment & Underwriting (IIU).

Ximalaya, a 1.5-year-old, Shanghai-based podcast sharing service, has raised $11.5 million in Series A funding from Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, SIG Asia Investment and Sierra Ventures, reports TechNode.

New Fundings

Highland Capital Partners Europe has closed its debut fund, hitting its hard cap of 250 million euros. TechCrunch has all the details here. Fergal Mullen, a veteran of Highland Capital Partners in the U.S., launched the European business in 2007.

Legend Capital, the 13-year-old, Beijing-based independent venture arm of the Chinese conglomerate Legend Holdings, has raised a new, $500 million fund in less than six months, reports VentureSource. Legend is part of a broader upswing in fundraising for China-based firms, notes the report, with China-based firms raising $1.07 billion in the first quarter — up 35 percent from the first quarter of 2013.

The Sapling Fund, a new, Columbus, Oh.-based early-stage venture firm, announced yesterday that it has launched a $50 million fund, led by two general partners (Abe Nixon and Jon Puz) and a venture advisor (Chris Payton), all of whom had previously cofounded an earlier business called Karma Capital, a separate investment and advisory firm. The firm says it intends to “leveraging relationships from Silicon Valley, to Harvard Business School, to Wall Street” to make smart investments in promising startups.

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IPOs

JD.com shares rose 10 percent in their debut yesterday after pricing the year’s third-largest U.S. initial public offering. The strong support indicates renewed interest in Internet stocks and China e-commerce firms in particular, suggests Investors Business Daily.

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Exits

Get Maid, a two-year-old, New York-based home cleaning service, has been acquired by Homejoy, a nearly two-year-old, San Francisco-based home cleaning company. Terms of the deal aren’t being disclosed, but in December, Homejoy had raised $38 million in Series B funding from Google Ventures, Redpoint Ventures, and First Round Capital, among others. GetMaid had raised $500,000 through an accelerator and angel investors.

Springpad, a 5.5-year-old, Charlestown, Ma.-based company that makes a productivity app, is planning to close its doors, reports The Verge. The company, whose momentum was dwarfed by the success of break-out companies like Evernote, has raised more than $7 million from investors, including Fairhaven Capital Partners.

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People

Ethan Beard, the former Facebook and Google executive, has joined the board of Parchment, an 11-year-old, Scottsdale, Az.-based company that digitally delivers transcripts and other academic credentials and has raised roughly $45 million from investors. Beard is currently an EIR at Greylock Partners (which is not a Parchment investor).

Venture capitalist Fred Destin talks with the WSJ about returning to London as Accel‘s newest partner — and how he plans to get up to speed on the scene. “The only way in which you prepare is to go meet tens or hundreds of people,” says Destin. “I’m planning to hit London and Berlin hard. That’s my strategy: Coffee shops and entrepreneurs.”

Charles Hudson, a partner at SoftTech VC, tells Xconomy that things are a little different, now that SoftTech is managing an $85 million fund, up from its second, $55 million fund. ““We had companies in 2010 that come in our office, they need $500,000, they need a little bit more help on the prototype. It’s early. [In those days,] we probably would have written that check and supported that company. Now I tell them, what you really should do is get $500,000 in angel money, build that prototype, make some progress, and then come back to us when you’re looking to raise that $1.5 million to $2 million seed round.”

Norm Meritt has joined the New York City startup ShopKeep as co-CEO, according to the WSJ. Jason Richelson, the company’s founder and CEO, said that after six years of running the company, which sells customer care and point-of-sales technology to retailers (so they can operate more like Apple stores), he needed help in scaling the company. Meritt comes to ShopKeep from iQor, a business process outsourcing services company that he joined in 2003 and where he was appointed CEO in 2012.

Naveen Selvadurai, who cofounded Foursquare and left in 2012 in what he has characterized as a “surprise” ouster, is joining Expa, the startup studio created by Uber and StumbleUpon founder Garrett Camp. Selvadurai will run the New York operations for the organization, which is cofounding companies and investing $500,000 and $1 million in each for a 20 percent stake. You can learn much more here.

Wen Tan, a partner at fund of funds FLAG Capital Management, says LPs’ views on Asia have changed noticeably over the last five years. “In the immediate aftermath of the global financial crisis, Asia was seen as a bulwark against the broader global downturn. In reality, if you look at median Asia Pacific private equity returns over the past decade, total value to paid-in [capital] has generally been no better than the U.S. and Europe. A small subset of sophisticated limited partners is recognizing that one needs a relatively concentrated portfolio of outperformers rather than having a broad portfolio of ‘index’ private equity funds.”

In case you missed it, the Winklevoss twins have a new gig, as satellite radio hosts for what’s being characterizes as a “short-term” SiriusXM radio program titled, yes, “Winklevoss Radio.” Salon has more here. According to a blog post written by Cameron Winklevoss, the show will focus on high-tech and feature an long list of high-wattage guests, including Virgin Group’s Richard Branson, “Silicon Valley” creator Mike Judge, and Joe Lonsdale of Formation 8. The first show aired yesterday.

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Job Listings

MHS Capital in San Francisco is looking for an associate. (Led by Mark Sugarman, the fund was nearing a final close on a $75 million fund as of a few weeks ago.)

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Happenings

Street Fight (Summit West). It’s coming.

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Data

With password security top of mind — especially after eBay’s warnings to users on Wednesday to change their passwords — Datafox decided to map out the enterprise password management landscape to find the providers it thinks will be around 20 years from now. (Click the graphic to enlarge.)

New numbers released by the firm Canalys earlier this week show Fitbit devices accounted for nearly 50 percent of the world’s 2.7 million wearable band shipments in the first quarter of 2014.

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Essential Reads

The trouble with IBM.

Forget net neutrality; what about Amazon neutrality?

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Detours

At the Fire Lab in Missoula, Montana, researchers are finding that fire is a mysterious phenomenon, and the physics behind it is often counterintuitive.

Is work your happy place?

A friendly reminder to wear sunscreen.

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Retail Therapy

The Osmo gaming platform. It’ll make you feel like a slightly less terrible parent.

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Happy Thursday morning, everyone!

—–

Top News in the A.M.

Facebook announced today that it is changing a privacy setting for new users, making their “friends” the default audience for all posts, rather than the general public.

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With $150 Million in Fresh Funding, Can the Amazon of Russia Deliver?

Dipping into a flourless cake at a French bistro in San Francisco, Maelle Gavet has reason to be in a celebratory mood. The French-born CEO of Ozon, considered the Amazon of Russia, has in the last few weeks sealed up $150 million in fresh backing from investors — money that helped Ozon secure a minority stake last week in LitRes, the leader in Russia’s small but fast-growing e-book market.

The achievements aren’t minor for the company, which Gavet has been leading for the last three years, after a Boston Consulting Group job led her to it. Founded in 1998 as an online bookstore, Ozon had barely issued a press release about its first $3 million round, from the Moscow-based PE firm Baring Vostock, when the dot.com industry imploded. Over the next decade, the company churned through employees, including CEOs, managing to survive but barely until Index Ventures stepped in to lead an $18 million round in the company in 2007. It gave Ozon a needed lifeline. But Ozon has really begun to click on Gavet’s watch.

Gavet’s biggest, and likely smartest, gamble to date has been to invest heavily in Ozon’s own private shipping company, O-Courier, which is making it possible not only for Ozon to fulfill its orders but also to serve as a back-end provider for a growing number of third parties that now rely on its increasingly sophisticated logistics network to deliver their own goods.

She has also been pouring resources into other subsidiaries, including a travel business, Ozon.travel; a shoe business à la Zappos called Sapato.ru; and Ozon Solutions, which offers turnkey solutions to brands that want to sell online but don’t want to pull together retail storefronts themselves.

Ozon, which employs 2,300, is far from profitable because of how much it’s investing in growth. But with roughly half of Russia’s 140 million inhabitants now online, and 20 percent of those 70 million shopping online, the company’s efforts are beginning to pay off. Last year, revenue hit $750 million, up from roughly $500 million in 2012 (which was itself up from $165 million in 2010).

Of course, Ozon still has its share of obstacles, some of which must seem insurmountable to American investors, who passed on Ozon’s newest round of funding. Ozon’s newest backers instead are Sistema and Mobile TeleSystems, two of Russia’s largest publicly traded holding companies, which invested in Ozon last month at a $700 million valuation. (They now own a 20 percent stake in the business.)

Not only are there the obvious geographic, cultural, and economic challenges to navigate (enormous country, terrible roads, cash culture, fewer people than Nigeria and a relatively tiny urban elite with money to spend), but business is utterly entangled with politics, too.

There’s the Ukranian crisis, for one thing, a situation that Gavet says has impacted Ozon indirectly but meaningfully. First, the Russian ruble devalued fairly quickly, making its import contracts far more expensive. Worried banks proceeded to cut customers’ credit lines, and “with retailers everywhere,” notes Gavet, “a lot of your working capital is through credit lines with the banks.” Soon, some European and American investors who Ozon had been talking with about its fundraising “stopped returning our calls,” Gavet tells me with a shrug.

There’s also the little problem of Pavel Durov, the country’s most visible Internet founder, who just fled the country because of the Kremlin’s steady inroads into the ownership of his company, VKontakte, Russia’s leading social network. How could investors not worry that some oligarch will steal her company, too, I ask her over lunch.

“If you look at Yandex [the Russia-based search engine that went public in 2011 on Nasdaq], it’s doing fine,” she says. The Russian Internet company Mail.ru., which went public on the London Stock Exchange in 2010, “is also doing fine. You have a lot of American investors in both of these companies,” she adds, noting that Ozon’s earlier shareholders include some U.S. investors, as well, including Cisco and Intel. (Ozon has raised $271 million altogether, including a $100 million round led by Japan’s Rakuten in 2011.)

“You can always [hypothesize] over whether the government is going to be interested at some point. But if you look at the facts, there is no issue,” she says. “I do think there are industries that are considered to be strategic by any government; I’m not sure that online retail has ever been one of them,” she adds with a laugh.

New Fundings

Drizly, a two-year-old, Cherborn, Ma.-based on-demand alcohol delivery company, has raised $2.5 million in fresh funding led by earlier investor Continental Investors. Vayner RSE, Suffolk Equity, and other previous investors also participated. The company has raised $7.3 million altogether, including from Atlas Venture, Fairhaven Capital Partners,Reynolds & Company Venture Partners, Breakaway Ventures, and many individual investors.

Evergage, a 3.5-year-old, Somerville, Ma.-based software platform whose detailed analytics help its companies better engage with customers, has raised $4 million in Series A funding led by G20 Ventures. Other, earlier investors to participated included Point Judith Capital and Advanced Technology Ventures. Evergage, which has raised roughly $6.3 million altogether, was originally called Apptegic.

Load DynamiX, a 6.5-year-old, Santa Clara, C.-based maker of testing and analytics products for data centers, has raised $12 million in financing led by HighBar Partners. Founded as SwiftTest, the company, renamed HighBar last year, has raised $19.3 million altogether, including from Core Capital Partners, Miramar Venture Partners, Benhamou Global Ventures, Kinetic Ventures, and Azure Capital Partners.

Lysogene, a 4.5-year-old, Paris-based biotech company focused on intracerebral gene therapy aimed at treating neuro-degenerative diseases, has raised 16.5 million euros ($22.6 million) in Series A funding led by earlier investor Sofinnova Partners. Bpifrance and Novo Seeds also participated in the round.

Mimosa Networks, a two-year-old, Campbell, Ca.-based company that builds outdoor gigabit wireless platforms, has raised $20 million in Series C funding led by earlier investor New Enterprise Associates. Another earlier investor, Oak Investment Partners, also participated in the round, which brings the company’s total funding to $38 million.

Roli, a five-year-old, London-based whose new kind of musical instrument, the Seaboard Grand, reimagines the piano, has raised $12.8 million in Series A funding led by Balderton Capital. Other participants in the funding included FirstMark Capital, Index Ventures and Universal Music. The WSJ has more on the company and its oddly compelling product here.

SimpliSafe, a 7.5-year-old, Cambridge, Ma.-based company that makes a portable, wireless home security system, has raised $57 million in funding from Sequoia Capital after what TechCrunch had last month described as an intense bidding war. The company was started by HBS graduates Chad and Eleanor Laurans after several of their friends’ homes were robbed.

Smartling, a five-year-old, New York-based translation technology company, has raised $25 million in Series D funding led by Iconiq Capital Partners. The company has now raised roughly $63 million from investors, including Tenaya Capital, Harmony Partners, Venrock, U.S. Venture Partners, IDG Ventures, First Round Capital and Felicis Ventures.

Storehouse, a year-old, San Franciso-based company behind a visual storytelling app, has raised $7 million in Series A funding led by
Sherpa Ventures. Earlier seed investors True Ventures, Lerer Ventures,Designer Fund and unnamed angel investors also participated in the round. The WSJ has more on the company here.

Treasury Intelligence Solutions, a 4.5-year-old, Walldorf, Germany-based cloud-based international payment service, has raised 4 million euros ($5.4 million) in Series B financing led by new investor Zobito. Target Partners also participated.

X.ai, a new, New York City-based company that has built and maintains an artificial intelligence-powered personal assistant, has raised $2.1 million in seed funding led by IA Ventures, Softbank VC and Lerer Ventures.

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IPOs

JD.com, the Beijing-based e-commerce company, priced its shares at $19 yesterday, higher than its initially proposed range of $16 to $18 per share. The pricing reflects a big appetite for tapping China’s growth, but a miscalculation could impact Alibaba’s impending IPO, notes TechCrunch.

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Exits

Intelligent Healthcare, a 24-year-old, Santa Monica, Ca.-based SaaS company that provides patient data integration and analysis services to physician groups, hospitals and health plans, has been acquired by 15-year-old ZirMed of Louisville, Ky., which makes revenue cycle management software. Terms of the deal weren’t disclosed. Intelligent Healthcare doesn’t appear to have outside investors. ZirMed is backed by Sequoia Capital, which first provided the company with an undisclosed amount of funding in 2010.

It’s official. India’s online fashion retailer Myntra has been acquired by India’s biggest e-commerce company, Flipkart, for an undisclosed amount that various outlets are pegging at roughly $300 million.

ThreatGRID, a four-year-old, New York-based malware analysis and sandboxing technology company, is being acquired by Cisco for undisclosed terms. ThreatGrid had raised an undisclosed amount of funding from In-Q-Tel, the investment arm of the CIA, and individual investors. You can find more on the deal here.

—–

People

Investor Marc Andreessen talks with the Washington Post, including about the many businesses bitcoin has the potential to disrupt: “Digital stocks. Digital equities. Digital fundraising for companies. Digital bonds. Digital contracts, digital keys, digital title, who owns what — digital title to your house, to your car. . . And if I sell you my car, automatically you get title, and you get the key that lets you operate the car, and it’s all digital, and it’s all unique, and it can’t be cracked. You’ve got digital voting, digital contracts, digital signatures. You’ve got unique pieces of digital content. If you guys wanted to know exactly who had every piece of content you ever made, you can track that. It’s this long list.”

Venture capitalist Fred Destin, who left Boston-based Atlas Venture recently after a decade with the firm, is now a London-based partner atAccel Partners.

Cisco’s longtime “chief futurist” Dave Evans has left to launch a stealth startup.

E-commerce company Fab is laying off up to 90 New York-based employees today in a fourth wave of layoffs reports Re/code. The move shrinks Fab’s global staff to 200, down from roughly 700 at its peak.

Speaking of Atlas Venture, Dave Grayzel is now a partner on its life sciences investing team. Since 2010, Grayzel has been a managing director for the Atlas Venture Development Corp., which focuses on acquiring drug assets and partnering with pharmaceutical companies to commercialize them. Grayzel had spent the previous eight years as a VP at Infinity Pharmaceuticals.

Palmer Luckey and the company he cofounded, Oculus VR, are being sued by Zenimax Media and its subsidiary id Software, where Oculus VR chief technical officer John Carmack once worked. The claim: that they stole and misappropriated “trade secrets relating to virtual reality technology” dating back to Carmack’s employment at id Software. The immediate response: “There is not a line of Zenimax code or any of its technology in any Oculus products.”

Venture capitalist Emily Melton has rejoined DFJ as a partner. Melton began her career in VC as an analyst at DFJ in 2000. In 2009, she left the firm as a partner to join Mayfield Fund, where she stayed just two years, turning to angel investing and advising part-time and, in 2013, working as a venture partner for U.S. Venture Partners for roughly six months. Melton focuses on consumer and mobile technology, healthcare technologies and marketplaces.

—–

Data

In the first quarter of 2014, Apple reportedly accounted for the largest share of smartphones for three of the top four U.S. mobile carriers: 52 percent at AT&T, 51 percent at Verizon Wireless, and 36 percent at Sprint, while taking the second place spot behind Samsung on the more value-oriented T-Mobile/Metro PCS with 24 percent. More here.

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Essential Reads

“Someone out there likes anonymous money,” reports Wired. “In only a month, the little-known bitcoin alternative known as Darkcoin has rocketed nearly tenfold in value–from around 75 cents a coin to almost seven dollars. Its selling point: Darkcoin offers far greater anonymity than bitcoin, mixing up users’ transactions so that it’s incredibly difficult to trace a payment to a person.”

—–

Detours

Best commencement speeches ever, via Huckberry.

Food service jobs of the tech industry’s rich and famous.

A new Bentley video that was shot, somewhat amazingly, on an iPhone 5S, and edited on an iPad Air — inside a Bentley.

Heather Havrilesky on how to write.

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Retail Therapy

A 3D machine that makes pancakes, people.

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