It’s Friday! No column today — we’ve been busy with interviews at TC’s temporary Davos studio today. (We’ll link to them Monday; the founders we talked with — Zach Sims of Codecademy, Zac Bookman of OpenGov, and Ted Bailey of Dataminr — are each running extremely interesting companies.)
Hope you have a great weekend, everyone. We’ll be sending especially good juju to those of you on the East Coast.
See you Monday when we’re back in San Francisco.
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Top News in the A.M.
Google‘s Android operating system has generated revenue of $31 billion and $22 billion in profit, a lawyer for Oracle Corp. said in court while disclosing figures Google says shouldn’t have been made public. Bloomberg has the story here.
During that same court proceeding, it was revealed that Google is paying Apple richly to keep its search bar on the iPhone. According to Bloomberg, Apple received $1 billion from Google in 2014. (That’s a percentage of the revenue that Google generated through the device, apparently.) More here.
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New Fundings
BaubleBar, a four-year-old, New York-based fashion jewelry e-commerce startup, has raised $20 million in Series C funding led by earlier backer Accel Partners. Hubert Burda Media, shoe retailer DSW, Simon Venture Group, and earlier backers Aspect Ventures, Burch Creative Capital and Greycroft Partners.
Canvs, a five-year-old, New York-based startup that measures emotion on social media, has raised $5.6 million in Series A funding led by KEC Ventures. Other investors in the Series A include Rubicon Venture Capital, Gary Vaynerchuk’s BRaVe Ventures, Social Starts, and Milestone Venture Partners. TechCrunch has more here.
FiveStars, a five-year-old, San Francisco-based startup that has built a platform and app to run loyalty programs and shopping analytics for small brick-and-mortar retailers, has raised $50 million in Series C funding led by HarbourVest Partners. Earlier backers Lightspeed Venture Partners, Menlo Ventures, and DCM Ventures also joined the round, which brings the company’s total funding to $92 million. TechCrunch has more here.
Ice.com, a 1.5-year-old, Austin, Tex.-based online jewelry marketplace that also aims to educate its customers on their potential purchases, has $2 million in seed funding Maveron, Rivet, Quest, Uj Ventures, and numerous angel investors. TechCrunch has more here.
Iterable, a 2.5-year-old, San Francisco-based growth marketing and user engagement platform that passed through the AngelPad accelerator in 2013, has raised $8 million in Series A funding led by CRV, with participation from previous investors. VentureBeat has more here.
Jugnoo, a 1.5-year-old, Chandigarh, India-based rickshaw-on-demand service, has raised $5.5 million in Series B funding, including from earlier backers Paytm, the Alibaba-backed billion-dollar mobile payments firm, and Snow Leopard. TechCrunch has more here.
LendUp, a three-year-old, San Francisco-based “socially responsible” financial tech company, has raised $150 million in funding from investors, including Susa Ventures, Data Collective, GV, QED, Kapor Capital, Victory Park Capital and SV Angel. More here.
LoanHero, a 1.5-year-old, San Diego, Ca.-based online-lender, has raised $2.5 million in new funding, led by Alsop Louie Partners and Mucker Capital. The company has now raised $4.2 million altogether. The San Diego Union-Tribune has more here.
Mucosis, a nine-year-old, Groningen, Netherlands-based clinical-stage biotechnology company at work on a vaccine for RSV, a virus that theatens newborns and elderly adults, has raised 3.7 million euros ($4 million) from Wellcome Trust. More here.<
Nubo, a 4.5-year-old, Israel-based company whose software enables employees to access company files on their own mobile devices, has raised $7 million in Series A funding led by Magma Venture Partners and Motorola Solutions Venture Capital. TechCrunch has more here.
OpenDoor, the two-year-old, San Francisco-based online home-selling service, quietly raised $80 million at a roughly $580 million valuation back in October, led by billionaire Len Blavatnik’s Access Industries. The WSJ has the story here.
Roger, a year-old, New York-based walkie-talkie-style voice messaging app created by two former Spotify engineers, has raised $1 million in seed funding led by Social Capital. TechCrunch has more here.
Waldo Photos, a new Austin, Tex.-based startup that works with professional photographers to zap photos of you at events, concerts and other events directly to your phone, has raised $5 million in seed funding from Upfront Ventures. TechCrunch has more here.
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New Funds
Abingworth, the London-based venture capital firm focused on life sciences, has closed its eleventh fund with $105 million fund. More here.
Israeli-American Dovi Frances announced earlier this week that he has raised $50 million for his second fund, SGVC II. Frances previously cofounded a fund with Russian-American billionaire Sergey Grishin that the two called SGVC. According to GeekTime, Frances will be running the new fund alone; he has also bought Grishin out of his position in that first fund. More here.
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IPOs
Just three IPOs are slated next week, according to Renaissance Capital. Only one of them is a tech play: 19-year-old, Cherry Hill, N.J.-based Ameriquest, which sells a suite of cloud-based B2B services to the transportation industry.
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Exits
Shareable Ink, a six-year-old, Nashville, Tn.-based health-care technology provider, has been acquired for undisclosed terms by Digital Reasoning Systems, a 15-year-old, Arlington, Va.-based cognitive-computing company. Shareable Ink had raised roughly $25 million from investors, including Founder Collective and New Enterprise Associates. Digital Reason has raised about $34 million from its backers, including In-Q-Tel and Goldman Sachs.
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People
Business Insider grabbed time with famed venture capitalist Jim Breyer here at the World Economic Forum in Davos and asked for his take on the current market. Breyer told the outlet there’s “blood in the water” and that he expects fully 90 percent of the privately held companies which are valued at a billion dollars or more to either be repriced or die.
Scott Weiss won’t be a part of Andreessen Horowitz’s next fund. Weiss had joined the firm as its fourth general partner. He was previously the CEO of IronPort Systems. More here.
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Jobs
Sands Capital Ventures is looking for a life sciences venture associate. The job is in Washington, D.C.
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Essential Reads
Human driver, taking over from computer, crashes autonomous car.
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Detours
Overheard in a retirement community, 2070 AD.
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Retail Therapy
Darth Vader Macbook decals.