StrictlyVC: February 26, 2016

Happy Friday, everyone!

Thank you so much to everyone who came out last night for our San Francisco event. We had a really great time; we hope you did, too. Giant thanks, also, to our wonderful speakers Heidi Roizen, Bill Maris, Carl Bass, Ben Einstein, Hans Tung, and Peter Szulczewski, as well as to our sponsors Autodesk, AiBrain, Ludlow Ventures, and Bolt.

We have lots of content from the evening coming soon, along with pictures. In the meantime, hope everyone has a wonderful weekend!

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Top News in the A.M.

Tech giants are uniting in support of Apple, with Google, Facebook and Microsoft among those that will back the company in its iPhone fight with the U.S. government.

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New Fundings

55Haitao.com, a 4.5-year-old, Pasadena, Ca.-based online cash-back shopping guide, has raised $15 million in Series A funding led by the Beijing-based venture firm JJ Capital. More here.

Arctic Sand Technologies, a 5.5-year-old, Cambridge, Ma.-based MIT spinoff that is commercializing a power conversion technology, has raised $19 million in Series B funding led by Murata Manufacturing, with participation from GE Ventures, Northwater Capital and Arsenal Venture Partners. Xconomy has more here.

CREXi, a year-old Venice, Ca.-based commercial real estate platform for brokers, has raised $4.3 million in seed funding from Lerer Hippeau Ventures, Freestyle Capital, TenOneTen Ventures, Founder CollectiveKarlin Ventures and Leon Capital Group. FinSMEs has more here.

GenomeNext, a 1.5-year-old, Columbus, Oh.-based genomic data management and analysis company, has raised $1.2 million in seed funding led by Hydra Capital, with participation from unnamed investors. More here.

Niantic, a five-year-old, San Francisco-based mobile gaming group that began as a lab at Google, has raised $5 million in expanded seed funding from Alsop Louie Partners and individual angel investors, including Scott and Cyan Banister. VentureBeat has more here.

Signal Sciences, a two-year-old, Venice, Ca.-based SaaS platform that provides security monitoring and defense for web applications, has raised $9.7 million in Series A funding led by Index Ventures. SoCal Tech has more here.

VitalWare, a five-year-old, Yakima, Wa.-based company that makes revenue cycle software for healthcare organizations, has raised an undisclosed amount of growth equity funding from F-Prime Capital Partners (formerly Fidelity Biosciences). More here.

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New Funds

Tribeca Venture Partners, a four-year-old, New York-based early-stage venture firm, has closed its second fund with $107 million in commitments. Tribeca founders Brian Hirsch and Chip Meakem (who remain the firm’s only investors) closed their debut fund with $65 million. We talked with the firm yesterday.

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Exits

Talkwheel, a company that offers a unique way to visualize customer conversations, has been acquired by Clickable. More here.

Zumper, an apartment rental platform, has acquired the apartment listings startup PadMapper. More here.

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People

Frederic Jacobs, a Switzerland-based developer who helped develop Signal — the secure messaging app of choice for NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden — is joining Apple this summer to work on its CoreOS security team. More here.

Startups whose VCs tweet the most.

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Data

The affordability of housing by profession.

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Essential Reads

Zenefits just laid off 250 people. More here.

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Detours

Dial-up, slowed down.

A taste of Vienna.

Every Oscar-winning special effects clip ever, in a neat little supercut.

The most right-swiped jobs on Tinder.

The Hamster Revenant.

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Retail Therapy

Smart, collapsible, hard-shelled luggage.

A floor pillow for your startup’s office.


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