Happy Wednesday morning, everyone!

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Top News in the A.M.

Yay? Beginning in September, companies can begin testing their autonomous vehicles on public roads, the California DMV announced yesterday.

Ebay is telling users this morning to change their passwords.

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VC Brian Hirsch: New York is Just Fine, Thank You

Brian Hirsch founded the New York-based venture arm of Greenhill & Co., then, in 2011, Tribeca Venture Partners, which is managing a $65 million debut fund. Hirsch knows the New York tech scene, in other words, and he’s a little exasperated by recent reports that it isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Yesterday, we chatted by phone about what he’s seeing in the trenches.

We’ve been discussing differences between what’s happening in New York and the Bay Area. One burgeoning trend out here, apparently, are rounds where one investor tries writing a check for an entire seed round, instead of pulling in a handful of co-investors. Have you seen this happening in New York?

I’m not seeing it . . .but I’ve heard of things like that happening, mostly [involving] larger funds that want more control. I do wonder if there have been more learnings by those involved in party rounds about the increased competition at the table when it’s time to do [the startup’s] follow-on funding. [These new efforts] could also be tied to ownership. Smart investors are starting to understand that you can have a lot of great companies in your portfolio, but if you own one percent of [each], it may not move the needle. It’s still too early to know if these seed-only funds really [produce returns]; the challenge of the model is that you wind up owning more of your worst companies and less of your good ones.

You’ve backed 15 companies at the Series A level with your new fund. Have Series A rounds begun to balloon to Series B size, as in the Bay Area?

No. There’s just a lot more capital there and funds tend to be larger and much more competitive than here. If you’re looking to raise a Series A round here, there are just five to 10 funds that you’re going to go to that consistently lead or co-lead Series A rounds.

For good deals [locally], there’s always some competition, but we’ve put out 18 term sheets since [founding Tribeca] and we have 17 of those companies in, or about to be in, our portfolio. The one [outlier] was a situation where another fund was 70 percent higher in valuation, and even in that case, the investor invited us into the round, and we chose not to do it. We haven’t been blown out of a deal.

This is purely anecdotal, but I hear less about West Coast VCs canvassing New York. What’s your experience been like this year? Are you seeing the same level of enthusiasm from those investors?

They’re here. Accel and NEA opened offices and they do occasional investments here. But the power center is Silicon Valley, and when 95 percent of your time is spent in one market and 5 percent in another, it’s hard to make an impact. You really have to be living in a community to be networked. Most – if not all – of the out-of-state funds haven’t hired someone who has been active in the market here for 15 to 20 years because there aren’t that many, and those who do have that background have opened our own firms. [None of us] wants to be part of a West Coast firm that decides New York is great today but might change its mind in five years.

Tech investor Chris Dixon, who long lived in New York and now lives primarily in California has reportedly said of New York that it’s about applying, not inventing, new technologies at this stage in its evolution as a tech hub. Do you agree?

I think if you drink enough of the water, this Silicon Valley stance somehow becomes ingrained. I do agree that some really hard-core tech — storage networking technologies and semiconductors — might [remain West Coast industries], but with software – and that’s where 90 percent of the value will be in venture capital over the next 50 years — there’s no advantage between that market and this market, which is why every year, the gap between New York and Silicon Valley shrinks further.

New Fundings

AfterShip, a 2.5-year-old Hong Kong-based company whose shipment tracking app helps online retailers track shipments and send out delivery notifications, has raised $1 million in Series A funding from IDG-Accel China Fund, reports Tech in Asia. The funding comes almost two years after it received a seed round from the Australian online service providerBusiness Switch.

Autopilot, a three-year-old, San Francisco-based marketing automation platform (formerly known as Bislr), has raised $10 million in Series B funding led by Rembrandt Venture Partners. Other participants in the round included Southern Cross Venture Partners, Blackbird, and individual investors Tim Draper and Terry and Katrina Garnett.

Captora, a 1.5-year-old, Mountain View, Ca.-based marketing automation startup, has raised $22 million in Series B funding led by New Enterprise Associates. Earlier investor Bain Capital Ventures also participated in the round, which brings Captora’s total funding to $27.3 million, shows Crunchbase.

Chumbak Design Private, a three-year-old, Bangalore-based retailer known Chumbak, has received an undisclosed amount of Series B funding from Matrix Partners India reports the Hindu Business Line. The company’s earlier seed investor, Seedfund India, also participated in the round, says the outlet. Chumbak sells “India inspired” merchandise through its own kiosks and stores in Mumbai, New Delhi, Chennai, Bangalore, Hyderabad and Pune. It also sells goods online.

Clarizen, a nine-year-old, San Mateo, Ca.-based work collaboration and project management platform, has raised a new, $35 million, round of funding led by Goldman Sachs. Clarizen’s earlier investors also participated in the funding. The company has now raised $90 million altogether, including from Opus Capital, Benchmark Capital, Balderton Capital, Carmel Ventures, and DAG Ventures.

DataPad, a year-old, San Francisco-based visual data analytics company that’s targeting small business customers and individuals, has raised $1.7 million, including from Accel Partners, Google Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz, SV Angel, Ludlow Ventures, and angel investors.

FutureAdvisor, a 3.5-year-old, San Francisco-based registered investment advisory firm that affordably manages its users’ existing investment accounts using algorithms, has raised $15.5 million in Series B funding led by Canvas Venture Fund. Sequoia Capital, which provided the company with $5 million in Series A funding in 2012, also participated in the round. Rebecca Lynn of Canvas, who StrictlyVC profiled yesterday, has taken a board seat. (FutureAdvisor “has a better strategy” than competitors that ask customers to liquidate their assets and open brand-new accounts. The company “also has more traction,” she says. The WSJ has more here.)

HouseCall, a year-old San Diego-based company whose site and mobile app connects users to contractors, has raised $1.5 million in seed financing led by the real estate investment firm Canter Companies. The company has now raised $3 million altogether, including from e.ventures.

Housekeep, an eight-month-old, London-based housekeeping booking service, has raised $1 million in funding led by Pentland Group. TechCrunch has more on the very crowded space it’s entering here.

Indiegogo, the six-year-old, San Francisco-based crowdfunding platform, has raised a new, undisclosed amount of funding from some high-wattage investors, including billionaire Richard Branson, PayPal co-founder Max Levchin, Yahoo board chairman Maynard Webb, longtime investor Tim Draper, and Dawn Lepore, the former CEO of Drugstore.com (and long an executive with Charles Schwab before that). The round follows $56.5 million in previous funding for Indiegogo, whose investors include Insight Venture Partners, Institutional Venture Partners, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, MHS Capital, Metamorphic Ventures, and ff Venture Capital.

iSnap, a four-year-old, Sacramento, Ca.-based company that makes networked photo stations, has raised $1 million in Series A funding led by a group of unnamed individual investors from California and Europe.

Mango Health, a two-year-old, San Francisco-based company whose free mobile apps and enterprise software platform aim to entice people to take better care of their health, including by providing them with medication reminders, has raised $5.25 million in Series A funding from Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. The round brings the company’s total funding to roughly $8.3 million. The company’s previous investors include Floodgate Fund, First Round Capital, Baseline Ventures, Bullpen Capital and angel investors.

MBA & Company, a nearly five-year-old, London-based project delivery platform that matches a “highly skilled and flexible workforce” with clients needing help, has raised $1.3 million in new funding from earlier investor MMC Ventures, reports the U.K. outlet Growth Business. Last year, MMC led a separate, $1.3 million round in the company, joined by Piton Capital and Cabides.

Powerhouse Dynamics, a 6.5-year-old, Newton, Ma.-based maker of monitoring management systems, has raised $6 million in Series B funding led by Point Judith Capital and Constellation Technology Ventures. Earlier investors SOSventures and Vision Ridge Capital also participated in the round, which brings the company’s total funding to roughly $11 million.

Snapdeal, the four-year-old, New Delhi-based Indian e-commerce site, has raised $100 million in a new funding round that that values the company at roughly $1 billion, according to WSJ sources. Investors in the financing include Temasek Holdings and BlackRock. With its new capital infusion, Snapdeal has raised roughly $350 million, including a $134 million round closed just in February from eBay, Bessemer Venture Partners, Intel Capital, Nexus Venture Partners, Saama Capital and Kalaari Capital.

Thumbtack, a 5.5-year-old, San Francisco-based online marketplace that matches users with local service professionals based on quotes they provide, has raised $30 million in Series C funding from Sequoia Capital and Tiger Global Management, says TechCrunch. The company has raised $48.2 million altogether, shows Crunchbase, including from Javelin Venture Partners, MHS Capital, and numerous individual investors such as Tim Draper, Hadi Partovi, and Cyan and Scott Banister.

Tradesy, a 4.5-year-old, Santa Monica, Ca.-based company whose online platform invites people to buy and sell new and gently used clothing, shoes and accessories, has raised $13 million in Series B funding led by Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. Other investors in the round include Richard Branson, Rincon Venture Partners, Riverwood Capital, and Northgate Capital. Tradesy has raised $14.5 million to date, including from 500 Startups and Bee Partners.

VUV Analytics, a 4.5-year-old, Lakeway, Tx.-based company that develops vacuum ultraviolet optical technologies for use in the life and environmental sciences, has raised $5.8 million in Series A funding led by S3 Ventures of Austin.

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New Funds

The Irish government has unveiled a roughly $290 million venture capital fund for investing in Ireland-based life-sciences companies. Lightstone Ventures is partnering with Enterprise Ireland and the National Pension Reserve Fund to manage the fund. You can learn more here.

Project 11 Ventures, a Cambridge, Ma.-based seed and early stage investment firm that manages the TechStars Boston investment program, is looking to raise up to $30 million for a new fund, shows an SEC filing. According to the filing, the first sale has yet to occur. The three executives listed on the Form D are Robert Mason, Reed Sturtevant, and Katherine Rae.

Recruit Holdings of Tokyo has formed a 4.5 billion yen fund dedicated to corporate venture capital investments outside of Japan. VentureWire has more here.

River Cities Capital Funds, a Cincinnati-based growth equity firm focused on both healthcare and IT, has raised a $200 million fund — the largest in its history and the “biggest fund in Cincinnati this millennium,” reports the Cincinnati Business Courier. The firm raised its last fund, a $120 million pool of capital, in 2007.

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IPOs

Amphastar Pharmaceuticals, an 18-year-old, Rancho Cucamonga, Ca.-based specialty and generic pharmaceuticals company that makes injectable and inhalable treatments, has filed to raise $100 million. Its biggest shareholders include Applied Physics & Chemistry Laboratories, which owns 19.7 percent of the company, and Coller Capital, which owns 8.7 percent.

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Exits

BioProtein A/S, based in Stavanger, Norway, is being acquired by Calysta Energy, a three-year-old, Menlo Park, Ca.-based developer of natural gas conversion technology using methane for high value chemicals and fuels. Calysta has raised $8 million to date, including from Pangaea Ventures. Terms of the acquisition weren’t disclosed.

Bubbli, a four-year-old, Bay Area-based 3D photo stitching technology startup, has been acquired by Dropbox. Terms of the deal haven’t been disclosed, but the LinkedIn page of cofounder Ben Newhouse now lists him as employed by Dropbox’s “Ministry of Magic.” Bubbli had raised $2 million from August Capital.

Nimbic, a 7.5-year-old, Mountain View, Ca.-based electromagnetic simulation technology company that can accurately calculate complex electromagnetic fields, is being acquired by publicly traded Mentor Graphics to strengthen Mentor’s chip-package-board simulation portfolio. Terms of the acquisition weren’t disclosed. Nimbic has raised at least $11.5 million from investors, including WRF Capital, Austral Capital, and Madrona Venture Group.

Renesys, a 14-year-old, Hanover, N.H.-based Internet traffic monitoring company, has been acquired by Dyn, another Internet performance service company, for an undisclosed amount. Renesys doesn’t look to have raised venture capital; Dyn has raised at least $38 million, including from North Bridge Venture Partners.

SeeWhy, an 11-year-old, Boston-based real-time behavioral marketing company that optimizes website visitors’ paths to purchase, has been acquired by the German software company SAP for undisclosed terms. SeeWhy had raised at least $16 million, shows Crunchbase, including from Delta Partners, Scottish Investment Bank, Logispring, and Pentech Ventures.

Remember that yesterday, we mentioned that Twitter was considering buying the German music-streaming service SoundCloud? Right, well, not anymore, never mind.

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People

Smart, Uber. Yesterday, the New York Times reported that Ashwini Chhabra, deputy commissioner of New York City Taxi and Limousine Commission, is becoming Uber’s first head of policy development and community engagement.

Raanan Bar-Cohen, long a senior VP of Automattic (parent of the WordPress blogging platform) is leaving the company to become a venture capitalist, he announced yesterday in a blog post. Writing of his “seven incredible, fun, and rewarding years at Automattic,” Bar-Cohen said that he’s now off to become a general partner at Resolute Ventures, the early-stage venture fund founded by Mike Hirschland. (Last Friday, we told you about Resolute’s plans to raise a new, $40 million fund.) The two have known each other for close to a decade, said Bar-Cohen, adding that Hirschland, formerly with Polaris Partners, also sat on the board of Automattic for many years.

Dan Lyons, the former Newsweek writer and author of the hugely popular Fake Steve Jobs blog, will be helping to write the second season of HBO’s new comedy series “Silicon Valley,” reports Valleywag.

Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers has hired Scott Ryles as chief operating officer, reports Fortune. You can learn more here.

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Job Listings

Singularity University is looking for a managing partner. In February, the Silicon Valley think tank unveiled plans to raise a $50 million fund, fundraising for which was slated to begin in the second quarter of this year.

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Essential Reads

A lawsuit filed yesterday against Google accuses the tech titan of engaging in widespread fraud by canceling AdSense accounts just before they were due to pay out. It’s seeking class action status.

Fifteen-year-old Nathan Han has developed a machine-learning software tool to identify cancer threats from BRCA1 gene mutations and according to Intel, it has an accuracy rate of 81 percent.

A new report out of San Francisco’s Human Services Agency finds that in numerous ways, San Francisco has more extreme income inequality than some developing nations, including in sub-Saharan Africa.

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Detours

How cold weather affects your brain.

The Guardians, a photographic project by Vladimir Antaki.

Neil Degrasse Tyson’s best tweets.

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Retail Therapy

The world’s most expensive donut.

The world’s most expensive Rolex.

Be the first one to fly past the Rosewood in one of these babies.

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To sign up for StrictlyVC, click here. To advertise, click here.

Good Tuesday morning, dear readers!

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Top News in the A.M.

U.S. authorities have just opened a new front in their investigation into bitcoin exchanges and other businesses that deal in the online currency, says the WSJ.

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Rebecca Lynn on the Power of Second Movers

In venture capital, there’s a lot of talk about “first-mover advantage.” Too much, says Rebecca Lynn, a general partner at Canvas Venture Fund (which spun out of Morgenthaler Ventures last year).

“If you look at my portfolio, I’m usually not [backing] the first company with an idea,” Lynn observes. “I let that company break its pick and [zero in on] the second mover, the one that figures out the model when the market is ready for it.”

Even though Lynn is a chemical engineer with both an MBA and JD from UC Berkeley, she doesn’t fit the conventional VC mold. For starters, neither of her parents went to school. Raised in a farming town in Missouri, Lynn learned computer programming beginning in third grade as part of her small school’s program for gifted students.

Though Lynn has led just seven deals, she has assembled an impressive portfolio, including what could be a career-making bet on the online lending marketplace LendingClub. Her key criteria is whether she could imagine herself working at the company.

Lynn’s approach clearly resonates with entrepreneurs. In fact, over dinner in 2009 to discuss the LendingClub’s Series B round, founder Renaud Laplanche told Lynn’s colleague, Gary Little, that he would accept Morgenthaler’s term sheet only if Little gave Lynn — then a principal — Morgenthaler’s board seat. “To Gary’s credit,” she says, “he didn’t do what a lot of VCs might have, which is spend the next half hour convincing Renaud why it should be him. He just said, ‘Of course she’ll be on your board.’”

Here’s a bit more from our conversation yesterday afternoon:

You’ve had a lot of careers, a product, you half-kiddingly say, of having ADD. You’ve been a nuclear engineer, worked in new product development all over the world for Proctor & Gamble, and been a marketing VP for NextCard, one of the first online credit card issuers. What haven’t you done that you wanted?

I always wanted to start a [tech] company. I ran the business plan competition at [the Haas School of Business at Berkeley] with the idea of meeting people at the school and starting something, but I ended up meeting the guys at Morgenthaler at one of those events. Even [after joining the firm], I thought, I can meet people to add to my team or get them to fund me or pick whatever company [seeking funding] is most interesting and join them. . . After that dinner with Renaud, I thought, “Now I’m in venture.”

How would you describe your pacing right now, given that Canvas closed a $175 million fund last fall?

I’m funding a couple of companies a year. Because the angel environment has been so hot in recent years and you can now invest in so many Series A or B deals, the bar is pretty high, which is hard because there are so many interesting companies coming up, it’s difficult not to do more.

You’ve been a VC for five or six years now. Have you established that elusive “pattern recognition” that VCs say they develop over time?

When we were spinning out Canvas, they put us through this test that determined that I’m half intuitive and half analytical, and I’d say the same is true of venture. You can get through the analysis: Is this a big market, is this company going to disintermediate an offline business, is this a CEO with a chip on his or her shoulder? These are all things you look for. But the biggest piece is the intuitive piece, which is hard to verbalize but I do think gives women a leg up in venture. With every one of my investments, I’ve had a thesis, I’ve mapped out the space, and said, “This is the company I want to bet on.”

You bring up gender. You think it’s an advantage, being a woman in this field?

I do. I think women overall are pretty good investors and that this intuitive piece is an interesting string to pull on. Some industry stats have said that women make up 11 percent of venture firms, but that’s bullsh_t. If you subtract out Cisco and Intel and focus on the people at firms who are leading at least a deal a year, that number drops to 3 percent, the same percentage of female-led startups that raise venture funding. It’s pretty interesting how closely the two mirror each other.

New Fundings

ALung Technologies, a 17-year-old, Pittsburgh, Pa.-based maker of medical devices that treat acute and chronic respiratory disorders, has raised $10 million in new funding from an undisclosed group of investors. ALung is a spin-out of the University of Pittsburgh. It has raised at least $72.5 million to date, shows Crunchbase.

Centrify, a 10-year-old, Sunnyvale, Ca.-based maker of identity management and “single sign-on” software, has raised $42 million in funding, including from Samsung Ventures, Fortinet, and Docomo Capital. The company has raised at least $94 million to date, shows Crunchbase.

Coherus BioSciences, a four-year-old, Redwood City, Ca.-based biologics company focused on the treatment of oncology and inflammatory diseases, has raised $55 million in Series C funding from KKR, Venrock, RA Capital Management, Rock Springs Capital and Fidelity Biosciences, along with earlier investors Sofinnova Ventures, Lilly Ventures and Vivo Capital. Coherus has now raised more than $220 million from equity and non-dilutive licensing fees and milestones, it says.

Context Relevant, a two-year-old, Seattle-based company that sells prepackaged applications intended to solve specific, data-related business problems, has raised $21 million in Series B funding led by Formation 8. Earlier investors Madrona Venture Group, Bloomberg Beta, Vulcan Capital, and numerous Seattle-area angels also joined in the round, as well as one of the largest banks and one of the largest insurance companies in the U.S. (neither of which is being publicly disclosed). The round brings the company’s total funding to date to $28 million.

Earnest, a year-old, San Francisco-based company that provides small loans to individuals based on their earning potential rather than their credit history, has raised $15 million in funding from Andreessen Horowitz,Atlas Venture and Maveron. Cofounder Louis Beryl was a former quant options trader at Morgan Stanley and Lehman Brothers who was hired as a partner at Andreessen Horowitz in 2012.

G2 Crowd, a two-year-old, Chicago-based online platform for user reviews of business software, has raised $2.3 million in seed funding from Chicago Ventures; Hyde Park Venture Partners; G2 Crowd co-founders Godard Abel and Matt Gorniak, who provided the initial seed financing; and numerous other angel investors. The company has raised $4.3 million million to date, shows Crunchbase.

Jibe, a four-year-old, New York-based SaaS company that aims to simplify the process of applying for a job from a smartphone or tablet, has raised $20 million in Series C funding led by SAP Ventures. The funding boosts the company’s total capital raised to $37 million. Others of its investors include Longworth Venture Partners, Lerer Ventures, DFJ, Gotham Ventures, Thrive Capital, Polaris Partners, Zelkova Ventures, andSilicon Valley Bank.

LuckyFish Games, a two-year-old, Ramat Gan, Israel-based maker of casino-like social games for mobile devices and social networks, has raised $1.6 million in Series A funding from Carmel Ventures.

Niche, a 10-month-old, New York and San Francisco-based network for social media creators and the brands that want to engage with them, has raised $2.5 million in seed funding led by SoftTech VC. Other investors in the round included Lerer Ventures, Box Group, Advancit Capital, SV Angel, Kevin Colleran, William Morris Endeavor, and Gary Vaynerchuk.

NoWait, a 3.5-year-old, Pittsburgh, Pa.-based company whose wait list app and seating tool enables restaurants to notify patrons via text when their table is ready, has just raised $10 million in funding led by Drive Capital. The company, which says its app is being used by more than 1,000 restaurants in North America, has raised $15.5 million altogether, including from Birchmere Ventures, Carnegie Mellon University, Open Field Entrepreneurs Fund, Innovation Works and Sand Hill Angels.

Sumo Logic, a four-year-old, Redwood City, Ca.-based log management and analytics company, has raised $30 million in new funding led by Sequoia Capital. Earlier investors Greylock Partners, Sutter Hill Ventures and Accel Partners also participated in the round, which brings the company’s total funding to $80.5 million.

Survios, a year-old, L.A.-based virtual-reality company focused on gaming applications, has raised $4 million in funding led by Shasta Ventures. Other investors include Michael Chang of Mavent Partners, Gen Isayama of World Innovation Lab, and Renata Quintini of Felicis Ventures.

Tamr, a year-old, Cambridge, Ma.-based big-data startup founded by entrepreneur Andy Palmer and MIT professor Michael Stonebraker, has raised $16 million in funding led by Google Ventures and New Enterprise Associates. Tamr says it can root out meaningful enterprise data from (and for) its business customers in days or weeks versus months or quarters.

Tripping, a 3.5-year-old, San Francisco-based metasearch platform for travelers to access and book vacation and rental homes, has raised between $5 million and $10 million in Series A funding led by Recruit Holdings and Quest Venture Partners, sources tell Business Insider. The company had raised $1 million in seed funding previously.

Yummy77, a year-old, Shanghai, China-based food delivery site, has raised $20 million in funding from Amazon, reports TechNode. It’s reportedly the first time Amazon has invested in a Chinese company since entering the Chinese market ten years ago.

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New Funds

Bain Capital Ventures is looking to raise $625 million for its latest fund, Bain Capital Venture Partners 2014, according to marketing documents viewed by Bloomberg News. Bain Capital Ventures invests in infrastructure software, health-care technology, as well as consumer-focused companies, including those in e-commerce. Bain Capital started a dedicated venture arm in 2000 and the unit raised its first fund the following year. For the latest fund, says Bloomberg, the firm will charge a 2.5 percent management fee and take a 25 percent cut of profits. Bain Capital Ventures closed its last fund, a $601 million pool of capital, in 2012. (If you’re interested in learning more, StrictlyVC profiled the firm in November.)

Insight Venture Partners has closed a $510 million vehicle called Insight Venture Partners Coinvestment Fund III, which it established to invest alongside Insight Venture Partners VIII, closed with $2.57 billion in May 2013.

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IPOs

Ardelyx, a 6.5-year-old, Fremont, Ca.-based company at work on therapeutics that treat cardio-renal, gastrointestinal and metabolic diseases, has filed for IPO. Some of its biggest shareholders include New Enterprise Associates, which owns 45.89 of the company; CMEA, which owns 28.72 percent; and Amgen Ventures, which owns 6.03 percent.

GoPro, the 11-year-old, San Mateo, Ca.-based maker of wearable cameras that have become popular with professional athletes, has publicly revealed its paperwork for an initial public offering of stock. The San Jose Mercury News has a solid overview of what the filing shows here.

Kite Pharma, a 4.5-year-old, Santa Monica-based company that is developing cancer immunotherapies, has filed for an IPO. The company’s principal shareholders include the Israel-based venture capital firm Pontifax Ventures, which owns 8.5 percent of the company, and Alta Partners, which owns 8.3 percent.

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Exits

Assembly Pharmaceuticals, a two-year-old, Lucerne Valley, Ca.-based biopharmaceutical company that’s been developing drugs to treat chronic hepatitis B virus infection, is being acquired by publicly traded Ventrus Biosciences in an all-stock transaction. Ventrus will issue approximately 23 million shares of common stock to the Assembly’s venture stockholders, which include BioCrossroads, JJDC, Twilight Ventures, and Luson Bioventures. Ventrus’s stock was trading at less than $1 yesterday.

Cognea, an Australian-founded startup that makes virtual assistants for enterprise customers, has been acquired by IBM’s Watson group. Morehere.

Divide, a mobile-device-management startup, is being acquired by Google for an undisclosed amount. The idea is to help the Internet giant’s Android business reach more business customers. Divide, formerly called Enterproid, has raised $25 million from investors, including Google Ventures, Comcast Ventures, Qualcomm Ventures, Globespan Capital Partners and Harmony Partners.

Twitter is considering a deal to acquire SoundCloud, the 6.5-year-old, Berlin-based music and audio-sharing company, according to Re/code’s sources.

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People

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio kicked off the Internet Week New York festival yesterday by announcing a $10 million “tech talent pipeline” that aims to train thousands of New Yorkers for high-tech jobs. Funded over three years from city, state, federal and private sector investors, including JP Morgan Chase, the initiative will put New York on the path to becoming “undoubtedly one of the great tech hubs of the entire world,” he said.

Shruti Gandhi, who spent the last two years as a principal at Samsung Ventures, has joined True Ventures as a investor. She announced the move on the online identity site About.me (a True Ventures portfolio company).

Lu Guanqiu, the Chinese billionaire who bought Fisker Automotive Holdings at a bankruptcy auction, is now planning to take on Tesla Motors in both the U.S. and in China with his own electric vehicles. “I’ll burn as much cash as it takes to succeed, or until [my holding company] Wanxiang goes bust,” he tells Bloomberg.

Tom Perkins the cofounder of Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, is in the headlines again, this time for providing $2.5 million to UC San Francisco to endow a professorship in oncology research, reports the San Francisco Business Times. Perkins lost his first wife, Gerd Thune-Ellefsen, to cancer in 1994, UCSF said yesterday in a statement about the gift.

Sten Tamkivi, long a general manager at Skype, and Andreessen Horowitz general partner Balaji Srinivasan, have formed a still-stealth startup called Teleport that’s beginning to raise the curtain, slowly. (Tamkivi spent the last 10 months working as an entrepreneur in residence at Andreesseen Horowiz.) TechCrunch has more here.

The Winklevoss twins, who’ve become major-league bitcoin boosters, tell The Guardian that bitcoin will be bigger than Facebook. “Bitcoin potentially could be more impactful because being able to donate 50 cents to someone across the world has more impact than potentially sharing a picture,” says Tyler Winklevoss. “But they’re very different. . .”

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Job Listings

New York University’s seed-stage venture capital fund, Innovation Venture Fund, is looking for an associate.

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Essential Reads

Why tech’s best minds are very worried about the so-called Internet of Things.

Venture capitalist Ron Conway‘s tech alliance, SF.citi, is going to start sending people from its 900-member companies to volunteer in San Francisco’s 116 public schools, and the companies sound legitimately excited about it. “I suspected that our team would receive the program well, but even I was surprised by how excited everyone is that we’re doing this,” Steve Sarner, vice president of marketing for the social-network company Tagged, tells the San Francisco Chronicle. “We had over 40 of our 180 employees volunteer right off the bat – asking to participate versus having me have to ask.”

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Detours

Every rooftop bar in New York City worth knowing about, just in time for summer. (H/T: Shai Goldman)

Jordan Belfort, “The Wolf of Wall Street,” told conference goers in Dubai yesterday that he expects to make more money this year than he “ever made in my best year as a broker . . . My goal is to make north of $100 million so I am paying back everyone this year.”

Ira Glass doesn’t know or care who edits the New York Times.

“Last Week Tonight with John Oliver” has an hilarious take on the new European law that would allow people to erase themselves from Internet search engines.

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Retail Therapy

AgLocal. Pasture-raised meats for that Memorial Day cookout. (H/T: InsideHook.)

A beer foamer for people, plainly, who do not drink beer.

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Hey, good morning! Last Friday was not April 24th, as you likely know. (Apologies.)

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Top News in the A.M.

The FBI and police in several countries have arrested more than 100 people in a global crackdown on hackers linked to the malicious software called Blackshades. As CNN reports, the years-long investigation centered one of the most popular tools used by cybercriminals to hijack computers around the world, malware that can be used to hijack computers remotely and turn on webcams, access hard drives and capture keystrokes to steal passwords.

In honor of the Rubik’s Cube’s 40th anniversary, Google is featuring a playable version of the toy today. Have at it.

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Battery Ventures and Venrock Back 6Sense with $12 Million

A lot of bets are being made these days on the thesis that most enterprise products don’t make users’ lives easier or help them do their jobs better. “I doubt you could find a single sales rep who really enjoys using Salesforce,” says Roger Lee, a general partner of Battery Ventures. “What a [customer-relationship management] product should do is tell you which leads are likely to close this quarter, what products they’ll buy, how much they’ll spend, and whether they’re candidates for upsell opportunities.”

Lee — who likens Salesforce’s offering to “basically a filing cabinet” — is putting his money where his mouth is with 6Sense, a year-old, 15-person company that helps enterprise customers like Cisco and Pure Storage to determine an account’s overall propensity to buy, help them predict where their prospects are in the buying cycle, and surface new prospects. In fact, this morning, 6Sense is announcing a $12 million Series A round led by Battery and Venrock. I talked with its CEO and cofounder, Amanda Kahlow, late last week to learn more.

You say you figured out the market fit for 6Sense at your last company – a Web analytics consultancy – but had to figure out the technology piece.

A lot of really smart technical founders build [a technology] in search of a business case. We were the opposite. We were a business case looking for a platform. Thankfully, at one meeting with a venture firm, a firm’s CTO [pointed me to] GrepData, a [big data analytics startup that went through the Y Combinator incubator program in late 2012], and when we came together, it was a match made in heaven. I couldn’t be blessed with a better technical cofounder [than GrepData cofounder Premal Shah].

You have lots of competition. How do you differentiate 6Sense from the many other startups doing predictive analytics?

We live in a world where people leave behind a digital footprint, and in the consumer world, that helps companies like Amazon know what you want, likely before you know you want it. But in the [business-to-business] world, [no one has yet] solved the problem because of the complexity and irregularity of the data coming in. What everyone else is doing right now is asking: Is this the profile of the right buyer? But they aren’t asking: Is she going to buy now? Our magic is in taking time-sensitive data [and combining it with unstructured data, like activity on thousands of B2B publishers sites] along with [structured] behavioral data to create a behavioral catalogue to make sense of data across the Web.

Why isn’t Salesforce doing what you do?

The focus of companies like Salesforce has been around the efficiencies of workflow. Which email should you send next? How do you manage the buyer’s process? I do think Salesforce will want to do [what we’re doing], but it’s not trivial. It isn’t something a smart engineer can do tomorrow.

This is your second company. You started your first about a dozen years ago, soon after you’d graduated from college. Why not work for someone else?

I come from a family of entrepreneurs. My dad has been a lifelong entrepreneur, trying to make a go of different software technologies. One of my brothers runs an [e-learning company]; another brother runs a company in the B2B marketing space. [I credit] our dad’s entrepreneurial spirit. We also have a mom who told all of us — almost ad nauseam [laughs] — that we could be anything we wanted to be.

New Fundings

ActualMeds, a 4.5-year-old, East Hartford, Conn.-based company whose Web-based platforms facilitate patient data collection and automate the coordination of care for patients with chronic diseases, has raised $400,000 from Connecticut Innovations and Vineyard Point Associates.

BetterCloud, a 2.5-year-old, New York-based company that develops enterprise-level security and management products built for the Google Apps platform, has raised $8.6 million in venture capital, according to anSEC filing. The company has now raised roughly $22 million altogether, including from Bear Creek Capital, Tribeca Venture Partners, BLH Venture Partners, Flybridge Capital Partners, and Greycroft Partners.

CrowdSystems, a young, Moscow-based maker of retail analytics tools that rely on crowdsourced, smartphone user data, has raised a $1 million Series A round led by InVenture Partners based in Moscow. The company had previously raised an undisclosed amount of seed funding from Moscow Seed Fund.

Dashlane, a 4.5-year-old, New York-based company behind a password manager and secure digital wallet app, has raised $22 million in Series B funding led by Bessemer Venture Partners. Earlier investors also participated in the round, including Rho Ventures, FirstMark Capital, and Bernard Liautaud, who founded the enterprise software company Business Objects and is a general partner at Balderton Capital. Liautaud had co-founded Dashlane as a project he brought to his alma mater, Ecole Centrale de Paris.

e-Go aeroplanes, a three-year-old, Cambridge, England-based maker of lightweight carbon fiber aeroplanes, has raised $1.6 million in Series B funding led by Angel CoFund, the SyndicateRoom (a crowdfunding platform), and a group of new and existing angel investors.

Epidemic Sound, a 4.5-year-old, Stockholm, Sweden-based production music library, has raised $5 million in Series A funding from Creandum. TechCrunch has more on the company here.

Gelesis, a 7.5-year-old, Boston-based biotech developing a pill that’s designed to curb hunger in obese and diabetic patients, has raised $12 million in fresh funding. The capital came from its founder, the venture creation company PureTech, along with the Pritzker/Vlock family office and several unnamed angel investors. The company has raised more than $42 million to date.

Incentive, a 5.5-year-old company headquartered in Malmo, Sweden and L.A., has raised $2.3 million in funding from unnamed private investors. The company manages a private social intranet service for small- and medium-sized businesses.

Kymab, a 4.5-year-old, Cambridge, England-based monoclonal antibody biopharmaceutical company, has raised $40 million in Series B funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, along with the Wellcome Trust, an earlier investor. Both parties invested $20 million, says Kymab, which has garnered roughly $70 million to date.

Olset, a 1.5-year-old, San Francisco-based hotel-booking service for business users, has raised $1.1 million in seed funding led by Montage Ventures, with Digital Garage, 500 Startups, Plug & Play Tech Ventures, XG Ventures, Principle Innovation, Merced Partners, and a number of angels also participating in the round, according to TechCrunch.

Proteon Therapeutics, a 13-year-old, Waltham, Ma.-based company focused on renal and vascular diseases, has raised $45 million in Series D funding led by Abingworth, with participation by Deerfield Management and Pharmstandard International S.A. Earlier investors also participated in the round, including TVM Capital, Prism VentureWorks, Skyline Ventures, Intersouth Partners, MPM Capital,Devon Park Bioventures, Bessemer Venture Partners, and the Vectis Healthcare and Life Sciences Fund. The company has raised roughly $125 million to date.

Sansan, a 6.5-year-old, Tokyo-based contact-management service that hosts structured data (like business cards) in the cloud, has raised $14 million in funding led by DCM. Other participants in the round included the Innovation Network Corporation of Japan, Nikkei Digital Media, Energy and Environment Investment, and GMO Venture Partners.

Timeful, a year-old, Mountain View, Ca.-based still-stealth startup focused on intelligent time management, has raised $6.8 million in Series A funding led by Khosla Ventures. Other participants in the round included Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Greylock Partners, Data Collective, Pitango Venture Capital, and A-Grade Investments, among others. More on why the company has captured investors’ interest here.

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New Funds

Looks like New York has a new life sciences venture firm on the scene. According to an SEC filing, Azimuth Ventures, founded by Milena Adamian, is looking to raised $75 million for a debut fund, the first sale of which has yet to occur, shows the filing. Adamian, a cardiologist by training, has been in New York since 2010, when she transferred from a San Francisco outpost of the life sciences firm Easton Capital to its New York headquarters. Soon after, Adamian founded the Life Sciences Angel Network, where she remains executive director. Earlier in her career, Adamian worked in interventional cardiology at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York; she later joined Boston Scientific as an associate medical director, then Lehman Brothers as an analyst beginning in 2005. Azimuth has made at least one investment to date, in Owlet, maker of a “smart” baby sock that’s embedded with sensors to measure an infant’s heart rate. The company raised $1.85 million in funding last month.

Last November, we told you about Blade, a new, Boston-based “startup foundry” that had raised almost $20 million from undisclosed funding sources and which is being managed by Paul English, the co-founder and chief technology officer of Kayak Software (sold to Priceline.com in May for roughly $1.8 billion). Late last week, English revealed more about the outfit, saying Blade’s funding comes from Accel Partners andGeneral Catalyst Partners, both of which were Kayak investors. TechCrunch has more here.

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IPOs

Shares of Jumei, the China-based online cosmetics retailer, rose roughly 29 percent in their market debut on Friday, valuing the Chinese online cosmetics retailer at about $4 billion. Sequoia Capital, which invested more than $10 million in Jumei in 2011, owned 19 percent of the company before its IPO; its stake is now 16.5 percent.

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Exits

DirecTV, the satellite TV operator, is being acquired by AT&T for $48.5 billion. Dealbook has much more on what deal means here.

Twitch, a 2.5-year-old, San Francisco-based site for broadcasting and watching video game play, is being acquired by Google’s YouTube for $1 billion in cash, reports Variety. If completed the acquisition would be the most significant in the history of YouTube, notes the outlet. It’d be pretty significant for Twitch investors, too. Among those firms that have funded the company with $35 million are Bessemer Venture Partners, Alsop Louie Partners, WestSummit Capital, Take-Two Interactive Software, and Thrive Capital. Perhaps most impressive: the exit would mark another huge win for serial entrepreneur Justin Kan, who launched Twitch with cofounder Emmett Shear in 2011. In 2012, SocialCam, a separate video startup that Kan cofounded in 2011, was acquired by Autodesk for $60 million.

Quest Visual, a 4.5-year-old, San Francisco-based company that’s best known for its augmented reality app Word Lens Translator, has been acquired by Google for an undisclosed amount. Quest Visual doesn’t appear to have raised (or, at least, disclosed) outside funding.

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People

The 100 most influential tech-focused women on Twitter.

Dr. Dre isn’t the only rapper who will make money in a sale of Beats Electronics to Apple. Will.i.am also has an ownership stake in the electronics company, and played a key role in its success by “marketing the hell out of the brand,” reports Fortune.

Diapers.com cofounder Marc Lore is talking with investors about raising funds for a new, mobile-first e-commerce startup, according to numerous press reports, with Re/code sources telling the outlet that Lore is interested in raising as much as $50 million to get his new company off the ground.

Forerunner Ventures founder Kirsten Green is profiled in PandoDaily, which notes Green’s unconventional rise in the world of venture capital. “It’s hard to find others who have invested early in this many big hits and avoided nearly all the [e-commerce] mega-disasters,” says the report. “To wit: Andreessen Horowitz invested in Fab and ShoeDazzle. Accel invested in Bonobos and Birchbox, but also invested in Beachmint. And Jeremy Liew of Lightspeed Venture Partners invested in Bonobos and Honest, but he also was on the board during ShoeDazzle’s Kardashian-studded, high profile, and mostly self-inflicted implosion. Of course, more failures than hits is the nature of the venture business. But there issomething special about Kirsten Green.”

Massimo Marchiori could have been one of the wealthiest Silicon Valley billionaires. Instead, he’s a $3,000 per-month computer-science professor and mathematician at University of Padua, Italy. Bloomberg tells his story here.

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Job Listings

LinkedIn is looking for a business development manager, mobile. The job is in Mountain View, Ca.

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Happenings

The Internet Week New York festival kicks off today. Get more information, including a schedule of events, here.

Re/code’s Code conference is coming up May 27th through the 29th. Tickets are already sold out for the event, being held in Rancho Palos Verdes, but you can put yourself on a waitlist here.

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Data

The first quarter of 2014 was very kind to entrepreneurs, shows a new venture capital survey of 156 tech and life sciences companies from the law firm Fenwick & West. According to respondents, just 8 percent of financings in the first three quarters were down rounds, while 16 percent were flat and 76 percent were up rounds — and boy, were they up. According to Fenwick’s survey, the average percentage change in the share price of startups funded during the first quarter compared with the share price of their previous financing round was 85 percent. More here.

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Essential Reads

Facebook insiders and executives have cashed out $7.2 billion since the company’s May 2012 IPO. Bloomberg breaks out who has made what from share sales here.

“The business plan of InsideAtlas is somewhat unorthodox: It will measure and store your building’s magnetic fingerprint in its computing cloud. Keeping it private, however, will cost $99 a month, per building.”

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Detours

Things Parisians do that stun New Yorkers — and vice versa.

Why airplane food has become so bad.

“It’s not just a goal. It’s much more than that. It’s the whole story.”

Feminist humblebrags.

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Retail Therapy

A case that looks like a dead Japanese crustacean and 12 other insane options for your iPhone.

Skylock. It does everything but send birthday reminders.

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Happy Friday, everyone, hope you have a terrific weekend!

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Top News in the A.M.

Despite all the hand-wringing statements about net neutrality, tech actually had a pretty good day in D.C. yesterday, argues Re/code.

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VC Josh Felser: Small Steps Can Have An Impact

This week, a new study found that tropical cyclones worldwide are moving out of the tropics and more toward populations of people, especially in the Northern Hemisphere. It’s the kind of news about which we should be more aware, and concerned. But in the land of social media, it commanded about as much attention as a new software update from Blackberry — which is to say it went largely unnoticed.

Josh Felser isn’t okay with that. Which explains why the successful entrepreneur turned venture capitalist is trying to change the conversation through #climate, a new nonprofit that has enticed a small but growing number of people to download its app.

Here’s how the process works, loosely: The months-old organization researches and produces information on hundreds of climate-oriented nonprofits. It then produces shareable “actions” based on users’ interests. If I were predominately focused on the Amazon rainforest, for example, I might be pointed to the Rainforest Trust organization, along with a tweetable link about saving the cotton-top tamarin. My Facebook friends or Twitter followers could then click on that link to learn more about why these small primates are endangered and, hopefully, donate to Rainforest Trust.

It’s a tall order, of course — getting people to use the app, as well as ensuring the prompts are so compelling that social media users, despite their short attention spans, take the time to click on them.

Felser argues that he had to start somewhere. “You can’t look at this as a viral media app,” he told me during a chat last week. “Getting people to focus or take action on a negative [like global warming] is hard. But we know that in the last three weeks, we’ve driven 35,000 unique visitors to various nonprofits’ sites. That’s hard to do and I feel really good about it.” (Asked if his team can track how many donations have resulted from those visits, he says the technology exists, but that getting nonprofits to change their code is “a bit of a challenge.”)

So far, certain sports and entertainment figures have had the most impact on social media, including the band Gun N’ Roses, which has been asking fans to help save the Amazon, and the NBA, which has been promoting green initiatives and sustainability.

Felser would like to see many more of his colleagues in tech take an interest, though. Tweets of congratulation on his efforts have been nice, he suggests, but as far as he’s concerned, the Silicon Valley startup community needs to get more visibly involved in amplifying the work of climate organizations.

“We’ve created climate change and we have to fix it or it will destroy us,” says Felser, alluding to drought in the Middle East and Africa and rising sea levels that are putting people at risk in coastal regions like eastern India and and the Mekong Delta in Vietnam. “It makes poverty worse, it makes malaria worse, it makes everything worse.”

Felser says not everyone has to get behind climate change, though he thinks they should. Eventually, his organization will broaden its mandate to include many other causes.

Either way, he persuasively argues that the tech industry is missing an easy opportunity to be helpful. “I’m not sure that people in tech understand the impact they can have, with their knowledge, expertise, and reach. All are underutilized resources. They’re so passionate about entrepreneurship and tech that many forget the substantial impact they could have on the world if only they’d apply [themselves] to a cause.”

New Fundings

Compare Metrics, a 1.5-year-old, Austin, Tx.-based analytics software company that aims to help retailers boost shopper engagement, has raised $3.8 million in funding led by earlier investor Austin Ventures. Other participants in the round included Capital Factory, Julie Allegro of Allegro Venture Partners, Bob Greene of Contour Ventures, Mike Maples of Floodgate, and Brett Hurt of Hurt Family Investments. The company has raised $8 million to date.

Giphy, a year-old, New York-based search engine for GIFs, has raised $2.4 million in Series A funding led by Betaworks, with participation from Lerer Ventures, RRE Ventures, and CAA Ventures. Giphy, which was launched by Betaworks last year, raised $1 million from the company at the outset; it plans to top off its new round with another $100,000 via Alphaworks, a new crowdfunding platform that was also created at Betaworks.

Inspire Medical Systems, a seven-year-old, Maple Grove, Mn.-based company behind an implantable stimulation device that treats sleep apnea, has raised $40 million in Series E funding led by OrbiMed. Other new investors in the round include the Johnson & Johnson Development Corporation and Aperture Venture Partners. Earlier investors Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, US Venture Partners, Synergy Life Science Partners, Medtronic, GDN Holdings and TGap Ventures also participated in the funding.

Innometrics, a four-year-old, Stockholm, Sweden-based company that makes cloud-based marketing and sales software, has raised $5 million in Series A funding led by SEB Venture Capital. Earlier investor Fortunator Invest, a Stockholm-based investment firm that focuses on e-commerce opportunities, also participated, along with unnamed angel investors.

Keystone Heart, a 10-year-old, Caesarea, Israel-based medical device company focused on protecting the brain from emboli during heart surgery, has raised $14 million in Series B funding led by OrbiMed.

MediaV, a 4.5-year-old, Shanghai-based Chinese developer of online marketing analytics and tracking technologies, has become a subsidiary of the Chinese Internet giant Qihoo 360 Technology Co. According to reports, Qihoo bought a majority stake in the company for more than $100 million. The WSJ has more on what the move means here.

Odoo, a nine-year-old, Belgium-based open-source software company with enterprise resource planning features and more (the company used to be named OpenERP), has raised $10 million in new funding. Investors in the round include the French venture firms XAnge and Soffinova Partners, and the Beligum firm SRIW Belgium.

OpenGov, a two-year-old, Mountain View, Ca.-based company that helps cities and other local governments move their financial data into the cloud, has raised $15 million in Series B funding led by Andreessen Horowitz, with participation from earlier investors Thrive Capital andFormation 8. According to Crunchbase, OpenGov has raised about $22 million to date.

Pinterest, the 5.5-year-old, San Francisco-based scrapbooking website, has raised $200 million in new funding led by SV Angel (TechCrunch is reporting). Other previous investors to participate in the round included Bessemer Venture Partners, Fidelity, Andreessen Horowitz and Valiant Capital Partners. As notes the WSJ, Pinterest’s valuation has risen 32 percent since seven months ago, when the company raised $225 million at a valuation of $3.8 billion. The unprofitable company has raised a total of $764 million in funding to date.

Posiq, a four-year-old, San Jose, Ca.-based company that develops restaurant customer-relationship management software, has raised $3.2 million in Series A funding from Thayer Ventures, SVG Partners and angel investors.

Sinch, a new, Stockholm-based communications platform that enables mobile developers to add voice and messaging to their apps, has raised $12 million from Rebtel, “Sweden’s smaller answer to Skype,” says TechCrunch. The company — which was, in fact, spun out of Rebtel — also counts Index Ventures and Balderton Capital as backers.

Soldsie, a two-year-old, San Francisco-based social commerce platform, has raised $4 million in Series A funding led by First Round Capital, with participation from SoftTechVC, Lerer Ventures, Correlation Ventures,Great Oaks Ventures, e.Ventures, 500 Startups, and angel investors. The company has raised $5.6 million altogether.

Sorbent Therapeutics, a nine-year-old, Sunnyvale, Ca.-based biopharmaceutical company developing therapies for cardiovascular and renal diseases, has raised a $6.5 million tranche in a $15 million Series D financing. Existing investors CMEA Capital, ARCH Venture Partners,Sofinnova Ventures, AgeChem and Novartis Venture Funds participated in the round, which has brought the company’s current funding to at least $90 million, shows Crunchbase.

StepOne, a three-year-old, Austin, Tx.-based company whose self-service system lets consumers solve their tech problems online, has raised $4 million in Series A funding co-led by earlier investor LiveOak Venture Partners and new investor Silverton Partners. Last summer, StepOne raised an undisclosed amount of seed funding from LiveOak.

Terra Motors, a four-year-old, Tokyo, Japan-based electric vehicle maker, has raised $10 million Fenox Venture Capital and the Japanese venture capital Mizuho Capital Co. led the round. Other investors included Shinsei Bank, SMBC Venture Capital Co., and Aizawa Securities Co., all of which are based in Tokyo.

Uber Technologies, the five-year-old, San Francisco-based logistics company, is in talks to raise new financing in a round that may value it at more than $10 billion, according to Bloomberg sources. The valuation would be nearly triple the valuation Uber commanded a year ago when it raised $258 million.

Urban Engines, a two-year-old, Los Altos, Ca.-based company that uses spatial analytics and behavioral economics to alleviate urban congestion and shorten commutes, has raised an undisclosed amount of funding from Google Ventures, Eric Schmidt, Ram Shriram, A16Z and SV Angel. TechCrunch has more here.

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New Funds

Expansive Ventures, a new venture capital firm, is looking to raise roughly $100 million, reports the WSJ. Its founders are Adeo Ressi, head of the entrepreneur-training program Founder Institute, and Jon Soberg, a former managing director of Blumberg Capital. The pair plan to invest up to $2 million in early-stage startups that they source through the roughly 3,000 entrepreneurs who are affiliated with Founder Institute. The idea: that these entrepreneurs who live around the world can help Expansive discover startup gems, particularly in foreign markets.

Resolute Ventures, the three-year-old venture firm of former Polaris Partners investor Mike Hirshland, is in the market for its second fund, according to an SEC filing first spied by Fortune. The firm, which makes seed investments, is targeting $40 million. Hirshland, who is Resolute’s sole GP, targeted $25 million for its first fund. He has since brought aboard serial entrepreneur Matt Meeker as a venture partner and earlier this year had advertised a search for a principal. (If Resolute has hired one, it hasn’t listed that person at its site yet.)

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IPOs

Those watching the debut of Zendesk on the NYSE yesterday were undoubtedly feeling relieved last night. Shares of the 6.5-year-old, San Francisco-based on-demand customer service platform provider finished up at $13.45 from their offering price of $9. The IPO raised just under $100 million for Zendesk, about $50 million less than the company originally planned to raise.

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People

Everyone has to find their investing sweet spot, and Aneel Bhusri‘s is not consumer Internet, he said in an interview earlier this week at the NVCA conference in San Francisco. Bhusri said he came to this conclusion the hard way, during his first year as an investor at Greylock Partners in 1999. For example, he talked of backing an e-commerce site focused on cameras, saying, “I invested $25 million, Amazon waged a price war and we were out of business in 12 months.” A second investment in an online portal quickly also became “good-bye $15 million,” he added, noting that he might have lost $70 million before famously finding his groove in enterprise investing.

Venture capitalist Ken Lerer and his cofounder in Huffington Post, Arianna Huffington, have reportedly settled a three-year-old lawsuit over the site, which remains one of the one of the most heavily visited online destinations in the country. Filed by Democratic consultants Peter Daou and James Boyce, the suit alleged that the men helped shape Huffington Post, which sold to AOL in 2011 for $315 million, and that they were denied proceeds from the sale as well as recognition for their contributions. As Forbes notes, Lerer and Huffington have always insisted the claims were meritless, but a judge ruled in February that that the case could proceed to trial. Interestingly, Daou and Boyce published joint statements yesterday afternoon, praising Huffington for making Huffington Post “a far greater success than anyone could have imagined. Neither mentioned Lerer.

Cnet cofounder and beleaguered tech personality Halsey Minor is back with a new bitcoin-related company, though “there are also some oddities about the company that might give customers pause,” reports Bloomberg BusinessWeek. Minor told the outlet that he only recently emerged from “six years of depression . . . It’s hard to describe to someone who has not been through what I went through, but my only goal was to get through this part of my life alive.”

Venrock, the 45-year-old technology and health care investor — with offices in Cambridge, Ma.; Palo Alto, Ca.; and New York City — has added two new investment professionals to its Palo Alto office: Camille Samuels and Doug Dooley. Samuels, previous a managing director at Versant Ventures, is a partner and will focus on biotech and consumer health investing. Dooley, whose title isn’t clear, has a long history of working at infrastructure technology companies, including Cisco, Intel, Neoteris, NetScreen, and RingCube. Venrock filed paperwork in March to raise $200 million for its newest fund, Venrock Healthcare Partners II.

Google Glass’s lead electrical engineer Adrian Wong has defected to Oculus VR. Techcrunch has more here. Meanwhile, the company has also reportedly brought aboard a seasoned marketing pro, Ivy Ross, to lead the division. (The moves aren’t related, says a source. Wong was simply presented with a great offer from Oculus.)

A Bay Area real estate developer has filed a lawsuit accusing Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg of breach of contract in a case that dates back to Zuckerberg’s decision to acquire several properties that surround his own Palo Alto home. Zuckerberg made the move after discovering that developer Mircea Voskerician planned to build a mansion on a lot behind Zuckerberg’s home. In exchange for Voskerician’s cooperation, Zuckerberg told him he’d provide introductions to potential clients who might want to buy homes from him, says the developer, who alleges in his complaint that Zuckerberg hasn’t upheld his end of the bargain. The San Jose Mercury News has the story here.

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Job Listings

Adidas Group, the sporting goods giant, is looking for a manager to join its M&A and corporate venture group. The job is near Nürnberg, Germany.

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Essential Reads

To protest against the FCC’s new rules relating to Internet traffic, various companies and organizations have added code to their websites that kicks in whenever there’s a visit from someone who works at the FCC. While everyone else is enjoying these websites at ordinary broadband speeds, this code ensures that FCC staffers view them at dial-up speeds reminiscent of the 1990s.

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Detours

Why salaries shouldn’t be secret.

The most expensive city in America to hire a babysitter.

What do animals see in the mirror?

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Retail Therapy

Beer lollipops.

Quickboats.

St. Tropez is coming to San Francisco, apparently. (We wish.)

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