Hi, everyone! We realize we’re a little late today — we’re still catching up after a busy weekend.

If you missed StrictlyVC on Friday (a couple of readers let us know it landed in their spam folders), it’s here.

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Top News in the A.M.

Oracle is buying Micros Systems, which makes software for restaurants and hospitality providers, in its biggest deal since acquiring Sun Microsystems five years ago.

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Julie Wainwright on Lessons in E-Commerce

Julie Wainwright is an e-commerce pioneer. In the late ‘90s, she was the chief executive of Berkeley Systems, a maker of popular games and computer screen savers; Reel.com, which was one of the first companies to sell videos online; and the short-lived retailer company Pets.com (best remembered for its legendary sock puppet marketing campaign).

She’s still at it, leading the RealReal, a fast-growing online consignment business she began building in 2011 and that StrictlyVC visited last week for a profile. As part of that sit-down, we asked Wainwright to share some of what she has learned through her online selling adventures. Our chat has been edited for length.

The RealReal has raised $43 million from investors. Do you think your personal brand made a difference early on?

I don’t know about that. To the people who already knew me, absolutely. But coming into new VCs, I’m not like them in any way. I’m a woman, and I’m an older woman. One even said [whispering], “A lot has changed.” And I was like, “Really? Basic business has changed? I don’t think so. Tactics change, but not business fundamentals.”

Very broadly, what are the advantages and disadvantages of being a veteran of this industry?

Youth has so many advantages, because you don’t know what you don’t know, and you take risks and put yourself in situations that, if you had a broader perspective or more learning, you wouldn’t. And great breakthroughs can come through when you don’t have fear. But every business goes through a trial period, and that’s where you need a playbook and that’s where I’d say you really enjoy the beauty of experience. I have a playbook, and I’ve hired people with deep playbooks, so early on, we were already a business with great potential.

Pets.com raised your profile for better or worse. What are some things you learned from that experience?

The key lesson I learned there is that strategic investors’ interests and your company’s interests are not always aligned.

I already knew that anything relating to commodities, Amazon was going to do better and cheaper, even back in 1997. I’d been watching them. I’d been to their warehouse. I’d seen their infrastructure. They were so far ahead. So when I was brought in to lead Pets.com, I said the only way I’ll do it is if Amazon is a strategic investor in the business. And Amazon put in $60 million. And I thought that because they put in so much money that we had a safe harbor and that they’d just end up buying this company; I thought we’d create this category, which was huge, and then just merge with them. Drugstore.com thought the same thing.

And they copied both of you instead.

Maybe they just ran the numbers and decided it was cheaper than buying. They did the same thing with [the daily deals business] LivingSocial. Now Amazon is doing their own daily deals.

The market turned on you at Pets.com. What happens if that happens again now?

We have a very capital-efficient business here. I don’t have the same issues that any other e-commerce-built business that I know of does. Because our goods come from our seller and buyer base, and we have a huge repeat rate, we’d be okay even if we couldn’t get more financing. We’d just have slower growth.

What do you think other e-commerce companies, including Fab and One Kings Lane, are doing wrong?

First, I think both are doing a lot right. As a consumer, I love One Kings Lane. I’d say, looking at things from a very superficial level, that Fab overextended its growth by moving too quickly. It also has a lower average price point, and to make money at a lower price point, you have to be phenomenally efficient. For example, the average selling price point of Zulilly [the daily deals site for mothers and children] is $50, and Zulilly is making money. I bet Fab’s [average selling price point] is close and it’s not. The difference is Fab was really interested in expanding internationally and bought all these companies and had to merge them all and it didn’t have its own manufacturing facilities, then switched to its own pick, pack, and ship [model] . . . It’s just done so much in three years, whereas Zulilly has always focused on its products and how to get cost-efficient.

You think it’s too late for Fab?

My guess is that Fab can do it. It has to get really focused, though.

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New Fundings

AnyPerk, a two-year-old, San Francisco-based company that helps its customers create and distribute employee perks and incentives, has raised $3 million in seed funding, reports Venture Capital Dispatch. Vegas Tech Fund, FundersClub and Vayner/RSE led the round, joined by more than ten other investors. The company is a Y Combinator alum.

Benvenue Medical, a 10-year-old, Santa Clara, Ca.-based spine tech startup, has raised $40 million in Series E funding, plus $24 million in debt financing, InterWest Partners led the equity round, with DeNovo Ventures, Domain Associates, Technology Partners and Versant Ventures participating. Silicon Valley Bank was the sole debt provider. MedCity News has more here.

Box, the nine-year-old, Los Altos, Ca.-based online-storage company, is in talks to raise a round of funding from private-equity firm TPG, three months after filing for IPO. Box is unprofitable because it spends heavily on salespeople, marketing and expansion into more countries, notes the WSJ, which raised the specter on Friday that “though still very unlikely,” without a cash infusion, “Box could run out of money” some time next year. Box has raised a total of more than $400 million from roughly a dozen venture firms, including Draper Fisher Jurvetson, General Atlantic, Bessemer Venture Partners and Emergence Capital Partners.

Dimension Therapeutics, a 1.5-year-old, Cambridge, Ma.-based gene therapy company focused on developing novel treatments for rare diseases, has raised $30 million in funding from new investor OrbiMed, along with earlier investor Fidelity Biosciences. The company has now raised $35 million altogether.

Dual Therapeutics, a year-old biotechnology startup that spun out of University Hospitals of Cleveland last year, is raising $7.5 million, according to an SEC filing. According to MedCity News, the company is currently operating out of Harlem Biospace, a life science incubator that opened in New York last year. It’s developing therapeutics for prostate cancer, lung cancer and acute lymphoblastic leukemia.

Dynamic Yield, a three-year-old, Tel Aviv, Israel-based developer of a real-time website optimization and personalization platform, has raised $12 million in Series B funding led by Marker, with participation from existing investors Bessemer Venture Partners, ProSiebenSat.1 Media AG, Innovation Endeavors, and the New York Times Co. The company has raised $14.2 million to date, shows Crunchbase.

Inpria, a seven-year-old, Corvallis, Or.-based developer of high-resolution photoresists, has raised $1.45 million led by the Oregon Angel Fund. The capital comes on the heels of a separate, $7.3 million round of funding the company announced in February, led by Samsung Ventures, with participation from Intel Capital and Applied Ventures.

ProjectManager, a six-year-old, Auckland, New Zealand-based maker of online project management software has raised $3.5 million in Series A funding led by New Zealand’s Zeus Management.

Proterra, a 10-year-old, Greenville, S.C.-based maker of zero-emission-battery electric buses, has raised $30 million in Series D round led by earlier investors Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and GM Ventures. The company had closed the second round of its $34 million Series C funding in January, led by new backer Tao Invest (the family firm of Nick and Joby Pritzker). The company has now raised $150 million to date, including from Edison Energy, Constellation Ventures, Mitsui & Co.,Vision Ridge Partners, Hennessey Capital and 88 Green Ventures.

Scivantage, a 14-year-old, Jersey City, N.J.-based company that sells Web-based front and middle-office technologies to the financial services industry, has raised $20 million from earlier investors Brown Brothers Harriman Capital Partners and Edison Ventures. The round also included debt financing provided by Comerica Bank and ORIX Ventures.

Skyhigh Networks, a two-year-old, Cupertino, Ca.-based company whose cloud-based security software helps companies monitor employees’ use of cloud computing services, has raised $40 million in Series C funding from earlier investors Greylock Partners and Sequoia Capital, which were joined by Salesforce. The company has now raised $66.5 million altogether. Dealbook has more here.

Tanium, a 6.5-year-old, Berkeley, Ca.-based enterprise management startup that helps companies manage and secure the devices on their network via a Web brower, has raised $90 million from Andreessen Horowitz. It’s the company’s first venture investment, Re/code reports, citing a tweet by Marc Andreessen about the deal. In a separate tweet, Andreessen called Tanium’s technology a “breakthrough like we’ve never seen.” Orion Hindawi, who founded Tanium with his father, tells the WSJ that Tanium offers a near-instant snapshot of potentially malicious software in corporate-computing networks, then lets employees wipe out the unwanted software remotely.

VocalIQ, a three-year-old, Cambridge, England-based company whose software aims to improve dialogue interactions in voice-activated systems, has raised $1.27 million in seed funding. The round was led by Amadeus Capital Partners, with participation from Cambridge Enterprise. The company is a spin-out of the University of Cambridge’s Dialogue Systems Group.

Webydo, a four-year-old, Tel Aviv-based software as a service startup whose technology helps professional graphic designers to create sites on fly, without manual coding, has raised $7 million in Series B funding led by the crowdfunding platform OurCrowd, along with Magna Capital Partners and unnamed strategic investors. Webydo has raised $9.7 million to date. TechCrunch has more here.

Yooli, a 1.5-year-old, Beijing-based person-to-person lending platform, has raised “tens of millions of dollars” in Series B financing led by Morningside Ventures, reports TechNode. The company reportedly raised $10 million in Series A funding from Softbank China Venture Capital last year.

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New Funds

On Friday, Cisco Canada announced the Cisco Canada Innovation Program, a strategy to invest $150 million in Canadian dollars to accelerate innovation in Canada. The company said it plans to invest across a mix of technologies, businesses, and investment stages over the next 10 years, and that it will “actively engage with investment partners and start-ups to mentor and develop new leaders and innovators.”

Khosla Ventures, the 10-year-old, Sand Hill Road firm, is raising a fifth fund, according to an SEC filing that lists the fund’s target as $1 billion and states that, as of Friday, the first sale has yet to occur.

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IPOs

Atara Biotherapeutics, a two-year-old, Brisbane, Ca.-based company that’s developing therapies for muscle wasting conditions, kidney disease and cancer, has filed to go public. Among the company’s biggest shareholders, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers owns 18.6 percent of the company; Domain Associates owns 13.2 percent; DAG Ventures owns 13.2 percent; Baupost Group owns 11.8 percent; Inmobiliaria Carso S.A. de C.V. (the family trust of billionaire Carlos Slim) owns 9.3 percent; Celgene Corporation owns 8.7 percent; and Amgen owns 8.6 percent.

GoPro, the 11-year-old, San Mateo, Ca.-based maker of those wearable cameras that are so popular with athletes, is set to price almost 18 million shares of stock in a range of $21 to $24 on Wednesday, with the company’s stock hitting the market Thursday. GoPro is looking at raising about $400 million, which could value the company at $2.8 billion.

Ocular Therapeutix, an eight-year-old, Bedford, Ma.-based biopharmaceutical company that’s developing therapies for diseases and conditions of the eye, including a gel to treat glaucoma, has filed to go public. Its biggest shareholders include Versant Ventures, which owns 19 percent of the company; Polaris Partners, which owns 16.2 percent; SV Life Sciences, which owns 15.1 percent; CHV II, which owns 12.5; and Baxter Healthcare, which owns 5.3 percent.

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Exits

Baarzo, a year-old, Palo Alto-based video discovery technology that claims to help users find specific moments in a video, is in talks to be acquired by Google, reports TechCrunch. Baarzo was part of StartX, the non-profit acclerator for Stanford alums.

Dropcam, the popular, San Francisco-based home monitoring camera startup, is being snapped up by Google-owned Nest Labs, maker of smart thermostats and smoke detectors in a $555 cash deal. Dropcam will be folded into Nest’s brand and its employees will head to Nest’s headquarters in Palo Alto, Re/code had reported on Friday. Venture capitalist Trae Vassallo — who led Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers into Dropcam’s $30 million Series C last summer and joined its board — tells StrictlyVC of the deal: “It’s always bittersweet to sell a company that’s growing so fast, but the combined vision is extraordinary.” Dropcam had raised roughly $48 million altogether, including from Mitch Kapor, Ben Narasin, David Cowan, Bradley Horowitz, Felicis Ventures, Bay Partners, Accel Partners, Menlo Ventures, and Institutional Venture Partners.

LiveLook, a seven-year-old, Matawan, N.J.-based company that creates co-browsing and screen sharing technologies primarily for customer service interactions, is being acquired by Oracle for an undisclosed amount. According to VentureWire, Rose Tech Ventures, New Vantage Group, New York Angels, and the state of New Jersey’s Edison Innovation Fund were among LiveLook’s investors.

TalkTo, a 3.5-year-old, Cambridge, Ma.-based smartphone app that helps its users correspond with local businesses via text messages, has been acquired by the still-private, San Francisco-based social media company Path for undisclosed terms. TalkTo had raised $3 million in 2012 led by Matrix Partners.

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People

Businessweek politely asks: Is Marc Andreessen overdoing it with his torrents of tweets, streams that are “mostly rabid celebrations of technology”? Does he risk “turning his firm into a primary target” of those who already think Silicon Valley is tone deaf? Eh, says Andreessen to the outlet; he’s not worried about it. “This is running 1,000 to 1 in favor of what we are doing,” he says.

Oliver Samwer of Rocket Internet, the German venture capital company behind dozens of online start-ups, told those gathered at a retail industry conference last week that e-commerce means certain doom for those who don’t get with the program.  “You only have stores because there was no Internet, but that does not mean there is a right to have a store,” he said, reportedly adding: “It will all move online, you will have 10 percent left that will not move online.”

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Job Listings

Fidelity Growth Partners Asia is looking for an associate to work out of both Beijing and Shanghai.

Also, Fenox Venture Capital and True Ventures are looking for summer interns in San Jose, and Palo Alto, respectively. Meanwhile,Zelkova Ventures is looking for an intern in New York.

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Happenings

Google‘s annual two-day I/O technology conference takes kicks Wednesday at the Moscone Center in San Francisco. You can find more details here.

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Essential Reads

Surprise: Snapchat‘s most popular feature isn’t snaps anymore.

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Detours

I was a digital bestseller!

A World Cup viewing guide for stay-at-home dads.

The 10 “snobbiest” mid-size cities in America, per a ranking based on home prices, the number of private schools per capital, and so on.

The best, and worst, paid jobs in America.

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Retail Therapy

Grovemade desk collection, when you like things matchy-matchy. (It’s okay. We won’t judge you.)

StrictlyVC is so very happy it’s Friday! Have a terrific weekend, everyone, and we’ll see you Monday.:)

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Top News in the A.M.

Apple‘s smartwatch, which could reportedly hit the market as early as October, will likely come in multiple screen sizes and feature more than 10 sensors, including ones to track health and fitness, reports the WSJ.

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Currency Expert: Bitcoin “Not a Clear Winner”

Jesse Powell was once a hard-core gamer who spent his teen years playing the trading card game “Magic: The Gathering” in tournaments around the country. The 33-year-old has become somewhat of a currency specialist since. Back in March 2011, while the rest of the tech world was obsessing over Facebook’s valuation, Powell was shutting down his gaming forum and e-commerce business to focus on Bitcoin, eventually founding the venture-backed cryptocurrency exchange Kraken.

Kraken trades a variety of “coins,” including Litecoin, Dogecoin, Namecoin, Ven and Ripple. But the company, which makes its money off exchange fees, receives the bulk of its revenue by trading 1,000 to 2,000 Bitcoin per day (valued at between $600,000 and $1.2 million, based on its current price of $601).

That ratio could change, Powell told me yesterday in an interview that’s been edited for length.

When you were building Kraken, did you anticipate that Bitcoin would become so much more dominant than other virtual currencies?

I didn’t know if Bitcoin would be the currency to end all currencies. I thought it might be version 1.0 and that somebody might come out with something much better. It was hard to know if it’d be the Facebook of currencies or the MySpace, so we wanted to be currency agnostic and be able to capture the market, whichever way it developed.

Do you have your answer now?

I’m not nearly as bullish on Bitcoin as I was a year ago. There are a lot of good-looking new currencies coming out. Bitcoin has a huge network effect right now and a brand name, but technically it has some problems. The mining lately has been a big problem; consolidation is a big risk for the whole system.

You’re talking that mining pool that has, numerous times, provided more than half the computational power needed to mine new coins. Can you explain what a mining pool is to readers and why that’s such bad news?

With mining, you’re basically crunching numbers, solving puzzles with your computing power and coding; it’s the way you prove that you’re securing the network, that you’re auditing the transaction. It’s kind of like, because so much auditing [goes into each transaction] it would be impossible for someone to scam the system. But if someone controls more than 50 percent of all Bitcoin mining taking place, that person or group could have a majority vote and basically dictate what happens. So someone could spend Bitcoin, and you could say, “No, my 51 percent vote says you didn’t” in order to sell the same Bitcoin twice.

Why do people use mining pools in the first place?

It’s like a lottery pool. People compete to mine the coins, with a winner rewarded with 25 of them every 10 minutes. So people tend to pool their mining efforts to increase their likelihood of getting some portion [of those Bitcoin], and they often want to be part of the biggest pool to increase their odds, even though [what they’d win] would be less valuable [divided up among more people]. But a pool that can tip past 50 percent is a big problem.

Wouldn’t miners be hurting themselves if they tried scamming the network?

Financially, it’s not in their best interest, because people would stop using it. But, say, China directed all the fabs in the country to stop producing chips for Apple and start producing Bitcoin mining chips. A country does have the ability to destroy bitcoin.

And no one could do anything about it?

There are things that could be done, changes to the way that mining is done that could make China’s miners obsolete overnight. But other coins that are emerging don’t have this vulnerability, like Ripple [which is] why I could see another currency like Ripple or [the next-generation cryptocurrency] Ethereum emerging as the winning currency – or maybe we’ll just have 100 different currencies.

Do you have a financial stake in Ripple?

Yes, I am an investor in Ripple Labs, and I have some [of its] currency.

It may be that Bitcoin lives on as a store of value, like gold, but isn’t used in day-to-day transactions. But I think there’s enough new interesting stuff that’s built off the Bitcoin idea that it’s not a clear winner.

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New Fundings

Algolia, a 1.5-year-old, San Francisco-based company that makes a developer-friendly SaaS API for database search, has raised an additional $1.2 million in seed funding led by Storm Ventures. The company has now raised $2.8 million altogether, including from Y Combinator, 500 Startups, Alven Capital, Index Ventures and Point Nine Capital.

Aspire Health, a three-year-old, Nashville-based palliative care start-up, has raised an undisclosed amount of Series B funding from BlueCross BlueShield Venture Partners, the insurance company’s investment arm, which is managed by the Chicago-based firm Sandbox Industries. Aspire was co-founded by former Republican Senator Bill Frist; it sets up house-call physician practices to treat the sick, in person and over the phone. The Tennessean has more here.

Compliant Innovations, a 1.5-year-old, Sunnyvale, Ca.-based company behind a case collaboration app that let’s surgeons and care teams communicate about patient care, has raised an undisclosed amount of Series A funding from Lifeforce Ventures and Attractor Ventures.

ieCrowd, a 3.5-year-old, Riverside, Ca.-based company that buys and tries to commercialize intellectual property from university research labs, has raised $2.2 million in new seed funding from undisclosed investors.

JHL Biotech, a two-year-old, Taiwan-based company that sells contract manufacturing services to companies developing and commercializing biologic medicines in Asia, has raised $35 million in Series B funding led by new investors Milestone Capital and unnamed Taiwanese venture capitalists and individuals. Earlier investors, including China Development Industrial Bank, Biomark Capital and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, also participated in the round.

Light Chaser Animation Studios, a 1.5-year-old, Beijing-based company that makes animated films, has raised $20 million in Series B funding led by GGV Capital and Chengwei Capital, with participation from Hillhouse Capital and earlier investor IDG Capital Partners.

MiTu, a two-year-old, Culver City-based developer of streaming digital content for the Latino market, has raised $10 million in Series B funding led by Upfront Ventures. The company’s other investors included The Chernin Group, Advancit Capital, and Machinima co-founder Allen DeBevoise. MiTu says it has 400 million monthly video views, 40 million subscribers and 1,200 video creators creating content for its channels. Variety wrote about it last year.

Navitor Pharmaceuticals, a new, Cambridge, Ma.-based biotech company that’s exploring uses of the so-called mTORC1 pathway, has raised $23.5 million from Polaris Partners, Atlas Venture, and Johnson & Johnson Development Corp. The Boston Business Journal has muchmore here.

Review Trackers, a two-year-old, Chicago-based service that helps businesses aggregate and manage online reviews about them, has raised $2 million in funding led by Milwaukee’s CSA Partners, with participation from American Family Ventures, Symphony Alpha Ventures and angel investor Jeff Rusinow.

Saltside Technologies, a three-year-old, Gothenburg, Sweden-based online marketplaces platform aimed at emerging markets, has raised $25 million in funding, led by AB Kinnevik. The company now has operations in Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Ghana, Africa. TechCrunch has more here.

Siva Power, an eight-year-old, San Jose, Ca.-based maker of solar panels has closed on $15 million in new funding from the Chinese city of Wuxi and earlier investors Trident Capital, DBL Investors, and Acero Capital Management.

Sidecar Interactive, a four-year-old, Philadelphia-based company that has developed an automated online marketing platform, has raised $3.1 million in new venture funding led by Osage Venture Partners. The company has reportedly now raised $8.1 million to date, including from NextStage Capital, Innovation Ventures, Gabriel Investments, Ben Franklin Technology Partners, Mid-Atlantic Angel Group, Robinhood Ventures, and ARC Angel Group.

TouchofModern, a two-year-old, San Francisco-based e-commerce website geared toward male customers, has raised $14 million in Series B financing led by Partech Ventures. Other participants in the round included Great Oaks Venture Capital, Lucas Venture Group, Silicon Valley Bank and earlier investors Hillsven Capital and Floodgate. The company has raised $17 million to date, shows Crunchbase. PandoDaily has more here.

Tyrogenex, an eight-year-old, West Palm Beach, Ca.-based biotechnology company researching and developing treatments for solid tumors, has raised $15 million in Series D financing from Brace Pharma, the U.S. investment company of EMS S/A, the largest pharmaceutical company in Brazil.

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New Funds

Clarus Ventures, a nine-year-old, Cambridge, Ma.-based life sciences venture firm, has raised $234.2 million for its new fund, according to a new SEC filing. Clarus Ventures first registered a filing for the fund, which lists a target of $375 million, in February. At either the current or target size, the fund will be meaningfully smaller than Clarus’s last two funds. The firm closed its second, $660 million fund, in 2008 and its inaugural, $500 million, fund in 2005.

Costanoa Venture Capital, a 2.5-year-old, Palo Alto, Ca.-based early-stage firm, is hoping to raise $135 million for its second fund, shows an SEC filing that states the first sale has yet to occur. The fund, Costanoa Venture Capital II, would be larger than the firm’s debut $100 million fund. Costanoa was founded by Greg Sands, formerly of Sutter Hill Ventures; in February, he added a second partner, Neill Occhiogrosso, who joined from an evergreen fund called Investor Growth Capital. It focuses primarily on cloud-based services — especially companies that focus on data and analytics.

Palo Alto Venture Science, a new, Palo Alto, Ca.-based fund founded by former business-intelligence consultant Matt Oguz, is looking to raise $200 million for a new fund, reports Forbes. Oguz, like Google Ventures and a growing number of firms, has a more data driven-approach, telling Forbes that he has built a a scoring system for companies that looks at 13 variables, including “intellectual property” and “sales approach.” More here.

Polaris Partners, the 18-year-old, Boston-based firm with offices in San Francisco and Dublin, Ireland, is raising a seventh fund and targeting $400 million for the effort, reports Fortune’s Dan Primack. The firm closed its sixth fund, a $375 million pool, in 2011. In what looks like a succession-related step, co-founders Jon Flint and Terry McGuire are now listed on Polaris’s site as founding partners, notes Primack, while four younger professionals — Dave Barrett, Brian Chee, Amir Nashant and Bryce Youngren — are listed as managing partners.

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IPOs

Mobileye, a 15-year-old, Har Hotzvim, Israel-based company whose software algorithms and camera-based technology helps drivers see and manage traffic risks, has registered to go public, though it has yet to disclose how many shares it plans to offer and at what price range. The company has raised at least $515 million over the years, shows Crunchbase. Some of the company’s biggest shareholders include Goldman Sachs, which owns a 17.5 percent stake; Fidelity, which owns 7.8 percent; Enterprise Holdings, which owns 7.1 percent; and Blackrock, which owns 5.7 percent.

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Exits

Alpental Technologies, a year-old, Seattle-based wireless communication startup started by former Clearwire engineers including Michael Hart and Pete Gelbman, has been acquired by Google for undisclosed terms. The company never publicly disclosed funding, but Geekwire had discovered an SEC filing last summer that showed it had raised $850,000 from investors. More here.

mDialog, a nine-year-old, Toronto-based video advertising technology startup, has been acquired by Google for an undisclosed amount. MDialog had raised at least $8 million from investors, including Relay Ventures, shows Crunchbase.

MasteryConnect, a 4.5-year-old, Salt Lake City-based maker of evaluation software that helps teachers assess their students’ performances, has acquired 3.5-year-old, Cambridge, Ma.-based education-technology peer Socrative for $5 million in a cash-and-stock deal. MasteryConnect previously raised $1.1 million in a seed round and $7.9 million in a Series A round led by NewSchools Venture Fund and Catamount Ventures. Socrative had raised $760,000 in seed funding led by True Ventures. The WSJ has more here.

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People

Life sciences investor Steven Burrill was quietly removed from control of a $283 million venture capital fund back in March, reports Forbes. Burrill famously founded Burrill & Co., the 20-year-old, diversified merchant bank that does venture investing, investment banking, private equity, media, and events. Reportedly, in an inspection of the books and records of the venture fund by a financial advisory services firm, it was discovered that $19.2 million had been paid out to various affiliates of Burrill (the man, not the firm) in excess of what had been earned. Forbes reports that Burrill also failed to make nearly half a million dollars in capital contributions that were required under the firm’s partnership agreement with its investors. It was known that Burrill & Co. had hit on hard times in recent years. Now, it’s looking like a December piece in Xconomy about its woes merely scratched the surface.

Kevin Rose of Google Ventures may have been looking to escape to Portland to get away from anti-tech protesters who began gathering outside his San Francisco home in early April. But Rose finds himself at the center of another controversy, after buying a Willamette Heights home that he now plans to demolish and replace with a new, modern home. According to the Oregonian, hundreds of neighbors have signed a petition asking him to leave alone the somewhat historic house, built in 1892 and “in very good condition,” according to a local real estate broker quoted in the article. “We did expect him to do a substantial remodel,” added the broker. “[B]ut you pay $1.3 million and tear a house down? In Portland? That doesn’t happen in Portland.” Rose has said he would donate the house’s materials to charity to be re-used; he has also apparently offered to sell the house back to its previous owners, who didn’t return a call from the paper.

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Job Listings

Handybook, a two-year-old, New York-based company whose app connects users with on-demand housecleaners and home repair services (and that announced $30 million in funding last week), is looking for business development managers in Chicago and Toronto.

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Essential Reads

In a unanimous decision, the Supreme Court has ruled that a series of banking patents didn’t cover a concrete software process but an abstract idea, potentially setting a stricter precedent for future patents.

What Silicon Valley investors are using to track the Next Big Thing.

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Detours

Life in the ’80s, as seen through old Sharper Image catalogs.

Jeremy Meeks’s mugshot is going viral, “not because he was arrested on five weapons charges” in Stockton, Ca. but “because he’s very, very, handsome.”

We’re a little tired right now, but we’re pretty sure this would be hilarious under any circumstance.

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Retail Therapy

Ever wanted to measure your heartbeat through your derriere? Now you can (no pun intended).

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Hi, good Wednesday morning, everyone. StrictlyVC was out much of yesterday so we have a slightly rushed column for you today. Hope you enjoy it, though, and we’ll see you back here tomorrow!

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Top News in the A.M.

Apple has just released a new model of iMac, and it’s considerably cheaper than its predecessors.

BlackBerry will bring thousands of apps from Amazon‘s store to its Blackberry 10 phones, coming this fall.

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Arvind Sodhani on the Giant that is Intel Capital

Last week, at a conference in San Francisco, I was asked to interview Intel Capital’s president Arvind Sodhani, who also holds the title of executive VP of Intel Corporation. The idea was to give the audience insight into how the nine-year-old corporate venture unit – which employs 85 investors around the world and invests between $300 million and $500 million each year – does what it does.

Suffice it to say that it’s complicated. Here’s a cheat sheet, though, for investors and entrepreneurs looking for more, ahem, intel.

Intel, like most corporate VCs, won’t invest in something that looks like it could be a financial home run but has no bearing on the company’s business. Every investment has to have the potential of delivering both a strategic and financial return. The good news: In one form or another, Intel’s business touches almost every sector out there, so it’s investing in everything from wearables to semiconductors to Hadoop, the bedrock software of so-called big data businesses — which Intel sees as a growth sector. Indeed, readers might recall that in late March, Intel forked over$740 million for an 18 percent stake in Cloudera, which produces the most popular version of the Hadoop software framework.

Which raises another point: Intel Capital is stage agnostic. While it sometimes makes a swing-for-the-fences deal like Cloudera, it’s also willing to fund very nascent ideas, Sodhani told me last week, calling the organization’s “sweet spot between $5 million and $20 million – that’s where we’re doing the bulk of our investments.”

As for where it’s making its bets geographically, Sodhani said that half of Intel Capital’s investments are here in the U.S., with the rest distributed globally, including in China, where the organization recently committed to invest up to $100 million in companies working on smart devices, as well as Israel, Russia, India, Brazil, Japan and elsewhere.

Unsurprisingly, some places work out better than others. Intel Capital has backed companies in places like Vietnam and Chile, for example, but hasn’t been able to consistently find deal flow in either country. It also recently placed an investor in Nigeria to scout out opportunities in Africa, though Sodhani said it “takes a year-and-a-half to two years before someone new in a country can get going and see investments . . . When you arrive in a new country, it takes time to figure out the legal framework, what instruments are available . . . there are lots of different issues.”

One of them is helping to develop a tech-friendly ecosystem, which Sodhani credits Intel Capital with doing in a variety of places like Vietnam, where startups are still a relatively new phenomenon. While there are plenty of founders, said Sodhani, wresting potential employees out of their solid jobs to work for those founders is still in an upward battle. “Entrepreneurs are willing to take the risk; the hard part is how do you get the rest of the people to come and join the company.”

Before we’d parted ways, I’d asked Sodhani to share how investment decisions are made within Intel Capital. He suggested that, despite the sprawling design of the organization, it isn’t unlike most venture firms. Every Tuesday, it holds a weekly partner meeting where all deals receive some air time and potential new investments are presented. Company experts are then brought in to discuss and evaluate new funding prospects, questions are asked and researched, and after at least a second look at a company, a committee of five people within Intel Capital decides whether or not to back it. (Sodhani says that Intel Capital can “move lightening fast when there’s a great deal if we’re made aware that it’s a competitive situation. We can put together a term sheet in less than 24 hours if we want.”)

Like a lot of firms with deep pockets, Intel Capital is also willing to overlook price if the technology is deemed as a must-have. “Valuations are very [high], and I’d say that we’re probably getting to a point where we need to be careful of them,” Sodhani said. Still, he’d added, “some things we have to hold our noses and say, [Let’s move forward], because the technology is important to us.”

Open source software is one of those things, he continued. “It’s becoming very expensive, but open source is producing lot of software that’s critical. The whole trend of IT migration to the cloud — that’s a $30 trillion idea.”

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New Fundings

Appier, a two-year-old, Tapei-based company whose advertising technology is used for cross-screen targeted marketing across a range of devices, has raised $6 million in Series A funding from Sequoia Capital. TechCrunch has more here.

AuraSense Therapeutics, a 4.5-year-old, Evanston, Il.-based company focused on commercializing spherical nucleic acid conjugates, has raised $13.6 million in Series C funding from a long list of investors, including Microsoft cofounder Bill Gates; Microsoft executive Craig Mundie; Patrick Ryan, founder of Aon; David Walt, co-founder of Illumina; Boon Hwee Koh, director of Agilent Technologies; and the Rathmann Family Foundation. The company has raised at least $21.5 million to date, including from Abbott Biotech Ventures.

BioCatch, a four-year-old, Boston-based company that makes cyber-security software focuses on online and mobile fraud mitigation, has raised $10 million in funding led by Blumberg Capital and the equity crowdfunding firm OurCrowd. Other, unnamed investors also participated in the round, which brings BioCatch’s total funding to $11.6 million

BucketFeet, a three-year-old, Chicago Heights, Il.-based company that specializes in artist-designed footwear, has raised $3.7 million in funding led by Bridge Investments and Jumpstart Ventures. Other participants in the round included Levy Family Partners, Listen Ventures, and individual investors, including Crate & Barrel founder Gordon Segal. The company has raised $5.8 million to date.

BitPagos, a year-old, electronic-payment company that supports bitcoin and credit card payments and has offices in both Palo Alto, Ca., and Buenos Aires, has raised $600,000 in seed funding from Pantera Capital, Tim Draper, Barry Silbert, Boost Bitcoin Fund, Amasia and others. The company is a graduate of the San Mateo, Ca.-based Boost VC accelerator program, which focuses on virtual-currency startups.

Kony, a seven-year-old, Orlando, Fla.-based company behind a mobile application development platform, has raised $50 million in new funding co-led by Softbank Capital and earlier investor Insight Venture Partners. The company has now raised at least $98.4 million, according to Crunchbase, including from Telstra Ventures, Georgian Partners, Delta-v Capital, and Hamilton Lane.

Onapsis, a 4.5-year-old, Cambridge, Ma.-based cyber-security software firm focused protecting highly sensitive applications within large companies and government agencies, has raised $9.58 million in funding led by .406 Ventures, which was joined by Endeavor Catalyst. The company had previously raised $3 million from investors, including TPG founder David Bonderman.

Other Machine Co., a 1.5-year-old San Francisco-based startup that makes what it called 3D cutters, has raised $8.5 million in Series A funding from investors that include Broadway Angels, Allegro Venture Partners, Core Ventures Group, Crunchfund, VegasTechFund, Slow Ventures and several angel backers including Autodesk CEO Carl Bassand 3D Robotics CEO Chris Anderson. The WSJ has much more on the company here.

Quantum Technology Sciences, a 15-year-old, Cocoa Beach, Ca.-based maker of intrusion detection and movement monitoring software designed for securing energy assets, has raised $4.4 million in Series A funding round from investors knowledgeable about oil and gas production, including Jim Farnsworth, chief exploration officer with Cobalt International Energy, Infinity Oil & Gas; Texas-based investment firm McNair Group; and Bud Brigham of Anthem Ventures.

Rhiza, a six-year-old, Pittsburgh, Pa.-based maker of marketing analytics tools, has raised $3 million in Series A funding led by Draper Triangle Ventures. Other investors in the round included Arthur Ventures andCamp One Ventures.

SIM Partners, an eight-year-old, Evanston, Il.-based digital marketing company, has raised $8 million in Series A funding, including from River Cities Capital Funds in Cincinnati and Chicago-based Jump Capital Partners. The company’s software is used by large companies to provide standardized online-marketing content across their locations and affiliates.

Sunverge Energy, a five-year-old, San Francisco-based maker of distributed energy management systems, has raised $15 million in Series B funding led by the Southern Cross Renewable Energy Fund.Siemens Venture Capital and Total Energy Ventures International also participated in the round.

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New Funds

Arrowroot Capital, a six-month-old, Santa Monica, Ca.-based growth equity firm, is targeting $50 million for its debut fund, shows an SEC filing. Founder and managing partner Matthew Safaii is the only person listed on the filing. Safaii was previously a managing director and head of the acquisitions team at ICG Group, the publicly traded venture capital firm.

Bain Capital Ventures has raised a new, $935 fund, reports Dealbook, a pool that comes in two parts, it says. The core fund totals $715 million, of which $65 million was committed by Bain employees and the balance was from outside investors. Bain also raised a separate fund totaling $220 million, which includes $20 million from Bain insiders. More here.

Danhua Capital, a year-old, Palo Alto, Ca.-based early-stage fund founded by Stanford physics professor Shoucheng Zhang and Stanford alumnae Anjia Gu have raised $91.3 million for its debut fund, shows a new SEC filing. Among the firm’s bets so far is Apportable, a San Francisco-based mobile development technology company that raised $5 million earlier this year.

James Joaquin, a former partner with Catamount Ventures and an entrepreneur whose experience includes roles as CEO of Xmarks, Xoom and Ofoto, as well as co-founder of When.com, is raising his own venture fund under the name Obvious Ventures. A new SEC filing for the fund doesn’t list a target. The site is here.

Lightspeed China Partners is back in the market and raising $260 million for its second fund, shows an SEC filing. The affiliate of Lightspeed Venture Partners closed its first fund with $168 million in January of last year after targeting $150 million. It invests exclusively in China-based businesses, with a focus on startups in the the Internet, mobile, services and enterprise software.

Microsoft Ventures is launching a new, Redmond, Wa.-based accelerator for startups that are developing technologies to automate the home, the company tells Venture Capital Dispatch.

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IPOs

CyberArk Software, a 15-year-old, Lower Newton Falls, Ma.-based cybersecurity software company, recently submitted a preliminary, confidential filing to list on Nasdaq, according to VentureWire sources who say the company plans to sell a 15 percent to 20 percent stake in an IPO at a valuation of between $500 million and $1 billion. CyberArk has raised at least $43 million over the years, show Crunchbase. Its investors include Jerusalem Venture Partners and Goldman Sachs.

Sage Therapeutics, a four-year-old, Cambridge, Ma.-based biopharmaceutical company that’s developing a drug for a life-threatening seizure condition, has filed to go public. The company has raised at least $93 million from investors. Its biggest shareholders include Third Rock Ventures, which owns 58.5 percent of the company; ARCH Venture Partners, which owns 21.3 percent; and Fidelity Investments, which owns 5.6 percent.

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Exits

GlassHouse Technologies, a 13-year-old, Boston-based data center services provider, has filed for bankruptcy, reports Boston Business Journal. The firm twice pulled plans to go public. GlassHouse had raised $91.3 million, shows Crunchbase, including from Citrix Systems, Cisco,GrandBanks Capital, Kodiak Venture Partners, Paladin Capital Group, Globespan Capital Partners, Montagu Newhall Associates, and Sigma Partners.

Oracle is nearing a deal to buy the publicly traded hospitality-industry software provider Micros Systems for more than $5 billion, according to Bloomberg sources. The deal would be Oracle’s largest since its $5.7 billion takeover of Sun Microsystems, announced in 2009, says Bloomberg.

Silevo, a seven-year-old, Fremont, Ca.-based company that makes solar modules, is being acquired by SolarCity, the full-service solar energy services company that went public in late 2012. Silevo has raised more than $33 million from investors, including DT Capital Partners, GSR Ventures and NewMargin Ventures.

Tail-f Systems, a nine-year-old, Stockholm-based maker of configuration management and network automation software, has been acquired by Cisco for $175 million to broaden its cloud-services offerings. Tail-f Systems had raised $6.3 million from SEB Venture Capital, according to Crunchbase.

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People

When boxing champion Floyd Mayweather decided to throw a million dollars into his first tech venture, he literally threw a million dollars, stuffed into a gym bag, at the company’s founder, a former employee of his named John Shahidi. “Champ, we can’t do it that way,” Shahidi told him. “There has to be paperwork.”

Richard Mordini has left Javelin Venture Partners — where he spent the last five years as a senior associate, then venture partner — to join Fooda, a three-year-old company that delivers food from local restaurants to employees at work. Mordini joins the company as its VP of finance after taking a “long look at it while an investor,” he tells StrictlyVC. “Fooda’s been at the food game for a bit longer than the newer entrants and is sort of executing in the ‘Chicago style’ of Groupon . . . blocking and tackling unnoticed until all of a sudden it’s not.” Fooda has raised $7.8 million to date, including from Lightbank and Valor Equity Partners.

One Kings Lane, the online home decor retailer that raised a $112 million Series E round at a $900 million valuation in January, is laying off between 15 and 20 percent of its staff, reports Re/code. More here.

Gary Swart, the longtime CEO of oDesk, the online workplace platform, is joining Polaris Partners as a venture partner in San Francisco. Swart left oDesk the first week of April, when its merger with former rival ELance was completed. Swart tells StrictlyVC that at Polaris, he’ll be “focused on marketplaces . . . and SaaS companies, which is very similar to the Polaris approach already.”

Investor Hunter Walk of Homebrew, who spent roughly a decade at Google before becoming a venture capitalist, published some thoughts on Twitter last night about why “startups,” like Facebook‘s new ephemeral messaging app Slingshot, are difficult to nurture inside established large companies. Among the factors Walk listed was legal risk. “Parent co won’t let ‘startup’ into gray areas out of lawsuit fear. Big pocketbook.” A second concern: brand risk, meaning “big [company] brand tied to ‘startup’ influences what startup can do. What happens on Slingshot impacts P&G ad buys on Facebook.” Partner risk is another factor, wrote Walk, tweeting, “Potential partners treat ‘startup’ as part of large [company] and react accordingly to tech, distribution, etc. [opportunities].” Walk added: “Google had all sorts of these ‘startups’ inside. All failed. Now they let those folks start companies [and Google Venture] funds. Much better model.”

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Job Listings

The global, early-stage venture firm e.ventures is looking for an associate, per a new listing on LinkedIn. The job is in San Francisco.

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Happenings

Next Friday, in San Francisco, 500 Startups hosts PreMoney, a one-day conference for accredited investors about the future of venture capital. You can check out the speaker line-up here; registration is over here.

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Essential Reads

Inside the secretive R&D lab where Amazon has been developing a 3D phone since 2009.

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Detours

The genius of “Silicon Valley.”

How to anonymize everything you do online.

Comic John Oliver and celebrated physicist Stephen Hawking talk robots and more. Asks Oliver at the segment’s end: “If time travel were possible, would you want to go back in time and refuse to do this interview?” “Yes,” answers Hawking. Oliver: “You truly are an incredibly smart man.”

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WashApp, a new app that’s trying to crowdsource the business of washing your clothes, is offering StrictlyVC readers a discounted spin (heh, heh) as long as you live in San Francisco. You can download the app here. (To get $10 off, use the code WASH10. If you order from the site directly, just mention the newsletter when you hit the “special instructions” field.)

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