Happy Thursday, everyone! (Pst, web visitors, here’s an easier-to-read version of today’s email.)

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Top News in the A.M.

LinkedIn just launched an ad network.

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Strava CEO Mark Gainey on Community, Competition and L0ve-Hate Relationships with Partners

People love Strava, the 95-person, San Francisco-based company whose training app for cyclists and runners has garnered an almost fanatical following. The company keeps its number of “members” close to the vest, but among the passionate acts of its users was one recent job hopeful who employed the company’s mobile app to spell out “Hire Me” over the course of an 8.1-mile run that ended at Strava’s offices. Another user plotted out a bike ride in the shape of a turkey. In the U.K., where the company’s app has taken off (70 percent of Strava users are now outside the U.S.), the press has even asked of its obsessed users: “Is Strava Destroying Your Marriage?”

Last week, at a StrictlyVC event in San Francisco, Strava’s likable cofounder, Mark Gainey, talked at length about his business with Sigma West managing director Greg Gretsch, who wrote Strava one of its first checks. During the conversation, Gainey opened up about what he views as the biggest weak spot of the sporting goods goliath Under Armour, his “love-hate” relationship with the navigation equipment company Garmin, and the one thing that keeps him up at night. Some of that chat follows here, edited for length.

When Strava started [in 2009], it had 5,000 users. How has it evolved into a global brand with the most engaged social fitness community in the world?

It’s been a fascinating ride. [Cofounder] Michael Horvath and I . . .wanted to motivate and entertain the world’s athletes. At first, we were a web company that supported Garmin devices for cyclists. We basically tried to surprise and delight cyclists using the data they’d just uploaded. [Editor’s note: users had access to all of Strava up to five rides; afterward, they were asked to pay $6 a month, or $60 per year for the use of all of its features.] In 2011, in trying to figure out a cheaper way for people to participate in Strava, we launched a mobile app that put us on a completely different path. The good news was that wow did that create growth, domestically, internationally – everywhere. The bad news was that we had to completely reconstruct our team and rethink the way we were building ourselves out.

What types of athletes are using Strava?

We started with cycling and really focused on them; cyclists are data geeks who are used to [logging their data]. But now, almost half the activity coming in is from the running community, You can upload up to 28 different activities into Strava, though. We see everything from yoga to skiing to kite surfing. We want people to capture their athletic life on Strava.

What’s the business model and how has it evolved?

You can use Strava for free as long as you like, or you can upgrade to $6 a month or $60 a year [to access premium features]. It’s a very straightforward model that has worked very well for us over the past five years. By going direct to athlete, we’ve been able to maintain that one-to-one relationship and really create long-term customer value.

A year-and-a-half ago, we also began developing a second direct-to-athlete revenue model, with integrated commerce. We’re not trying to be the Amazon for athletes or create a shop where you can buy stuff but [rather] integrating opportunities into the Strava experience. You can sign up for a monthly “Gran Fondo” — we basically challenge for you to ride roughly 100 miles on a given Saturday — and if you finish, you get an email from us and you “unlock” the ability to buy a limited-edition jersey. We routinely get more than 100,000 people who sign up for these challenges, and it turns out that rewards for athletes is really powerful. We’re simply trying to keep them motivated.

We also launched something six months ago called Strava Metro, which is an opportunity for us to begin working with urban planners and local governments, taking ride and run data in any given population and giving them an anonymized version of it so they can plan bike paths and pedestrian walkways. That’s something we’ve begun to license out and we think it’s another interesting part of our business going forward.

Under Amour has been busily acquiring companies. It bought MyFitnessPal and Endomondo last week for $475 million and $85 million, respectively. Over a year ago, it acquired MapMyFitness [for $150 million]. Can you comment on what’s going on, and how you see the market evolving?

We’re pretty excited about our future. We did a Series D [last fall] led by Sequoia. We didn’t need the capital; we’ve been pretty efficient with our capital. But we were sending a clear signal to the market that we intend to go and grow a global brand. We think there’s a great opportunity to build a sports brand using digital as the platform, so we’ve watched with interest as there has been some consolidation. Under Armour has been especially aggressive over the last year and a half. What we’re finding is that they’re just very different businesses.

When you listen to Under Armour CEO Kevin Plank, he’s very clear. His business is selling apparel and shoes, and he needs channels to do so. And he has figured out that he can get 100 million email addresses when he pulls together these sites.

At Strava, we have a strict definition of community. Community is about getting our customers to interact with one another. That’s when community happens, [that’s] when you have network effect. I’m not judging. Under Armour has a loyal customer base, Nike has a loyal customer base, Apple has a loyal customer base. I’m not saying that community is the way to go, but in our case, we’re a community-based business. We’re akin to a LinkedIn or a Facebook, and our business is very much predicated on the way the network interacts. And when you look at things like MyFitnessPal and Endomondo, the challenge they’ve had is there’s tremendous churn with them because there isn’t network effect. So it’ll be interesting to watch how it plays out.

For more of this interview, click here.

New Fundings

17zuoye, an eight-year-old, China-based online education platform, has raised $100 million in Series D funding led by H Capital, with participation from Temasek Holdings, DST Global, and Shunwei Capital Partners. Tech in Asia has more here.

6sense, a year-old, San Francisco-based big-data analytics software company, has raised $20 million in Series B funding led by Bain Capital Ventures, with earlier backers Battery Ventures and Venrock participating. The company has now raised $36 million altogether.

Better Walk, a nearly two-year-old, Atlanta-based medical device company whose crutches are designed to prevent underarm strain, has raised $450,000 in Series A funding led by MB Venture Partners. The company has raised $600,000 to date. MedCity News has more here.

Betterment, a 6.5-year-old, New York-based online platform for personal investment management, has raised $60 million in new funding led by Francisco Partners, with participation from earlier backers Citi Ventures, Globespan Capital Partners, Northwestern Mutual Capital, Bessemer Venture Partners, Menlo Ventures and Anthemis Group. The company has now raised $105 million altogether, shows Crunchbase.

BlueTalon, a nearly two-year-old, Redwood City, Calif.-based database security startup, has raised $5 million in new funding from Signia Venture Partners, Biosys Capital, Bloomberg Beta, Stanford-StartX Fund, Divergent Ventures and return backer Data Collective. The company has now raised $6.5 million. GigaOm has more here.

BookingPal, a 1.5-year-old, Irvine, Ca.-based company that increases vacation rentals visibility and bookings by connecting property managers and owners to online travel sites and agencies, has raised $5 million in Series B funding led by Thayer Ventures. New investors PAR Capital Ventures and Amadeus Ventures also participated in the round, along with earlier backers Camp One Ventures and Plug and Play Ventures. BookingPal has raised $7.5 million altogether to date.

Credible Labs, a 2.5-year-old, San Francisco-based company that matches recent graduates who have loans to repay with companies that can refinance their debt, has raised $2.7 million in seed funding from Carthona Capital, Cthulhu Ventures and Redbus Group.

K2, a 15-year-old, Bellevue, Wa.-based company that makes business application platforms and services for running business apps, has raised $100 million in funding from Francisco Partners. The company had previously raised $16 million in 2006. TechCrunch has more here.

Konekt, a 1.5-year-old, Chicago-based company whose technology enables engineers and others to connect their devices to wireless data and manage their billing as they grow, has raised $1.3 million in funding, including from Mucker Capital, NextView Ventures and individual investors.

Grovo Learning, a 4.5-year-old, New York-based training platform for digital and professional skills, has raised $15 million in Series B financing from earlier backers Accel Partners, Costanoa Venture Capital, SoftTechVC and Greg Waldorf. The company has raised $22 million to date. TechCrunch has more here.

Lineage Labs, a year-old, Boston-based maker of a hybrid physical storage and cloud backup device for family photos and video, has raised $4 million in Series A funding led by Blade, the consumer technology incubator created by Kayak cofounder Paul English. More here.

Lineagen, a 13-year-old, Salt Lake City, Ut.-based molecular-diagnostics company that’s focused on providing genetic evaluation services for autism, developmental delays and other genetic disorders, has raised the second and last tranche of its $15.8 million Series C financing led by HealthQuest Capital. Other new investors in the round include Mountain Group Partners and Petra Capital Partners. The company has now raised $55.2 million to date.

Instructure, the 6.5-year-old, Salt Lake City, Ut.-based company that sells cloud-based learning management software to educational institutions and other organizations, has raised $40 million in funding led by Insight Venture Partners, reports Business Insider. Other investors in the round include OpenView Venture Partners and EPIC Ventures. The company has now raised roughly $90 million altogether.

Merganser Biotech, a four-year-old, Newton Square, Pa.-based company that’s developing peptides as therapeutics to treat rare hematological and iron overload diseases, has raised $28 million in Series A funding led by Novartis Venture Fund, with participation from Frazier Healthcare, Sutter Hill Ventures and Osage University Partners. Seed investors BioAdvance and Stateside Developments also participated in the round.

Onfido, a 2.5-year-old, London-based data-driven platform designed to conduct background checks for on-demand companies, has raised $4.5 million in Series A funding led by Wellington Partners, with participation from CrunchFund and numerous angel investors. The company has now raised $5.4 million altogether.

Pindrop Security, a four-year-old, Atlanta, Ga.-based maker of phone-fraud prevention and call-center authentication software, has raised $35 million in Series B funding led by Institutional Venture Partners, with participation from earlier backers Andreessen Horowitz, Citi Ventures, Felicis Ventures, Redpoint Ventures, and Webb Investment Network. The company has now raised $47 million to date, shows Crunchbase.

Pinterest, the 5.5-year-old, San Francisco-based social bookmarking site, is in talks to raise $500 million at around an $11 billion valuation, according to WSJ sources. It is unclear whether any new investors will join the round, which is expected to close in the coming weeks, says the Journal. When Pinterest last raised money — it has so far raised $762.5 million from investors — it was in May of last year and its valuation was $5 billion.

Radius Networks, a 3.5-year-old, Washington, D.C.-based company that provides beacons and other services used by retailers and brick-and-mortar operations, has raised $6.5 million in seed funding led by Core Capital Partners, Contour Venture Partners, and Trilogy Partners.

Revmetrix, a two-year-old, Washington, D.C.-based customer intelligence platform for retailers, has raised $2.2 million in seed funding co-led by Genacast Ventures and .406 Ventures, with participation by Neu Venture Capital, and numerous angel investors, including Millennial Media cofounder Chris Brandenburg. VentureBeat has more here.

Science, a 3.5-year-old, Santa Monica, Ca.-based startup studio that invests in media and online commerce companies, has raised $20 million in growth financing from Silver Lake Waterman, part of technology-focused firm Silver Lake. The company, which says it has backed more than 13 startups and helped launch 24 others, had previously raised $40 million in funding from Hearst Ventures, White Star Capital, and Rustic Canyon Partners. Fortune, which was first to report the news, has more here.

ScienceLogic, a 12-year-old, Reston, Va.-based IT monitoring company, has raised $43 million in fresh funding led by Goldman Sachs, with participation from earlier backers New Enterprise Associates and Intel Capital. The company has now raised $84 million altogether. Venture Capital Dispatch has more here.

SkyGiraffe, a 2.5-year-old, Menlo Park, Ca.-based startup that helps companies quickly build and deploy apps, has raised $3 million in Series A funding led by Trilogy Equity Partners, with participation from earlier backer 500 Startups. The company had previously raised $1.5 million, including from Microsoft Ventures. TechCrunch has more here.

Stayzilla, a 4.5-year-old, Chennai, India-based online platform that enables individuals to research and reserve hotels and apartments across India, has raised $20 million in Series B funding led by Nexus Venture Partners and earlier backer Matrix Partners. TechCrunch has more here.

Triptease, a 1.5-year-old, London-based SaaS company that aims to bring hotels and their guests closer, including by providing them a realtime display of their pricing (and others’ pricing for their rooms from across the web), has raised $2 million in seed funding led by Episode 1 Ventures and Notion Capital.

Uber, the 5.5-year-old, San Francisco-based ride-hailing service, has expanded its Series E round of venture financing by $1 billion, according to documents flagged by the New York Times yesterday. The funding brings the total capacity for the round up to $2.8 billion. Uber’s $40 billion valuation remains unchanged, though Matt Levine of Bloomberg View notes that “at some point they’re going to have more than that just in cash.”

Wooplr, a three-year-old, Bangalore, India-based social commerce startup that runs an online platform for fashion enthusiasts, has raised $5 million in Series A funding from Helion Ventures. The company had previously raised $225,000 in seed funding.

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New Funds

Bessemer Venture Partners has closed a new, $1.6 billion fund. Much more here.

Social Leverage, a 6.5-year-old, Coronado, Ca.-based seed-stage venture firm cofounded by serial entrepreneur Howard Lindzon, is looking to raise up to $30 million for its new fund, shows an SEC filing. Social Leverage typically invests between $100,000 and $500,000 in companies. Among its investments is Kensho Technologies, whose data crunching software attracted funding from Goldman Sachs last November; ApplePie Capital, an online loan business focused on franchise funding; and Robinhood, a brokerage firm whose lets customers trade stocks without paying commission.

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IPOs

Inotek Pharmaceuticals, a biopharmaceutical company developing therapies for glaucoma, sold 6.7 million shares at a price of $6 per share in its IPO yesterday, raising $40.2 million for the company.

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Exits

Always Prepped, a three-year-old, Bethesda, Ma.-based company whose online tools help teachers manage student and classroom data, has been acquired by educational technology provider Alma for undisclosed terms. The company had raised $650,000 in seed funding in 2012 led by True Ventures.

LoopPay, a two-year-old, Burlington, Ma., mobile payment company, has been acquired by Samsung Electronics for undisclosed terms. Samsung is reportedly planning on including LoopPay’s technology in an upcoming smartphone that will take on Apple and its Apple Pay system. LoopPay had raised $13 million from investors, including Visa.

Rocketmiles, a 2.5-year-old, Chicago-based hotel booking startup, is being snapped up by Priceline Group for a reported $20 million. According to Crunchbase, Rocketmiles had raised $8.5 million from investors, including Corazon Capital, Chicago Ventures, Atlas Venture, Link Ventures, Peterson Ventures, and August Capital.

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People

The electric-car battery maker A123 Systems has sued Apple for poaching a handful of its engineers to build a large-scale battery division — further evidence, suggests Reuters, that Apple may be developing a car.

A court filing from Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers as part of its defense against former partner Ellen Pao, shows at least five key points the firm plans to make, reports Recode. Among them, Kleiner Perkins will argue that it paid Pao better than some of her male peers. It will also, apparently, try making her look unreasonable. Says the brief: “Pao’s complaints that she did not sit in the front row at a meeting, was not sitting at a table during an event, her office was not on ‘the power corridor’ (whatever that means), she was not included on someone’s interview schedule, she was asked to take notes during a meeting — among many, many others — are simply not even close to being adverse employment actions sufficient to constitute retaliation.”

The White House has finally, officially, named DJ Patil as its first ever Chief Data Scientist and Deputy Chief Technology Officer for Data Policy.Wired says the idea is for Patil — who has worked inside LinkedIn, eBay, PayPal, Skype, and venture capital firm Greylock Partners—to press for new applications of big data across all areas of government, with a particular focus on healthcare.

Vice Media CEO Shane Smith is himself in the news for spending$300,000 for a dinner at the Prime Steakhouse at the Bellagio in Las Vegas during the CES trade show last month. Technology Crossover Ventures and A+E Networks each invested $250 million for 10 percent stakes in the company last year, though a guest of Smith says he used his more than $1 million in blackjack winnings to splash out on the meal.

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Data

At a conference in Munich last month, Business Insider founder Henry Blodget walked attendees through our ever-evolving digital landscape. His slides, just posted on Business Insider, are worth scanning.

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Job Listings

We told you yesterday that Merck Research Lab Ventures in Cambridge, Ma., is looking for a managing director. Turns out it’s looking for a principal, too.

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Essential Reads

The U.S. Marshals Service is planning to auction 50,000 bitcoins, worth nearly $12 million, on March 5, reports Dealbook. The auction will be the government’s third. The bitcoins were seized from the computer hardware of Ross Ulbricht, who was convicted earlier this month on charges related to the operation of Silk Road, an online bazaar for illegal drugs and other illicit activities.

Meet the startups focused on the so-called hyperloop, a “fifth mode” of travel that aspires to be as fast as a plane, cheaper than a train and available in any weather.

YouTube is clamping down on video creators who work directly with brands, forcing them instead to rely on Google’s sales team for deals.

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Detours

The king of the megamansion.

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Retail Therapy

Astropad: It turns your iPad into professional graphics tablet. More here.

Hi, everyone, happy Tuesday!

We still have lots of great content to share from last week’s INSIDER event. In fact, before we move on from what VC Keith Rabois had to tell attendees, we thought you might be interested in his thoughts on the growing number of venture firms trying to tackle multi-stage investing. (If you missed our first feature on Rabois yesterday, it’s here.)

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Top News in the A.M.

The Obama administration announced yesterday that it will permit the widespread export of armed drones for the first time to allied nations.

Ugh. A patent troll that claims to own Bluetooth just won a $15.7 million verdict against Samsung.

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Keith Rabois on the Tricky Business of Multi-Stage Investing

Last week, at a StrictlyVC event in San Francisco, investor-writer Semil Shah interviewed Keith Rabois of the Sand Hill Road firm Khosla Ventures. There, he asked Rabois how Khosla manages its multi-stage approach, and whether Rabois anticipates that more firms will raise different-stage funds to capitalize on today’s go-go market.

Rabois — who speaks at a rapid-fire clip that keeps listeners on their toes — made several interesting observations, most notably that investing across stages is a very tricky business that, done properly, involves different teams, different skills, different compensation, and different bets.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, he thinks Khosla Ventures has the model down.

Noting that the firm has a seed fund (“a very large seed fund, [at] $300 million plus,” he said), as well as a “main” fund that has historically been roughly $1 billion in size, he went on to explain that Khosla’s seed fund “isn’t necessarily designed to do the same things the main fund is designed to do. The seed fund is designed to take risky experiments and provide capital to entrepreneurs who want to prove things and validate that something is technically feasible . . .” Meanwhile, he said, the main fund is “not a growth fund,” but rather a “standard venture fund” that invests in standard Series A and B deals.

It’s an important distinction, he implied. It minimizes the potential for the conflicts of interest that can arise with the new breed of growth funds to be raised in recent years by Union Square Ventures, Foundry Group, Spark Capital, and Greycroft Partners, among others.

Said Rabois: “What I detect from other funds is everyone is trying to raise a growth fund. Everybody who is a good Series A or Series B investor is like, ‘Wow, we have great asymmetric information about how well these companies are doing. Wouldn’t it be great if we could invest more money and take advantage of that information and of that relationship with the entrepreneur?’”

It’s an understandable impulse, he said. Investors have long resorted to special purposes vehicles, which are time consuming and can be “painful” for the entrepreneur left managing his or her increasingly complicated cap table. But Rabois also warned of conflicts of interest, pointing to the storied firm Sequoia Capital to illustrate his point.

Sequoia “fundamentally [does] Series A and Series B [rounds], and they do Series A better than anybody else and have for a very long time,” Rabois said. But Sequoia’s growth-stage fund, which typically invests between $10 million and $100 million in companies, has “now cherry-picked a couple of those [early-stage] investments,” including, most famously, the messaging app WhatsApp.

That investment proved highly lucrative for Sequoia and its limited partners. In fact, WhatsApp’s exit last year was the largest ever for a still-private venture-backed company. (Sequoia invested $8 million in the company in 2011, then elbowed aside other investors to sink another $50 million into the company in 2013.)

Still, “if you do that too often,” Rabois continued, “no one wants to fund your companies because they see your selection bias. It’s the same signaling problem [that can plague earlier-stage companies] just applied [to maturing companies]. It’s very challenging to run a true growth fund and a Series A fund and fund some [of your startups] but not all, or fund X percent but not Y percent, without people reading into it.”

Obviously, said Rabois, “If Sequoia thinks a company is amazing, they’ll proactively offer from their growth fund to double down on it,” he continued. But “if they don’t, maybe I should be reading into that when I get an introduction from them to a Series B [deal]. Maybe I should be cynical about what’s going on at this company [laughs]. Why are you sending it to me? Why aren’t you funding it yourself?”

Before moving on to another topic, Shah asked Rabois if it were any less dangerous for larger funds to “move down the stack” and invest in younger companies than they’ve traditionally funded. The hedge fund Tiger Global Management, for example, has recently led a number of Series A deals, including, most recently, in the India-based news aggregation startup News In Shorts.

Rabois’s take: “I’m not sure it’s going to turn out that well. Early stage is just a very different skill set. Later stage is more science and early stage is more . . . I don’t think you can use metrics to assess most seed and Series A investments. The [metrics] just don’t exist, and you’re kidding yourself if you think that they do in any statistically valid way. You might be able to tease out something from some cohort, but [that’s it].”

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New Fundings

Apptimize, a two-year-old, Mountain View, Ca.-based company whose technology enables users to A/B test their native applications on Android and iOS platforms, has raised $4 million in Series A funding led by Costanoa Venture Capital. According to Crunchbase, the company had earlier raised at least $2.1 million, including from Google Ventures, Paul Graham, and Quora cofounder Charlie Cheever.

Axcient, an 8.5-year-old, Mountain View, Ca.-based data backup technology that’s cloud-based, has raised $25 million in funding led by Industry Ventures, with participation from earlier investors Allegis Capital, Peninsula Ventures, Scale Venture Partners and Thomvest Ventures. The round brings the company’s total funding to nearly $129.2 million, shows Crunchbase.

Coffee Meets Bagel, a 2.5-year-old, San Francisco-based dating app that aims to find one quality match for users each day, has raised $7.8 million in Series A funding led by earlier backer DCM Ventures, with participation from Question Ventures and Azure Capital. The company has now raised $11. 2 million altogether. TechCrunch has more here.

Cuseum, a 14-month-old, Boston-based startup whose context-aware mobile apps enhance the way visitors to museums, galleries and other cultural venues experience what they’re seeing, has raised $1.2 million in seed funding from a long list of investors. Among them is Foundry Group’s FG Angels, Atlas Venture’s Boston Syndicates, Seavest Capital Partners, Drummond Road Capital, and New Gen Partners. Numerous angel investors also participated, including Kayak cofounder Paul English.

Dianping Holdings, the 12-year-old, Shanghai-based company that is often likened to Yelp, is reportedly talking with investors, including Tencent Holdings, about an $800 million round that would value the company at $4 billion. According to the WSJ, other investors likely to participate in the round are Temasek Holdings, the private-equity firm Fountainvest Partners, and Chinese conglomerate Wanda Group. To date, the company has raised $162 million from investors, shows Crunchbase. Its backers include Google, Sequoia Capital, QiMing Venture Partners, and Lightspeed Venture Partners.

Eyegate Pharmaceuticals, a 17-year-old, Waltham, Ma.-based specialty-pharmaceutical company that develops medicines to treat eye diseases, has raised $4.1 million by listing on the OTCQB Venture Marketplace, reports VentureWire. The company sold 683,250 shares at an IPO price of $6 on Friday. The company — which originally planned to go public on Nasdaq late last summer — had raised at least $56 million from private investors, including Innoven Partners, Nexus Medical Partners,Ventech, and Medicis Capital.

FanDuel, a 5.5-year-old, New York-based real-money fantasy sports site, is weighing a new fundraising round that would value the company at $1 billion or more, reports Fortune. Last September, the company raised $70 million from investors, including Shamrock Capital Group, KKR, NBC Sports Ventures and earlier backers at what Fortune’s sources report was a sub-$400 million post-money valuation. To date, FanDuel has raised $86.2 million altogether.

Firefly Games, a months-old, L.A.-based mobile game maker, has raised $8 million from a handful of Asian investors, including the Chinese investment firms Skyocean International Holdings, Ceyuan Ventures, and GuangZhou WinHi. VentureBeat has more here.

Gilt Groupe, the eight-year-old, New York-based online shopping site, has raised a new round of roughly $50 million led by earlier backer General Atlantic, reports Recode. An unnamed new strategic partner and earlier backers also participated, according to the company. To date, Gilt has raised $286 million from investors, including Matrix Partners, DFJ, and TriplePoint Capital; it was expected to go public last year.

Glint, a 1.5-year-old, Redwood City, Ca.-based company that makes employee engagement software, has raised $15.5 million in new funding led by Norwest Venture Partners and Shasta Ventures, with participation from individual investors, including Ev Williams.

InDinero, a five-year-old, San Francisco-based company whose software helps small businesses track and manage their finances, has raised $7 million in new funding from Coyote Ridge Ventures, SaaS Capital,Streamlined Ventures, and individual investors. The round brings the company’s total funding to date to $10 million.

Message Systems, a 6.5-year-old, San Francisco-based email infrastructure company, has raised $27 million from Hercules Technology Growth Capital and earlier backers LLR Partners and NewSpring Capital. Separately, Message Systems secured a new $8 million line of credit for working capital purposes, also from Hercules. The company has now raised $73 million in equity and debt, shows Crunchbase.

NewCo, a nearly three-year-old, San Francisco-based events startup that brings attendees into the startups of host cities to observe how the companies work, has raised $1.75 million in seed funding from a long list of investors, including Obvious Ventures, True Ventures, Bloomberg Beta, Transmedia Capital, Freestyle Capital, and Foundry Fund. Angel investors Dave Morin, Andrew Anker, Owen Van Natta and numerous others also joined the round. NewCo cofounder John Battelle tells Fortune more about the company’s plans here.

Plumbr, a 3.5-year-old, Tallinn, Estonia-based company whose software automatically detects the root causes of Java performance issues, has raised $700,000 in new funding from Skype cofounder Jan Tallinn, angel investor Matt Arnold, and the founders of global mobile-payment firm Fortumo. The company had earlier raised $300,000, including from the former head of Skype Estonia, Sten Tamkivi.

Rainbow Medical, a five-year-old, Herzeliya, Israel-based early-stage life-sciences research and development firm, has raised $25 million in new funding from the China-based insurance firm Ping An, along the investment firm Yongjin, the telecommunications firm ZTE, and other China-based venture firms that specialize in biomedical investments. The company will use part of the capital to open an office in China. The Globes has more here.

RapidMiner, a seven-year-old, Cambridge, Mass.-based predictive analytics platform, has raised $15 million in Series B funding led by Ascent Venture Partners and Longworth Venture Partners. Earlybird Venture Capital and Open Ocean Capital, which led a $5 million Series A round for the company in late 2013, also participated in the new funding.

Sindeo, a 1.5-year-old, San Francisco-based online mortgage marketplace, has raised $5 million in Series A funding led by Chinese social-networking giant Renren.

Snapchat, the nearly four-year-old, Venice, Ca.-based mobile app for sending photos and videos that quickly disappear, is seeking up to $500 million in a new round of funding that would value the company in the neighborhood of $16 billion to $19 billion, Bloomberg is reporting. Snapchat disclosed late last year that it raised $485.6 million from 23 investors during the latter part of the year, including Yahoo, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and previous backers, including Lightspeed Venture Partners, Benchmark and Institutional Venture Partners. In late December, TechCrunch reported on that capital, saying it was raised at a post-money valuation of between $10 billion and $20 billion.

Springpath, a 2.5-year-old, Sunnyvale, Ca.-based company whose software platform aims to dramatically simplify how data storage is managed, has raised $34 million in funding across two previously undisclosed rounds from Sequoia Capital, New Enterprise Associates and Redpoint Ventures. The company, founded by VMware veterans, was formerly known as Storvisor.

Tailor Brands, a nine-month-old, Brooklyn, N.Y.-based startup that provides branding services like logo designs for companies, has raised $1.1 million in funding led by Disruptive, a venture fund with offices in New York and Tel Aviv.

Tealium, a seven-year-old, San Diego-based company whose tag management system helps its marketing customers collect information from web surfers, has raised $30.7 million in Series D funding led by Georgian Partners, with participation from Bain Capital Ventures and earlier backers Battery Ventures, Presidio Ventures, and Tenaya Capital. The company has now raised $77.9 million altogether.

TraceLink, a six-year-old, Woburn, Ma.-based supply-chain-security software company that works with pharmaceutical companies to stop the trafficking of counterfeit drugs, has raised $20 million in new funding led by Volition Capital, with participation from Fidelity Biosciences and earlier backer FirstMark Capital. The company has now raised roughly $30 million altogether.

WorldRemit, a five-year-old, London-based online money transfer startup, has raised $100 million at a reported $500 million valuation led by Technology Crossover Ventures. The round, notes Business Insider, comes less than 12 months after WorldRemit’s last, $40 million round, led by Accel Partners (which also participated in the company’s newest funding). The company, which competes squarely with traditional services like Western Union, has now raised $147.7 million altogether, shows Crunchbase.

New Funds

Finistere Ventures, a 10-year-old, San Diego-based venture firm that invests in food, energy and health-technology companies, has raised $37.5 million for its second investment fund and $20 million for a related “Feeder Fund,” show SEC filings.

Sequoia Capital is raising new funds for India and China, show new SEC filings: Sequoia Capital India IV and Sequoia Capital China Growth Fund III. The India fund has so far attracted $494.75 million, says its filing; the China fund has collected $650 million to date. Sequoia is among the most active venture investors in both countries.

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IPOs

Arcadia Biosciences, a 13-year-old, Davis, Ca.-based agricultural technology company, has filed to raise $86 million in an IPO. The company’s largest shareholders include Moral Compass Corp., which owns 77.1 percent of the company; Mandala Capital, which owns 11.5 percent; and Vilmorin & Cie, which owns 6.6 percent. According to Crunchbase, Arcadia has raised roughly $100 million from investors, including Saints Capital, BASF Venture Capital, and CMEA Capital.

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People

Ryan Hoover, founder and CEO of the site and email newsletter Product Hunt, has become one of the “most visible benefactors of the easy money fueling the tech boom,” reports Bloomberg. All that attention is “somewhat flattering,” Hoover tells the outlet, “but it’s just different because it’s never happened before . . . I have to be hyper aware about what I do and what I say.”

After nearly three years, the lawsuit against Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers by former partner Ellen Pao appears to be headed toward trial. The selection of jurors is scheduled for Monday in San Francisco Superior Court, and attorneys could make their opening arguments as early as next Tuesday, reports the WSJ (which dug through some court documents and published an exchange that hints at what’s to come). The case could still settle in the eleventh hour, notes the WSJ, but should it proceed, it’s expected to last about four weeks.

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Job Listings

The MRL Venture Fund, a venture group within Merck Research Laboratories, is looking for a managing director. The job is in Cambridge, Ma.

Google Ventures is preparing to set up shop in India, reports VentureWire, and it’s interviewing candidates to lead the effort (so start working those connections). The move follows earlier steps by Google to mentor India-based startups.

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Essential Reads

How Google determined Europe’s right to be forgotten.

Why too much finance is bad for the economy.

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Detours

Why you shouldn’t shop — for anything — while hungry.

The world’s most powerful close talker strikes again.

Airline flights around the world, visualized in WebGL.

A most impertinent cat.

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Retail Therapy

Torn between a man purse and fanny pack? We’ve got you covered with this number, fashioned from “semi-vegetable Tuscan leather.” (Note: we do not know what that means.)

Hi, and welcome back, everyone! Hope you had a great long weekend. (We realize that half of the Bay Area is still enjoying “ski week.” Thanks for reading in between runs.)

Also, some of you had asked if we had photos from last week’s INSIDER event. We’ve put together a short slide show here.

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Top News in the A.M.

“Microsoft is truly becoming open. A huge win for customers and the industry. And a huge loss for Microsoft jokes.” — Box CEO Aaron Levie

Apple has asked its suppliers to make up to six million units of its three Apple Watch models ahead of the product’s release in April, according to WSJ sources.

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Keith Rabois to Startups: Go Public Already

Last week, at a StrictlyVC event San Francisco, investor-writer Semil Shah interviewed Keith Rabois of Khosla Ventures in a wide-ranging chat. Among the issues raised was why companies are staying private longer, and whether founders, investors and the institutions that finance venture capitalists should be concerned.

Rabois – a former lawyer who’d earlier served as COO of Square, and was an executive at PayPal, LinkedIn, and Slide — didn’t equivocate. He said he thinks companies that delay their public offerings are making a mistake, and he traces the trend to “his PayPal friends” and specifically to PayPal cofounder Peter Thiel.

Said Rabois: “My views are a little bit more like [fellow VC] Bill Gurley’s than Marc Andreessen’s or Peter Thiel’s, [which is] that companies should go public earlier rather than later [for] a variety of reasons. One is that you actually get a lot of cash, and that cash gives you leverage to do things. Secondly, you have a currency, and you have a price on your currency and you can acquire things, which is very difficult to do as a private company.”

Continued Rabois, “Some of the reasons that people don’t want to go public are just excuses. The founder doesn’t want to have scrutiny, doesn’t want transparency.” Other oft-cited reasons that management teams give for pushing off an IPO include concerns over employee retention and flagging morale, said Rabois, who called all of them “bad reasons” not to go public.

As for the common complaint that employees begin obsessively watching their company’s ticker after a public offering, for example, Rabois noted that companies’ shares “go up and down” and that staffers can “get a little miffed and annoyed” by those gyrations. But he added that management can also respond proactively to those swings, saying that they’re ultimately among a long list of “soft things” that affect employee satisfaction.

“If you actually manage people, you know the things that are going to distract the people in your office [are things like] the food you serve,” Rabois told the gathered attendees. “I actually had a revolt [at a former company] because I took away bacon because it’s not good for you. All the engineers barfed [at the move] and I didn’t know why they were all annoyed at me until someone asked a question [about my decision] at a company meeting.”

As for retention, Rabois shared a story about the online review site Yelp, on whose board of directors Rabois served for roughly eight years. (He stepped down in January 2014.)

According to Rabois, Yelp co-founder and CEO Jeremy Stoppelman — who’d worked as an engineer at PayPal earlier in his career — “was very nervous about going public because he’d gotten all this advice from Peter [Thiel] and my PayPal friends,” who had themselves gone through a “searing experience” when PayPal staged its IPO in 2002.

“[PayPal] was one of two companies in technology that went public that year – the other being Netflix – we [filed our S-1] the day after [the terrorist attacks of] 9/11, and people had a lot of emotional reactions to all the things we went through,” said Rabois. “The state of Louisiana suspended us the week before we went public [owing to customer service complaints. We had numerous other issues]. So Peter and other friends of mine started telling everyone that it’s terrible to go public,” and the “Facebook crowd kind of bought into that,” he said.

So have a lot of other entrepreneurs, said Rabois, characterizing today’s accepted wisdom about the dangers of going public as a “derivative sort of consequence” of that “mess.”

It’s a shame, suggested Rabois, who said that once Yelp did go public, in March 2012, it became “the best thing ever for the company. Morale improved, actually, the year before we went public. Retention post going public is significantly better than the two years before going public. I’d argue that innovation [at Yelp] is better. We’ve also been able to acquire a couple of strategic assets, one in Europe, one just last week . . . one maybe could have been done as a private company but the others surely couldn’t have been.”

Said Rabois, “All the most innovative companies on the planet are public. Apple – nobody is more innovative than Apple — Amazon, Google. If you have the right founder, you can innovate. Every other answer is an excuse.”

New Fundings

Applicaster, a six-year-old, Tel Aviv-based online platform that helps TV broadcasters to engage with viewers via their mobile devices (including via games and polls), has raised $10.5 million in Series B funding led by Pitango Venture Capital, with participation from earlier backer 83North (formerly Greylock IL). The company has now raised $18.5 million altogether.

Carmudi, a two-year-old, Philippines-based car classifieds site focused on emerging markets, has raised $25 million in Series B funding from Asia Pacific Internet Group (a joint venture between Rocket Internet and Ooredoo), Holtzbrinck Ventures, Tengelmann Ventures, and an undisclosed private investor. The company has now raised $35 million altogether.

Invuity, an 11-year-old, San Francisco-based company that makes illumination and visualization products for minimally invasive surgical field applications, has raised $20 million in fresh funding led by Wellington Capital Management, with participation from earlier backers HealthCare Royalty Partners, InterWest Partners, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, and Valence Life Sciences. According to Crunchbase, the company has now raised at least $96.2 million to date.

Laguna Pharmaceuticals, a 6.5-year-old, Cleveland, Oh.-based company that’s been developing small molecule pharmaceuticals to treat atrial fibrillation, a common arrhythmia that can cause heart attacks and strokes, has raised $30 million Series B funding co-led by Versant Ventures and Frazier Healthcare. BioMed Ventures and earlier backer Sante Ventures also participated in the round. The company has raised $31.2 million altogether, shows Crunchbase.

Luxury Garage Sale, a four-year-old, Chicago-based online and offline upscale consignment startup, has raised $1.5 million in seed funding led by Chicago Ventures and angel investors, including Trunk Club cofounder Brian Spaly and Lon Chow of Apex Venture Partners.

Michelson Diagnostics, a 8.5-year-old, Kent, U.K.-based medical device company whose tissue-imaging system allows users to non-invasively see below the surface of the skin, has raised £2.5 million ($3.8 million) in a first tranche of Series B funding led by the medical technology company Smith & Nephew. Kent County Council also joined the round, as well as earlier backers, which include Octopus Investments, Catapult Ventures, and angel Investors. The company has now raised $10.8 million altogether, shows Crunchbase.

Mobeewave, a 3.5-year-old, Montreal, Quebec-based company whose technology turns NFC-enabled mobile devices into point-of-sale systems without additional hardware, has raised $6.5 million in Series A funding led by SBT Venture Capital.

News In Shorts, a 1.5-year-old, New Delhi-based news platform that provides web and mobile users with 60-word synopses of stories from a wide variety of outlets, has raised $4 million in Series A funding led by Tiger Global Management. The Japan-based firm Rebright Partners and earlier investors, including Flipkart founders Sachin Bansal and Binny Bansal, also joined the round. Two weeks ago, Bangalore-based Newshunt, a similar news aggregation app, raised $40 million in Series C funding led by the New York-based hedge fund Falcon Edge Capital. TechCrunch has more here.

Notey, a two-year-old, Hong Kong-based startup that promises to direct users to the best blogs about more than 500,000 topics, has raised $1.6 million in seed funding from a long list of angel investors, including Infoseek and CoinTrust founder Steve Kirsch, Xiaomi VP Hugo Barra, and Hootsuite CEO and founder Ryan Holmes. More here.

RoboCV, a 2.5-year-old, Moscow-based maker of warehouse robots, has raised $3 million in Series A funding from Almaz Capital, Columbus Nova Technology Partners, I2BF Global Ventures, LETA Capital and VTB Capital. The company has raised $3.7 million altogether, shows Crunchbase.

WeTransfer, a five-year-old, Amsterdam-based cloud service that enables users to send files to each other that are too large to send as email attachments, has raised $25 million in its first funding round from Highland Capital Partners Europe.

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New Funds

500 Startups, the five-year-old, Mountain View, Ca.-based investment firm and accelerator known for funding startups across the world, has launched a $10 million fund called 500 TukTuks that will be dedicated to funding startups in Thailand. TechCrunch has more here.

Shunwei Capital Partners, a four-year-old, Beijing-based venture capital firm focused on early to mid-stage start-ups in China’s Internet and technology industry, has closed a RMB1 billion ($160 million) RMB fund. Last year, the firm had separately raised $525 million for two new venture funds that it closed in June. Shunwei was created by Lei Jun, founder of Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi, and Tuck Lye Koh, a Stanford grad and investor who’d worked previously at Deutsche Bank and Starr International. The new RMB fund brings the firm’s total assets under management to $910 million. China Money Network has more here.

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IPOs

Valeritas, an 8.5-year-old, Bridgewater, N.J.-based medical-device company that’s focused on treating Type 2 diabetes, could raise up to $90 million in an IPO, according to its newly filed S-1. One of the company’s biggest outside shareholders is the private equity firm Welsh, Carson, Anderson, & Stowe, which owns 11.6 percent of the company.

ViewRay, an 11-year-old, Cleveland, Oh.-based company that’s been developing an advanced radiation therapy technology to treat cancer, has filed to raise up to $69 million in an IPO. The company’s biggest outside shareholders include Aisling Capital, Beacon Bioventures, and OrbiMed, which each own 21.3 percent of the company; and Kearny Venture Partners, which owns 12.2 percent.

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Exits

Panaya, an 8.5-year-old, Menlo Park, Ca.-based company whose software helps reduce the cost and risk of making changes to ERP systems, has been acquired by Infosys for $200 million. Panaya had raised roughly $60 million from investors, including Benchmark, Gemini Israel Ventures, Battery Ventures, Hassno Plattner Ventures, the Tamares Group, and Israel Growth Partners. Geektime has more here.

Oneflare, a local services directory based in Sydney, Australia, has acquired WOMO, which claims to be the country’s largest customer reviews site. The amount of the deal was undisclosed. TechCrunch has more here.

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People

Pavel Durov, founder of the Russian social network VKontakte, talks with Vice about being forced to part ways with his company — and with Russia. “I am very happy that my life/career in Russia is over.”

Jony Ive, the famed Apple senior VP of design, granted access to Apple’s industrial design studio to Ian Parker of the New Yorker, who reports that “team members work twelve hours a day and can’t discuss work with friends. Each project has a lead designer, but almost everyone contributes to every project, and shares the credit.” As for Ive himself, Parker concludes, “It’s hard to mount a challenge to the consensus that Ive, however vexed and self-conscious, is a good egg.”

Even by today’s standards, that was fast: Dan Lyons is leaving his new post as editor of Valleywag just six weeks into the job.

President Obama returned to the White House last night after a busy weekend in California. Among his stops: talking with Recode’s Kara Swisher and playing golf at Porcupine Creek in Rancho Mirage, owed by Oracle cofounder Larry Ellison.

New York Post sources suggest that Snapchat cofounder and CEO Evan Spiegel is interested in snapping up Scott Borchetta’s Big Machine label, which houses Taylor Swift.

Yahoo laid off between 100 and 200 employees last Thursday, and staffers knew it was coming. The tell-tale sign, they tell Business Insider: conference rooms that were suddenly reserved for HR, with all previously scheduled meetings in the rooms canceled.

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Data

What’s getting funded on Kickstarter, via the data visualization company Silk.

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Job Listings

Strava, maker of the popular fitness training app, is looking for a CFO. The job is in San Francisco. Send resumes to patricia at redfinsearch dot com.

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Essential Reads

Apple‘s electric car dreams may bring Detroit’s auto industry nightmares, reports Bloomberg.

Kaspersky Lab, the Russian cybersecurity firm, says the United States has found a way to permanently embed surveillance and sabotage tools in computers in countries including Iran, Russia, Pakistan and China.

The Atlantic investigates just how little traffic Twitter actually contributes to websites.

Yik Yak‘s growth has flatlined in the months following a giant Sequoia Capital investment in its business. We flagged this issue in a piece last week, but GigaOm takes the time to ask what’s happening.

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Detours

A tour of Dubai, from top to bottom.

Seven things Greek Americans know to be true (starring — yes — our cousins’ cousin).

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Retail Therapy

We like these canvas bags.

Happy Friday, everyone!

Wow, last night was fun. Thanks to everyone who came out to our first INSIDER series event. We loved seeing so many of you who we know and meeting other longtime readers in person for the first time. Next World Capital, you were phenomenal hosts. Craig Hanson, special thanks to you for your time and generosity. Ballou PR and Standish Management, thank you for being terrific partners. We also cannot say enough about our amazing speaker line-up. We would head out any day of the week to see Keith Rabois, Naval Ravikant or Strava CEO Mark Gainey talk about their work and the broader industry; we’re confident that everyone at last night’s program felt the same way. Much thanks, too, to Semil Shah of Haystack and Greg Gretsch of Sigma West, who managed their interviews with aplomb.

We’ve run out of time this morning for a column, but stay tuned for some great content from the event, including pictures, interviews and sound files (if you’d rather listen to the interviews at your leisure). We won’t be publishing on Monday — Presidents’ Day — but we’ll see you back here bright and early Tuesday!

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Top News in the A.M.

Google executives Eric Schmidt and Larry Page; Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer; and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg have declined invitations to attend President Obama’s cybersecurity summit in Palo Alto, Ca., today, the latest in a string of signs that relations between the White House and Silicon Valley have frayed over privacy and other issues.

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New Fundings

CloudVelox, a five-year-old, Santa Clara, Ca.-based company whose business centers on hybrid cloud disaster recover and migration, has raised $15 million in Series C funding from Cisco Investments, along with previous backers Mayfield Fund, Pelion Venture Partners, and Third Point Ventures.

Cortendo AB, a 19-year-old, Goteborg, Sweden-based biopharmaceutical company that develops treatments for orphan endocrine diseases, has raised $26.4 million from investors just five months after raising $11 million. Investors in the combined round include RA Capital Management, New Enterprise Associates, Broadfin Capital, and HealthCap.

Gummicube, a three-year-old, San Jose, Ca.-based company whose platform aims to provide developers with more app store intelligence, has raised $830,000 from Golden Seeds and F50 Venture Partners. VentureBeat has more here.

Lyft, the three-year-old, San Francisco-based ride-hailing service, is in talks to raise about $250 million in new financing at a $2 billion valuation, reports Dealbook. The company has raised $332.5 million to date, including from Floodgate, Founders Fund, K9 Ventures, Alibaba Group, and Andreessen Horowitz. Its much larger rival, Uber, has raised roughly $4.9 billion. Depending on investor interest, Lyft could seek to raise up to $500 million, says Dealbook.

Moda Operandi, a 4.5.-year-old, New York-based online luxury fashion retailer that allows members to pre-order ready-to-wear accessories and jewelry, has raised $60 million in funding led by Fidelity Investments. The company has now raised $78.4 million altogether, shows Crunchbase. Others of its investors include LVMH, Condé Nast, Manatt Venture Fund, New Atlantic Ventures, RRE Ventures, and New Enterprise Associates.

Practo Technologies, a 6.5-year-old, Bangalore, India-based company whose health care platform connects patients with doctors’ appointments, has raised $30 million in Series B funding from new investor Matrix Partners and earlier backer Sequoia Capital. The company has now raised $34 million to date, shows Crunchbase.

Saguna Networks, a six-year-old, Hazafon, Israel-based mobile broadband tech developer, has raised an undisclosed amount of money from strategic investors SoftBank Ventures Korea Corp. and Akamai Technologies.

Unchained Labs, a three-month-old, Pleasanton, Ca.-based company with a product to help drug researchers analyze the stability of proteins, has raised $25 million in funding from Novo Ventures, Canaan Partners and TPG Biotech. The San Francisco Business Times has more here.

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New Funds

August Capital, the 20-year-old, Menlo Park, Ca.-based firm, announced yesterday that it has raised $450 million for its seventh fund, which will be stage agnostic. Longtime partner David Hornik has more here.

Polaris Partners, the 19-year-old investor in life-sciences and technology startups, with offices in Boston, San Francisco, and Dublin, Ireland, has closed on two new investment vehicles, reports VentureWire: Polaris Partners VII LP, the firm’s main fund, recently closed at $435.6 million; a side fund affiliated with the main fund closed at $30 million.

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IPOs

Yesterday, Invitae, a 4.5-year-old, San Francisco-based genetic diagnostics company, sold 6.35 million shares at $16 per share in its IPO, raising $101.6 million. Its shares closed the day at $17.05 apiece.

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Exits

AlertMe, an 8.5-year-old smart energy and home monitoring system that enables users to control home appliances and devices, has been acquired by one of its investors, British Gas, in a deal worth £65 million ($100 million). AlertMe had raised $36.8 million from investors, including Index Ventures, VantagePoint Capital Partners, SET Venture Partners and Good Energies. TechCrunch has more here.

Automated Insights, a 7.5-year-old, Durham, N.C.-based company that sells its natural language generation technology to companies in business intelligence, media, sports, finance, and more, has been acquired for undisclosed terms by another Durham company, Stats, which is a sports data company backed by Vista Equity Partners. According to Crunchbase, Automated Insights had raised at least $10.8 million from investors, including IDEA Fund Partners, OCA Ventures, Court Square Ventures, Steve Case, Samsung Ventures, and Osage Venture Partners.

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People

David Carr, the brilliant media critic – and advocate — died at age 58 last night, shortly after speaking at an event at the New School in New York. He will be missed by many.

Tripp Jones has been promoted to general partner at the Sand Hill RoadAugust Capital. Jones joined the firm in 2011 after spending four years at the private equity firm Spectrum Equity Investors. Earlier in his career, he worked as an analyst at JMP Securities and BMO Capital Markets.

Yesterday, at a technology conference, TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington asked Senator Rand Paul about a vaccine-related comment he made last month to CNBC, when Rand told an interviewer: “I’ve heard many tragic cases of walking, talking normal children who wound up with profound mental disorders after vaccines.” Said Arrington to Rand: “You seem convinced that there’s a link between autism and vaccines. You didn’t actually say that ____.” More here.

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Job Listings

SVB Capital, the venture arm of SVB Financial Group, is looking for an associate. The job is in Menlo Park, Ca.

—–

Essential Reads

The five-year-old Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi is entering the U.S. market, reports the WSJ. At an event yesterday, the company said it’s bringing its mi.com e-commerce site to American consumers to sell accessories like earphones and fitness bands. “We are not a handset company,” said Xiaomi co-founder Bin Lin. “We are an Internet company.”

The arc of company life, and how to prolong it.

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Detours

How one stupid tweet blew up Justine Sacco’s life.

The most intense military training exercises from around the world.

Extremely high-resolution, time-lapse videos of Rio De Janeiro. (Thanks, David!)

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Retail Therapy

New era, new View-Master.

The Adidas Yeezy Boost sneaker. We like it.

Hi, happy Thursday, everyone!

We have a slightly abbreviated version of the newsletter today (event prep), but we’ll be back in full form soon.

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Top News in the A.M.

Pinterest is unveiling a new product today that could make it easier to discover new smartphone apps without even having to go into Apple’s App Store. The New York Times has the story.

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New Fundings

ActionSprout, a four-year-old, Bellingham, Wa.-based company that makes software tools for nonprofits looking to promote themselves on Facebook, has raised $1.7 million in seed funding led by Oregon Angel Fund, with participation from Bellingham Angel Fund, Portland Seed Fund and other West Coast investors.

Bivarus, a five-year-old, Durham, N.C.-based health-care analytics company, has raised $1.9 million in funding led by Excelerate Health Ventures, with participation from returning angel investors. The company has now raised $2.3 million to date.

Bill.com, an 8.5-year-old, Palo Alto, Ca.-based on-demand accounts payable application for CPAs and small and mid-size businesses, has raised $50 million in new funding from Silicon Valley Bank, along with earlier backers DCM Ventures, Scale Venture Partners, August Capital, Napier Park Global Capital, and Commerce Ventures. The company has now raised $122.6 million altogether, shows Crunchbase. Silicon Valley Business Journal has more here.

Changing Environments, a year-old, Cambridge, Ma.-based startup that’s making Internet-connected, solar-powered park benches that can charge phones and be mounted with sensors to monitor traffic and air quality, has raised more than $1 million in a seed round. Its backers include Atlas Venture; E14 Fund, a fund affiliated with M.I.T.; and Where Angels Fund. Venture Capital Dispatch has more here.

Cidara Therapeutics, a 1.5-year-old, San Diego-based company that’s developing anti-infectives and immunotherapies for fungal and other infections, has raised $42 million in Series B funding from undisclosed investors. The company has now raised at least $74 million, shows Crunchbase. Its earlier backers include 5AM Ventures, Aisling Capital, Frazier Healthcare and InterWest Partners.

Conductor, a seven-year-old, New York-based marketing-software startup, has raised $27 million in fresh funding led by Catalyst Investors, with participation from Blue Cloud Ventures and earlier backers FirstMark Capital, Matrix Partners and Investor Growth Capital. The company has raised $60.6 million to date, shows Crunchbase.

Jet, the year-old, Montclair, N.J.-based e-commerce company founded by entrepreneur Marc Lore, has raised $140 million in new funding led by Bain Capital Ventures, with participation from Accel Partners, Coatue Management, General Catalyst Partners, Goldman Sachs, Google Ventures, MentorTech Ventures, New Enterprise Associates, Norwest Venture Partners, Silicon Valley Bank, Temasek, Thrive Capital and other investors. The investment, in the form of debt that is convertible into equity, is expected to value the young e-commerce company at nearly $600 million. The WSJ has more here.

InterviewJet, 1.5-year-old, New York-based members-only hiring platform designed to introduce experienced engineers with employers who have 72 hours to lock down an interview with each candidate, has raised $750,000 in seed funding from Mitchell Martin, an IT and healthcare staffing company. Now the company just has to find some engineers. TechCrunch has more here.

Laurel & Wolf, a year-old, L.A.-based interior design platform that connects professional designers with customers, has raised $4.4 million in Series A funding led by CRV, with participation from earlier backers. The company has now has raised $5.5 million in total, including from Karlin Ventures, Upside Partnership, and Draper & Associates.

Metaps, a 7.5-year-old, Singapore-based app monetization platform, has raised $36 million in Series C funding from new and earlier backers that aren’t being named. According to Crunchbase, the company has now raised $52.5 million altogether, including from Fidelity Growth Partners Asia, Mitsui Sumitomo Insurance Company, Sansei Capital Investment, and Nippon Venture Capital.

Reserve Media, a year-old, New York-based restaurant-booking and payment app startup, is raising a $15 million Series A round led by Expa Capital and Human Ventures Capital, with numerous angel investors participating, including entertainers Jared Leto, Jon Favreau, andWill.i.am, as well as earlier backers like Advancit Capital, First Round Capital, Lowercase Capital, Sherpa Ventures, and new backers SV Angel, Venture51 and Visionnaire Ventures.

WedPics, a four-year-old, Raleigh, N.C.-based online and mobile platform that encourages wedding participants to share photos, has increased the size of its Series B round, closing on $6.5 million, including from Barbara Corcoran Venture Partners. TechCrunch has more here.

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New Funds

Carrick Capital Partners, a 2.5-year-old, San Francisco-based tech focused investment firm, has raised $275 million for its second fund, up from the $180 million it raised for its debut vehicle. Carrick invests across stages; among its most recent bets is Everspring, an Evanston, Il.-based company that helps universities design and deliver their classes online.

Emergence Capital Partners, the 12-year-old, San Mateo, Ca.-based venture firm, has closed its fourth fund with $335 million. (“Not too big and not too small,” says the firm of its size.) Emergence undoubtedly could have raised much more. It’s been a hit factory for its limited partners, with bets that include Salesforce, SuccessFactors, Yammer, Box, and Veeva Systems, whose 2013 IPO produced an especially enormous return for the firm.

Zetta Venture Partners, the two-year-old, San Francisco-based venture fund, has closed its debut fund with $60 million — double its original target, founder and managing director Mark Gorenberg tells Venture Capital Dispatch. Gorenberg was long a managing director at Hummer Winblad Venture Partners. He’s now running Zetta — which is zeroing in on data analytics startups — with Ash Fontana, who Gorenberg plucked out of AngelList to be a managing director. (Fontana had created AngelList’s first startup index fund.)

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Exits

Expedia is buying Orbitz for about $1.6 billion in cash. This comes after Expedia announced that it was buying Travelocity last month for $280 million. Skift has more here.

MakeMeReach, a six-year-old, advertising startup that lets mobile app developers extend ad campaigns to social media platforms, has been acquired by the Tel Aviv-based media company Perion Network for undisclosed terms that various reports have pegged at between $12 million and $15 million. Crunchbase shows the company had raised at least $4.4 million in funding, including from Alven Capital, UFG Private Equity, and Groupe Siparex.

The Niche Project, a 1.5-year-old, New York-based startup that connects Internet stars with big-brand advertisers, has been acquired by Twitter for roughly $30 million, according to Recode’s sources. The company had raised $3.1 million in seed funding from a long list of investors, including Slow Ventures, BoxGroup, and entrepreneur Bryan Goldberg.

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People

Longtime Cisco CEO John Chambers ran four miles yesterday morning, lifted weights, then, in an earnings call, told the world he was going to crush the “white label” efforts of Facebook and numerous startups trying to build their own, new, less expensive computer networks. He also said VMWare had better watch its back. “VMware is a competitor,” he said. “We’re going to view them as a competitor and we will beat them and have fun doing it. I wish I was a better person, but I’m not.”

Elise Clougherty, the Stanford graduate who recently filed an explosive lawsuit against her former boyfriend and mentor, Joe Lonsdale, began telling her side of the story seven months ago to New York Times Magazine writer Emily Bazelon. That report — which includes interviews with Lonsdale — is out this morning.

Murray Cox, a software engineer-turned-photographer from Brooklyn, has launched a site that claims to map out every Airbnb listing in New York City — including details that could help lawmakers suss out illegal rentals. USA Today has the story here.

Indranil (“Indy”) Guha, has been promoted to partner at Bain Capital Ventures, which he joined in 2007. He’ll be working out of Bain’s new San Francisco office. Guha was previously a consultant at the Monitor Group. Bain Capital Ventures, the 15-year-old offshoot of Bain Capital, opened its first West Coast office in Palo Alto, Ca., in 2011. The firm also has offices in Boston and New York. Venture Capital Dispatch has more here.

Former Motorola Mobility CFO Vanessa Wittman has joined Dropbox as its CFO, reports Recode, a move that suggests an IPO can’t be too far off. Dropbox’s former CFO, Sujay Jaswa, who’d joined the firm from New Enterprise Associates roughly a year ago, is “moving back into some kind of unspecified investing job, but will also remain a special adviser to the company,” says Recode.

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Job Listings

Twitter is looking to hire a business development manager who will help the company build and scale its commerce initiatives.

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Data

The law firm Cooley has rolled out a new data visualization feature that allows visitors to drill down on data gleaned from thousands of the deals Cooley has worked on from the beginning of 2009 through 2014’s end.

The law firm Fenwick & West has released its fourth quarter venture capital survey, and it’s also worth a look. The big takeaway: valuations were up, up and away.

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Essential Reads

Good news: Facebook now lets you designate a “legacy contact” for your digital afterlife.

This new Tesla battery will power your home, and maybe the electric grid, too.

Fitbit is reportedly facing new complaints over skin irritation by its customers. (The company’s response: People, you need to take the thing off once in a while.)

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Detours

“This like the best first date I’ve ever been on.”

A modern guide to the love letter.

Ultra-fast robots arranging batteries.

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Retail Therapy

The Taurus First 24 Kit. No one will accuse you of being ill-prepared for the apocalypse.

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