Hi, everyone, happy Thursday!

Sorry for the late send — we were on several back-to-back calls this a.m. Also, no column today. More tomorrow!

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Top News in the A.M.

Nasdaq has agreed to buy SecondMarket to combine forces with the Nasdaq Private Market, reports TechCrunch. Terms of the deal aren’t being disclosed. The group will facilitate the exchange of shares for private companies, including DocuSign, Pinterest, Shazam and Tango. Bill Siegel, present CEO of SecondMarket, will lead the expanded Nasdaq Private Market business, which will be headquartered in both San Francisco and New York.

Amazon‘s one-hour delivery service, Prime Now, has hit the Bay Area.

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New Fundings

Ampy, a 1.5-year-old, Chicago-based kinetic charging battery startup — it makes a wearable spare battery pack charged by human movement — has raised $875,000 in seed funding led by Clean Energy Trust and NewGen Ventures, with participation from numerous angel investors. TechCrunch hasmore here.

Bownty, a 4.5-year-old, Copenhagen, Denmark-based aggregator that collects, sorts and distributes deals from more than 100 deal sites in approximately 1,200 cities in Europe, has raised €3.4 million (roughly $3.9 million) in Series A funding. Backers include HOWZAT Partners, SEED Capital, and Bownty chairman Pia Vemmelund. More here.

Clutter, a 2.5-year-old, L.A.-based high-tech self-storage service, has raised $9 million in Series A funding led by Sequoia Capital. The company has now raised $12.3 million altogether. The WSJ has more here.

DigiTour Media, a five-year-old, L.A.-based company that produces concerts and other live events that feature social media stars, has raised an undisclosed amount of funding from Viacom, LionTree Entertainment and Slow Ventures. More here.

Honestbee, a year-old, Singapore-based on-demand grocery concierge and delivery service startup, has raised $15 million in funding led by Formation 8, with participation from Pejman Mar Ventures, Gideon Yu and Owen Van Natta. Tech In Asia has more here.

Insureon, a Chicago-based online provider of small business insurance, has raised $31 million in new funding led by Oak HC/FT, with participation from earlier backer Accretive. The Chicago Tribune has more here.

Kaleo Software, a three-year-old, El Segundo, Ca.-based enterprise cloud platform for capturing and sharing employee expertise, has raised $7 million in funding led by OMERS Ventures, with participation from Saturn Partners. More here.

MoneyForward, a Tokyo, Japan-based online financial management startup, has raised JPY 1.6 billion (US$13.3 million) in Series C funding from SBI Holdings, Shizuoka Bank, Yamaguchi Financial Group, Toho Bank, Fenox Venture Capital, Mitsubishi UFJ Trust and Banking Corporation, and Mitsui & Co. Tech in Asia has more here. The company had raised a separate,$12.6 million round, less than a year ago.

Numerify, a three-year-old, Cupertino, Ca.-based company that sells IT business analytics applications to companies, has raised $37.5 million in Series C funding led by Tenaya Capital. Silicon Valley Bank and Four Rivers Group also joined the round, along with earlier backers Sequoia Capital and Lightspeed Venture Partners. The company has now raised more than $60 million altogether. Vator has more here.

Opinio, a six-month-old, Bangalore, India-based hyperlocal delivery startup, has raised $7 million in Series A funding from Accel Partners, Sands Capital and the logistics firm Delvhivery. Tech in Asia has more here.

Periscope Data, a 3.5-year-old, San Francisco-based startup that has built a platform for data scientists to create fast, detailed and customized visualizations, has raised $9.5 million in Series A funding led by by DFJ, along with participation from earlier backers AngelPad, Susa Ventures and Eric Schmidt’s Innovation Endeavors. TechCrunch has more here.

Playful Corp., a three-year-old, McKinney, Tex.-based virtual-reality gaming studio founded by Paul Bettner, cofounder of the once-popular mobile game “Words with Friends” (it sold to Zynga for a bundle in 2012), has raised $25 million from undisclosed investors. The WSJ has more here.

Portal Instruments, a three-year-old, Cambridge, Ma.-based drug delivery company focused on injectable biologics for chronic diseases, has raised $25 million in Series B funding led by 5AM Ventures. Earlier backer Sanofi Sunrise also joined the round. Med Device Online has more here.

Silk Road Medical, an eight-year-old, Sunnyvale, Ca.-based company that makes medical devices for neurovascular diseases, has raised $57 million in equity and debt financing. CRG led the debt financing. It also participated in the company’s equity funding, with Warburg Pincus and The Vertical Group. Fierce Medical Devices has more here.

Squad, a months-old, New York-based app that connects groups of friends together (including around events or nights out), has raised $1.7 million in seed funding led by Lerer Hippeau Ventures and First Round Capital. TechCrunch has more here.

Sunnova, a three-year-old, Houston, Tex.-based private residential solar service company, has raised $300 million in debt arranged by Credit Suisse and equity funding led by Triangle Peak Partners. Other equity investors include business development companies sponsored by Franklin Square Capital Partners. Sunnova had raised another giant round — $250 million — last November. More here.

The18, a 1.5-year-old, Boulder, Co.-based online content and commerce platform for soccer enthusiasts, has raised $1 million in funding from unnamed individual investors. More here.

Hi, everyone, hope your Wednesday is off to an auspicious start!

We’re racing out the door a little early for an interview; please send any and all complaints to trumpforpresident@aol.com.

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Top News in the A.M.

JP Morgan is about to make it easier for retail investors to gain access at the IPO price. The bank is announcing today that it will partner with Motif Investing to give ordinary investors the option to purchase shares in IPOs that it manages.

Morgan Stanley downgraded Twitter stock to “underweight” this morning, with a price target of just $24 — down from the roughly $30 at which it was trading. (As of this writing it has fallen just 4 percent to $29.50.)

Apple and Dropbox said yesterday that they do not support a controversial cybersecurity bill that critics say would give the government new powers to spy on Americans.

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Howdy Raises $1.5 Million from Top VCs to Build Apps for Slack

Despite a checkered history with online platforms, developers are always looking for the next big distribution model and a small but growing number is betting Slack, the popular group-messaging platform, is the way to go.

One such startup, Austin-based Howdy, may be the first to nab venture funding based largely on that vision. Specifically, the company, which has developed a customizable chat bot application that runs automated tasks for teams on Slack, has just nabbed $1.5 million in venture funding from Bloomberg Beta, True Ventures, a small angel group called Outlier and numerous individual investors.

Howdy is first and foremost a time saver for now, especially when it comes to meetings. For example, after connecting to Slack, the app can simultaneously message each member of a team, collecting status updates that can be archived and viewed by everyone. The idea: to keep meetings from turning into one long catch-up session and enabling attendees to focus on decision-making instead. (Worth noting: Howdy can also be used to collect everyone’s lunch orders. It’s up to the team using it.)

Howdy co-founder Ben Brown says the still-in-beta company will eventually charge customers on a monthly basis but that it’s a “little early to know the details.” What he says he does know is that providing applications, content and services via messaging applications is becoming a “huge opportunity.”

More here.

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New Fundings

Hi, happy Tuesday, everyone!

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Top News in the A.M.

Venture capital funds should face less red tape across the 28-nation European Union so there can be more of them and in more regions, EU Financial Services Commissioner Jonathan Hill said at a conference earlier today in Brussels. Here’s what he has in mind.

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Crisis Experts Debate Amazon’s Latest Lob

When a New York Times piece came out in August that described Amazon’s workplace culture as “bruising,” Amazon cofounder and CEO Jeff Bezos acted quickly to dampen the story’s blow. He wrote a memo to employees saying the account “doesn’t describe the Amazon I know” and pointed out a separate piece by an Amazon engineer who described the Times article as “utter reader bait.”

It was a smart approach, suggests Marina Ein, whose Washington, D.C.-based crisis communications firm has represented Michael Milken and Dominique Strauss-Kahn, among others. “I thought the company was acting on very good advice,” she says.

More confounding to Ein is a new post authored by former journalist and current Amazon spokesman Jay Carney, in which Carney not only systematically attacks the now two-month-old Times piece for being imbalanced but works to undermine several former employees quoted in the story.

One is former site merchandiser Bo Olson, who spent roughly 20 months at Amazon and had told the Times for its story, “You walk out of a conference room and you’ll see a grown man covering his face . . . Nearly every person I worked with, I saw cry at their desk.”

Wrote Carney of Olson today: “His brief tenure at Amazon ended after an investigation revealed he had attempted to defraud vendors and conceal it by falsifying business records. When confronted with the evidence, he admitted it and resigned immediately.”

“I think it’s crazy,” says Ein of Carney’s unexpected missive.

More here.

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New Fundings

AgentDesks, a year-old, San Francisco-based mobile-first CRM for real estate agents that helps realtors track tasks, find property leads, import contacts, and store notes, has raised $2.95 million in seed funding from Sierra Ventures, Cota Capital and Vegas Tech Fund, among others. The company was incubated at the accelerator program, AngelPad, late last year. The Economic Times has more here.

Amino, a two-year-old, San Francisco-based digital healthcare startup that’s been quietly amassing a database of U.S. consumer healthcare data since late 2013 to make it easier for consumers to locate a doctor or specialist with experience treating their condition, has raised $19.4 million in pre-launch funding from Accel Partners, CRV, Rock Health and more than a dozen individual investors. TechCrunch has much more here.

Attune Technologies, a six-year-old, Singapore-based startup that makes cloud-based software for hospitals and labs, has raised $10 million in Series B funding from Qualcomm Ventures and returning investor Norwest Venture Partners. TechCrunch has more here.

Illusive Networks, a 1.5-year-old, Tel Aviv, Israel-based cybersecurity company focused around so-called deception technology, has raised $22 million in Series B funding led by new investor New Enterprise Associates, with participation from new and earlier backers, including Bessemer Venture Partners, Marker LLC, Citi Ventures, and Eric Schmidt’s Innovation Endeavors.

Mobvoi, a three-year-old, Beijing, China-based company specializing in mobile voice search technology, has raised an undisclosed amount of Series C, including from Google, which has become a minority shareholder. Altogether, the company has raised $75 million to date. TechCrunch has more here.

Redox, a 1.5-year-old, Madison, Wi.-based health care software development tool-maker, has raised $3.5 million in  funding round led by .406 Ventures, with participation from Flybridge Capital Partners, and HealthX Ventures, a venture capital fund that formed in Madison to invest in digital health companies. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel has more here.

Stitch Labs, a four-year-old, San Francisco-based maker of online inventory control software, has raised $15 million in Series B funding led by Triangle Peak Partners. The company has now raised $23 million altogether. More here.

Hi, everyone, happy Monday! No column today, but we have some good stuff coming your way tomorrow, so stay tuned.

Also, congratulations to our co-conspirator in StrictlyVC events and our favorite guest editor, investor Semil Shah, on his beautiful week-old twin sons. We’re so happy for his family.

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Top News in the A.M.

The Transportation Department plans to announce today that it wants to soon require registration for all unmanned drones “except for toys and those with minimal safety risk,” according to the WSJ. Its concern: That the devices increasingly pose a threat to people on the ground and in the air.

This morning, Amazon has come out swinging hard at the mid-August New York Times piece that called the company’s workplace culture “bruising.”

Hundreds of iOS applications have just been pulled from the App Store, following a report from analytics service SourceDNA, which uncovered a group of applications that were extracting users’ personally identifiable information, including their email associated with their Apple ID, device and peripheral serial numbers, and a list of apps installed on their phone.

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New Fundings

AppSheet, a three-year-old, Seattle-based startup whose tool lets companies build their own custom mobile apps without writing code, has raised $1.5 million in seed funding from New Enterprise Associates. The company has now raised $2.1 million altogether. GeekWire has more here.

Ensighten, a six-year-old, San Jose, Ca.-based maker of enterprise tag management software to enable companies to manage their sites more effectively,has raised $53 million in private equity and debt financing. Insight Venture Partners, Lead Edge Capital, Mack Capital and Volition Capitalprovided the equity; Silicon Valley Bank provided the debt. AdExchanger hasmore here.

HealthiPASS, a two-year-old, Chicago-based patient check-in and payments company, has raised an undisclosed amount of Series A funding led by OCA Ventures, with participation from Beverly Capital and MPG Equity Partners.More here.

StreetHub, a two-year-old, London-based startup that helps independent retailers be discovered and sell online, has raised $2.6 million in new funding led by earlier investor Octopus Ventures, with participation from Index Ventures and Playfair Capital. TechCrunch has more here.

TinderBox, a five-year-old, Indianapolis Ia.-based company that sells cloud-based sales productivity software, has raised $7 million in funding co-led by Greycroft Partners and Allos Ventures, with participation from the regional firm High Alpha. Indianapolis Business Journal has more here.

UserZoom Technologies, an eight-year-old, San Jose, Ca.-based SaaS platform used to test web and mobile products, has raised $34 million in new funding led by TC Growth Partners, with participation from Trident Capital and StepStone Group. NovoBrief has more here.

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Exits

Dyson, the British maker of vacuums, has agreed to acquire Ann Arbor, Mich.-based battery startup Sakti3 for $90 million in cash, according to Quartz. Sakti3 has raised around $50 million in VC funding from Dyson, Beringea, GM Ventures, ITOCHU Corp. and Khosla Ventures.

Time Inc. has acquired Hello Giggles, operator of the pop-culture, beauty and lifestyle website HelloGiggles.com, for $20 million, give or take, says the WSJ. The company was founded in 2011 by entertainer Zooey Deschanel.

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Exits

Ellipse Technologies, a 10-year-old Aliso Viejo, Ca.-based company that makes orthopedic implant systems, has filed for a $75 million IPO. Its largest outside shareholders include HBM Healthcare Investors, which owns 29.9 percent of the company; Wexford Capital, which owns 18 percent; and HBM-MedFocus, which owns 12.9 percent. More here.

Match Group, a spinoff of IAC that owns properties like Tinder and OKCupid, has filed to go public. TechCrunch has much more here.

Mimecast, a 12-year-old, London-based email security provider, has filed to go public on Nasdaq. The company has raised roughly $90 million over the years, shows CrunchBase. Its investors include Insight Venture Partners, which owns 19.8 percent of the company; Index Ventures, which owns 17 percent; and Dawn Capital, which owns 14.5 percent. Reuters has more here.

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People

Legendary venture capitalist Michael Moritz has published an opinion piece about the boom in “unicorn” tech businesses, saying many are “subprime.”

Jacqueline Reses is leaving her role as chief development officer at Yahoo, to help boost the executive team at Square. Bloomberg has the storyhere. Yahoo Marketing Partnership SVP Lisa Licht is also out the door, though it isn’t clear yet where she’s headed.

VCs tend to be optimistic about startups, but have they grown blindly defensive? Business Insider suggests the answer is yes.

Inside a love triangle at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business.

Meet venture capital’s teenage analyst.

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Jobs

Mercedes-Benz is hiring a venture scout. The job is in Sunnyvale, Ca.

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Data

Home prices are bad in San Francisco, but they’ve pulled almost as far away from the middle class in Los Angeles and San Diego, suggests Standard & Poor’s data.

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Essential Reads

Late last week, TechCrunch obtained documents that show Pinterest has been forecasting $169 million in revenue this year and $2.8 billion in annual revenue by 2018, and expecting to grow its monthly active users to 151 million by year end and to 329 million by 2018.

In April, Amazon filed suit against the operators of websites that offered Amazon sellers the ability to purchase fake, four and five-star reviews of their products. Now it’s going after individuals who provide such fake reviews.

Apple wants mobile devices to be filled with apps. Google supports a world where people browse the web for most things. Sites are increasingly caught in the middle.

Twenty new ways Facebook is eating the Internet.

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Detours

Facebook will now notify you of “state-sponsored attacks” on your account.

Parents talk differently to boys and girls after accidents.

An epic escape from Syria.

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Retail Therapy

A 24-karat gold manicure set, for when every other overpriced gift idea in the world has been exhausted.

Ah, Friday, not a day too soon.:) Hope you have a fantastic weekend, everyone!

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Top News in the A.M.

Regulators in Nevada just banned DraftKings, FanDuel and other daily fantasy sports sites, saying that they’re unlicensed gambling operators.

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YC Tells VCs Not to Worry About Its New, $700 Million Growth Fund

Almost a year-and-a-half after Ali Rowghani resigned as COO of Twitter, he’s been appointed the head of Y Combinator’s growth fund by the organization’s president, Sam Altman.

TechCrunch had heard whispers of the move earlier this week, but Altman made the announcement official earlier yesterday,tweeting of Rowghani that he’s a “wonderful partner to help companies scale.”

Rowghani joined Y Combinator as a part-time partner back in November of last year. Earlier in his career, from 2002 through 2008, he served as the CFO of Pixar. (Rowghani had joined Twitter as CFO from Pixar but was made COO in 2012.)

Yesterday, we hopped on the phone with Rowghani to discuss some of his plans moving forward.

Most notably, Y Combinator will be leading investments in startups with its new growth capital, which is coming in part from Stanford University, Willett Advisors, and TrueBridge Capital Partners, according to the Wall Street Journal. Indeed, as TechCrunch reported early this week, YC is the lead investor in Checkr, a San Francisco-based startup that runs background checks and vets potential hires for fast-growing startups. The company is raising at least $30 million in Series B funding, at a valuation north of $250 million.

For VCs who haven’t had to compete with Y Combinator in later-stage rounds, this is a Big Deal.

More here.

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New Fundings

Codacy, a three-year-old, Lisbon, Portugal-based company that makes an automated code review tool, has raised €1 million ($1.1 million) in a seed extension round from Caixa Capital, with participation from current investors Faber Ventures and E.S. Ventures. The company has now raised €1.5 million altogether. TechCrunch has more here.

HappyCar, a two-year-old, Hamburg, Germany-based car rental comparison startup, has raised $1.58 million in funding led by Capnamic Ventures, with participation from HR Ventures, Global Founders Capital, and Swoodoo founder Wolfgang Heigl, among others. The company has now raised $3.2 million to date. TechCrunch has more here.

Emergent VR, a months-old, Francisco, N.C.-based startup that promises full video capture that can be viewed on virtual reality headsets, has raised $2.2 million from Accel Partners, Rothenberg Ventures and Google Ventures. TechCrunch has more here.

Klook, a year-old, Hong Kong-based company that sells travel activities across Asia, has raised $5 million in Series A funding led by Matrix Partners. China Growth Capital and Francis Leung, chairman of CVC Capital. The round brings the company’s total funding to $6.5 million. TechCrunch has more here.

MycoTechnology, a two-year-old, Aurora, Co.-based natural food technology company that employs “gourmet fungi,” has held a first close on a $9.2 million Series A round from S2G Ventures, Seventure Partners, and Middleland Capital. More here.

Quip, a three-year-old, San Francisco, Ca.-based company behind a hybrid communications, collaboration and productivity service, has raised $30 million in Series B funding led by Greylock Partners, with participation from Benchmark. Recode has more here.

Virtus.pro, a 12-year-old, Moscow-based online sports company that live-streams video game tournaments, has received roughly $100 million in funding from billionaire Alisher Usmanov’s USM Holdings. Bloomberg has more here.

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Exits

Alibaba is acquiring Youku Tudou, one of China’s top YouTube-like services, in a $3.5 billion deal. TechCrunch has more here.

The publicly traded enterprise software company Red Hat is spending more than $100 million to acquired Ansible, a two-year-old, Santa Barbara, Ca.-based company that helps its clients build and manage hybrid IT deployments across the cloud and on site, reports VentureBeat. Ansible had raised $6 million from Menlo Venture and e.ventures, shows CrunchBase.

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IPOs

First Data Corporation ended lower in its trading debut yesterday, a move that could dampen the struggling IPO market even more. Dealbook has more here.

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People

Former Microsoft CEO (and current L.A. Clippers owner) Steve Ballmer says he has built up a 4 percent stake in Twitter.

Flipboard cofounder Evan Doll isn’t returning to the company after a long sabbatical. Instead, he’s becoming an entrepreneur-in-residence at Redpoint Ventures.

Square (and Twitter) CEO Jack Dorsey is giving almost 20 percent of his Square stake to an organization serving struggling communities.

Matt Kelly, Facebook‘s head of growth product, has resigned from the company.

The restaurant search app Zomato has laid off 300 employees, or 10 percent of its staff.

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Jobs

Hercules Technology Growth Capital is looking to hire an associate. The job is in Palo Alto, Ca.

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Essential Reads

Under pressure from regulators, Theranos has stopped collecting tiny vials of blood drawn from finger pricks for all but one of its tests, reports the WSJ.

Stanford and Michael Bloomberg now back every Y Combinator startup.

Dropbox‘s reinvention continues with Paper.

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Detours

How well do you know the news? Take Fast Company’s quiz.

American’s top 10 fears, 2015 edition.

The new “billionaire beach bunker,” in Miami.

Pirate cat.

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Retail Therapy

Vuarnet Glacier Spectre sunglasses. James Bond wears them. Just sayin’.

Hi, everyone, and happy birthday to one of our most cherished readers!

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Top News in the A.M.

Square is officially going public, and investors in its most recent round were guaranteed a return of at least 20 percent, shows its SEC filing.

The FBI and the US attorney’s office in Boston have launched an investigation into whether DraftKings and other fantasy sports operators are violating federal gambling laws, according to the Washington Post.

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Kinnek, a Small Biz Marketplace, Raises $20 Million Led by Thrive

Kinnek, a 3.5-year-old, New York-based marketplace for small businesses to find suppliers and manage purchasing, has just raised $20 million in Series B funding led by Thrive Capital.

It already looks like a smart bet.

The company currently has 20,000 businesses and 2,000 suppliers using its marketplace, and they’re striking millions of dollars worth of deals every week, says cofounder Karthik Sridharan. Considering the company’s age and the fragmented landscape in which it’s operating – think restaurants to distilleries to manufacturers – that kind of traction is meaningful.

It’s also just the tip of the iceberg, apparently. According to a spokesperson for the company, Kinnek “conservatively” estimates that U.S. businesses with up to 100 employees and $20 million in yearly sales spend more than $2.2 trillion annually on machinery, equipment and physical goods based on data from Visa, Intuit, and the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

While we can’t vouch for the accuracy of that number (there are lots of different figures floating around out there), what is clear is the competition, or lack of it, facing Kinnek.

More here.

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(Other) New Fundings

17hats, a 1.5-year-old, L.A.-based business management app for small business owners, including project management, quotes, time tracking and bookkeeping, has raised $4 million in Series A funding led by Wavemaker Partners, which also led the company’s $1.3 million seed round earlier this year. TechCrunch has more here.

8i, a 1.5-year-old, New Zealand-headquartered company that’s building a consumer media platform to let users create and share immersive 3D video of real people, has raised $13.5 million in Series A funding from RRE Ventures, Founders Fund Science, Horizons Ventures, Samsung Ventures, Dolby Family Ventures, Bertelsmann Digital Media Investments, Sound Ventures, Signia Venture Partners, Inevitable Ventures, Freelands Ventures, Advancit Capital, Rothenberg Ventures and Boost VC (among others). TechCrunch has more here.

23andMe, the nine-year-old, Mountain View, Ca.-based genetics-testing company, has raised $115 million in Series E funding led by Fidelity Management & Research Co., with participation from Google Ventures and New Enterprise Associates and new backers Casdin Capital and WuXi Healthcare Ventures. The financing implies a valuation of $1.1 billion, reports Bloomberg.

Bracket Computing, a four-year-old, Sunnyvale, Ca.-based company that protects corporate customers from some of the security risk associated with cloud computing, and which was founded by veterans of the anti-spam company Ironport Systems, has raised $45 million. Fidelity Management and Research and Goldman Sachs joined the round along with several current investors. The company has now raised $130 million altogether. Venture Capital Dispatch has the story here.

Clustree, a two-year-old, Paris, France-based recruiting tool that helps HR departments assess internal candidates by matching up employees’ talents and job openings, has raised $2.9 million (€2.5 million) in new funding from Alven Capital and business angels. TechCrunch has more here.

Decibel Therapeutics, a months-old, Boston-based hearing company focused on discovering and developing new medicines to protect, repair and restore hearing, has raised $52 million in Series A funding led by Third Rock Ventures, with participation from SR One. Forbes has more here.

FabFitFun, a five-year-old, L.A.-based women’s lifestyle subscription box company that sends off products from numerous categories, including beauty, fashion, food, wellness, and technology, has raised $3.5 million in funding led by New Enterprise Associates and Upfront Ventures. TechCrunch has more here.

FollowAnalytics, a two-year-old, San Francisco-based mobile marketing automation and engagement platform, has raised $10 million in Series A funding led by Aspect Ventures, with participation from Salesforce Ventures. Earlier backers Sapphire Ventures, Zetta Venture Partners and others also joined the round. More here.

Gaana, a five-year-old, New Delhi, India-based music streaming service, has raised an undisclosed amount of funding from Micromax, the country’s largest smartphone maker, which will now bundle Gaana’s music app on its devices. TechCrunch has more here.

Galera Therapeutics, a six-year-old, Malvern, Pa.-based clinical-stage biotech developing new treatments for cancer patients, has raised $37 million in Series B funding led by Novo Ventures, with participation from earlier backers New Enterprise Associates, Novartis Venture Fund, Correlation Ventures and Galera Angels. More here.

Hatch Baby, a two-year-old, Menlo Park, Ca.-based company whose smart changing pad is due to ship soon (it weighs babies so parents know they’re gaining enough weight as they grow), has raised $7 million in Series A funding led by True Ventures. Other participants in the round include Geoff Ralston, James Hong, H. Barton Co-Invest Fund, and Veddis Ventures. TechCrunch has more here.

Hermo, a 3.5-year-old, Malaysia-based online cosmetics and skincare marketplace, has raised $2 million in Series A funding from Gobi Partners. Tech In Asia has more here.

Lenddo, a four-year-old, New York-headquartered company that helps financial service providers with their credit scoring and online verification, has raised an undisclosed amount of Series B funding led by new investors AT Capital and Life.SREDA, with participation from earlier backers Omidyar Network, Blumberg Capital and Golden Gate Ventures. More here.

Mast Mobile, a two-year-old, New York-based mobile communications platform that provides phones to its corporate customers that feature separate work and personal numbers, has raised $7 million in funding led by by FirstMark Capital. Other participants include DFJ, Eniac Ventures, Harrison Metal, HMM Investors, and Initialized Ventures. We talked about the company yesterday with CEO David Messenger. More from that chat here.

Niantic, a four-year-old, Mountain View, Ca.-based games maker that began as a lab within Google and was spun out last month, has raised $20 million in Series A funding from Pokémon Company Group, Google and Nintendo. TechCrunch has more here.

OpenGov, a three-year-old, Mountain View, Ca.-based company whose software visualizes municipal financial data, allowing governments to access, analyze, and share that data with the public, has raised $25 million in Series C funding from earlier backers Andreessen Horowitz, Formation 8, Thrive Capital and AITV, along with new investors Glynn Capital, Sound Ventures, and Intuit founder Scott Cook. TechCrunch has more here.

Outdoor Voices, a three-year-old, New York-based recreational apparel — or “athleisure wear” — company, has raised $7 million in new funding led by earlier backer General Catalyst Partners, with participation from Forerunner Ventures, Collaborative Fund, and 14W. The company had previously raised $1.1 million in seed funding. TechCrunch has more here.

Zwipe, a six-year-old, Oslo, Norway-based company whose embedded fingerprint reader technology can authenticate card payments, just raised $5 million in Series B funding from Photon Future, a wholly owned subsidiary of the Shenzhen, China-based high-tech holding group Kuang-Chi Group. TechCrunch has more here.

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Exits

VMware has announced plans to purchase email management app Boxer for an undisclosed amount. Three-year-old, Austin, Tex.-based Boxer had raised $3 million dollars from Sutter Hill Ventures. TechCrunch has more here.

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IPOs

The eight-year-old, French music streaming service Deezer has announced that it plans to raise €300 million ($343 million) in a public listing that will take place in its native France at the end of this month. TechCrunch has more here.

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People

Christina Smedley, who’d been PayPal’s VP of global brand and communications, is joining Facebook to run communications for Messenger. TechCrunch has more here.

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Jobs

Eastman Kodak is looking for a director of business development. The job is in San Francisco.

Pandora wants to add a senior associate to its corporate development group. The job is in Oakland, Ca.

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Data

Yesterday, CB Insights and KPMG published their most recent numbers. Today, it’s Dow Jones VentureSource, and the theme is much the same: Investments continued apace in the third quarter, hitting $19 billion, according to its findings. U.S. venture investments hit $54.6 billion for the first nine months of the year; that’s nearly all the venture money invested in 2014 (which was $55.5 billion). Still, bubbly as those figures may sound, they’re still likely to be below the record $94.17 billion invested in 2000 at the height of the dot-com boom, says the report. Much more here.

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Essential Reads

Theranos, which has raised more than $400 million from investors, is struggling with its blood tests, reports the WSJ. Notably, it has retained legendary litigator David Boies, too, which could mean one of two things. Meanwhile, founder and CEO Elizabeth Holmes has pronounced the WSJ piece “disappointing” and “full of falsehoods.”

The unicorn boom has just begun, argues Forbes.

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Detours

A Twitter account run by a chicken.

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Retail Therapy

The August doorbell cam, accessible from you phone.