StrictlyVC: November 9, 2015

Hi, hope you had a terrific weekend, everyone!

We have to send out a streamlined version of StrictlyVC as we’re interviewing Rich Miner of Google Ventures on stage at the Open Mobile Summit this morning and racing to get there. (Hope to see some of you at the conference.)

Before we go, a favor: We’re trying to learn more about Faraday Future. If you can shoot us a related email or DM us or send up a flare, we’d be very appreciative.:)

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Top News in the A.M.

The world’s economy is growing at a slower pace than the International Monetary Fund and other large forecasters are predicting, says the owner of the world’s biggest shipping line. Bloomberg has more here.

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This Twenty-Year-Old Has More Connections Than You Do

Shahed Khan is a kind of VC wunderkind at the moment. At age 20, while many of his peers are either attending college or living with their parents, he’s working as an entrepreneur-in-residence with a noted team of investors at NFX Guild, a new accelerator program in San Francisco. (We’d written about it here.)

Now the spotlight is on Khan to see if he can produce.

Khan and three cofounders – all of whom are currently working at other startups — are building an enterprise software tool that allows companies to receive feedback on their product and its usability from product experts. For example, a company might be trying to understand why users are dropping off during its onboarding flow and can benefit from the knowledge of a UX designer who has designed similar flows at a company like Slack.

The company is currently in an alpha stage, with Khan and the others bringing on new clients each day to test the product. The question is whether Khan can stand out for his achievements and not just for his youth alone.

More here.

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New Fundings

CB Insights, a nearly six-year-old, New York-based outfit focused on private company research and analysis, has raised $10 million in Series A funding from the growth stage investment firm RSTP. CEO and cofounder Anand Sanwal tells us the money represents CB Insights’s first equity round. The company had previously raised $1.15 million in grants from the National Science Foundation. More here.

Edyn, a two-year-old, Oakland, Ca.-based smart gardening system that monitors and tracks environmental conditions, has raised an undisclosed amount of funding from investors, including Fenox Venture CapitalQueensBridge Venture Partners, and Indicator Ventures.

H2O.ai, a four-year-old, Mountain View, Ca.-based company behind an open source machine learning platform designed to build smarter applications, has raised $20 million in Series B funding led by Paxion Capital Partners, with participation from Capital One Growth Ventures and earlier backers Nexus Venture Partners and Transamerica Corporation.

InnoUp Farma, a two-year-old, Noain, Spain-based nanomedicine company focused on developing and licensing therapies for major diseases with unmet medical needs, has raised €2 million ($2.14 million) in public-private funding from the local government business unit Sodena,  Inveready and the Spain Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness.

Iron Horse Therapeutics, a new, San Diego-based company that will develop treatments for ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis), has launched with $10 million in Series A funding. The money comes from Avalon Ventures andGlaxoSmithKline, which began collaborating on new companies two years ago. Xconomy has more on the deal, and that collaboration, here.

POPxo, a New Delhi, India-based digital media company, has raised $2 million in Series A funding led by IDG Ventures and Kalaari Capital, with participation from 500 Startups. LiveMint has more here.

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New Funds

Indonesia state-owned bank PT Bank Mandiri Tbk has established a venture capital arm called Mandiri Capital with an initial commitment of Rp 500 billion ($36.90 million). Now it’s looking for candidates to head the effort. DealStreetAsia has more here.

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IPOs

Match Group, the online dating business whose properties include Match.com and Tinder, said today that it plans to raise upwards of $467 million in an IPO that it expects to happen before Thanksgiving. Fortune has more here.

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Exits

Microsoft has acquired Secure Islands Technologies, a nine-year-old, Bet Dagan, Israel-based company that develops advanced policy-based data classification software. The price isn’t being formally disclosed, but according to ZDNet, it went for around $77.5 million. It had raised $11 million from investors, shows CrunchBase.

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People

The richest awards in science were handed out last night when the Breakthrough Prize organization presented a total of $21.9 million to physicists, mathematicians, life scientists and one high school student. The New York Times has a list of the winners here.

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Jobs

BioMed Ventures is looking to hire a venture capital analyst. The job is in San Diego.

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Essential Reads

Much-hyped uBeam says wireless power is possible, and it has declassified some of its secrets to prove it.

According to Recode, Yahoo has hired McKinsey & Co. to help the company decide which units to shutter and which to sell. CEO Marissa Mayer has also reportedly asked her top execs to make three- to five-year commitments to Yahoo either verbally or in writing.

Living and dying on Airbnb.

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Detours

The disturbing truth about how airplanes are maintained.

Bad girls.

But does this have enough pages?

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Retail Therapy

The holidays are approaching fast. Time to prepare for all that networking.


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