Happy Tuesday, everyone, and welcome back!

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Top News in the A.M.

Apple Pay debuts in China this week. Reuters has more here.

DoorDash is close to completing a round of investment valuing the food-delivery startup at around $700 million, a steep discount to the $1 billion valuation it sought when it began fundraising last fall, according to people familiar with the deal. The WSJ has more here.

SoftBank yesterday moved to bolster its share price beaten down by worries about its subsidiary, Sprint, saying it would buy back up to  $4.4 billion in shares, its biggest repurchase ever. The WSJ has more here.

Yahoo just announced it will be live-streaming the annual shareholders meeting of Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway on April 30. CNBC has more here.

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Venture-Backed Fundrise Fires CFO, Citing Extortion Scheme

It’s strange days for Fundrise, a Washington, D.C.-based, venture-backed crowdfunding platform that allows a range of investors to fund commercial real estate projects.

Yesterday, The Real Deal, an outlet that covers New York real estate news, turned upan SEC filing which states that Fundrise has fired its mortgage REIT’s chief financial officer and treasurer Michael McCord, citing an attempt by McCord to extort more than $1 million from the company.

“Exhibit one” listed in the filing is a letter to Fundrise’s backers that reads: “Strategic Investors & Advisors, I am saddened to have to inform you that an employee of our company has engaged in what we believe to be an attempt to extort over $1M from the company. As part of this, he claims the company acted inappropriately concerning two real estate deals. Though we believe there is no merit to his claims, we take any allegation with the utmost seriousness.

As a result, we have engaged a third-party financial audit firm to conduct a thorough investigation concerning his allegations. We are pursuing all appropriate and precautionary steps to protect our investors and our organization.

Furthermore, we are contacting the appropriate law enforcement agency to report what we believe to be his criminal behavior.”

The letter was presumably authored by Fundrise cofounder and CEO Benjamin Miller, who, according to the same SEC filing, is taking on the role of interim CFO and treasurer in addition to his other responsibilities.

Miller did not respond to requests for comment today.

Miller’s brother, Daniel Miller, who cofounded Fundrise and formerly served as its president, wrote us on LinkedIn, saying he has “moved on to pursue other independent opportunities, which will be announced shortly. Since my departure in October 2015, I have not been involved in corporate governance or the day-to-day operations that may relate to this matter.”

Asked about the accusation, McCord told us last night that the “current narrative” is “baseless and a pathetic deflection attempt from the real story by Fundrise.” He declined to comment further.

More here.

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New Fundings

Akarna Therapeutics, a 1.5-year-old, San Diego-based biopharmaceutical company at work on a drug for a progressive form of fatty liver disease, has raised $15 million in Series B funding from Forbion Capital Partners, with participation from earlier backers New Science Ventures and Third Point Ventures. FierceBiotech has more here.

EnTouch Controls, a seven-year-old, Richardson, Tex.-based company that makes facility asset and energy management software, has raised $8 million in Series C funding led by Egis Capital Partners, with participation from Traverse Venture Partners, Aster Capital, Calvert Investments, and earlier backers SJF Ventures and Trailblazer Capital. More here.

Giphy, a three-year-old, New York-based startup that provides a search engine for a vast library of GIFs, has raised $55 million in Series C funding at a post-money valuation of $300 million. The deal was led by earlier investor Lightspeed Venture Partners, with participation from General Catalyst Partners, RRE Ventures, Betaworks, Lerer Hippeau Ventures, CAA and other existing Giphy investors. TechCrunch has more here.

Knewton, an eight-year-old, New York-based adaptive learning technology company, has closed on $52 million in fresh capital led by Belgium-based Sofina and London-based Atomico. Other participants in the round include EDBI, the dedicated corporate-investment arm of the Singapore Economic Development Board; TAL Education Group, a China-based K-12 education company; and earlier backers Accel Partners, Bessemer Venture Partners, FirstMark Capital, and Founders Fund. FinSMEs has more here.

LiveAction, an eight-year-old, Palo Alto, Ca.-based enterprise IT network visibility software platform, has raised $36 million in Series B funding led by Insight Venture Partners, with participation from prior investors Accelerate-IT Ventures and Cisco Investments. More here.

Mondo, a year-old, London-based fully digital bank, is raising £6 million ($8.6 million) in funding at a reported has been valued at £30 million ($42.9 million) valuation, despite that it has yet to fully launch to the public or secure a banking licence. Mondo has raised £5 million from the London-based firm Passion Capital, which invested £2 million in the company last year. The startup is also launching a £1 million crowdfunding campaign on Crowdcube. Business Insider has more here.

Naritiv, a 1.5-year-old L.A.-based platform that connects brands and advertisers with influencers on Snapchat, has raised $3 million in Series A funding from FreeForm, Third Wave Capital, Luminary Capital, and Disney, among others. Naritiv launched out of the Disney Accelerator, powered by TechStars, in 2015. TechCrunch has more here.

Waterline Data, a three-year-old, Mountain View, Ca.-based data mining company, has raised $16 million in Series B funding led by Partech Ventures, with participation from Infosys and earlier backers include Menlo Ventures and Jackson Square Ventures. The company has now raised $23 million altogether. More here.

SchoolMint, a three-year-old, San Francisco-based company that makes mobile and online-enrollment software for K-12 public, charter and private schools, has raised $5.6 million in Series A funding led by Runa Capital, with participation from Reach Capital, Fresco Capital, Govtech Fund, Kapor Capital, Crosslink Capital, Maiden Lane Ventures and CSC Upshot, as well as individual investors from human resources solutions company Gusto. The company has now raised just less than $8 million altogether. More here.

Understory, a 3.5-year-old, Somerville, Ma.-based weather data and analytics company that provides real-time, surface-level data generated by grids of proprietary weather stations, has raised $7.5 million in fresh funding, shows anSEC filing. The company is an alum of Bolt‘s hardware accelerator program. More here. (Disclosure: Bolt is a sponsor of our upcoming StrictlyVC event.)

Zoomdata, a 3.5-year-old, Reston, Va.-based data visualization and analytics system optimized for real-time and historical big data backends, has raised $25 million in Series C funding led by Goldman Sachs’ Principal Strategic Investments Group. New investor Comcast Ventures also participated, along with prior investors Accel Partners, Columbus Nova Technology Partnersand New Enterprise Associates. Zoomdata has now raised a little more than $47 million, according to CrunchBase. TechCrunch has more here.

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Exits

YouTube has acquired BandPage, a seven-year-old, San Francisco-based startup that helps artists show off and sell concert tickets, merchandise, and exclusive fan experiences, for a reported $8 million, or slightly less than a third of the $27.6 million in funding that BandPage had raised from investors. TechCrunch has more here.

The ADT Corporation, which provides home and business security systems for 6.5 million customers, is being acquired by the private equity firm Apollo Global Management for $6.9 billion in the largest leveraged buyout so far this year. Dealbook has more here.

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People

Early-stage venture firm First Round Capital has brought aboard Birchbox cofounder and former co-CEO Hayley Barna as a venture partner. We have more here.

Reddit has hired Mark Luckie, the former news manager at Twitter and the person behind Today in Black Twitter, as its first-ever head of journalism and media.

Elon Musk’s little brother Kimbal Musk is facing off against Wolfgang Puck over the name of brand “The Kitchen.” Musk owns restaurants in Colorado by the same name (and the concept has since moved to Chicago). Meanwhile, Puck has opened a restaurant of the same name in Grand Rapids, Mi. Musk, who owns some related trademarks, said he’s willing to take Puck to court if a formal protest, and a burgeoning Twitter campaign, don’t work first.

Schwark Satyavolu has joined Trinity Ventures as a general partner. Satyavolu was the co-founder and CTO of Yodlee, along with Trinity-backed Truaxis (formerly known as BillShrink). His latest post was as EVP of product and technology at the publicly traded company LifeLock. Satyavolu will be focusing on financial tech and services, consumer apps and marketplaces. Venture Capital Dispatch has more here.

Entertainer Kanye West appeared to have an epic meltdown over the weekend, telling the world that he’s $53 million in debt and asking Silicon Valley billionaires Mark Zuckerberg, then Larry Page, to bail him out. “Mark Zuckerberg I know it’s your bday but can you please call me,” he tweeted, before adding: “All you dudes in San Fran play rap music in your homes but never help the real artists.”

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Jobs

National Australia Bank has launched a $50 million fund and it’s looking for an investment analyst and an investment manager to help lead it. The jobs are in Sydney.

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Essential Reads

Google‘s internet balloons are arriving in Sri Lanka. More here.

Flubbing Kanye West’s album release is just the newest misstep for digital music service Tidal. More here.

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Detours

A way to prevent jet lag while you sleep.

The parmesan cheese you sprinkle on your penne could be wood.

Nineteen things keeping you from becoming rich — rich, I say!

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Retail Therapy

Because why shouldn’t your kids have their own Tesla Model S?

 

You know how much we love Fridays!

For those of you coming to our event in less than two weeks(!), we’re excited to see you. Much thanks again to our generous sponsors Autodesk, Bolt, Ludlow Ventures, and AiBrain, without which we wouldn’t have such a lovely venue, or food and drinks from wonderful Jessica Lasky catering. There’s still a sprinkling of tickets available; if you haven’t grabbed yours yet, do before the Autodesk Gallery tells us we’re overdoing things.

Hope you have a wonderful long weekend, everyone! See you back here Tuesday.:)

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Top News in the A.M.

Whoa. A secret software program inside Zenefits made it seem that brokers were completing a legally required 52-hour online training course and led them to certify under penalty of perjury that they had actually done so. BuzzFeed has the scoop here.

More broadly, Zenefits is being investigated by the California Department of Insurance, and firing execs who may have encouraged employees to skirt the law.

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In Race to Build Kid-Activity Subscription Services, a New Entrant

They’re starting to crop up here and there, new startups that have appropriated the monthly class-pass model and are focused on children’s activities. Last month, a New York-based startup called KidPass announced $325,000 in seed funding, including from serial entrepreneur Kevin Ryan. Meanwhile, Brooklyn-based The Kids Passport, which caters to local families and launched in October, has raised an undisclosed amount of seed funding from Notation Capital and Collaborative Fund.

Now, there’s a new entrant. A Chicago-based startup that’s similarly focused on helping parents and other caregivers find affordable and varied things to do with young children, is launching this coming Monday.

Called Pearachute, it’s just six weeks old, yet investors love the idea so much that the company has already raised $1.2 million in seed funding, including from former Match.com CEO (and now vice chairman) Sam Yagan, Techstars cofounder David Cohen, Chicago Ventures, Hyde Park Venture Partners, HotelTonight CEO Sam Shank, SitterCity cofounder Genevieve Thiers, and various other angel investors.

Yagan has even signed on as chairman.

More here.

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New Fundings

DataRobot, a nearly four-year-old, Boston-based machine learning company, has raised $33 million in Series B funding led by New Enterprise Associates, with participation from Accomplice, Intel Capital, IA Ventures, Recruit Strategic Partners and New York Life. The company has now raised roughly $57 million altogether. More here.

Diffbot, a five-year-old, Palo Alto, Ca.-based developer of machine learning and computer vision algorithms and public APIs for web scraping, has raised $10 million in Series A funding co-led by Tencent and Felicis Ventures, with participation from Amplify Partners, Valor Capital, Bill Lee, Georges Harik and Andy Bechtolsheim. Xconomy has more here.

Jisto, a 2.5-year-old, Boston-based company that creates a private elastic compute cloud for the enterprise out of the enterprise’s idle server/cloud resources, has raised $2.45 million in seed funding led by .406 Ventures. More here.

Label Insight, an eight-year-old, Chicago-based cloud-based analytics company that provides insights to retailers and consumer packaged goods brands, has raised $10 million in Series B funding led by KPMG Capital, KPMG’s investment fund. Earlier backers Mercury Fund, Cultivation Capital, Serra Ventures and dunnhumby Ventures also joined the round, along with new investor West Capital Advisors. More here.

Uber, the seven-year-old, San Francisco-based ride-hailing service, has raised another $200 million in fresh funding; this time it comes from LetterOne, a fund based out of Luxembourg and headed by Russian billionaire Mikhail Fridman. TechCrunch has more here.

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New Funds

GGV Capital, a 15-year-old, cross-border venture fund that invests in both U.S. and China-based companies, is raising two giant new funds, shows new SEC filings that list a target of $880 million and $250 million, respectively. Both forms state that the first sale has yet to occur. The figures represent an enormous increase in the amount of money that GGV is managing. A fast close would also represent a remarkably short turnaround for its investment team. GGV closed its fifth fund with $620 million less than two years ago. Much more here.

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IPOs

Proteostasis Therapeutics, a nearly 10-year-old, Cambridge, Ma.-based company whose therapeutics aim to treat diseases caused by defects in protein processing, has raised $50 million in its IPO. The pre-revenue company has raised $107 million in private funding, shows Crunchbase. Its biggest backers include Elan Science One, which owned 21.6 percent of the company heading into its IPO; New Enterprise Associates, which owned 17.1 percent; and Healthcare Ventures, which owned 13.9 percent.

According to Renaissance Capital, there are no IPOs scheduled for next week.

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Exits

ASICS, the Tokyo-based specialty athletic retailer, has acquired Runkeeper, a 7.5-year-old, Boston-based fitness app maker. No financial terms were dislcosed. Runkeeper had raised at least $11.5 million in funding over the years, including from Spark Capital, O’Reilly AlphaTech Ventures, Boston Seed Capital and Revolution Ventures. TechCrunch has more here.

The publicly traded streaming music service Pandora has reportedly retained Morgan Stanley to solicit possible takeover offers. The New York Times has more here.

Rakuten, the Japan-headquartered e-commerce firm, has written down $340 million from a range of businesses, including its Kobo e-reader division and France-based e-commerce site PriceMinister. It has also announced plans to close a number of global operations as part of a new strategic focus. TechCrunch has more here.

Yodle, an 11-year-old, New York-based company that specializes in local online marketing, is being acquired by publicly traded Web.com Group for $300 million, plus an additional $42 million in earn-outs over the next two years. Yodle had raised $40 million from investors, including DFJ and Icon Ventures. New York Business Journal has the story here.

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People

Michael Paulus, the former president of Addepar, has left Andreessen Horowitz, where he had been a member of the investment team, reports Fortune. Paulus hasn’t yet shared what his next move will be.

VC Mark Suster swung by Bloomberg’s offices yesterday, and chatted with Emily Chang about whether or not there’s a funding slowdown.

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Essential Reads

You can reserve Tesla’s low-cost Model 3 starting March 31. Unless you are Stewart Alsop.

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Detours

Surreal paintings by Jeremy Geddes.

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Retail Therapy

The “Tesla” for the nine-year-old set.

Hi, everyone! Happy Thursday.

No column today. We had a fun but busy afternoon yesterday that included an on-stage sit-down with Tomasz Tunguz of Redpoint Ventures at the SaaStr Annual conference in San Francisco. An online commenter, “Bubba,” noted that we could have been better prepared, describing our performance as “moderating hack,” “weak,” “half-assed” and also “kind of clueless.” (Bubba, thank you for your copious feedback.) Worth noting: before our Q&A, Tunguz showcased some interesting information about the Series A fundraising landscape for SaaS businesses; you can find the presentation here.

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Top News in the A.M.

Twitter yesterday reported its fourth-quarter earnings, and they weren’t great. The company missed revenue forecasts. It didn’t add any users, either. More here.

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New Fundings

First Stop Health, a four-year-old, Chicago-based telemedicine company that serves employers, has raised $2.1 million in seed funding from unnamed angel investors and family offices. The company has now raised $5.6 million to date. MedCity News has more here.

Halo Neuroscience, a 2.5-year-old, San Francisco-based company that makes headphones and a companion app designed to improve fitness performance through brain stimulation, has raised $9 million in Series A funding led by Lux Capital, with participation from Andreessen Horowitz, Jazz Venture Partners, SoftTech VC and Xfund. MedCity News has more here.

Hexadite, a Boston-based company that makes automated incident response software, has raised $8 million in Series A funding from Hewlett Packard Ventures, Ten Eleven Ventures and seed backer YL Ventures. More here.

NuuED, a year-old Oakland, Ca.-based whose mobile educational app promises to assist learning based on a user’s particular learning style, has raised $3 million in funding led by DuKlaw Ventures, with participation from Deutsche Gruppe. More here.

Payleven, a three-year-old, Berlin-based mobile payments startup, has raised $10 million in growth funding from earlier backers Holtzbrinck Ventures, ru-Net, B Cinque, New Enterprise Associates and MePay, along with new backer Seventure Partners. The company has now raised $51 million altogether. TechCrunch has more here.

SchoolMint, a three-year-old, San Francisco-based company whose software helps families and schools manage their admissions process (from preschools through high schools), has raised $5.6 million in new funding led by Runa Capital. Other participants in the round include Maiden Lane Ventures, CSC Upshot, Crosslink Capital, Reach Newschools Capital, Fresco Capital, the Govtech Fund, and Kapor Capital.

Renew Financial, an eight-year-old, Oakland, Ca.-based clean energy finance company, has raised $70 million in growth funding, including from Angeleno Group, Apollo Capital Management, Claremont Creek Ventures, LL Funds, NGEN Partners, and Prelude Ventures.

Sky-Futures, a 6.5-year-old, London-based drone startup that flies UAVs around oil rigs and gas pipelines and analyzes the captured data to spot things before they become a problem, has raised $3.8 million from Bristow Group, a helicopter service provider to the energy industry, and earlier investor MMC Ventures. TechCrunch has more here.

Statflo, a three-year-old, Toronto-based wireless customer service startup, has raised $1.7 million in seed funding led by Round13 Capital, with participation from Extreme Venture Partners, MaRS IAF, Globalive Capital, Rising Tide Fund, Garage Capital, Hedgewood and TIO Networks. More here.

Student.com, a four-year-old, London-based accommodation marketplace focused on the needs of international students, has raised $60 million in a combined Series B and C round led by VY Capital. Horizons Ventures, Expa, Spotify founders Daniel Ek and Martin Lorentzon, and Hugo Barra from Xiaomi also participated in the round. TechCrunch has more here.

Toss Lab, a 1.5-year-old, Seoul, Korea-based company behind an enterprise communication tool that is tailored for companies in Asia called JANDI, has raised $2.5 million. TechCrunch has more here.

Veniam, a four-year-old, Mountain View, Ca.-based company that’s trying to build city-scale networks of connected vehicles that expand wireless coverage and bring terabytes of physical data to the cloud, has raised $22 million in Series B funding led by Verizon Ventures. Other investors include Cisco Investments, Orange Digital Ventures,  Yamaha Motor Ventures, and earlier backers True Ventures, Union Square Ventures, and Cane Investments. Veniam has now raised $27 million altogether. More here.

ZyBooks, a three-year-old, San Francisco-based company that makes interactive learning products for the higher education STEM market, has raised $4 million in funding led by Bialla Venture Partners. More here.

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New Funds

BBVA,  the Spanish banking giant, is shutting down its in-house venture arm, BBVA Ventures, and taking its portfolio, along with the $100 million fund it had allocated to the group, and an additional $150 million, and putting all of it into a new venture called Propel Venture Partners in which BBVA will be a limited partner. TechCrunch has the story here.

Goodwater Capital, a two-year-old venture firm cofounded by former Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers partner Chi-Hua Chien, is looking to raise up to $200 million for its second fund, reports Fortune. The firm closed its debut fund with $130 million in the summer of 2014; some of its bet include the digital investment advisor Stash and the apartment rental platform Zumper.

IMJ, a venture capital firm based in Japan, has raised roughly $52 million for a new fund that it intends to invest in Japan-based startups that want to transform traditional industries like finance and healthcare, as well those that play in emerging technologies like artificial intelligence, the Internet of Things, and blockchain. TechCrunch has more here.

JetBlue Airways announced yesterday that it’s launching a Silicon Valley-based venture capital unit called JetBlue Technology Ventures. The aim: to invest in tech innovations that will evolve JetBlue’s customer experience and move forward the travel industry at large. Business Insider has more here.

Karma Ventures, a new pan-European VC firm, has closed its debut fund with €40 million ($45.4 million) in capital commitments. TechCrunch has more here.

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IPOs

Sensus Healthcare, a Florida-based biotech developing photon x-ray low energy superficial radiation therapy for non-melanoma skin cancer and keloids, just filed a prospectus for a $23 million IPO. MedCity News has more here.

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Exits

Publicly traded Pocket Games has acquired Viximo, a Cambridge, Ma.-based social gaming platform, for $3.5 million in stock. Viximo had raised $5 million in 2009 from North Bridge Venture Partners and Sigma Partners.

Time Inc. is acquiring Viant, a 17-year-old marketing platform. TechCrunch has more here.

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People

Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff owns a lot of Fitbit.

Former HP CEO Carly Fiorina dropped out of the U.S. presidential race yesterday (finally).

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Jobs

Google just posted an opening for a corporate development strategy manager. The job is in Mountain View, Ca.

Credit Karma is also looking for a corporate development manager. The job is in San Francisco.

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Essential Reads

Andreessen Horowitz and Founders Fund each sold a portion of their stakes in Lyft to Saudi Arabia’s Prince al-Waleed bin Talal and his Kingdom Holding Co. in a December deal that coincided with Lyft’s $1 billion Series F round, which included Al-Waleed and General Motors. The WSJ has the story and some useful analysis about what’s up here.

According to a new report, Airbnb manipulated data about its business in New York to hide the fact that a lot of renters in New York City are businesspeople with multiple properties listed on the site. More here.

Delivery startups like DoorDash, Postmates, and Instacart are facing all kinds of challenges, not that this will surprise many of you.

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Detours

OK Go has just released the newest music video in a long line of its famously complicated productions.

Online dating among young adults has nearly tripled since 2013, says a new Pew report.

Rent-a-Minority. (Heh.)

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Retail Therapy

Surfboards inspired by European art.

Hi, everyone!

We’ll be at the SaaStr Annual conference today; hope to see some of you there.:)

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Top News in the A.M.

Twitter announced earlier today that it’s inserting more tweets at the top of the timeline that a user missed while away. The WSJ has more here.

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Doomed-i-corns: Unicorns Reach a Tipping Point

This morning, the law firm Fenwick & West published new findings about all the U.S.-based unicorn financings that took place during the last nine months of 2015. It’s rife with interesting nuggets, but perhaps most fascinating is that in the fourth quarter of last year, half of the 12 rounds it tracked featured valuations in the $1 billion to 1.1 billion range — and terms that were far more onerous than earlier in the year.

Fenwick & West politely suggests these companies may have been “willing to be more flexible” regarding “investor friendly terms” in order to attain their billion-dollar-plus valuations. We’d call the behavior bone-headed.

The instinct is understandable, to a degree. For the last couple of years, the media has been almost singularly obsessed with companies valued at north of a billion dollars. Some management teams invariably concluded that to attract the attention of reporters and even potential recruits, they needed so-called unicorn status.

Slack is among them. CEO Stewart Butterfield told Fortune in January of last year that if he couldn’t get a billion-dollar valuation straightaway for his company, he wouldn’t raise capital at all, saying the valuation was a “psychological threshold” for “certain types of customers” who want the “comfort of knowing we’re highly valued and financially secure.” Butterfield said the valuation helped with hires, too. “There is a class of employees who are more risk-averse and work at some company like Google or Facebook and they have a mortgage and kids,” he told Fortune. “It helps a lot of those kinds of people as well.”

Well, it does until it doesn’t.

More here.

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New Fundings

ARMO BioSciences, a four-year-old, Redwood City, Ca.-based maker of an immuno-oncology drug that can be used on its own or with other therapies, has raised $50 million in Series C funding including from Celgene Corp., Clough Investment Partners, GV, HBM Healthcare Investments, Industrial Investors Group, and earlier backers DAG Ventures, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, NanoDimension, and OrbiMed Advisors. The company has now raised $100 million altogether. More here.

CrunchBase, an 8.5-year-old, San Francisco-based analytics company spun out of AOL/Verizon last fall, has raised $2 million in Series A2 funding from Salesforce Ventures, Felicis Ventures, Cowboy Ventures, SV Angel, and 8 Partners, as well as a number of undisclosed private investors. The company had earlier raised an undisclosed round of Series A funding (that we were told was between $5 million and $7 million) led by Emergence Capital Partners. TechCrunch has more here.

Edyn, a 2.5-year-old, Oakland, Ca.-based smart soil and irrigation system maker, has raised $2 million in seed funding led by Fenox Venture Capital, with participation from Idea Bulb Ventures, Morningside Group, Indicator Ventures and individual angel investors. Venture Capital Dispatch has more here.

Gjirafa, a 2.5-year-old Albanian search engine, has raised $2 million Series A round led by San Francisco and Prague-based Rockaway Capital. TechCrunch has more here.

Lantern, a 3.5-year-old, San Francisco-based mental health startup that offers tools to deal with stress, anxiety and body image, has raised $17 million in Series A funding led by the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center’s venture arm, with participation from earlier backers, including Mayfield andSoftTechVC. TechCrunch has more here.

Latch, a 1.5-year-old, New York-based smart access system that works for enterprise, consumer, and hospitality users, has raised $10.5 million in Series A funding led by Lux Capital, with participation from Primary Venture Partners, Corigin Venture Partners, Camber Creek, Expansion Ventures, PCH, and Wan Li Zhu of Fairhaven Capital, along with a group of large (unnamed) real estate funds. The company has raised now raised $16 million altogether. TechCrunch has more here.

Paytm, a 5.5-year-old, Noida, India-based mobile payments and e-commerce business that’s backed in part by Alibaba and is one of the bigger startups competing against Amazon in India, is raising money again, just months after a reported $680 million round. TechCrunch sources close to the company say that Paytm is now looking to raise $400 million by June to help with the launch of its new payments business, Paytm Payment Bank. More here.

Riskified, a 3.5-year-old, Tel Aviv, Israel-based e-commerce fraud prevention startup, has raised $25 million round led by Qumra Capital, with participation from The Phoenix Insurance Company, NTT DOCOMO Ventures, and earlier backers Genesis Partners and Entrée Capital. More here.

TiZR, a 1.5-year-old, London-based startup behind a social video streaming app, has raised $500,000 in funding led by the record label Spinnin’ Records. TechCrunch has more here.

WorldRemit, a 5.5-year-old, London-based startup competing in the lucrative remittance market, has raised  $45 million in fresh funding in a debt round from TriplePoint Venture Growth BDC Corp. and Silicon Valley Bank. TechCrunch has more here.

Yumanity Therapeutics, a 14-month-old, Cambridge, Ma.-based company working to advance treatments for diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s, has raised $45 million in Series A funding led by Fidelity Management, with participation from Alexandria Venture Investments, Biogen, Dolby Family Ventures, Redmile Group, and Sanofi-Genzyme BioVentures. Boston Business Journal has more here.

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Exits

Software maker Opera has received a $1.2 billion buyout offer from a consortium of Chinese Internet firms, the company announced earlier today. The consortium includes Kunlun and Qihoo 360 and is backed by the investment funds Golden Brick and Yonglian. Opera’s board is reportedly recommending the deal. ZDNet has more here.

—–

People

You may have heard; investor and Twitter enthusiast Marc Andreessen offended a lot of Indians with a single tweet yesterday. He apologized this morning, on Twitter.

Doug Pepper, a former general partner at InterWest Partners, has left the firm after 15 years to join Shasta Ventures. According to Deborah Gage of VentureWire, Pepper’s departure follows a decision by InterWest last year to split its medical and technology groups and focus solely on investing in health-care companies. Pepper invests in IT companies whose software helps businesses improve their relationships with customers.

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Essential Reads

Twenty-First Century Fox, which invested $160 million in the daily fantasy sports startup DraftKings last summer, has written down the investment by about 60 percent, according to a 10-Q filed yesterday. Specifically, Fox noted that “based on information concerning DraftKings’ current valuation in a recent financing transaction, the Company determined that a portion of its investment in DraftKings was impaired and recorded a loss of approximately $95 million…” TechCrunch has more here.

—–

Detours

Funny or Die has made a Trump biopic, starring Johnny Depp.

If Jane Austen got some feedback from some guy in her writing workshop.

—–

Retail Therapy

Van Gogh’s bedroom: Available for rent on Airbnb.

Hi, everyone, happy Tuesday!

We had a great time last night at the Crunchies, the entirety of which you can catch here if you missed it. The event’s host, actor and comic Chelsea Peretti, pretty much killed it, especially in her opening act. Jordan Crook of TechCrunch, who’s hilarious and did bits from the audience all night, did a fantastic job, too.

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Top News in the A.M.

Parker Conrad, cofounder of high-flying Zenefits, was elbowed out of his position as CEO, and even off the company’s board, Zenefits announced in an announcement late yesterday. David Sacks, who’d cofounded and sold Yammer before joining Zenefits as COO about 14 months ago, is now CEO, and he sent a memo to employees of the online health benefits manager didn’t paint a pretty picture of Conrad’s leadership. Acknowledging attacks the company has come under of late for missing its revenue projections and the problems it has encountered with regulatory agencies, Sacks wrote that Zenefits’s “internal processes, controls, and actions around compliance have been inadequate, and some decisions have just been plain wrong.”

Three-and-a-half-year-old Zenefits was valued at $4.5 billion during its most recent funding round, last May. That round was led by Fidelity, which went on to slash the value of its investment in the company by nearly 50 percent in November. Business Insider has more here.

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For DFJ, a Quick Close on Fund XII

DFJ, the 31-year-old, Sand Hill Road venture firm, is announcing a new, $350 million fund this morning — the firm’s 12th early-stage vehicle.

We chatted with managing director Josh Stein yesterday about the effort, which he says took about two months from start to finish.

The biggest takeaway: Expect more of the same from the firm, which typically plugs between $10 million and $15 million into its startups; has six investment partners, including firm cofounder Steve Jurvetson; and has become known, largely owing to Jurvetson’s bets, as an outfit willing to gamble on companies that are little out there — sometimes literally.

Among the firm’s many Jurvetson-led investments: the rocket company SpaceX, the satellite company Planet Labs, and the electric car company Tesla Motors. Indeed, Jurvetson accepted a Crunchie award on behalf of SpaceX at last night’s Crunchies awards ceremony. The company won for the category of best technology achievement for its two-stage rocket, the Falcon 9, which was designed to transport satellites and SpaceX’s own Dragon spacecraft into orbit.

Stein wouldn’t talk yesterday about the internal rate of return of any of the firm’s previous funds. He did say DFJ’s last fund — a $325 million vehicle closed exactly two years ago — has backed an as-yet-undisclosed autonomous transportation startup that “we think could be the biggest company we’ve ever been involved with.”

More here.

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New Fundings

CognitiveLogic, a five-month-old, U.K.-based analytics startup that wants to join raw data between multiple companies to gain insights from the combined datasets, has raised $3 million in seed funding from Upfront Ventures and IA Ventures. TechCrunch has more here.

Digital Shadows, a 4.5-year-old, London-based company whose SaaS service helps businesses wanting to monitor and manage potential risks by keeping tabs on their digital footprint, has raised $14 million in Series B funding led by Trinity Ventures. Paladin Capital Group also joined the round, along with earlier investors Storm Ventures, TenEleven Ventures and Passion Capital. TechCrunch has more here.

Iron.io, a 4.5-year-old, San Francisco-based cloud-based message queue and processing platform for building distributed cloud applications, has raised $3.5 million in new Series A funding from Sapphire Ventures, bringing its total round to $11.5 million. Earlier participants in the round include Baseline Ventures, Bain Capital Ventures, Divergent Ventures, Ignition Partners and Cloud Capital Partners.

Stash, a 5.5-year-old, New York-based digital investment advisor that targets millennials, has raised $3 million in seed funding led by Goodwater Capital, with participation from Valar Ventures and Entrée Capital.

SwervePay, a 5.5-year-old, Chicago-based payment platform that enables patients to pay medical bills with a text message, has raised $10 million in Series B funding led by Garland Capital Group, with participation from KGC Capital, Mandell Ventures and individual investors. More here.

ThinkingPhones, a Cambridge, Ma.-based cloud service that offers messaging, phone service and video streaming, has raised $112 million in new funding led by Summit Partners with participation from earlier investors Bessemer Venture Partners and Technology Crossover Ventures. The company, which is being renamed Fuze, has now raised nearly $200 million altogether. TechCrunch has more here.

Trifacta, a 3.5-year-old, San Francisco-based company that cleans up enterprise data to make it more useful, has raised $35 million in new funding from Cathay Innovation, with participation from Accel Partners, Greylock Partners and Ignition Partners. VentureBeat has more here.

Vast, a 14-year-old, Austin, Tex.-based data-as-a-service platform for vehicles and real estate, has raised $14 million from Capital One Growth Ventures. Vator has more here.

Woo, a new, San Francisco-based startup whose online platform invites tech talent to gauge their own market value, has raised $2.35 million in seed funding from Hank Vigil and Fritz Lanman from Acequia capital, both early investors in Pinterest and Square; Lord David Alliance; and Moshe Lichtman of Israel Growth Partners. More here.

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New Funds

Harmony Partners, an eight-year-old, New York and Menlo Park, Ca.-based venture firm focused on expansion-stage companies, is looking to raise $100 million for its third fund, shows a new SEC filing that states the first sale has yet to occur. The firm closed its second fund with $85 million in late 2014.

RWE, Germany’s second-biggest utility, is creating a $140 million clean tech venture fund. GreenTech Media has more here.

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IPOs

Apellis Pharmaceuticals, a 6.5-year-old, Louisville, Ky.-based developer of immunotherapies, has withdrawn registration for an $86.25 million IPO. It didn’t cite a reason.

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Exits

Lulu, a mobile app that lets women anonymously review and rate men, has been acquired by the London-based dating platform Badoo for undisclosed terms. According to CrunchBase, Lulu had raised $3.5 million from investors, including Passion Capital of London. Badoo has meanwhile raised roughly $30 million, including from the Moscow-based fund Finam Global. TechCrunch has the story here.

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People

Verizon has reportedly authorized AOL CEO Tim Armstrong to kick Yahoo’s tires, says Bloomberg.

Early-stage venture firm Benchmark has added a sixth general partner to its roster: 35-year-old Scott Belsky, a former Goldman Sachs associate who went on to cofound the New York company Behance, an online platform for graphic designers, illustrators, photographers, web designers, and art directors to showcase their skills that Adobe acquired in 2012 for more than $150 million in cash and stock. TechCrunch has more here.

DataGravity, a startup focused on securing stored corporate data against hacker attacks and other threats, is cutting an undisclosed number of jobs, Fortune reported yesterday. The company has raised $92 million from investors, including CRV, General Catalyst Partners, Accel Partners, and Andreessen Horowitz.

Another bombshell CEO switcheroo, this one from Fortune: Adam Marchick has stepped down as CEO of Kahuna, the mobile marketing automation company he co-founded four years ago.  Board member Charles Hudson, managing partner of Precursor Ventures, will serve as interim CEO as the search proceeds for a full-time replacement. More here.

Alphabet has quietly granted Sundar Pichai, chief executive of the company’s main Google business, an equity award valued at nearly $200 million, making him one of the world’s highest-paid executives. The WSJ has more here.

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Data

AngelList, the early-stage fundraising and recruiting platform, says it closed out last year having raised $163 million online on behalf of 441 companies. That’s about 56 percent higher than the year before in 2014. More here.

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Essential Reads

Amazon is building a global delivery business that aims to bypass Fedex and UPS altogether.

Twitter has revealed video ads to run atop your timeline.

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Detours

The Bloomberg job skills report 2016: What recruiters want.

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Retail Therapy

Birthday balloons for jerks.

Hi, welcome back, everyone! Hope you had a wonderful weekend.

Giant thanks to our newest sponsor, the artificial intelligence company AiBrain, for partnering with StrictlyVC on our upcoming event, February 25th. We really appreciate AiBrain’s support, along with that of our other generous sponsors Autodesk, Bolt, and Ludlow Ventures. We’re getting excited about the evening.

It’s also the Crunchies awards show tonight! TechCrunch has lots of great speakers coming, including Sequoia’s Roelof Botha, with whom we get to share the stage and crack some corny jokes. Hope to see many of you there.:)

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Top News in the A.M.

Google is developing its own virtual reality headset. The Financial Times has more here.

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IfOnly Raises $10.25 Million for Its “Experiences” Marketplace

It used to be hard to take IfOnly very seriously. The 3.5-year-old, San Francisco-based company service has always serviced customers looking for unusual experiences, but they seemed out of reach for most, like the (expensive) chance to cook with famed chef Thomas Keller. That the company was inspired by the wealthy friends of founder and CEO Trevor Traina — people looking to have “incredible experiences,” as Traina told Vanity Fair in a 2013 story about San Francisco society — added to the impression that IfOnly was aimed squarely at the 1 percent.

But Traina, who has founded four companies previously and managed to sell all of them, has big ambitions to serve more than the very monied.

In fact, a long list of investors has provided IfOnly with $10.25 million in Series B funding to help it evolve beyond an “experiences marketplace” for clients like Madonna to a platform through which local experts can market and sell their services. Want to learn how to make a macchiato from the best coffee bar in your neighborhood? You might find the opportunity on IfOnly. Interested in a basketball lesson from a former NBA pro? He might be marketing his services on IfOnly, too.

Traina says in earnest that the addressable market his 60-employee company is chasing is $225 billion. He cites as proof surveys that suggest millennials in particular are more interested in experiences than past generations. (One such study in 2014, conducted by Harris Poll on behalf of the online ticket company Eventbrite, reported that 72 percent of respondents wanted to increase their spending on experiences in the coming year.)

“They’re never going to buy a car,” says Traina of millennials. “They don’t care about furniture. But they’re on social media channels, where it’s not fun to post about a belt but it is fun to [post a picture, saying], “Check me out backstage.” In fact, says Traina, he believes there’s an “eBay-sized business here. Everyone wants experiences and no one is really offering it to them.”

It’s not so ridiculous.

More here.

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New Fundings

Affinivax,  a two-year-old, Cambridge, Ma.-based biotechnology company that’s developing a pneumococcal vaccine, has raised $2.5 million in new funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation a little less than two years after raising $4 million from foundation. More here.

Africa Internet Group, a three-year-old, Lagos, Nigeria-based outfit that owns online retailer Jumia and nine other e-ventures, is receiving $83 million from Europe’s AXA Insurance in exchange for an 8 percent equity stake in its business. TechCrunch has more here.

Amperity, a months-old, Seattle-based provider of enterprise marketing software, has raised $9 million in Series A funding led by Madrona Venture Group. The Seattle Times has more here.

Hired, a nearly four-year-old, San Francisco-based career marketplace, has raised $40 million in Series C funding led by Lumia, with participation from Comcast Ventures, Crosslink Capital, Sierra Ventures, and Silicon Valley Bank. Bloomberg has more here.

Invictus Oncology, a four-year-old, Delhi, India-based developer of cancer therapeutics, has raised an undisclosed amount of Series A funding from Ratan Tata. Tech Story has more here.

Revolut, a year-old, London-based company that makes a mobile foreign exchange app, has raised $4.8 million in seed funding from Balderton Capital, Seedcamp, Point Nine, Venrex and Index Ventures. TechCrunch has more here.

Xignite, a 12-year-old, San Mateo, Ca.-based company that provides real-time and reference market data APIs to fintech companies and enterprises, has raised $20.5 million in Series C funding led by Tokyo-based QUICK Corporation, with participation from earlier backers StarVest Partners, Altos Ventures, and Startup Capital Ventures. The company has now raised $37 million altogether. More here.

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New Funds

AccelFoods, an accelerator for companies that make packaged food and beverages, has raised a new $20 million fund to back companies from pre-seed through Series B stages. The firm’s debut fund, a $4 million vehicle, closed in January 2014. Venture Capital Dispatch has more here.

The Bangalore, India-based venture capital firm Kalaari Capital has started an accelerator program for startups called Kstart. It will have a new batch every quarter of up to five startups, each of which will receive up to $500,000 via a convertible equity instrument. The Economic TImes has more here.