Friday! Hope you have a fun weekend in store, and for those of you who are dads, we’re wishing you a very happy Father’s Day!
(Streamlined version today as we’re racing out the door to Palo Alto for some meetings.)
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Top News in the A.M.
And now we know; Salesforce was reportedly the other bidder for LinkedIn.
Uber says it’s now profitable in all the developed markets where it’s operating.
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Talking Kleiner 3.0 with Its New Consumer Investing Partner
Kleiner Perkins has been through the wringer since the go-go dot-com days of the late 1990s. After making a bundle on Google, the storied venture firm raised too much money from investors and grew too ambitious in scope before dramatically retrenching a few years ago — but not before being hit with one of the highest-profile lawsuits in venture industry. (It won the case, which centered on gender discrimination, but it took a beating in the process.)
To restore its former glory, the firm is largely transformed from the firm it was a dozen years ago. For starters, it has undergone some major casting changes. Only one of its five general partners — Ted Schlein, who leads Kleiner’s investments in security and some of its enterprise investments — has been with the firm throughout all the tumult, having joined the firm 20 years ago. Meanwhile, Beth Seidenberg, who focuses on everything from life science to digital health, joined Kleiner in 2005; Wen Hsieh, who focuses on enterprise and hardware deals, joined in 2006; Mike Abbott joined in 2011 to focus largely on enterprise deals; and Eric Feng, a former CTO for both Hulu and Flipboard, joined last October to lead the firm’s consumer investing.
Kleiner, which is currently raising $1.3 billion across two new funds, has also taken a page from the playbook of Benchmark and some other smaller partnerships, and its partners now enjoy equal partner economics. (Kleiner has also five associate partners, as well as a separate growth investing group.)
To get better insight into the firm and how it operates today — as well as where it’s shopping — we talked yesterday with Feng. Our chat has been edited for length.
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New Fundings
Beamery, a two-year-old, London-based company that makes employee recruitment software and was previously known as Seed.Jobs, has raised $2 million in seed funding from Edenred Capital Partners and Grupa Pracuj, a human resources tech firm. TechCrunch has more here.
ClearTax, a five-year-old, New Delhi, India-based online tax filing platform, has raised $12 million in Series A funding, including from Founders Fund and Sequoia Capital. TechCrunch has more here.
Common, a year-old, Brooklyn-based startup that’s creating group living developments with the help of real estate developers, has raised $16 million in Series B funding led by 8VC, with participation from Circle Ventures, LeFrak, Solon Mack Capital, Ron Burkle’s Inevitable Ventures, Wolfswood Partners and return backers Maveron, Lowercase Capital, Slow Ventures and Pierre Lamond. Fortune has the story here.
Mark One, a 2.5-year-old San Francisco-based company that was cofounded by renowned designer Yves Behar and which right now makes a smart cup that tracks consumption, has raised $4 million in new funding from earlier backers, including Intel Capital. TechCrunch has more here.
Tigera, a months-old San Francisco-based startup that’s trying to secure cloud-native applications, has raised $13 million in Series A funding led by New Enterprise Associates, with participation from Wing Venture Capital. More here.
Vrse, the 1.5-year-old, L.A.-based VR firm launched by video and commercial director Chris Milk and Google veteran Aaron Koblin, has raised $12.56 million in funding from syndicate that includes WME and Fox. The company is also renaming itself Within. The L.A. Times has the story here.
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IPOs
Business software company AppDynamics has hired investment banks Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley as lead underwriters for an IPO that could come later this year, reports Reuters. Last November, the company raised $158 million at a $1.9 billion valuation. (One of the investors in that round was Goldman Sachs.) More here.
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People
Facebook has hired e-sports super-connector and former professional gamer Stephen “Snoopeh” Ellis to build out a new team at the company. More here.
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Essential Reads
A dispute between Apple and Chinese regulators broke into the open after Beijing’s intellectual property authority said the design of the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus violated a patent held by a Chinese company. It wants Apple to stop selling both phones in the city. The WSJ has the story here.
Why Silicon Valley should be paying close attention to the Redstone-Viacom mess.
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Detours
Confessions of a performative dad.
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Retail Therapy
We would happily take fashion designer James Perse’s Malibu farmhouse (up for sale now). H/T: Uncrate.