Did you see that game last night?! (Warriors fans, don’t dismay. FiveThirtyEight thinks they have an 80 percent chance of winning the title again. In the meantime, please let your long-suffering friends from Cleveland enjoy this moment.)

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Top News in the A.M.

High-speed internet service can be defined as a utility, a federal court ruled this morning in a decision that clears the way for more rigorous policing of broadband providers. The New York Times has more here.

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With LinkedIn Deal, Frank Quattrone Notches Another Win

While the tech industry digests the news that LinkedIn is becoming an independently run subsidiary of Microsoft in exchange for $26.2 billion in cash, one renowned figure in Silicon Valley is already publicly celebrating the deal: Frank Quattrone.

The legendary investment banker tweeted earlier today that Qatalyst, the boutique bank that he founded eight years ago, served as the lead advisor to LinkedIn on its sale, noting that it’s the “largest sale” of an internet company “ever,” and stating its acquisition price at $28.1 billion.

Maybe that was the price before Qatalyst and Allen & Co., which also advised the company, took their fees, along with Microsofts’s advisers — Morgan Stanley and law firm Simpson Thacher & Bartlett. (We’re half-kidding. The fees were more likely in the tens of millions of dollars, though some top M&A firms charge upwards of 5 percent of a transaction’s value in fees. Qatalyst didn’t respond to our request for clarification.)

Either way, it’s a coup for Quattrone, who was the most prominent banker of the go-go ’90s tech boom and who helped take public Amazon, Cisco, Netscape and other high-fliers before coming under investigation by federal prosecutors. As longtime industry watchers will remember,  Quattrone was accused of obstructing an investigation into whether the equity salesmen were doling out hot IPO shares to favored clients in exchange for inflated commissions during the same period that Quattrone was head of CSFB’s tech banking business. Two trials and one overturned conviction later, Quattrone — who previously headed up Morgan Stanley’s technology group, as well as served as the CEO of Deutsche Bank’s technology group — reached a settlement with the government in which he admitted no wrongdoing. Soon after, he launched Qatalyst.

While LinkedIn is now the bank’s biggest win to date, it has been involved in a string of high-profile deals. Among them is OpenDNS’s sale to Cisco for $635 million last year; HomeAway’s sale to Expedia last year for $3.9 billion; and the sale of Ping Identity, a firm that manages employees’ digital identities, to the private equity firm Vista Equity Partners. (Terms of the deal, which was announced just last week, aren’t being disclosed, though a report in TheInformation pegs the amount at $600 million.)

In a deal that Qatalyst might be less eager to advertise than others, it also advised Autonomy on its 2011 sale to Hewlett Packard for $11 billion.

More here.

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New Fundings

Alpine Immune Sciences, a 1.5-year-old, Seattle, Wa.-based immunotherapy startup that’s developing a recombinant protein-based therapeutic, has raised $48 million in Series A funding led by OrbiMed Advisors, with participation from Frazier Healthcare Partners and Alpine Bioventures, the investment vehicle that Alpine founder Mitch Gold started with own money after leaving his last company, Dendreon. Forbes has more here.

AVA, a months-old, Boston-based personalized, data-driven nutritional coaching app that’s currently in private beta, has raised $3 million in seed funding led by DCM Ventures, with participation from Khosla Ventures and Eric Schmidt’s Innovation Endeavors, among others. More here.

Chronext, a three-year-old, Switzerland-based online luxury watch marketplace, has raised €11 million ($12.3 million) in Series C funding led byPartech Ventures, with participation from Octopus Ventures, Capnamic Ventures, NRW.BANK and InVenture Partners.

Jobandtalent, a seven-year-old, Madrid, Spain-based job matching platform, has raised $42 million in Series B funding led by Atomico, with participation from numerous individual investors. TechCrunch has more here.

League, a two-year-old, Toronto-based health insurance startup, has raised $25 million in Series A funding led by OMERS Ventures, with participation from Royal Bank of Canada, Manulife Financial Corp., Power Financial Corp., and Mike Lazaridis’s Infinite Potential Technologies. Reuters hasmore here.

PromisePay, a three-year-old, Melbourne, Australia-based fintech startup that specializes in payments for online marketplaces, has raised $10 million in funding led by Australia’s Carsales, with participation from Australian venture funds Rampersand and Reinventure, and earlier investors Cultivation Capital and Mark Harbottle, who cofounded the logo marketplace 99Designs. TechCrunch has more here.

Roadie, a 1.5-year-old, Atlanta, Ga.-based “on-the-way” delivery network (its app rewards drivers for delivering items on trips they are already taking), has raised $15 million in Series B funding led by UPS Strategic Enterprise Fund, with participation from Stephens Inc. and TomorrowVentures. TechCrunch has more here.

Talkspace, a four-year-old, New York-based startup that offers therapy via an app, has raised $15 million in Series B funding led by Norwest Venture Partners. Other participants in the round include earlier backers Spark Capital, SoftBank, Metamorphic Ventures and TheTime. TechCrunch hasmore here.

Yotpo, a five-year-old, Tel Aviv, Israel-based platform that lets companies solicit content from their users and customers in the form of reviews, Q&As, photos, and videos for use across different marketing channels, has raised $22 million in Series C funding. Bessemer Venture Partners led the round, with participation from earlier backers Innovation Endeavors, Marker LLC,Vintage Investment Partners, Blumberg Capital and Access Industries. The company has now raised $50 million altogether. TechCrunch has more here.

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New Funds

This morning, Revolution, the 11-year-old, Washington, D.C.-based venture firm founded by former AOL executives Steve Case, Donn Davis and Ted Leonsis, is taking the wraps off its newest growth fund, which has closed with $525 million. TechCrunch has more here.

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IPOs

Draper Esprit, the venture capital firm, is planning to list tomorrow on Aim, the London Stock Exchange’s junior market, and the Irish Stock Exchange.  The early-stage outfit said the move was key to it becoming a $1 billion (£700 million) source of “patient capital” for start-ups across Western Europe. The Telegraph has more here.

—–

Exits

Move Loot, a three-year-old, San Francisco-based platform designed to help users buy and sell used furniture, says it’s being acquired, though it has yet to disclose the buyer’s name, reports TechCrunch. In the meantime, the company — which has raised roughly $21 million from investors, including Index Ventures and First Round Capital — seems to be failing its current customers. More here.

Storehouse, a three-year-old, San Francisco-based app that makes it easy for users to lay out their content to create visually appealing stories, is shutting down. The company had raised $8.5 million from investors, including True Ventures, SV Angel, Sherpa Capital, Maven Ventures, Lerer Hippeau Ventures, and Designer Fund. TechCrunch has more here.

ThinkUp, a seven-year-old, New York-based platform that provided customers with insights into their activity on social networks like Twitter and Facebook, is shutting down. According to CrunchBase, the company had raised an undisclosed amount of seed funding from Bloomberg Beta and Quotidian Ventures. Cofounder Anil Dash has more here.

—–

People

Shannon Liss-Riordan, the attorney who is representing approximately 350,000 Uber drivers in California and Massachusetts, told a court she is cutting her proposed fees by $10 million as part of an arrangement to settle lawsuits that Uber misclassified the drivers as contractors not drivers. Some drivers objected to the commission she’d originally proposed. Fortune has the story here.

Zenefits today is laying off another 9 percent of its staff — or 106 additional people — and offering its existing employees a buyout offer. More here.

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Jobs

NextEV, a China-based electric car company poised to compete with Tesla, is looking for a corporate development associate. The job is in San Jose, Ca.

Twitch, the Amazon-owned video platform and community for gamers, is looking for a corporate development associate. The job is in San Francisco.

—–

Essential Reads

Everything you need to know from Apple‘s WWDC event yesterday.

If you were wondering about the generous premium that Microsoft is paying for LinkedIn, it may be tied to another bidder that was reportedly interested in acquiring the company. Bloomberg has (a little) more here.

Alibaba Group is trying to shore up investors’ confidence. Here’s how.

—–

Detours

Steps to turn off the nagging self-doubt in your head.

Experiments with guaranteed income have shown resoundingly positive results. So what’s stopping us?

Seven hacks for hiding secret stuff on your iPhone.

—–

Essential Reads

iPong. You’ll be all like so.

Welcome back, everyone. What a terribly sad weekend.

—–

Top News in the A.M.

Big news: Microsoft is buying LinkedIn for $26.2 billion. The software giant is offering $196 per share in an all-cash transaction that’s expected to close by the end of the year. (Nice premium: LinkedIn’s shares were trading at $131 as of Friday.) Microsoft says that LinkedIn, which claims 433 million members, will continue to operate as an independent company with Jeff Weiner remaining in his role as CEO. The New York Times has more here.

Walgreens is officially terminating its relationship with Theranos. TechCrunch has more here.

Starting at 10 a.m. PST, Apple will be offering a sneak peak at changes to its mobile IOS operating system, its Apple Watch and the Apple TV (and maybe more). You can tune in here to watch it live.

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Andreessen Horowitz Raises $1.5 Billion Again

In March, we told you that Andreessen Horowitz was targeting $1.5 billion for its fifth and newest fund. On Friday, the seven-year-old Sand Hill Road firm confirmed that it has closed on that amount, having secured the capital commitments from its previous investors.

The announcement comes a little more than two years after the firm closed its fourth, multi-stage venture capital fund with $1.5 billion.

The money also comes on the heels of a $200 million fund that the firm announced last November called the AH Bio Fund, a vehicle that’s being used to invest in mostly early-stage startups at the intersection of computer science and life sciences. (We wrote about its newest bet, Freenome, last week.)

Altogether, Andreessen Horowitz has now raised a somewhat stunning $6.2 billion. Managing partner Scott Kupor shared more about the fundraise and what’s changing (and not changing) in a chat Friday morning. Our conversation has been edited slightly for length and clarity.

How would you describe this fundraise?

It was a great raise. It took a relatively short period of time; we were oversubscribed. It’s consistent with our last funds in terms of size, based on the opportunity set we see in VR and artificial intelligence and core enterprise infrastructure, among other things.

Any changes to your mandate?

No, we’ll still do multistage investing in software companies, with about 70 percent of our bets going into early-stage stuff and the rest going into later-stage stuff.

What about seed-stage investing? Marc Andreessen had suggested a few years ago that the firm might dial back on this except for “fringe” technologies or products.

We’re still doing seed investing. Earlier on, we did a lot of small seed investments where we’d put in $50,000, but we realized that a better approach for us would be to take bigger positions and do fewer of them  . . . so a lot of our deals today range from $500,000 to $1.5 million where we’re not just part of a party round but a major investor and those companies become part of the full Andreessen Horowitz family, meaning they can [take advantage] of our [internal] service and networking groups.

You’d also kind of backed off of late-stage deals, the idea being that newer investors could mark up your deals. Has that changed or will it as those non-traditional investors back away? 

Yes, if there are greater opportunities or later-stage becomes more attractive. I’m not smart enough to know how to forecast it.

There has been some turnover at the firm. How many GPs do you have currently, and will that change with this new fund?

More here.

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New Fundings

Aunt Bertha, a six-year-old, Austin, Tex.-based startup that enables individuals to find and apply for government and charitable social service programs, has raised $5 million in funding led by Techstars Ventures. SiliconHills has more here.

Carro, a year-old, Singapore-based online marketplace for buying and selling cars, has raised $5.3 million in Series A funding led by Indonesia’s Venturra Capital, with participation from Singtel Innov8, Golden Gate Ventures,Alpha JWC Ventures, Skystar Capital and GMO Venture Partners, among others. TechCrunch has more here.

Meta, a four-year-old, Redwood City, Ca.-based company that makes special glasses that are part-AR viewer and part-VR simulator, has raised $50 million in Series B funding, including from Horizons Ventures, Lenovo, Tencent Holdings, Banyan Capital, Comcast Ventures, and GQY. TechCrunch has more here.

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New Funds

Commerce Ventures, a San Francisco.-based venture capital firm, has held the first close of its second fund at $ 25.6 million. According to an SEC filing, the firm is targeting $40 million. More here.

Vivo Capital, 20-year-old, Palo Alto, Ca.-based healthcare investment firm, has closed a new, early-stage fund, Vivo PANDA Fund, with more than $100 million in capital commitments from unnamed financial institutions, corporate entities and family offices. The firm plans to plug the money into healthcare companies across the industry spectrum, including pharmaceuticals, biotechnology, medical devices, and diagnostics. More here.

—–

IPOs

Cloud communications software company Twilio plans to sell 10 million shares of its stock at a price of $10 to $12 per share. Priced in the middle of that range, the company would enjoy a market cap of $1.07 billion — slightly more than the valuation it was assigned during its last funding round. Fortune has more here.

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Exits

Axel Springer has agreed to buy market researcher eMarketer for roughly $250 million as the German publisher continues its push into digital businesses and English-speaking markets. Advertising Age has more here.

Just two weeks after filing papers for an IPO, BlueCoat Systems, the cybersecurity company, is accepting a $4.5 billion takeover offer instead from the antivirus software giant Symantec. TechCrunch has more here.

OneLogin, a six-year-old, San Francisco-based company that makes cloud identity and access management software, is acquiring Portadi, a two-year-old, Santa Clara, Ca.-based startup that helps its users control access to cloud apps. OneLogin has raised roughly $42 million from investors, shows CrunchBase. Portadi had raised an undisclosed amount from Microsoft Accelerator, shows CrunchBase. TechCrunch has more here.

—–

People

The founders of Lyft talk Uber, Carl Icahn, and driverless cars.

Tom Rikert has been promoted from partner to general partner at Next World Capital, the San Francisco-based  early-revenue stage venture capital firm. Rikert joined Next World in 2014 from Andreessen Horowitz, where he was a partner on the investment team focused on enterprise startups.

—–

Data

Solar will become the cheapest source to produce power in many countries over the next 15 years, according to a new report from Bloomberg New Energy Finance. Fortune has the numbers here.

—–

Essential Reads

Amazon is preparing to launch a standalone music streaming subscription service, placing it squarely in competition with rival offerings from Apple and Spotify, according to a Reuters report. More here.

Uber backer China Life Insurance has also decided to back Uber’s biggest rival in China, Didi Chuxing. The WSJ has more here.

AT&T and Verizon are still in contention for Yahoo, reports Reuters, which says a consortium led by Quicken Loans founder Dan Gilbert and backed by Berkshire Hathaway Chairman Warren Buffett will also be invited to submit another bid. More here.

Snapchat just positioned itself for a colossal expansion on the advertising front. AdWeek dives in here.

—–

Detours

Sweet story.

For two “Mindy Project” writers, plenty of plot twists.

—–

Retail Therapy

Boom!

 

 

Friday! Hope you have an outstanding weekend, everyone!

—–

Top New in the A.M.

Apple has quietly become an energy company, one looking to sell excess electricity into the grid and maybe more. 9to5Mac has the story here.

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Propeller, a New Venture Outfit, Tries a Different Fundraising Approach

There’s been no shortage of disruption in the venture industry over the last decade of so, yet someone is always trying to introduce a new way of doing things.

Among the latest is Propeller, a six-month-old outfit that’s hoping to entice family offices and sovereign wealth funds to invest in four new but distinct funds at once. One will focus on IoT investments; a second will focus on insurance-related investments; a third fund will focus on fin tech more broadly; and a fourth intends to invest in women-led businesses.

Each of the funds is a standalone entity in terms of their economics. Carried interest, or the fund managers’ share in future profits, will not be shared across the funds. Management fees will mostly accrue to each fund, too, though every fund manager will pay into parent company Propeller to cover their shared resources, including marketing and back office support.

None of the people leading the funds has extensive venture capital experience, though they do have relevant operational experience.

Propeller’s insurance fund, for example, is being managed by Antonio Derossi, who has spent time as a senior VP at Allianz Group and been COO of Fireman’s Fund Insurance Company. Its IoT fund is headed up by Eitan Bienstock, who has worked in telecommunications, for a tech incubator in Australia, and briefly, for a corporate venture unit. The women-focused fund, called Shatter, is being led by Shelly Kapoor Collins, who’s long run her own boutique advisory firm in Silicon Valley and who served as vice chair of a public service project at the Wilson Center in Washington that had her advocating for STEM education and women’s entrepreneurship around the world.

Of Propeller’s structure, founder Cam Yuill says simply that the “data shows that funds that are highly specialized in sectors provide the best returns, and that underlines our thesis.”

Maybe. Specialized funds have certainly been an emerging trend over the last five to 10 years, with hundreds of so-called micro VC funds springing into existence. But many have had to specialize in order to attract capital as the field has grown crowded; the jury is still largely out regarding their performance.

As for why Propeller is raising four funds simultaneously instead of serially, Yuill — who worked briefly as a VC at the seed-stage fund Structure Capital, is an angel investor, and who has been an operator at a variety of tech companies since the late ‘90s – says to “think of it like a fund of funds, except that we aren’t charging [our limited partners] double the fees.”

More here.

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New Fundings

ABA English (American & British Academy), a nine-year-old, Barcelona, Spain-based startup whose video platform is designed to get students to mimic how English is spoken by native speakers, has raised €12 million ($13.5 million) in funding led by Kennet Partners. GeekTime has more here.

Liberty SBF, a five-year-old, New York-based commercial real estate lending company, has raised $75 million in Series B funding led by Exigent Capital and Mainline Investment Partners, among other, unnamed investors. The company also secured an expanded but undisclosed amount of credit from Capital One Bank. More here.

Lux, a year-old, San Francisco-based mobile shopping app for home décor, has raised $3.5 million in Series A funding from IDG Capital Partners and FREES Fund. More here.

ProGlove, a 1.5-year-old, Munich, Germany-based industrial IoT startup, has raised $2.2 million in Series A funding led by Intel Capital, with participation from Gettylab and Bayern Kapital. GeekTime has more here.

Tonsser, a three-year-old, Copenhagen, Denmark-based social football platform for young players, has raised €1.8 million ($2 million) in seed funding from Wellington Partners, Seed Capital Denmark, and unnamed angel investors. More here.

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New Funds

Garrett Van Wagoner is back. Van Wagoner famously led an actively managed, emerging tech stock fund beginning in the early 1990s. (By 2008, it was the worst-performing actively managed fund over the preceding 10-year period, prompting him to step down.) Now, Van Wagoner is looking to raise up to $250 million for a socially responsible venture fund. He’ll start marketing it in the Bay Area next week. More here.

—–

IPOs

Two years after the first reports of an IPO emerged, Japan’s Line — the company behind the popular messaging app Line — has announced plans to go public on the NYSE in the U.S. and the Tokyo Stock Exchange in Japan. TechCrunch has more here.

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Exits

Science Exchange, a Cambridge, Ma.-based online marketplace for scientific research, has acquired OnDeckBiotech, a four-year-old, Cambridge-based community and marketplace that connects biopharma companies with contract service providers. Terms weren’t disclosed. OnDeckBiotech appears to have been bootstrapped. According to CrunchBase, Science Exchange has raised $30.5 million in funding, including from Maverick Capital, Union Square Ventures, Index Ventures and Andreessen Horowitz. More here.

—–

People

Turntable.fm founder Billy Chasen is back with a new app that’s kind of like Turntable.

She may not wind up being worth billions of dollars after all, but Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes will reportedly see herself played by Jennifer Lawrence in an upcoming movie about her life and company. (That’s something, right? Not exactly?)

Longtime venture capitalist Tom Perkins, cofounder of the firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, has passed away at age 84.

Alphabet executive chairman Eric Schmidt wishes scientist Stephen Hawking and entrepreneur Elon Musk would stop freaking everyone out about artificial intelligence. Said Schmidt at a conference in Stockholm yesterday, ”In the case of Stephen Hawking, although a brilliant man, he’s not a computer scientist. Elon is also a brilliant man, though he too is a physicist, not a computer scientist.” Regarding computers so smart they might want to destroy us, Schmidt added, “Don’t you think the humans would notice this and start turning off the computers?”

Howard Sherman, the CEO of five-year-old Inventure Holdings, has just sold the house that he and actress wife Sela Ward own to super-performer Jennifer Lopez for $28 million. (We don’t care, but we thought you might find this interesting.)

—–

Essential Reads

Facebook now lets users comment with a video.

Tesla Motors is under scrutiny from federal regulators over suspension failures attributed to its biggest-selling model — along with reports that it had asked owners not to disclose the problem.

—–

Detours

How HBO’s “Silicon Valley” nails Silicon Valley.

Today’s significant digits.

—–

Retail Therapy

A $16 cup of coffee. Oof.

Happy Thursday, dear readers! And can we just say: LEBRON. (We love the Warriors but not quite as much as the Cavs.)

—–

Top News in the A.M.

Another day, another hack for users of popular social media sites to worry about. This time, malware may have used to collect more than 32 millionTwitter login credentials that are now being sold on the dark web. More here.

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Olly Has Built a Breakout Brand in a Crowded Market: Here’s How

Vitamins and venture capital might not seem like the most natural fit, but a number of related companies have attracted capital from tech investors in recent years, including SmartyPants, which makes a gummy vitamin, and Elysium Health, a supplements company that counts a former venture capitalist as a co-founder.

Still, competitors may have trouble catching up to two-year-old Olly, a 30-person company whose sweet vitamins, delivered in gummy form and packed in playful, eye-catching containers, are flying off a growing number of shelves. Indeed, the profitable startup, which began as an online subscription service, now derives just 3 percent of its revenue from online sales, with the rest coming from retail stores Target, CVS and GNC. (Safeway, Kroger and Albertsons will also feature Olly vitamins before the end of the year.)

To understand how Olly’s products have become so ubiquitous so quickly, we caught up with CEO Brad Harrington, who co-founded Olly with Eric Ryan, who’d previously cofounded cleaning-products company Method (acquired in late 2012). For anyone interested in creating a new brand, it’s worth a read.

The supplements market is an $82 billion market globally, says McKinsey. But it’s also crowded. What was the insight that made you and Eric think there was still room to compete?

Eric was interested in the category from a merchant perspective. He has spent a lot of time in mass merchants like Target, looking at different categories that might be ripe for disruption, and you could walk down aisles and be like, “Well, that’s obvious.” There aren’t a lot of brands, and most products are ingredient driven, so you didn’t know what to choose.

In fact, I was with Eric in Boulder, and we were standing in an aisle of a store, and strangers would just come up to us and ask how many milligrams of zinc they should take, and we were just as dumbfounded as they were. So we thought, let’s simplify this and make everything about the end benefit versus the individual ingredients.

Did you decide on gummy form right away?

More here.

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New Fundings

Aktana, a five-year-old, San Francisco-based startup that provides decision support services to life sciences companies, has raised  $17.5 million in new funding led by Safeguard Scientifics, with participation from previous backer Starfish Ventures. More here.

Aquicore, a 3.5-year-old, Washington, D.C.-based startup that sells analytics to commercial real estate companies for the purpose of energy management, has raised $5 million in Series A funding led by Kiddar Capital, with participation from Navitas Capital. DCInno has more here.

Embotics, a 10-year-old, Ottawa, Ontario-based company that sellsvirtualization management and private cloud automation software to enterprises, has raised $12.1 million in funding from Arrowroot Capital. SDxCentral has more here.

ePatientFinder, a three-year-old, Austin, Tex.-based healthcare startup that connects physicians with clinical trials for their patients, has raised $8.2 million in Series B financing from a “strategic healthcare technology investor syndicate.” The company has now raised nearly $11 million altogether. More here.

Forge, a three-year-old, San Francisco-based company that enables gamers to find short clips of action and share them on different social networks (the company was founded by YouTube cofounder Jared Kim), has raised $4.5 million in Series A funding. True Ventures led the round with participation from Social Capital and previous investors Resolute Ventures and WME Ventures. The company has now raised $9 million altogether. More here.

Freenome, a year-old liquid biopsy diagnosis platform that detects the cell-free DNA sequencing of cancer, has landed $5.5 million in seed funding led by Andreessen Horowitz, with participation from Founders Fund, Data Collective, and Third Kind Venture Capital. We have much more here.

Hireology, a six-year-old, Chicago-based hiring platform that targets franchises and retail-automotive industries, has raised $12 million from Baird Capital. Crain’s Chicago Business has more here.

RetraceHealth, a 2.5-year-old, Minneapolis, Mn.-based company that delivers primary care through in-home and video visits, has raised $7 million in Series A funding from earlier investors McKesson Ventures, Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota, and HealthEast Care System. The Minneapolis/St.Paul Business Journal has more here.

StoreKing, a five-year-old, Bangalore, India-based rural e-commerce company, has raised $16 million in funding from Axiata Digital. YourStory has more here.

SundaySky, a 10-year-old, New York-based company whose platform creates personalized videos for brands, has raised $30 million in Series D funding led by Viola Private Equity, with participation from NTT DoCoMo and earlier investors Carmel Ventures, Globespan Capital Partners, Norwest Venture Partners and Comcast Ventures. Globes has more here.

Tradeshift, a six-year-old, San Francisco-based startup whose platform helps companies simplify and improve their expensing systems with external contract partners, has raised $75 million in Series D funding led by Data Collective, with participation from HSBC, American Express Ventures, CreditEase and Pavilion Capital. Earlier backer Notion Capital also took part in the round The deal values the company at over $500 million, according to the Wall Street Journal. More here.

TravelPerk, a 1.5-year-old, Barcelona-based business travel booking platform, has raised $7 million in Series A funding led by Spark Capital. Additional investors including Sunstone Capital and existing backer LocalGlobe. TechCrunch has much more here.

When I Work, a six-year-old, Saint Paul, Mn.-based employee scheduling and communication app, has raised $15 million in Series B funding led by Drive Capital, with participation from Arthur Ventures and High Alpha. The company has now raised $24 million altogether. TechCrunch has more here.

—–

New Funds

Sherpa Capital, the venture firm that has backed companies including Uber, Hyperloop One and Munchery, has closed on $470 million in new capital, according to both Fortune and Recode, which say the capital will be deployed across two funds: Sherpa Ventures II, targeting early stage investments, and Sherpa Everest, focused on mid-stage companies. More here.

—–

Exits

Monster.com announced yesterday that it has acquired the San Francisco-based startup Jobr, which had been developing a job-finding app the company described as a Tinder for jobs. Deal terms weren’t disclosed, but Jobr had raised $2 million in seed funding. TechCrunch has more here.

Mobile advertising company Smaato is set to become the latest technology startup to be acquired by Chinese investors, after 11-year-old, San Francisco firm announced that Beijing-based Spearhead Integrated Marketing Communication Group, an offline marketing organization, is buying it for more than $148 million. Smaato had raised $47 million from investors, including Singapore Press Holdings. TechCrunch has more here.

—–

People

Richard Branson caught some poor employee asleep on the job, so he trolled him with this photo.

Arianna Huffington is building a new media startup backed by Alibaba founder Jack Ma. Bloomberg has more here.

Speaking at a conference in Berlin yesterday, Uber CEO Travis Kalanickshared what he tells investors who ask him when the company is going public: “[W]e are going to IPO as late as humanly possible. It’ll be one day before my employees and significant others come to my office with pitchforks and torches. We will IPO the day before that.”

Larry Page has been quietly working to build self-driving flying cars, too. Bloomberg has the story here.

Facebook just hired CollegeHumor’s Ricky Van Veen to make its giant video business even bigger. Recode has the story here.

—–

Essential Reads

Starting next week, Apple will begin rolling out new incentives for developers in its App Store, including a new revenue-share model and the introduction of search ads in its iOS App Store. The Verge has the story here.

AngelPad, the bi-coastal accelerator program, hosted one of its twice yearly demo days earlier this week in San Francisco. Here are its 12 newest companies.

The site of beleagured Lending Club was down for a couple of hours last night, and it’s been down again for hours this morning. The apparent “data center outage” comes at an unfortunate time for the company.

—-

Detours

The environment you spend your early years in is a major contributing factor to how sweaty you are later in life.

A brave (Yale-bound) high school valedictorian just disclosed her undocumented status in her graduation speech.

—–

Retail Therapy

Black crow print. We hate crows, but you may feel differently about these terrifying scavengers.

Hi, happy Wednesday, all. Fun seeing a number of you at various events yesterday.:)

—–

Top News in the A.M.

Yahoo is reportedly lining up bids for about 3,000 patents. More here.

Short-term rental sites like Airbnb will have to play by a much tougher set of rules in San Francisco under legislation approved by its Board of Supervisors yesterday. More here.

—–

SoftTech VC Goes Big with Two New Funds Totaling $150 Million

Back in January, we told you that SoftTech VC, a San Francisco-based seed-stage fund founded 11 years ago by investor Jeff Clavier, had promoted two of its senior investors to full partners: Andy McLoughlin and Stephanie Palmeri. The move seemed geared to bolster the firm during a time when it was out seeking more capital from its own investors.

Fast forward to today, and SoftTech is announcing that it has raised $100 million for its fifth and newest seed-stage fund. The firm has also gathered up another $50 million in capital commitments for a “breakout” fund that it will use expressly to invest in between 12 to 15 deals involving its successful portfolio companies. (Palmeri notes that the firm will never lead these deals but rather join them as follow-on investors.)

The funds effectively double the amount of money that SoftTech has been actively managing. Its last fund closed with $85 million. Its second-to-last fund closed with $55 million.

That limited partners were willing to write the firm larger checks isn’t a big surprise. SoftTech saw its biggest exit ever when the wearable fitness company Fitbit went public a year ago. It was a seed and Series A investor in the company, alongside True Ventures, another early-stage San Francisco venture firm.

Others of SoftTech’s most recent exits include Gnip, a data company that was acquired by Twitter for $134 million in 2014; Brightroll, a video ad platform acquired by Yahoo for $640 million in 2014; and LiveRamp, a maker of data onboarding software that was acquired by data management firm Acxiom for $310 million in 2014.

In a call with Clavier and Palmeri yesterday, both suggested that little will change at SoftTech, despite that it’s managing more money than in past years. The firm will still aim to secure between 7 percent and 10 percent ownership of the companies it funds. Initial checks — of between $750,000 and $1 million — will remain unchanged in size, though the firm is likely to invest in a few more companies this time around.

More here.
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New Fundings

Amplitude, a four-year-old, San Francisco-based web and mobile analytics company, has raised $15 million in Series B funding led by Battery Ventures, with participation from Benchmark Capital. The company has now raised $26 million altogether. More here.

Blow, a 2.5-year-old, London-based startup that provides beauty services on demand, has raised £500,000 from Unilever Ventures, as well as via a crowdfunding campaign on the Seedrs platform. More here.

Building Robotics, a three-year-old, Oakland, Ca.-based company better known as Comfy, has raised $12 million in Series B funding for its automation software that helps companies save energy on office air conditioning. Emergence Capital led the investment, with participation from Microsoft Ventures and the real estate services company CBRE.

Buildium, a 12-year-old, Boston-based startup that sells software for rental property managers, has raised $65 million in funding from Sumeru Equity Partners. Fortune has the story here.

Celonis, a five-year-old, Munich-based business-to-business optimization software company, has raised $27.5 million in Series A funding led by Accel Partners and 83North. TechCrunch has more here.

Cylance, a four-year-old Irvine, Ca.-based cybersecurity company that leverages artificial intelligence and algorithmic science, has raised $100 million in Series D funding co-led by The Blackstone Group and Insight Venture Partners. Earlier backers DFJ Growth, KKR, Dell Ventures, Capital One Ventures and TenEleven Ventures also joined the round. VentureBeat hasmore here.

Ginko Bioworks, an eight-year-old, Boston-based biotech startup that launched out of Y Combinator in 2014 and makes all sorts of scents and flavors from microbugs, has raised $100 million in Series C funding, including from YC’s Continuity Fund, Senator Investment Group, Cascade Investment, Baillie Gifford, Viking Global Investors and Allen & Company. TechCrunch has more here.

Midokura, a six-year-old, San Francisco-based software network virtualization company, has raised $20.4 million in Series B funding from the Japanese fintech company Simplex, with participation from earlier backers Innovation Network Corporation of Japan and Allen Miner, who is a member of Midokura’s board of directors. The company has now raised more than $44 million altogether. TechCrunch has more here.

Nuxeo, a 16-year-old, New York-based open source content management platform for business applications, has raised $10 million in fresh capital from Kennet Partners. More here.

Omicia, a seven-year-old, Oakland, Ca.-based maker of clinical genome interpretation and reporting software, has raised $23 million in Series B funding from UPMC Enterprises, Roche Venture Fund, LDV Partners, and Ping An Ventures, along with earlier backers ARTIS Ventures, Acadia Woods Partners and Buchanan Investments. More here.

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New Funds

Longitude Capital, a life science investment firm targeting mostly mid- to late-stage companies, has held a first close on Longitude Venture Partners III, raising a total of $525 million, according to the company. MedCity News has more here.

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People

Y Combinator President Sam Altman was denied entry into the Ritz hotel in London yesterday because of his “sport shoes.” (Rulez.)

Nir Blumberger, a former corporate development executive at Facebook, has joined Accel’s London office as a venture partner. TechCrunch has more here.

Secret cofounder David Byttow is back with a new startup called Bold. More here.

Ousted Lending Club CEO and co-founder Renaud Laplanche has been speaking to private equity firms and banks about a potential buyout of the online lender, according to Reuters. More here.

Ellen Pao, the former Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers partner who unsuccessfully sued the venture firm for gender discrimination, has just landed a book deal with Random House to write about the tech industry’s culture. Recode has more here.

A quick look at who’s voting for which U.S. presidential candidate in Silicon Valley.

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Essential Reads

The Japanese e-commerce giant Rakuten is having to scale back its global ambitions.

For good or bad, Austin denizens have come up with their own way to fill the void left by Uber and Lyft.

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Detours

The best CEOs in the U.S., according to the people who work for them.

What Tesla just showed us about the future of car crashes.

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Essential Reads

Beard Bib. (No returns, obviously.)