• StrictlyVC: December 1, 2016

    Hi, everyone, we’re on a plane tonight and not exactly sure when we’ll be able to publish SVC tomorrow, so, er, we’ll surprise you(?).

    Hope you have a very happy Thursday!

    Top News in the A.M.

    AngelList, the matchmaking platform for investors and startups, has just bought Product Hunt, a three-year-old, San Francisco-based platform where people vote on startup products. Terms aren’t being disclosed. Product Hunt had raised roughly $7 million from investors, including Andreessen Horowitz. Product Hunt had been rumored to be seeking new funding in recent months, though “this was just the better option,” founder Ryan Hoover tells TechCrunch. More here.

    Apple is releasing its AirPods in the “next few weeks,” says CEO Tim Cook.

    Entrepeneurs Sense Power Shifting Back to VCs, Says First Round Survey

    The early-stage venture firm First Round Capital just published its second-ever State of Startups report, and it’s chock full of interesting sentiments from a survey of more than 700 founders — some of whom have ties to the early-stage venture firm and some who operate outside it.

    Taken altogether, it suggests that founders remain highly optimistic about their chances of success, but they also sense that some of their leverage has slipped away when it comes to dealing with investors and raising subsequent rounds of follow-on funding.

    Here’s a link to the complete survey.

    Among what we think are its most interesting findings:

    * Nearly one in five(!) founders think their company will eventually be worth a billion dollars or more.

    * First Round asked founders to write in the name of the one company they’d want to acquire their startup. Out of 150 companies named, Alphabet rose to the top as the most sought-after acquirer.

    *For the second year running, founders pointed to investors as having negotiating power, with two-thirds (67 percent) of all respondents saying investors will hold more sway. Last year, 54 percent of respondents felt similarly.

    More here.

    New Fundings

    Dashbot, a months-old, San Francisco-based startup that offers bot-specific analytics and tools to enable brands and developers to increase user acquisition, engagement, and monetization, has raised $2 million in seed funding led by ff Venture Capital, with participation from Bessemer Venture Partners, Samsung Accelerator, Scrum Ventures, Bertelsmann Digital Media Investments, and Rembrandt Ventures. More here.

    Geenee, a two-year-old, Berlin-based startup that employs image recognition to software to enable Instagram users to purchase items by clicking on them, has raised $4.4 million in Series A funding from Highlight Communications, Constantin Media, Stephen Cohen and Steve Titus, among others. TechCrunch has more here.

    Glossier, a two-year-old, New-York based online beauty brand known for its brow gels and serums, has raised a $24 million in Series B funding led by Institutional Venture Partners, with participation from Index Ventures. The company has now raised just more than $35 million altogether. WWD has more here.

    Opendoor, a three-year-old, San Francisco-based startup on a mission to make residential real estate liquid, has raised a whopping $210 million in Series D funding led by Norwest Venture Partners, with participation from New Enterprise Associates, Khosla Ventures, GGV Capital, Access Industries, FifthWall, Lakestar, SVB Capital, Caffeinated Capital and Felicis Ventures. TechCrunch has more here.

    Osterhout Design Group, a 17-year-old, San Francisco-based augmented reality company that’s been quietly shipping smart glasses for years, has raised $58 million in Series A led by 21st Century Fox, with participation from Shenzhen O-film Tech Co., Vanfund Urban Investment & Development Co. and some individual investors. TechCrunch has more here.
    Qstream, an eight-year-old, Burlington, Ma.-based maker of sales acceleration software, has raised $15 million in Series B funding led by Polaris Partners, with participation by existing investors Frontline Ventures, Launchpad Venture Group, and Excel Venture Management. The company has now raised $23 million altogether. More here.
    SQZ Biotech, a three-year-old, Watertown, Ma.-based biotech startup that’s developing a new generation of cell therapies that harness the body’s natural immune system, has tacked on $8 million in fresh funding to a previously closed Series B financing round. The new capital comes from GV and Quark Venturesand adds to $16 million that was previously led by NanoDimension and Polaris Partners in September. More here.

    WorkRamp, a two-year-old, Palo Alto, Ca.-based employee training platform company, has raised $1.8 million in seed funding led by Susa Ventures, with participation from Initialized Capital, Joe Montana, Y Combinator, and Haystack. TechCrunch has more here.

    New Funds

    Founder Collective, a seven-year-old, Cambridge, Ma.-based seed-stage venture fund, has closed its third fund with $75 million in capital from a small group of limited partners whose anchor investors are the the firm’s three partners: David Frankel, Micah Rosenbloom and Eric Paley. “Unlike most funds, the partners are, in fact, the single-largest investor in [our new fund]. So when entrepreneurs take our money, it’s really our money,” says Rosenbloom, who earlier in his career co-founded a 3D imaging startup that sold to 3M. Given Founder Collective’s success to date, we’re guessing that’s very much by choice. More here.
    Three members of the senior investing team at Genesis Partners, a major Israeli venture firm, are launching their own, new, early-stage fund called F2 Capital. According to TechCrunch, the partners are in the midst of closing a $50 million debut fund that will back seed-stage companies. More here.

    (Other) Exits

    Comcast‘s Fandango is acquiring the Latin American ticketing serviceCinepapaya for undisclosed terms. According to CrunchBase, Cinepapaya had raised at least $3 milion from investors, which include 500 Startups, Wayra, and SP Global Capital. The WSJ notes that the deal is expected to give Fandango another foothold in the growing Latin American market, where there are few screens relative to the population — and a major appetite for moviegoing. More here.

    Fitbit, the leader in the fitness band market, is near a deal to acquire smartwatch maker Pebble, according to The Information. The price isn’t being disclosed, but it’s thought to be for a small amount, given that Pebble had been looking to sell. Pebble had raised roughly $15 million from CRV, along with angel investors Paul Buchheit and Tim Draper. (It also famously raised many millions through crowdsourcing campaigns.) More here.

    People

    David “Big Papi” Ortiz, along with a star-studded group of other former baseball players, are launching Dugout Ventures, a private-equity fund that will focus on companies manufacturing the next generation of baseball equipment. Other investors in the fund include Hall of Famers Nolan Ryan and Barry Larkin, as well as retired players Vernon Wells and Torii Hunter. The WSJ has more here.

    Michael Phelps, the most decorated Olympian ever, is looking to join the long list of successful athletes turned investors. At the Intuit software conference in San Jose, Phelps told the the Associated Press, “I would love to get involved . . . Whether it’s in a couple little startups here and there, take a little risk, have some fun and see where it goes.” USA Today has more here.

    Peter Thiel makes a (ceremonial) move.

    Jobs

    Capital One Growth Ventures is in the market for a venture associate. The job is in San Francisco.

    Eastlink Capital, an early-stage venture firm, is looking to bring aboard a partner-track senior associate or principal. The job is in Menlo Park, Ca. Send queries to steven@eastlinkcap.com.

    Essential Reads

    Russia is building its own Silicon Valley in beautiful . . . Siberia.

    Nationalist trolls are destroying Reddit.

    Apple plans to use drones and new indoor navigation features to improve its Maps service and catch longtime leader Google, says Bloomberg.

    Owing to Donald Trump’s decision to appoint former Brietbart chairman Steve Bannon to his administration, a growing number of ad-tech companies are pulling the plug on the site’s access to advertising dollars via their systems, says AdWeek.

    More bad news for Zenefits; it was just ruled illegal in the state of Washington.

    Detours

    Candian police have a cruel new punishment for suspected drunk drivers:Listening to Nickelback.

    Napolean Dynamite and Pedro reunite over cheesy tots.

    Wait long enough, homeowner, and you can hit the jackpot.

    Retail Therapy

    Louis Gray quilts. So we will take them all and also the pillows.

  • StrictlyVC: November 30, 2016

    Wednesday! Busy day over here; hope yours is going well.:)

    Top News in the A.M.

    Now Germany’s spy chief is warning that Russian hackers who are pelting his country with disinformation could undermine their democratic process, too. Reuters has more here.

    More companies are getting in to the auto lending biz, but regulators warned this morning about an “increased level of distress” among millions of Americans who are falling behind on their loan payments.

    Is Europe is Poised to Give the U.S. a Run for Its Money?

    You might think Europe is treading water these days, with one of its biggest financial centers, London, hamstrung by Brexit and the uncertainty it has fostered.

    You’d be wrong. So suggests a new survey by the venture firm Atomico that persuasively argues that Europe’s tech scene is instead being fast propelled forward by three new trends:  a well of so-called “deep tech;” a growing number of tech hubs across the continent; and expanding interest by corporate investors, non-tech companies, and foreign giants in European tech startups.

    The numbers Atomico cites are eye-opening. With the help of companies like LinkedIn, Meetup, Stack Overflow, Dealroom.co, and the London Stock Exchange, as well as survey responses from roughly 1,500 founders, investors and tech employees, Atomico says that deep tech companies have attracted $2.3 billion in investment over the last 22 months, and that nearly 1,000 related startups have been founded over the same period.

    Deep tech, per Atomico’s definition, means startups that employ artificial intelligence; are focused around virtual reality or augmented reality; fall into the “frontier tech” bucket, meaning they make drones or robots or nanosatellites or similar; or have sprung up around the Internet of things, from wearables to smart home startups.

    Some of these companies are in Zurich, including Teralytics, a big data company backed by Horizons Ventures and Lakestar; Climeworks, which has figured out how to suck carbon dioxide out of the air and aims to remove 1,000 metric tons a year of the greenhouse gas with its first commercial plant just outside of Zurich; and the computer vision company Dacuda.

    But a growing number are spread across a number of other hubs, as well. Over the last five years, there’ve been 582 investments in deep tech companies in France alone, for example. In Germany, that number is 480. In Finland, it’s 137. In the Netherlands, it’s 332, by Atomic’s accounting.

    Indeed, there have been been 282 related deals in such companies in 2016 alone, up from five years ago, when that number was 55. Are those Silicon Valley-type numbers? No, but there’s reason to think that gap in funding — there’s a fivefold difference between the U.S. and Europe — will start to narrow.

    For one thing, as Atomico notes, a growing number of U.S. tech companies have set up shop in Europe, and those European employees are just as likely as their U.S. counterparts to start their own companies eventually. Alphabet is now in Zurich and London. Facebook is in Paris; London; and Somerset, England. Apple is in Cambridge; Berlin; Lund, Sweden, and Grenoble, France. Conglomerates headquartered in Asia are also planting flags in Europe, including Japan’s Rakuten, which now has an artificial intelligence center in Paris.

    More here.

    New Fundings

    Civis Analytics, a three-year-old, Chicago-based data intelligence company founded by the chief analytics officer of Barack Obama’s 2012 re-election campaign, has raised $22 million in Series A funding. Drive Capital led the round, with participation from Alphabet’s executive chairman Eric Schmidt, Verizon Ventures,  and the ad holding company WPP. TechCrunch has more here.

    Clue, a three-year-old, Berlin-based app built on machine learning to track a woman’s monthly menstrual cycle, has raised $20 million in Series B funding led by Nokia Growth Partners. Other participants in the round include Giving Wings, Fabrice Grinda, and earlier backers Union Square Ventures, Mosaic Ventures, and Brigitte Mohn and Christophe Maire. TechCrunch has more here.

    Dubsmash, a two-year-old, Berlin-based lip-syncing video app, has raised €9 million ($9.6 million) in Series B funding from earlier investors. The deal was led by Sunstone Capital; other participants include Index Ventures, Balderton Capital, Eniac Venture, and Lowercase Capital. TechCrunch has more here.

    Gett, a six-year-old,  New York-based on-demand ride service, has secured a $100 million, seven-year loan facility from Russia’s Sberbank. Gett has now raised $622 million to date and was reportedly looking for funding at a valuation of at least $2 billion earlier this year. TechCrunch has more here.

    Grokker, a four-year-old, San Francisco-based expert-led on-demand fitness, yoga, meditation, and cooking video service, has closed its Series B round with $22.5 million in funding. Investors include SV Angel, First Round Capital, Khosla Ventures, Aspect Ventures, Interwest Partners, Comcast, and Correlation Ventures. More here.

    Hyphenate, a 1.5-year-old, San Francisco-based cloud platform that helps mobile app developers acquire and retain users by enabling them to connect and chat, has raised $13.5 million round of funding, led by Matrix Partners China. More here.

    Inagora, a two-year-old, Tokyo-based e-commerce mobile platform that sells high-quality Japanese products to consumers, particularly those in China, has raised $26 million in Series B funding led by the cross-border venture firm World Innovation Lab. Other participants in the round include Japan’s ITOCHU Corporation and Ventech China. China Money Network has more here.
    LovePop, a 2.5-year-old, Boston-based greeting card company, has raised $6 million in Series A funding led by Accomplice Ventures, with participation from Shark Tank’s Kevin O’Leary, Wayfair co-founder Niraj Shah, Wayne Chang of Crashlytics and Twitter, and Bob White of Bain Capital. More here.

    Nohla Therapeutics, a 1.5-year-old, Seattle-based biotechnology company that’s developing universal donor cellular therapies for patients with blood disorders and cancers, has raised $43.5 million in Series A funding led by ARCH Venture Partners, with participation from 5AM Ventures and the Jagen Group. MedCity News has more here.

    Novogene Technology, a five-year-old, Beijing-based next-generation sequencing and bioinformatics company, has raised $75 million in Series B funding from China Merchants Bank Co., CMB International, SDIC Innovation, and Sigma Square Capital. More here.
    Ōura Ring, a three-year-old, Finnish company that makes smart, health-monitoring jewelry, has raised €5 million ($5.3 million) in Series A funding, including from MIT Media Lab Director Joi Ito and Jaan Tallinn, who was Skype’s founding engineer and a cofounder of Kazaa. TechCrunch has more here.
    Phil, a 1.5-year-old, San Francisco-based prescription medication delivery service, has raised $7.5 million in Series A funding, according to Fortune. Crosslink led the round and was joined by Eniac Ventures. More here.

    ServiceAide, a six-month-old, San Jose, Ca.-based provider of IT and cloud services for small and medium businesses, has raised $12 million in new funding led by Arrowroot Capital. More here.

    SonarSource, an eight-year-old, Geneva, Switzerland-based maker of quality assurance tools for software code, has raised $45 million in funding from Insight Venture Partners. Tech.eu has more here.

    Sudden Coffee, a year-old, San Francisco-based maker of instant coffee vials, has raised  $2.7 million in seed funding led by CRV, with participation from Founder Collective, Lifeline Ventures, and several angel investors. More here.

    TicketSauce, a three-year-old, San Diego, Ca.-based company that makes event management software, has raised $2.5 million in Series A funding led by Draper Frontier Opp & Tech Fund. More here.

    TraceLink, a seven-year-old, North Reading, Ma.-based  SaaS platform for tracking and tracing pharmaceuticals, has raised $51.5 million in Series C funding led by Goldman Sachs Growth Equity. Earlier backers FirstMark Capital, Volition Capital, and F-Prime Capital also participated in the round. TechCrunch has more here.

    New Funds

    Accel India has closed its fifth fund with $450 million, roughly two years after closing its fourth fund with $325 million. Whether it’s another sign of froth in the country or underscores a very real opportunity remains open to argument. In the meantime, Shekhar Kirani, a Bangalore-based partner who joined Accel in 2011, answered some of our related questions via email last night. More here.

    Singapore’s Jungle Ventures today confirmed the final close of its newest $100 million fund for investments in Southeast Asia. The firm announced plans for the fund — its second — in September 2015, when it completed a first close. More here.

    Exits

    Another non-tech company picking up a tech startup: this time it’s Dick’s Sporting Goods, which is expanding its digital tools with the acquisition of GameChanger Media, maker of a mobile scorekeeping app. According to CrunchBase, GameChanger had raised roughly $10 million from investors, including BoxGroup, Trilogy Equity Partners, and Costanoa Venture Capital. Terms of the deal aren’t being disclosed. TechCrunch has more here.

    GetInsured, an 11-year-old, Mountain View, Ca.-based platform that helps users find health coverage, has acquired Array Health, a 10-year-old, Seattle-based provider of group health insurance e-commerce technolog. Terms aren’t being disclosed. CrunchBase doesn’t turn up any funding data for GetInsured, but it shows that Array Health had raised roughly $13 millionfrom investors, including Founders Co-opNoro-Moseley Partners, and Vocap Investment Partners. GeekWire has more here.

    People

    Politico founders Mike Allen and Jim VandeHei kind of, partly reveal their new plan for media domination.

    GoPro is cutting 200 jobs, about 15 percent of its global workforce.

    Famed hacker George Hotz is resurrecting the DIY autonomous car project he canceled in October, but this time, he’s giving the code away.

    Power VC Vinod Khosla has refused to sell a six-acre public right of way to a California beach alongside one of his properties, the State Lands Commission disclosed today. The agency will now have to vote on whether to pursue eminent domain against him. More here.

    Five young CEOs who had a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad 2016.

    Jobs

    Hewlett Packard Enterprise Ventures is looking to hire an associate. The job is in Palo Alto, Ca.

    Essential Reads

    And it taketh away: Facebook has cut off live video access to Prisma, an increasingly popular company whose apps turn photos and videos into “artworks” using the styles of famous artists.

    How Google is challenging AWS.

    The hack that scared Apple straight.

    Confessions of an Instagram influencer.

    Detours

    Build instant rapport in an interview.

    How to hide $400 million.

    Retail Therapy

    The “Elder Statesman.” (Never actually buy this, please.)

  • StrictlyVC: November 29, 2016

    Hi, everyone, happy Tuesday! We’re running off to another field trip. If we missed anything, we’ll catch you up tomorrow.:)

    Top News in the A.M.

    Amazon is reportedly developing a premium Echo-like speaker with a screen. Bloomberg has the lowdown here.

    A Former I-Banking Star Among Two New Investors to Sue Theranos

    Theranos, the 13-year-old, Palo Alto-based health technology company, is being sued by two more investors who say they were lied to about Theranos’s health and its prospects by founder Elizabeth Holmes and former president and COO, Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani, who was reportedly long one of the Holmes’s closest confidants.

    The suit is the third that Theranos has been slapped with in recent months, following a $140 million lawsuit filed earlier this month by Walgreens, a former lab testing partner that’s now seeking the amount of money it invested in Theranos; and a separate suit filed by the San Francisco-based hedge fund Partner Fund Management, which told its backers that Theranos had fraudulently induced it to invest through a web of “lies, material misstatements, and omissions.”

    One of the plaintiffs in the newest lawsuit, Hilary Taubman-Dye, is a longtime technical recruiter who now works in investor relations for a TV production company, shows LinkedIn. According to the lawsuit, she purchased Theranos shares on the secondary shares platform SharesPost at $19 per share in August 2015. The suit also describes Taubman-Dye’s failed efforts — along with those of others who’d used SharesPost to buy stock in the company —  to cancel the transaction after the WSJ began publicly questioning its many claims.

    The second plaintiff — Robert Colman — is known in some Silicon Valley circles for having cofounded the once-powerful Silicon Valley boutique investment bank Robertson Stephens.

    In the suit, Colman says he invested in Theranos in 2013 through Lucas Venture Group, a venture firm founded by a second-generation VC named Donald Lucas whose other bets include the data analytics company Palantir. Indeed, according to the suit, Lucas “directly solicited” Colman’s investment in Theranos’s Series G round “at the invitation of Theranos and Holmes,” an invitation that was “purportedly a favor to Lucas,” whose father, also Donald Lucas, “originally funded Theranos and ‘mentored’ Holmes.”

    The younger Lucas, it says, had represented himself to Colman as a strategic advisor to Theranos. His father, Donald Lucas, has been a self-employed venture capitalist since 1960. Now 86 years old, he was at one point the chairman of the board at Theranos. He was also a director on the boards of Oracle and Cadence Design Systems until 2013.

    More here.

    New Fundings

    AudioCure Pharma, a six-year-old, Berlin, Germany-based pharmaceutical R&D company focused on hearing loss, has raised €9 million ($9.6 million) in Series A funding from MED-EL, a provider of hearing implant systems; earlier backer High-Tech Gruenderfonds; and other private investors. More here.

    BioMensio, a young, Tampere, Finland-based company whose smart, handheld bio-screening sensor and associated cloud services help determine the presence of specific biomolecules, has raised €2.5 million ($2.66 million) in funding, including from VTT Ventures, Siemens Technology Accelerator and Tekes, the Finnish Funding Agency for Innovation. More here.

    Devialet, a nine-year-old, Paris, France-based developer of high-end speakers, has raised €100 million ($106 million) in Series C funding in one of the biggest rounds to date for a French startup. The financing was led by Ginko Ventures, which is Foxconn’s European investment arm, and also included participation from Foxconn itself, carmaker Groupe Renault, Sharp Corporation (now owned by Foxconn), Playground Global, Jay Z’s Roc Nation, and Korelya Capital. More here.

    Fluidic Energy, an eight-year-old Scottsdale, Az.-based spin-out of the University of Arizona whose rechargeable metal-air battery could potentially be used for back-up power, diesel generator replacement, and to optimize electric grids, has raised $20 million in funding from Asia Climate Partners. More here.

    HawkEye 360, a year-old Boston, Ma.-based developer of a space-based radio frequency mapping and analytics system, has raised $11 million in Series A funding led by Razor’s Edge Ventures. Also participating: Allied Minds, which licenses cutting-edge technology from government and academic labs, then creates companies to commercialize that technology. HawkEye 360 is one of its subsidiaries. Boston Business Journal has more here.

    Innovent Biologics, a five-year-old, Shanghai, China-based biopharmaceutical company that’s making and commercializing biologics, has raised $260 million in Series D funding led by Future Industry Investment Fund, a private equity fund. Other backers include China Life Private Equity Limited, Milestone, Ping An and Taikang Insurance Group, as well as earlier backers Legend Capital, Temasek and Hillhouse Capital. China Money Network has more here.
    OxThera, an 11-year-old, Stockholm, Sweden-based biopharmaceutical company, has raised €32 million (roughly $34 million) in funding co-led by Life Sciences Partners, Ysios Capital, Sunstone Capital, and Flerie Invest, with participation from earlier investors Kurma Partners, Idinvest Partners, Stiftelsen Industrifonden, and Brohuvudet. More here.
    QuantGroup, a two-year-old, China-based online financial services company, has raised $73 million in Series C funding led by China’s Sunshine Insurance Group, with participation from Fosun Capital, Guosen Hongsheng Investment Co.,and other undisclosed investors. China Money Network has more here.
    Tetra Discovery Partners, a six-year-old, Grand Rapids, Mi.-based clinical stage biotechnology company whose therapeutic products aim to bring clarity of thought to people suffering from Alzheimer’s disease and other brain disorders, has raised $5 million in Series A funding co-led by the Apjohn Group and Grand Angels, with participation from Dolby Family Ventures, theAlzheimer’s Drug Discovery Foundation, and other private investors. The company also just announced the receipt of two new grants totaling $5 million from the National Institutes of Health. More here.
    Vaadin, a 16-year-old, Turku, Finland-based developer of open source web application development tools, has raised €5 million ($5.3 million) in funding from Verdane Capital, which partly bought secondary shares from another shareholder. More here.

    TransPod, a 1.5-year-old, Toronto, Canada–based developer of its own hyperloop system (it competes with Hyperloop One and Hyperloop Transportation Technologies), has raised $15 million in seed funding led by the Italian high tech holding group Angelo Investments. More here.

    New Funds

    WI Harper Group, a cross-border early-stage venture capital firm, has signed a strategic cooperation agreement with Luxin Venture Capital Group and Shandong Leader Equity Investment Fund to launch a cross-border fund that will back startups across a range of industries in both the U.S. and greater China. DealStreetAsia has more here.

    Another day, another space-focused venture fund. This time, it’s San Francisco-based Starburst Ventures, which says it has raised a $200 million debut fund to invest in early-stage aerospace startups over the next three years. The fund is an extension of the Starburst Accelerator, which was founded in 2012 to help aviation and aerospace tech startups raise seed funding. TechCrunch has more here.

    Exits

    Edwards Lifesciences, a publicly traded medical equipment company in California, is buying Valtech Cardio, an Israeli medical device company, in a deal valued at $990 million. According to the terms of the deal, Valtech will receive an initial $340 million in cash and stock, with Edwards agreeing to pay out up to $350 million as the team reaches a series of milestones. GeekTime has more here.

    People

    Goldman Sachs’s longtime president and CEO, Gary Cohn, is meeting with The Donald today, though it isn’t clear if he’s offering up advice or talking about a possible position in the incoming administration.

    Even Alphabet’s executive chairman Eric Schmidt just struggled to answer one of Google’s famously tricky interview questions.

    The cofounders of Stripe joined the ranks of the world’s youngest billionaires(on paper) after the online payments company announced a new round of funding last week that valued the company at $9.2 billion.

    The White House has partnered up with the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative and Stanford to host an invite-only event today that’s focused on the ways that technology can tackle issues like poverty, inequality, and economic immobility. It runs through tomorrow.

    Data

    This Cyber Monday was the biggest online shopping day, ever. ZDNet has the stats here.

    Essential Reads

    Rupert Murdoch, owner of the WSJ — which essentially stopped Theranos in its tracks with its reporting — had quietly poured $100 million into Theranos before the WSJ launched its series of investigative pieces. (You cannot make this stuff up.)

    Uber is defending its business model as a digital platform, not a transportation service, in landmark case in EU’s highest court. The New York Times has more here.

    The California Department of Insurance has fined human resources and health benefits company Zenefits $7 million for “multiple license violations,” the department announced yesterday. We sat down with CEO David Sacks to talk about this investigation and much more in September. TechCrunch has more on its outcome here.

    Detours

    Come Together,” a new commercial directed by Wes Anderson, and starring Adrien Brody.

    Capitalism camp for kindergartners.

    A gorgeous Porsche 718 Cayman (that happens to be racing a pack of drones).

    Retail Therapy

    Micro Luggage Scooter. Ideal for when the airport is nearly devoid of other people. Oh. Wait.

  • StrictlyVC: November 28, 2016

    Hi, everyone, and welcome back! Hope you had terrific break. We’re still a little zonked from ours.

    Quick mention: we head to London a little later this week for TechCrunch Disrupt. We’re excited; among our on-stage interviews is a sit-down with Skype and Atomico founder Niklas Zennström. (The rest of the line-up is great, too.)  As longtime readers know, when we travel, SVC grows a little more abbreviated, but we’ll still be publishing.:)

    Top News in the A.M.

    Samsung Electronics‘ board will reportedly consider splitting the conglomerate into two tomorrow, as proposed by activist hedge fund Elliott Management. More here.

    A Longtime VC on the Merits of Not Swinging for the Fences

    There’s a winner-take-all mentality in Silicon Valley. Unfortunately, it has seemingly distorted the thinking of countless entrepreneurs who’d likely be better off running smaller companies — and giving up less ownership to investors in the process. While funding announcements are widely celebrated as milestones, the reality is that founders often wind up with far less than their investors, and in plenty of cases, they can sell a company and make almost no money at all.

    It’s a point that longtime VC Jodi Sherman Jahic was eager to make recently when we met up for coffee in San Francisco. In fact, Jahic — who cofounded the venture firm Aligned Partners with Susan Mason (who previously spent 15 years with Onset Ventures) — focuses exclusively on enterprise companies that are ruthlessly focused on capital efficiency and whose founders will turn away  bigger checks, knowing they could be shooting themselves in the foot otherwise.

    More from our chat follows, edited for length.

    You were a Kauffman Fellow, then spent something like seven years as a principal at Voyager Capital. Why start your own firm?

    At the time, we were managing a $200 million fund, and [by 2007, 2008] I started to think that even that might be too much for some companies. With $200 million, you’re probably investing in 20 companies, committing up to $10 million in each, and at that level of risk, you’re likely to syndicate each deal. So, if every company can’t take at least $20 million and usually quite a bit more, then it’s probably not that interesting [to the $200 million fund]. And the problem gets larger as the fund gets larger.

    Did you see that a lot?

    Absolutely. When a company is doing just fine, everyone wants to put their money into it, which is ironic because it only generates less cash-on-cash returns for everyone. Also, the venture world tells us this story that one-third of venture-backed companies will become an abject loss and one-third will go sideways and one-third will be hits. So founders reason that two-thirds of the time, they’ll be fine. But that’s not what happens. The majority of the time — something like 75 percent of the time, according to [the benchmarking company] Sand Hill Econometrics — founders who take venture money get not a dime. And the venture industry has made it worse by taking some opportunities that could be more efficient and generate returns for everybody and turning them into lets-swing-for-the-fences types of things. And not every company is going to grow up to be that.

    People don’t realize this, but there is zero correlation between how much money goes into a company and its exit value.

    You struck out on your own years ago, when it was even harder for a woman to form a venture fund than today. How did you get things rolling?

    I started with a pledge fund.

    More here.

    New Fundings

    8i, a 2.5-year-old, Wellington, New Zealand-based virtual reality startup, has raised $20.4 million in Series B funding, shows an SEC filing first flagged by Fortune. Looks like the capital is coming at least in part from from Time Warner Investments and earlier backer Founders Fund.

    Agricool, a year-old, Paris, France-based argiculture startup that grows and produces fruits and vegetables inside shipping containers, has raised €4 million ($4.3 million) in funding from the newly launched venture firm Daphni, as well as entrepreneurs Henri Seydoux and Jean-Daniel Guyot. TechCrunch has more here.

    Cashboard, a two-year-old, Berlin, Germany-based wealth management startup, has raised €3 million ($3.1 million) in Series A funding led by Digital Space Ventures, with participation from earlier backers Redalpine Capital, Earlybird Ventures, and 500 Startups. Crowdfund Insider has more here.

    Galera Therapeutics, a seven-year-old, Malvern, Pa.-based clinical-stage biotechnology company developing new treatments for cancer patients, has raised $15 million in new funding funding led by Sofinnova Ventures. Earlier backers also joined the round, including New Enterprise Associates, Novartis Venture Fund, Novo Ventures, Correlation Ventures, Enso Ventures and Galera Angels. More here.

    Hornet, a five-year-old, San Francisco-based gay social network, has raised $8 million in funding led by the Shanghai-based venture firm Ventech China. VentureBeat has more here.

    ItemMaster, a seven-year-old, Chicago-based company that creates product information tools for food brands and retailers, has raised $7.5 million in Series A financing led by Edison Partners, with participation from Chicago Ventures. More here.

    Knowlarity Communications, a seven-year-old, Gurgaon, India-based telephony company, has raised roughly $20 million in Series C funding led by the Dubai-based private equity firm Delta Partners Capital, with participation from earlier backers Mayfield Fund and Sequoia India. LiveMint has more here.

    Kymab, a seven-year-old, Cambridge, U.K.-based company that’s developing human monoclonal antibody therapeutics, has raised $100 million in Series C funding led by ORI Fund. Other participants in the round include Wellcome Trust, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Shenzhen Hepalink Pharmaceutical, Malin Corporation, CF Woodford Equity Income Fundand Woodford Patient Capital. More here.

    Proficio, a six-year-old, Carlsbad, Ca.-based cybersecurity company, has raised $12 million in funding led by the private equity firm Kayne Anderson Capital Advisors. The San Diego Business Journal has more here.

    SafeDK, a two-year-old, Herzelia, Israel-based provider of a mobile SDKs management platform, has raised $3.5 million in Series A funding led by StageOne Ventures, with participation from Samsung Next Tel Aviv, Marius Nacht, Kaedan Capital, and angel investor Leon Waisbein. NoCamels has more here.

    Shockwave Medical, a seven-year-old, Freemont, Ca.-based startup focused on treating calcified cardiovascular disease, has raised $45 million in Series C funding led by Sectoral Asset Management, with participation from T. Rowe Price Associates and earlier backers Sofinnova Partners, Venrock, RA Capital, Deerfield, and Ally Bridge Group, among others. More here.

    Sightbox, a two-year-old, Portland, Or.-based on-demand contact lens startup, has raised $1.8 million in funding led by Rogue Venture Partners, with participation from Jumpstart Foundry, Portland Seed Fund and VistaRiver Healthcare Solutions. More here.

    Silexica, a two-year-old, Palo Alto, Ca.-based startup whose software development tools make it easier for electronic device manufactures to deploy multicore processors, has raised $8 million in Series A funding led by Merus Capital, with participation from Paua Ventures and earlier backers Seed Fonds Aachen and DSA Invest.

    Soul Machines, a months-old,  Auckland, N.Z.-based developer of human-like avatars, has raised $7.5 million in Series A funding led by Horizons Ventures, with participation from Iconiq Capital. The New Zealand Herald has more here.

    Stripe, a six-year-old, San Francisco-based company that lets websites and apps incorporate payments services by way of an API and a few lines of code, has raised $150 million in Series D funding at a whopping $9.2 billion post-money valuation. (It was valued at $5 billion roughly a year ago.) The round was led by CapitalG (formerly known as Google Capital) and earlier backer General Catalyst Partners. Other participants in the round include earlier investors such as Sequoia Capital. Stripe has now raised $460 million altogether. TechCrunch has more here.

    Wynd, three-year-old, Nova Scotia, Canada-based startup whose software aims to replace existing point-of-sale services in use at restaurants and stores, has raised a $31.7 million Series B round (€30 million) from Sodexo Ventures and earlier backer Orange Digital Ventures, with Bpifrance also participating. TechCrunch has more here.

    Zola, a three-year-old, New York-based wedding registry site co-founded by serial entrepreneur Kevin Ryan, has raised $25 million in Series C funding at a $200 million valuation, says TechCrunch. It says Lightspeed Venture Partners led the round. More here.

    New Funds

    BMW  is increasing the size of its five-year-old venture capital fund, BMW i Ventures, to 500 million euros (roughly $533 million) from 100 million euros, the German business daily Handelsblatt reported yesterday, citing an interview with one of the carmaker’s board members. The fund is also relocating from New York to Silicon Valley. Reuters has more here.
    Draper Nexus, a five-year-old, early-stage venture firm based in San Mateo, Ca., and Tokyo, Japan, has raised $175 million for its second fund. TechCrunch has more here.

    Playground Ventures, a Palo Alto-based venture firm run by Android co-founder Andy Rubin, is looking to raise up to $500 million for its second fund, shows an SEC filing. Rubin’s name is listed alongside fellow Playground founders Peter Barrett, Matt Hershenson and Bruce Leak. This follows a $300 million funding round that closed just about this time last year. TechCrunch has more here.

    Seraphim Capital, a 10-year-old, U.K.-based venture fund, is looking to raise up to £80 million ($100 million) for an early-stage venture fund focused on outer space-related software and hardware opportunities. The firm has already garnered a £30 million ($37.5 million) commitment from the British Business Bank (made under its Enterprise Capital Funds program), along with commitments from unnamed “international space companies, family offices and individual investors.” More here.

    SV Angel, a seven-year-old, seed-stage fund known for making a wide number of small bets (including on Pinterest and Airbnb) has closed its sixth fund with just over $53 million, says partner Topher Conway. The firm closed its predecessor fund with $75 million in 2014. More here.

    IPOs

    AppDynamics — an eight-year-old,  San Francisco-based company that makes performance management tools for app makers and has raised more than $300 million from investors, including Goldman Sachs, Greylock Partners, and Lightspeed Venture Partners  has postponed its planned IPO, bumping it from next month into next year. The WSJ has more here.

    Exits

    Airbnb is reportedly in advanced talks to acquire a Chinese home rental startup called  Xiaozhu.com that has raised more than $150 million from investors, including Morningside Ventures. Bloomberg has more here.
    Beme, the social media app startup cofounded by famed vlogger Casey Neistat, has been acquired for an undisclosed amount by CNN, which is bringing Neistat in-house along with Beme’s 11 other employees. The New York Times has more here.
    SkyScanner, a 13-year-old, Edinburgh, Scotland-based global travel search site that had raised $200 million from investors, including Sequoia Capital and Scottish Equity Partners, has been acquired by Chinese online travel giant Ctrip for £1.4 billion in predominately cash, or approximately $1.74 billion. TechCrunch has more here.

    People

    Grab, the company rivaling Uber in Southeast Asia, is losing its first CFO just seven months after her appointment, the company confirmed. TechCrunch has more here.

    Peter Thiel is reportedly pulling a principal at Founders Fund — Trae Stephens — into President-elect Donald Trump’s transition team, which Thiel himself officially joined two weeks ago. More here.

    Tomorrow is  #GivingTuesday, and leaders across nonprofit and for-profit industries will be using social media to promote the end-of-year giving season. Recode has more here.

    Essential Reads

    India’s largest ride-hailing app Ola, which is reportedy raising a new round of funding led by Japan’s SoftBank, will take a hit on its valuation in the process, reports the Economic Times. It says the new round will value Ola at anywhere between $3 billion and $4 billion. The company, which reportedly still dominates the ride-hailing industry in India with about 60 percent market share, was last valued at $5 billion when it raised $500 million in November 2015.

    The untold story of Vergence Labs, a once-struggling startup whose technology now powers Snap‘s “Spectacles.”

    How China’s lightning-fast copycats are ruining Kickstarter campaigns.

    The rapid ascent Otto, the self-driving truck startup, involved a high-stakes gamble that could have landed the startup in legal hot water rather than the arms of Uber. BackChannel looks at what happened.

    Detours

    The best five Cyber Monday flight deals.

    Watch a helicopter pilot nail a ship landing in a ridiculous storm.

    Retail Therapy

    Adjustable heels!

    DroneGun, for when it’s time for that drone to go.

  • StrictlyVC: November 22, 2016

    Happy Tuesday! No column today. Also, StrictlyVC is taking a teensy break for the rest of the week to enjoy our favorite American holiday. (U.S. readers, we hope you’ll be enjoying a little down time this week, too.)

    We know it’s not ideal for our readers outside of the U.S., but we’ll be back and completely re-energized on Monday! Also, if anything truly crazy breaks — holidays are ideal for burying ugly developments — we’ll hop online to share the news with you.

    Take care, everyone; see you soon, and happy Thanksgiving.:)

    Top News in the A.M.

    After abruptly canceling a meeting with the New York Times, then rescheduling it, Donald Trump is meeting right now with reporters, editors, and other writers from the outlet, who are using Twitter to report on what’s happening.

    New Fundings

    Apptopia, a five-year-old, Boston-based app analytics company, just raised $2.7 million in seed funding led by Ashton Kutcher’s Sound Ventures, with participation from Mark Cuban, 500 Startups, RTA Ventures and Full Tilt Capital. BostInno has more here.

    Aye Finance, a two-year-old, New Delhi, India-based startup that specializes in micro-loans in India, has raised $10.3 million in new funding led LGT, with participation from earlier investors SAIF Partners and Accion. TechCrunch has more here.

    Barefoot Networks, a 3.5-year-old, Palo Alto, Ca.-based startup that sells ultrafast chips for switching systems, has added $23 million to what is now an $80 million Series C round. Alibaba and Tencent led the financing. More here.

    Findo, a months-old, Menlo Park, Ca.-based smart search assistant across all personal cloud, emails, files, and contacts, has raised $7 million in funding from ABBYY, Flint Capital and Foxit. More here.

    Getui, a six-year-old, Beijing, China-based, third-party push-notification-service provider that enables app developers to set up and send notifications to users across Android, iOS, and other platforms, says it has raised $58 million in Series D funding from (unnamed) returning investors. DealStreetAsia has more here.

    Helpshift, a five-year-old, San Francisco-based mobile customer service platform for businesses, has raised $1.8 million in additional Series B funding from Cisco, says Fortune. Back in June, the startup had raised $23 million in Series B funding from Microsoft Ventures, Salesforce and earlier backers Intel Capital, Nexus Venture Partners, True Ventures, and Visionnaire Ventures. More here.

    LifeRobotics, a nine-year-old, Tokyo, Japan-based company whose “co-robots” help businesses to automate their production processes, has raised $9 million in Series B funding from Global Brain, Mitsui Fudosan, Koden Holdings, Mizuho Capital, Golden Asia Fund and several unnamed investors. The startup’s product, “Coro,” is being developed for small manufacturing spaces. DealStreetAsia has more here.

    PayKey, a two-year-old, Tel Aviv, Israel-based peer-to-peer payments company, has raised $6 million in Series A funding co-led by e.ventures and Gaby Salem, with participation from CommerzVentures, Mastercard, Santander InnoVentures, Digital Leaders Ventures, and Magma VC. More here.

    Recursion Pharmaceuticals, a three-year-old, Salt Lake City, Ut.-based drug discovery company focused on rare genetic diseases, has raised an additional $2.2 million in Series A funding that brings the total round to $15.1 million. The fresh capital came from Felicis Ventures and several angel investors. Lux Capital led the round. More here.

    SafeDK, a two-year-old, Herzliya, Israel-based startup that offers a mobile SDK management platform that helps app developers stay on top of the multiple SDKs their apps may rely on, has closed $3.5 million in Series A funding. Investors include Samsung Next Tel Aviv, Marius Nacht, StageOne Ventures, Kaedan Capital, and angel investor Leon Waisbein. TechCrunch has more here.

    True Link Financial, a 3.5-year-old, San Francisco-based financial services provider for seniors, has raised $3.6 million in funding from Kapor Capital,Initialized Capital, Symmetrical Ventures, and the Ziegler Link-Age Longevity Fund. VentureBeat has more here.

    Vymo, a three-year-old, Bangalore, India-based company that builds web and mobile applications to automating sales force activities and drive sales, raised $5 million in Series A funding from Sequoia India.The Economic Times has more here.

    New Funds

    Biomatics Capital Partners, a two-year-old, Seattle-based life sciences venture firm founded by Boris Nikolic — who spent five years as a chief advisor for science and tech to Bill Gates — has raised $200 million for its first fund. FinSMEs has more here.

    Caffeinated Capital, a seven-year-old, San Francisco-based venture capital firm founded by Raymond Tonsing, has raised $17 million in capital for a new fund that’s targeting $75 million, shows an SEC filing. The firm’s bets include Wish, Optimizely, and Docker, among others, shows Tonsing’s LinkedIn profile. (Caffeinated’s site is pretty bare bones.)
    Information Venture Partners, a Toronto-based early-stage venture fund focused on fintech and enterprise SaaS, has closed its second fund with $106 million. More here.

    Telescope Partners, a 1.5-year-old, San Francisco-based growth equity firm, is targeting $75 million for its debut fund, shows an SEC filing. The firm was founded by Mickey Arabelovic, who previously spent close to eight years as a partner with Sequoia Capital, where he focused on growth-stage tech and healthcare companies. Arabelovic also logged a couple of years as a senior associate with Summit Partners earlier in his career.

    Exits

    Google has acquired Qwiklabs, a four-year-old, hands-on learning platform for those who want to become more familiar with operating cloud environments and writing applications that run on them. Terms weren’t disclosed. Quiklabs doesn’t appear to have raised outside funding. TechCrunch has more here.

    People

    VC Marc Andreessen seems to think flying cars are highly likely, though he says we’ll need to see a fundamental breakthrough in battery technology first. Much more here.

    Investor Peter Thiel has reportedly been approaching other Silicon Valley entrepreneurs in recent days, asking them to advise the President-elect and possibly join his administration. He isn’t finding many takers, though — yet.

    Actress Reese Witherspoon appears to be launching a media startup called Hello Sunshine that will be “devoted to, and passionate for, telling female-driven stories” for “film, tv & mobile,” she writes on Twitter.

    Data

    Crikey. Researchers, including at Northeastern University, are finding racial and gender disparities in just about every corner of the on-demand labor market. More here.

    Essential Reads

    Xiaomi’s push into smart appliances could lay the foundation for the creation of a manufacturing conglomerate. But it’s unclear if that’s enough to justify its last valuation, reports The Information.

    NextEV yesterday unveiled its record-breaking electric supercar, the first product under the Chinese-backed startup’s new NIO brand, and it is not slow.

    Renaissance Technologies: Why this hedge fund is a money-making machine like no other.

    Detours

    A look inside today’s most cutting-edge superyachts.

    The states that college graduates are most likely to leave.

    An animated map that shows how population density has changed over the last two centuries.

    Retail Therapy

    Nine great gifts for your favorite twentysomething.

  • StrictlyVC: November 21, 2016

    Hi, everyone, hope you had a wonderful weekend! Apologies for the late send. We were mixing work with Thanksgiving prep and can we just say: do not wait until Wednesday to get your act together. It’s getting scary out there already.

    Top News in the A.M.

    Why Trump’s pick for attorney general could be bad news for Silicon Valley.

    This 18-year-old just raised $3.5 million to help developers easily add capabilities to their apps

    RapidAPI, a two-year-old, San Francisco-based startup that enables developers to find, test, and manage many of the APIs they want to integrate into their apps, has raised $3.5 million in seed funding. The round was led by Martin Casado at Andreessen Horowitz, with participation from FundersClub, SV Angel, Green Bay Advisors, and 500 Startups, whose accelerator program it recently passed through.

    The company is interesting for numerous reasons — not least of them its founder, Iddo Gino, an 18-year-old who was a high school senior in Haifa, Israel last year when he was “discovered,” so to speak. It happened at a local hackathon, where Gino caught the attention of Dov Moran. The renowned Israeli angel investor provided Gino with some early mentorship, as well as $250,000 in seed money that Gino — who studied briefly at the public research institute Technion – used to move to the U.S. in January.

    Of course, RapidAPI’s mission — to enable developers to access and easily use publicly available APIs in a way that allows them to seamlessly communicate — is obviously of great interest to investors, too.

    Gino likens these functional “blocks” that can be woven together, to pieces of plumbing, explaining that, “Each company has its own language. So [a developer] tries to learn how Facebook speaks then uses a dictionary to translate it back to English. And [he or she] has to do this every time” with every company and sometimes even across one company’s different divisions. RapidAPI has meanwhile created what are essentially big repositories of translator units, “so we don’t need an API company to change anything. We take care of turning everything into a single language.”

    More here.

    New Fundings

    AdvisorEngine, a two-year-old, New York-based digital wealth management platform for investment advisors, has raised $20 million in Series A funding from WisdomTree Investments. FinSMEs has more here.

    Cera, a five-month-old, London-based on-demand social care platform, has raised £1.3 million ($1.6 million) in seed funding from JustEat CEO David Buttress; former chairman of Lazard and UBS banks Ken Costa; and global head of digital at McKinsey & Co., Paul Willmott. More here.

    Electric, a months-old, New York-based startup that provides automated IT support channel to small and mid-size companies, has raised $2 million in seed funding led by Bowery Capital, with participation from Primary Venture Partners, Charge Ventures, Gunderson Dettmer, and Anchor Worldwide. More here.

    Garmentory, a 2.5-year-old, Seattle, Wa.-based e-commerce marketplace for independent boutiques and designers, has raised $2 million in funding led by MHS Capital. WWD has more here.

    Genalyte, a nine-year-old, San Diego, Ca.-based diagnostics company whose lab-on-a-chip technology reportedly requires just one drop of blood to run 128 tests, just raised $36 million in funding from earlier backers Khosla Venturesand Redmile Group. TechCrunch has more here.

    Joya Communications, a four-year-old, San Francisco-based creator of video messaging app Marco Polo, has quietly raised roughly $20 million at a post-money valuation of around $100 million valuation, says Recode. Benchmarkled the round. More here.

    PatSnap, a nine-year-old, Singapore-based intelligence platform startup, has raised an undisclosed amount of Series C funding led by Sequoia Capital, with participation from Shunwei Capital and Qualgro. China Money Network has more here.

    Rapid Healthcare, a two-year-old, Irvine, Ca.-based startup that makes mobile medical apps, has raised an undisclosed amount of funding from Watermark Venture Capital. More here.

    New Funds

    ARCH Venture Partners, a PE and VC firm that was originally spun out of the University of Chicago in 1986 and invests in a wide range of technologies from biotech to software, has raised $408.4 million toward a ninth venture capital fund, according to an SEC filing that shows a $550 million target. The firm’s previous fund closed with $410 million in 2014.

    Hyperplane, a nearly two-year-old Boston-based venture firm founded by local investor Vivjan Myrto, is looking to raise $45 million for its second fund, shows an SEC filing. This time, too, it looks like Myrto has company, including new managing partners Jack Klink, formerly the head of global strategy at State Street, and John Murphy, who was formerly an associate at Point Judith Capital. More here.

    IDinvest Partners, a 19-year-old, Paris-based investment firm, has closed on €250 million ($265.7 million) for a new growth fund. The firm reportedly hopes to raise upwards of $425 million before holding a final close.

    Exits

    Last month, BuzzFeed quietly acquired a budding e-commerce holding company called Scroll whose cofounder, Ben Kaufman, previously founded the now-shuttered business Quirky. The reason: Kaufman is helping BuzzFeed try out different forms of commerce. Fortune has more here.

    In a deal that highlights consolidation in the semiconductor industry, Macom Technology Solutions said it will acquire Applied Micro in a deal valued at $770 million. Both companies are publicly traded. ZDNet has more here.

    Oracle has acquired Dyn, an 18-year-old, Manchester, N.H.-based cloud-based Internet performance and DNS performance management company that suffered a massive DDoS attack last month. According to CrunchBase, Dyn had raised $88 million from investors over the years,  including Pamplona Capital Management and North Bridge Venture Partners. TechCrunch has more here.

    Symantec has agreed to acquire LifeLock, a 12-year-old, Tempe, Az.-based identity theft protection services company, for $2.3 billion. LifeLock had gone public in 2013. Network World has more about Symantec’s ambitions to create the “world’s largest consumer security business” right here.

    People

    Amid reported struggles, Munchery, a venture-backed meal preparation and delivery service, has named James Beriker as its new president and CEO. Most recently, Beriker was the CEO of the job search engine Simply Hired (acquired in June by Recruit Holdings). Before that, he was a VP of display advertising at Yahoo, among other posts. TechCrunch has more here.

    Michael (“Woody”) Sherwood, a Goldman Sachs vice chairman and co-head of its European division, will retire from the Wall Street firm at the end of the year. He’d previously been seen as a potential successor to Goldman CEO Lloyd Blankfein. Dealbook has more here.

    Sad news. Harry Weller, who long led the East Coast venture practice of New Enterprise Associates from Washington, D.C., passed away unexpectedly in his sleep Saturday night at age 46. Weller had joined the firm in 2002, not long after nabbing an undergraduate degree in physics from Duke University and an MBA from Harvard. In a statement, a shocked NEA described Weller as a “renowned technology investor, champion of innovation and true partner to entrepreneurs” who was “bold, brilliant, and passionate” and “equally remarkable for his kind heart and generous spirit.” More here.

    Jobs

    Silverton Partners, an early-stage venture firm that invests primarily in Austin, Tex.-based startups, is looking to bring aboard a principal who has three to six years of experience at either a venture-backed startup or a venture firm. This position could lead to a partner role at the firm. The job is in Austin. To apply, write to kelly@silvertonpartners.com

    Data

    1,700. That’s how many millionaires are minted in the U.S. every single day, according to Boston Consulting Group. (Note: many of them are inheriting that wealth.)

    Essential Reads

    Apple has disbanded its division that develops wireless routers, another move to try to sharpen the company’s focus on consumer products that generate the bulk of its revenue. Bloomberg has more here.

    Hyperloop One, the futuristic transporation company that aims to shuttle people and cargo at speeds of up to 700 miles per hour, says it has settled an ongoing lawsuit brought against it by its former CTO and cofounder, Brogan BamBrogan, and several former employees. Terms of the settlement aren’t being disclosed, unsurprisingly, but BamBrogan tells TechCrunch that he’s now “planning to build rad shit with rad people, starting with our take on Hyperloop. More to come in the near future.” More here.

    Instagram has launched ephemeral live video that followers can watch only when it’s streaming, along with Snapchat-style disappearing private messages. TechCrunch has more here.

    The IRS is on the hunt for people who used Bitcoin to evade taxes. On Thursday, it asked Coinbase — the largest Bitcoin exchange in the United States — for the records of all customers who bought virtual currency from the company from 2013 to 2015. Dealbook has more here.

    Accel Partners recently cautioned its startups to play nice with traditional companies, noting that more non-tech businesses have been acquiring startups than otherwise. Bloomberg has more here.

    Detours

    This is going to be one interesting presidency.

    Two websites you should always check before shopping at Amazon.

    Friendship at first sight.

    Retail Therapy

    Tiny Clouds.

    The accessory of the season.

  • StrictlyVC: November 18, 2016

    We’ve been racing around but didn’t forget you. Happy Friday, everyone! Hope you have a terrific weekend, and we’ll see you back here Monday.:)

    Top News in the A.M.

    Amazon is going to sell cars online now, too.

    Seen Enough? Here’s How to Get the SEC’s Attention

    Sean McKessy spent most of the last five years as first chief of the SEC’s Office of the Whistleblower, building the division into an 18-person unit that has chased down hundreds of the roughly 14,000 tips it has received to date and paying out $132 million to tipsters in connection with successful Commission enforcement actions.

    McKessy left the agency in late July to join the Washington office of the whistleblower law firm Phillips & Cohen. He was in San Francisco this week, however, and we sat down with him to discuss a range of things, including how often the agency hears from the startup world, whether the SEC is likely to pursue fewer cases in Silicon Valley under a Trump administration and, either way, how tipsters can get the agency’s attention most effectively.

    More from that conversation follows, edited here for length.

    You were an SEC enforcement attorney who left to work in the private sector, then came back to the SEC to spearhead this program. What was that like?

    It was a fascinating challenge. There was an awards program under the SEC that was specific to insider trading cases, but it had been around for [22] years and the entirety of the payouts was around $3 million. Dodd-Frank established the one that I ran, which was broader and basically said that if you come forward with any kind of securities law violation and help the SEC bring the case, you can get a reward.

    How big an award?

    The awards can range from 10 percent to 30 percent of the money collected when the monetary sanctions exceed $1 million.

    And the money comes from where?

    Wisely, Congress set up separate funds for whistleblowers to be paid out of. [So if you get an award], we’ll multiply the 10 to 30 percent against whatever was collected in the case you helped us bring, but the money is going to be paid out of a different pot. What Congress didn’t want was for victims’ rewards to be reduced because we’re [paying a] whistleblower.

    What’s the criteria, beyond that a case has to have sanctions of more than a million dollars?

    Well, for example, you need to have voluntarily provided information to us. If the SEC sends you a subpoena and that’s why you’re sharing information with us, you aren’t a whistleblower.

    You also have to provide original information, though are exceptions; you can take publicly available information and synthesize it into analyses. The paradigm for that would be Harry Markopolos [the former securities industry exec who famously tried in vain to warn the SEC about Bernie Madoff]. He never worked at Madoff; everything he knew was from public documents. But his analysis showed the only way Madoff could be producing the returns he claimed was through fraud. The program was set up [in the wake of that case] so people like Markopolos could be eligible.

    The office made a $20 million payout on Monday, but the release about it is very opaque.

    The SEC is extraordinarily transparent about the cases it brings, so as soon as it brings an enforcement action, there’s a press release. But the whistleblower office has a statutory mandate not to identify whistleblowers. There are many pieces of information that the public would like to know that we thought could be reverse-engineered [to reveal a source].

    The office says 14,000 tips have come through the program since it went into effect in August 2011, and that it has paid out $132 million dollars to 34 people connected with 26 cases to date. Those don’t seem like great odds for potential whistleblowers.

    The number of people paid doesn’t necessarily represent everyone who brought good information; some have brought in good information where the sanctions have been less than $1 million. As I was leaving this summer, we had 800 ongoing investigations that were generated by whistleblowers. That’s actually a pretty high conversion rate. At any kind of intelligence or regulatory agency, you’re going to get 100 tips for every one or two that are good; that’s just the nature of the business.

    Do you think people are reaching out because of the money or they’re more interested in seeking justice?

    In the early days of the program, you weren’t even required to fill out a form, so anyone who supplied anything in writing had technically done what they needed to do, and in one case, we reached out a whistleblower and said, “You helped us bring a really good case; you provided information in writing. You could get paid.” The whistleblower said, “I didn’t do this to get paid; I’m not all that interested in it.” I [strongly encouraged him to accept the award] and he did.

    Donald Trump has pledged to dismantle the Dodd-Frank law. Are you worried about preserving what you built at the SEC?

    The speculation right now is the SEC’s whistleblower program will be spared because it’s working and it’s a fraud measure, and part of Trump’s philosophy is that we’ve got to “drain the swamp” and root out fraud wherever it may be. And for anyone looking to trim the government, I can’t think [doing away with the unit] is a compelling narrative. I think a lot of what drove people to vote in certain ways was this feeling that the game is rigged. So I don’t know how you tap into that [as a candidate], then turn around and say, “We’re going to take all the resources away from the agencies that we’re counting on to fix the system.”

    Are startup employees and investors aware of the whistleblower program and trying to take advantage of it?

    More here.

    New Fundings

    BuzzFeed, the 10-year-old, New York-based digital media company, has raised another $200 million at a valuation of $1.5 billion, the same valuation it had last year, according to documents from CB Insights. Business Insider has more here.

    Cogito, a nine-year-old, Boston-based voice-analysis software business, has raised $15 million in Series B funding led by OpenView, with participation from earlier backers Romulus Capital and Salesforce Ventures. Xconomy has more here.

    Handshake, a 4.5-year-old, San Francisco-based recruiting platform and professional network for college students, has raised $20 million in Series B financing led by Spark Capital. The round also included participation from earlier backers Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, True Ventures, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Lowercase Capital, Annox Capital and Charlie Cheever. The company has now raised $34 million total. The WSJ has more here.

    Inspire Medical Systems, a nine-year-old, Maple Grove, Mn.-based company whose medical devices are used to treat sleep apnea, has raised $37.5 million in Series F funding led by Amazak Health, with participation from OrbiMed Advisors and Medtronic (the medical company it was originally spun out of). Mass Device has more here.

    PeerStreet, a three-year-old, Manhattan Beach, Ca.-based crowdfunding platform that provides investors with easy access to loans that are collateralized with real estate, has raised $15 million in Series A funding led Andreessen Horowitz, with participation from The Kaiser Family Foundation, Rembrandt Venture Partners, and Montage Ventures. Reuters has more here.

    Prevalent, a 12-year-old, Warren, N.J.-based cyber security company, has raised $60 million in Series C funding led by Insight Venture Partners. More here.

    Renew, a months-old, Venice, Ca.-based platform designed to help baby boomers understand their post-retirement benefits, has raised $3 million in Series A funding led by Venrock, with participation from Expa, WTI, Madrona Venture Group, Refactor Capital and angel investors. TechCrunch has more here.

    Sigfox, a seven-year-old, Labège, France-based company that operates a cell network dedicated to low-throughput communication for connected objects, has raised a whopping €150 million ($160 million) in Series E funding, including from new investors Salesforce, France’s gas giant Total, and Parrot founder Henri Seydoux. TechCrunch has more here.

    Sparkcentral, a five-year-old, San Francisco-based social media-focused customer service company, has raised $20 million in funding led by LRM, with participation from Group MC,  and earlier backer Split Rock Partners and Jackson Square VenturesMore here.

    Wearhaus, a three-year-old, Berkeley, Ca.-based wireless headphone startup, has raised $4 million in Series A funding from Tellus International, Xiaoxiang Capital, and China Southern Media. More here.

    Yup, a two-year-old, San Francisco-based chat-based mobile tutoring company that was formerly known as MathCrunch, has raised $4 million in a seed extension round led by Sesame Ventures, bringing the company’s total capital raised to date to $7.5 million. Earlier investors in Yup’s seed round included Floodgate and Index Ventures.TechCrunch has more here.

    New Funds

    Sheila Gulati, a former Microsoft manager who formed the venture firm Tola Capital six years ago, has just closed a $295 million growth-oriented fund. GeekWire has more here.

    Exits

    Xtera Communications, an 18-year-old, Allen, Tex.-based maker of optical networks for terrestrial and subsea applications, has filed for Chapter 11 protection. The company had raised roughly $120 million from investors, including Arch Venture Partners, ComVentures, and New Enterprise Associates, before going public late last year. More here.

    People

    Rob Fishman, the co-founder of Niche, has left Twitter, says Fortune. Twitter acquired the startup, which works with influencers on social networks like Vine, in 2015 for a reported $50 million. Fortune’s report notes that Twitter had pulled Niche’s app from the App Store and laid off much of its engineering team in September.

    Elon Musk says Tesla’s solar shingles will cost less than a dumb roof. “Electricity is just a bonus.” (In related news, yes, Tesla shareholders yesterday approved plans to acquire the solar energy firm SolarCity, and by an 85 percent majority. Bloomberg has more here.

    Volkswagen announced this morning that it’s cutting 23,000 jobs. Dealbook has more here.

    Data

    App abandonment is climbing, and app installs are only up 6 percent year-over-year, says a new industry report out from Adobe.

    Essential Reads

    Apple is reportedly asking Foxconn and others to study feasibility of making its iPhones in the U.S. Nikkei Asian Review has more here.

    Airbnb’s launch of Trips — which it’s describing as the biggest in its eight-year history — comes as the company is preparing to go public “as soon as possible.” Wired has more here.

    Detours

    Stephen Colbert destroys Apple over its $300 coffee table book.

    What to bring to next week’s Thanksgiving potluck dinner.

    How little kids figure out who’s in charge.

    Retail Therapy

    The Shinola Runwell turntable. Made in America. F yeah!

  • StrictlyVC: November 17, 2016

    One more day, guys, hang in there!

    Top News in the A.M.

    In her first public remarks since last week’s election, Federal Reserve chairwoman Janet Yellen just said the economy remains in good health for now, suggesting the central bank will go ahead and raise its benchmark interest rate at its next meeting in December.

    YC Tries a New Experiment: Temporary Partners

    Y Combinator has developed a reputation under its president, Sam Altman, for iterating — a lot. The accelerator program’s newest twist? Temporary or “visiting partners” who will be asked to become highly involved with a particular “batch” or YC class based on their particular expertise.

    The partners will be a bit like YC’s “part-time partners,” a role the program created in 2011, except that part-time partners — who are invited to stay for six months — operate on renewable terms, and most tend to renew their position.

    To kick off its newest initiative, YC is welcoming three of these visiting partners, two of whom are YC alums: Aaron Epstein, Gustaf Alströmer, and Lyle Fong.

    Epstein founded Creative Market, a marketplace for digitally designed content that passed through YC in 2010. It was acquired for undisclosed terms by Autodesk in 2014.

    Alströmer is a product lead for growth at Airbnb. He previously worked as VP of growth at the communications app company Voxer and cofounded Heysan, a messaging service that graduated from YC in 2007 and was acquired for undisclosed terms by Good Technology in 2009.

    Meanwhile, Fong is the cofounder and CEO of mobile video game studio Hobo Labs. He also founded Lithium Technologies, a social media software company that’s best known in some circles for acquiring the social web startup Klout in 2014.

    Before it kicks off its winter batch in January in Mountain View, Ca., YC is also bringing aboard three new “part-time partners” to add to more than the dozen of so already operating within the network.

    More here.

    New Fundings

    CodeFights, a two-year-old, San Francisco-based company that brings together coding challenges and skills-based recruiting, has raised $10 million in Series A funding led by e.ventures, with participation from SV Angel, Felicis Ventures, A Capital and Granatus Ventures. TechCrunch has more here.

    CoverWallet, year-old, New York-based online insurance management platform, has raised $7.8 million in Series A funding led by Union Square Ventures, with participation from Index Ventures and previous investorsHighland Capital Partners, Two Sigma Ventures and Founder Collective. More here.

    Domino Data Lab, a three-year-old, San Francisco-based startup that’s building a data science platform to help companies maximize the impact of their quantitative research, has raised $10.5 million in funding led by Sequoia Capital, with participation from earlier backers Zetta Venture Partners, Bloomberg Beta, and In-Q-Tel. More here.

    Glycomine, a San Francisco-based biotechnology company developing a new generation of replacement therapies for rare diseases, just raised $12 million in Series A funding led by Sanderling Ventures, with participation from Chiesi Ventures, along with unnamed angel investors and patients. More here.

    GuestReady, a year-old, Trogen, Switzerland-based service that helps homeowners who use Airbnb and other services manage their properties professionally, has raised $750,000 in seed funding led by existing investorSwiss Founders Fund. TechCrunch has more here.

    Heal, a two-year-old, Santa Monica, Ca.-based platform for scheduling on-demand medical house calls, raised $14.8 million in Series B funding fromFidelity Management and Research Company. More here.

    Helpster, a 10-month-old, Bangkok, Thailand-based company that matches employers with people seeking blue-collar jobs, has raised $2.1 million in funding led by Jakarta-based Convergence Ventures, with participation from Wavemaker Partners. TechCrunch has more here.

    Heptio, a months-old, Seattle-based company that’s being built to support and advance the open Kubernetes ecosystem (an explainer of Kubernetes here), has raised $8.5 million in funding led By Accel Partners and Madrona Venture Group. TechCrunch has more here.

    Hotbody, a two-year-old, Beijing, China-based fitness mobile app that combines fitness plans, video demonstrations, and social networking, has raised $15 million in Series B funding led by Haodao Capital, with participation fromAmeba Capital. China Money Network has more here.

    Jongla, a seven-year-old, Finland-based messaging startup, has raised €5 million ($5.4 million) in Series B funding, including from its founder Arto Boman, Circlion Capital, Kontino Invest, Takoa Invest, Ingman Finance, and JSH Capital. Artic Startup has more here.

    M87, a four-year-old, Seattle-based wireless infrastructure company that aims to deliver better coverage to the edge of the network, has raised $5 million from Madrona Venture Group, Qualcomm Ventures and Trilogy Equity Partners. More here.

    Particle, a five-year-old, San Francisco-based development platform for the Internet of Things, has raised $10.4 million in Series A funding led by Root Ventures, with participation from OATV and Rincon Venture Partners. More here.

    Petuum, a months-old, Pittsburgh, Pa.-based startup that’s building an artificial intelligence and machine learning development platform, has raised $15 million in Series A funding led by Advantech Capital, with participation from Tencent Holdings, Northern Light Venture Capital, and Oriza Ventures. More here.

    Tray.io, a four-year-old, London-based platform that makes it easy for anyone to build and share SaaS integrations, has raised $5 million in Series A funding led by London-based Mosaic Ventures, with participation from True Venturesand earlier backers Redpoint Ventures, Passion Capital, Angelpad and Huddle co-founder Andy Mcloughlin. TechCrunch has more here.

    Uplevel Systems, 1.5-year-old, Tigard, Ore.-based company that sells managed IT services to small business IT consultants, has raised $1.2 million in funding from undisclosed sources. More here.

    New Funds

    Slow Ventures, the early-stage venture firm cofounded by early Facebook employees Dave Morin and Kevin Colleran, has officially closed Slow Ventures III with $145 million — a huge jump from the $65 million fund that the team raised in the spring of last year. The firm reportedly raised the fund from more than 100 CEOs, tech founders, executives, VCs, university endowments, and foundations. More here.

    Exits

    Facebook could one day build facial gesture controls for its app thanks to the acquisition of a Carnegie Mellon University spinoff company calledFacioMetrics. More here.

    New York marketing tech firm Sprinklr, a New York-based marketing tech firm, has acquired five-year-old, Portland, Ore.-based LittleBird for undisclosed terms. LittleBird helped researchers quickly find the top experts and influencers on any given subject via Twitter. It had raised $4.8 million in funding, including from Mark Cuban, Jason Calacanis, Oregon Angel Fund and other individual investors. More here.

    Verizon has acquired SocialRadar, a mapping startup founded by Blackboard co-founder Michael Chasen that aims to provide users with more accurate location data for businesses. Terms aren’t being disclosed. SocialRadar launched its mapping SDK earlier this year. When the company was first founded, its central idea was to cross-reference the location beacons in our pockets – our smartphones – with the billions of social profiles online to create real-time information about the people around us. More here.

    People

    AOL CEO Tim Armstrong just announced internally that there will be layoffs across AOL’s global workforce. More here.

    Hours after VC Tim Draper defended Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes on CNBC yesterday, his daughter, Jesse, a childhood friend of Holmes, took to Twitter to flame the two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist who revealed the depth of the company’s troubles in the WSJ. “43 articles and you’ve never spoken to founder of Theranos but congrats on ruining someone’s life. Hope you feel good,” Draper tweeted to the reporter, John Carreyrou. Carreyrou responded by noting he’d begun asking for an interview with Holmes more than five months before writing his first article — and that he’s “still asking.”

    In related news, Theranos’s whistleblower — who happens to be former Secretary of State George Shultz‘s grandson — talked to the WSJ and Carreyou yesterday about trying to expose Therano’s overinflated claims, and his isolating ordeal afterward. (Amazing read.)

    It’s a big day for Elon Musk. SpaceX has asked the U.S. government for permission to launch an internet network powered by thousands of satellites above the Earth. Meanwhile, shareholders of Tesla Motors and SolarCity are voting on the companies’ controversial proposed merger today.

    Renaud Laplanche, who was ousted earlier this year from the company he founded and took public — LendingClub — is planning a comeback. According to the WSJ, his new startup, Credify Finance, will make loans via the internet, just like Lending Club.

    Essential Reads

    In the U.K. police and intelligence agencies can now legally hack into your electronic devices remotely.

    New analysis shows that in the final three months of the presidential election campaign, fake election news stories generated substantially more engagement on Facebook than stories from legitimate news outlets.

    Baidu began testing its self-driving cars in California earlier this year; now it’s testing them out in China.

    Detours

    Nice reflexes, kid.

    Stephen Hawking thinks we humans have maybe 1,000 years left.

    Drake and Dave Chappelle lose it over a truly insane David Blaine trick.

    Retail Therapy

    The Awesomatic, for your holiday party.

    Three $25 million beach houses on different islands.

  • StrictlyVC: November 16, 2016

    Wednesday! Booyah.

    Top News in the A.M.

    Erp. Facebook said this morning it has uncovered several more flawed measurements related to how consumers interact with content, raising more questions about the metrics marketers lean on to decide whether to buy ads on the social media network. The WSJ has more here.

    Zwift Raises $27 Million to Make Indoor Athletics More Social

    If you haven’t heard of Zwift, founded two years ago in Long Beach, Ca., you aren’t alone. But investors have been following the company. Its massive, multiplayer video game technology, which caters to indoor cyclists, just attracted $27 million in Series A funding in a round that brings Zwift’s total funding to $45 million.

    The round was led by the private equity firm Novator Partners out of London, with participation from Shasta Ventures, entrepreneur Max Levchin, and earlier backers, including the Swiss investment firm Waypoint and Samchully, a maker of bicycle parts that’s headquartered in Korea.

    What are they tracking, exactly? Well, a 70-person company that’s been quietly establishing an avid following by merging gaming, indoor cycling and social elements and changing the way that people get fit during colder months and inclement weather.

    Indeed, among Zwift’s appealing aspects is users’ ability to connect with friends and strangers around the globe for “virtual” group rides and races, which current users often log using the popular cycling and running app Strava. That integration also enables users to see a map of the virtual path they’ve ridden, along with their incline stats and other performance information, like heart rate and cadence. And, like Strava, Zwift users can earn awards and badges — as when they zip through a sprint section the fastest.

    Zwift doesn’t cost a fortune, either. In fact, a large part of its appeal is its affordability. It’s a little like a gamified Peloton, except that users needn’t buy a $2,000 stationary bike to get started. They can use the bikes they already own, along with their own trainers (which turn road bikes into stationary bikes). The cost? Just $10 per month, though it’s worth noting that users need to have “smart” trainers that can wirelessly interact with third-party software like Zwift’s. (These can run from $100 to $1,500.)

    More here.

    (Other) New Fundings

    BetterUp, a 3.5-year-old, San Francisco-based mobile career coaching platform, has raised $12.9 million in  Series A funding led by DFJ, with participation from SVAngel, Freestyle, and others. More here.

    East Meets East, a three-year-old, New York-based dating service for Asians in the U.S., has raised $1 million in funding from 500 Startups, East Ventures, the Japanese games firm DeNA, iSGS Investment Works, and Shintaro Yamada, who founded the Japan-based unicorn Mercari. TechCrunch has more here.

    Echo, a 1.5-year-old, London-based company whose app simplifies the process of ordering prescriptions, has raised £1.8 million ($2.2 million) in seed funding led by LocalGlobe, with participation from Global Founders Capital. TechCrunch has more here.

    Firefly Learning, a seven-year-old, London-based edtech company behind a SaaS-based teaching and learning support platform for schools, has raised £4.5 million ($5.6 million) in Series A funding led by BGF Ventures. TechCrunch has more here.

    LeShi, the 12-year-old, Beijing-based parent company of LeEco, has raised $600 million in funding from 10 Chinese companies, and an initial, $300 million tranche will go to LeEco. It needs it, it admitted recently. More here.

    Magenta Therapeutics, a months-old, Cambridge, Ma.-based biotech startup that’s developing stem cell and bone marrow-based therapeutics, has raised $48.5 million in Series A funding co-led by Third Rock Ventures and Atlas Venture. More here.

    Mavenlink, an eight-year-old Irvine, Ca.-based software platform that helps businesses do work with distributed teams, contractors, and clients, has raised $39 million in Series D funding led by Goldman Sachs Growth Equity. The company has now raised $84 million to date. More here.

    Mobalytics, a nine-month-old, L.A.-based startup that produces personal performance analytics for competitive League of Legends gamers, has raised $2.6 million in seed funding from Almaz Capital, Founders Fund, General Catalyst Partners and GGV Capital. The young startup had won TechCrunch’s Battlefield Disrupt competition in September. More here.

    MOD Super Fast Pizza Holdings, an eight-year-old, Seattle-based “fast-casual” pizza store franchise, has raised $42 million in funding led by Fidelity Management & Research Company and PWP Growth Equity. It’s the second round of funding this year for the company, which has now raised $150 million altogether. More here.

    Now Interact, a six-year-old, Stockholm, Sweden-based company that says its machine learning platform bridges the gap for ecommerce companies between online and offline channels, has raised $5 million in Series A funding co-led by SEB Venture Capital and Inventure, with participation from earlier backer Industrifonden. Tech.eu has more here.

    PageCloud, a two-year-old, Ottawa, Ontario-based browser-based website-creation service, has raised $4 million in a Series A round from Accomplice, the trade-finance agency Export Development Canada, and angel investors that include Shopify CEO Tobi Lutke, former Salesforce VP Avanish Sahai, and former LinkedIn VP Ellen Levy. The company has now raised $8.5 million altogether. TechCrunch has more here.

    Phononic, an eight-year-old, Durham, N.C.-based company whose patented solid-state cooling and refrigeration technology aims to replace older refrigeration systems, has added $40 million to a Series E round that originally closed in September. Investors in the extension round included UBS’s wealth management businesses, GGV Capital, Lookout Capital, Eastwood Capital, Venrock, Oak Investment Partners, Tsing Capital, Huaneng Invesco WL Ross, Wellcome Trust and Rex Healthcare Ventures. TechCrunch has more here.

    Royole, a three-year-old, Freemont, Ca.-based maker of flexible displays, sensors, and smart devices, raised $80 million in pre-Series D funding from Warmsun Holding Group. The investment values the company at around $3 billion. FinSMEs has more here.

    SeaLights, a year-old Israel-based continuous testing platform for quality assurance cycles, has raised $11 million in funding led by TLV Partners, with participation from Blumberg Capital and Oren Zeev. Tech.eu has more here.

    Scroll, a six-month-old, New York-based digital subscription service that allows users to read ad-free content from multiple publishers, raised $3 million in funding from SoftTech VC, OATV, Axel Springer, News Corp and the New York Times. Recode has more here.

    Skedulo, a four-year-old, San Francisco-based mobile workforce scheduling app, raised $9.2 million in new funding led by Costanoa Venture Capital, with participation from earlier backer Blackbird Ventures. More here.

    Spoiler Alert, a 1.5-year-old, Boston-based maker of enterprise software that helps manufacturers and farms put excess food inventory to good use, has raised $2.5 million in seed funding led by Acre Venture Partners, with participation from Valley Oak Investments, LaunchCapital, Fresh Source Capital, and FTW Ventures. TechCrunch has more here.

    WeFarm, a year-old, U.K.-based peer-to-peer network that enables small-scale farmers to access and share agricultural information, even when their internet access is limited, has raised $1.6 million (£1.3 million) in seed funding led byLocalGlobe. TechCrunch has more here.

    Womply, a five-year-old, San Francisco-based startup that makes front office software for small and mid-size businesses, has raised $30 million in new funding led by Sageview Capital, with participation from (unnamed) earlier backers. More here.

    New Funds

    Intel Capital will be investing $250 million in autonomous driving over the next two years, Intel CEO Brian Krzanich announced yesterday at the L.A. Auto Show. More here.

    IPOs

    Qufenqi, a two-year-old, China-based platform that invites university students to borrow money to buy goods and pay back the loans in monthly installments, is reportedly planning to raise between $500 million and $800 million in a U.S. IPO in the first half of next year. The company is backed by Ant Financial, BlueRun Ventures and Source Code Capital, among others. China Money Network has more here.

    Exits

    Virtual Instruments, an eight-year-old, San Jose, Ca.-based privately held infrastructure performance management company, has acquired Xangati, a San Jose-based hybrid cloud and virtualization performance management company. Terms aren’t being disclosed. According to CrunchBase, Xangati had raised $21.7 million in funding from investors including Alloy Ventures, Citrix Systems, HighBar Partners and Walden International. SD Times has more here.

    People

    Longtime VC Tim Draper still believes that Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes (who received one of her first checks from Draper) has “built a fabulous company.”
    Nasdaq has a new CEOAdena Friedman.

    Google just hired some artificial intelligence hotshots into its cloud computing business. Fortune has more here.

    Andy Page, who joined the personal genomics company 23andMe in 2013 as president, is leaving the company, reports Recode. The outlet says it’s unclear where Page is going. More here.

    John Weinberg, formerly a top corporate adviser at Goldman Sachs, is moving to a newer Wall Street firm — Evercore Partners — and he’s taking one of its most senior posts. Dealbook has more here.

    Essential Reads

    Perhaps you’ve heard: Snap confidentially filed paperwork for an IPO that may value the popular messaging platform at as much as $25 billion and is expected to take place as early as March. The WSJ has more here.

    Airbnb could slow down the growth in hotel revenues by almost double what Morgan Stanley analysts previously thought, say these same analysts. Business Insider has more here.

    Twitter has suspended a number of accounts associated with the alt-right movement, saying it will shut down any account that features targeted abuse and harassment. USA Today has more here.

    Detours

    The two Americas of 2016.

    Yikes. Apps just drove the biggest spike in traffic deaths in 50 years.

    These professors make more than $1,000 an hour pedding mega mergers. Their predictions are often wrong, too.

    Retail Therapy

    Black slate wallpaper (for that contrast wall, maybe?).

  • StrictlyVC: November 15, 2016

    Hi, all, hope you’re having a happy Tuesday.:)

    Top News in the A.M.

    Mary Jo White, the head of the SEC, announced yesterday that she’ll step down two years before the end of her term, clearing the way for Donald Trump to reshape the way Wall Street is regulated. What will that mean? Basically, the opposite of the coming crackdown on Silicon Valley startups that we’d foreseen last month. Now, the only thing stopping errant startups will be their investors — and we know how that usually goes.

    The FBI has reportedly signed a contract with Dataminr, a company that sifts through the Twitter newsfeed to identify issues and trends in real time. The Stack, which has the story here, reports that only an estimated 1 percent of tweets are made available to the public through Twitter’s API, but using Dataminr,the FBI will now have access to all messages written on Twitter. (If you aren’t familiar with Dataminr, we talked with CEO Ted Bailey earlier this year about his business.)

    Spark Capital just closed on $1 billion for the first time

    Spark Capital, whose investments have included Twitter and Cruise Automation, has closed on $1 billion in commitments, it revealed yesterday. The 11-year-old firm, which has offices in Boston, San Francisco, and New York, closed its fifth early-stage fund with $400 million, down slightly from the $450 million it had raised for its fourth-early stage fund, which closed in 2013.

    Spark also garnered $600 million in commitments for its second growth fund, just two years after launching its debut growth fund with $375 million in capital. Like a lot of early-stage funds that have raised so-called opportunity funds in recent years, Spark uses the capital to invest in its breakout portfolio companies. Among the startups it has funded are the Brazilian real estate portal VivaReal and the automated investing platform Wealthfront.

    Spark has enjoyed a string of hits in its relatively short existence. Among its exits: headset maker Oculus was sold to Facebook for $2 billion in 2014; Twitter went public in 2013; Wayfair, an online home furnishings company went public in 2014; and the autonomous driving tech startup Cruise Automation sold earlier this year to General Motors for a reported $1 billion.

    The firm also holds stakes in the highly valued messaging service Slack and the still-private eyeglasses retailer Warby Parker.

    Spark is among a growing spate of early-stage venture funds that are suddenly managing far more money than they ever had previously. Other firms that have raised significantly higher amounts than in past years include Forerunner Ventures, a young, San Francisco-based firm that focuses primarily on e-commerce opportunities and has raised at least $122 million this year, up from its last, $75 million fund; and decades-old Accel Partners, which closed on $2 billion across two new funds earlier this year, up from two funds that totaled $1.45 billion just three years earlier.

    New Fundings

    Ava, a two-year-old, Zurich-based startup that makes fertility-tracking wearable devices, has raised $9.7 million in Series A funding led by Polytech Ventures, with participation from Blue Ocean Ventures, Global Sources, Swisscom, and ZKB. TechCrunch has more here.

    CareCloud, a nearly eight-year-old, Miami, Fl.-based company that makes cloud-based healthcare software for physicians, has raised $31.5 million in Series C funding led by Blue Cloud Ventures, with participation from PNC Financial Services Group and First Data Corporation. Earlier backers Norwest Venture Partners, Intel Capital, Tenaya Capital and Adams Street Partners also joined the round. TechCrunch has more here.

    eOriginal, a 20-year-old, Baltimore-based software firm whose digital transaction management tools are used in the post-execution of financial asset documents, has raised $26.5 million from the Philadelphia-based private equity firm LLR Partners. More here.

    Genetesis, a three-year-old, Cincinnati, Oh.-based medical device startup that helps physicians detect and characterize cardiac rhythm disorders, has raised $1.2 million in seed financing co-led by CincyTech and Radical Investments. The Cincinnati Enquirer has more here.

    Gluru, a three-year-old, London-based task management platform, has raised $2 million in seed funding from British Sussex Place Ventures, SaatchInvest, Gecad, and Playfair Capital. TechCrunch has more here.

    Kit, a year-old, New York-based company created inside the startup studio Expa, has raised $2.5 million from Social CapitalPrecursor VenturesApril UnderwoodEllen PaoAuthentic VenturesBlack Angel Tech Fund, and Expa. Kit is a site where users can discuss and purchase interesting products that are grouped into kits for all sorts of activities, like, say, vlogging. Users who create “kits” for the benefit of others can also make money through affiliate links (a la Wirecutter). TechCrunch has more here.

    Logz.io, a two-year-old Israel-based startup that aims to simplify log analysis by using machine-learning algorithms to predict critical events, has raised $16 million in Series B funding led by OpenView, with participation from 83Northand Giza Venture Capital. SiliconAngle has more here.

    MacroPoint, a seven-year-old, Cleveland, Oh.-based company that makes automated location tracking software, just raised $44 million in funding from Susquehanna Growth Equity. More here.

    Midaxo, a five-year-old, Helsinki, Finland-based company that makes mergers and acquisitions software, has raised $4 million in Series A funding co-led by EOC Capital and Finnish Industry Investments. FinSMEs has more here.

    Musement, a four-year-old, Milan, Italy-based company that provides information and ticketing services pertaining to museums, archaeological sites, and opera theaters around the world, has raised $10 million in Series B funding led by the family fund Micheli Associati, with participation from P101, and 360 Capital Partners. TechCrunch has more here.

    Orbital Shift, a seven-year-old, Missoula, Mt.-based workforce management software company, has raised $1.25 million in funding led by Next Frontier Capital, with participation from unnamed angel investors. More here.

    PlaySimple Games, a two-year-old, Bangalore, India-based mobile social gaming startup, has raised $4 million in Series A funding co-led by SAIF Partners and earlier backer IDG Ventures India. LiveMint has more here.

    Procurify, a four-year-old Vancouver, Canada-based maker of cloud-based procurement software, has raised $7 million in Series A funding led by Runa Capital, with participation from Point Nine Capital, Nexus Venture Partnersand the Business Development Bank of Canada. TechCrunch has more here.

    Prynt, a 2.5.-year-old, San Francisco-based startup that builds printers for smartphone cases, raised $7 million in Series A funding led by GGV Capital. More here.

    Sauce Labs, an eight-year-old, San Francisco-based company that makes cloud-based testing software for mobile and web applications, has raised $70 million in funding from Centerview Capital Technology, Institutional Venture Partners, and Adams Street Partners. TechCrunch has more here.

    Siemplify, a year-old, New York-based online information security platform, has raised $10 million in funding led by 83North and G20 Ventures, with participation from a couple of investors. More here.

    xAd, a seven-year-old, New York City-based location marketing and advertising platform, raised $42.5 million in Series E funding. Eminence Capital led the round, with participation from W Capital, Institutional Venture Partners, and Emergence Capital. Part of the new capital is being used to buy WeatherBug, a weather app. TechCrunch explains why here.

    Zefo, a year-old, Bangalore, India-based refurbished furniture marketplace, has raised roughly $5.9 million in funding led by Sequoia India, with participation from Beenext and Helion Ventures. The Tech Portal has more here.

    New Funds

    Boldstart Ventures started off with $1 million in 2010 as a kind of experiment. Could a New York-based outfit find enough seed-stage, enterprise-focused, East Coast opportunities to rationalize a bigger fund? The answer, seemingly, is yes. Boldstart, founded by longtime VC Ed Sim (who’d spent the previous decade-plus an investor with Dawntreader Ventures), just closed its third fund with $47 million. That’s $30 million more than the $17 million Boldstart had raised for its second fund in 2013, says Sim, who now works alongside general partner Eliot Durbin. The two have also more recently brought in Work Market cofounder Jeff Leventhal as a venture partner. More here.

    IPOs

    Trivago, an 11-year-old, Düsseldorf, Germany-based online hotel search aggregator, has revealed plans to raise up to  $400 million in an public offering on Nasdaq. Skift has more here.

    Exits

    Estee Lauder is buying Too Faced, an Irvine, Ca.-based makeup brand that’s backed by General Atlantic, for about $1.45 billion. Bloomberg has more here.

    GE Digital has acquired Wise.io, a machine-learning powered service that helps businesses find patterns and trends in their vast data stores. The companies aren’t disclosing terms of the deal. Wise.io had raised $3.6 million. It also participated in the Alchemist Accelerator and Citrix Startup Accelerator programs. TechCrunch has more here.

    Hulu has bought the assets The Video Genome Project (The VGP), a three-year-old, Santa Monica-based company that maintains one of the largest structured databases of video content. Terms of the deal weren’t disclosed, and Hulu says only a small team from The VGP will join the company. The VGP was backed by Segal Group Limited. TechCrunch has the story here.

    People

    America’s biggest pension fund just revealed what it pays its PE managers.

    Data

    The law firm Fenwick & West quietly released its third-quarter venture capital survey this past Friday, and its findings aren’t exactly shocking. At the same time, they hint at problems to come for some startups. More here.

    The gender pay gap by tech job, courtesy of Glassdoor.

    Essential Reads

    Apple is reportedly exploring Google Glass-like augmented reality digital glasses that connect wirelessly to iPhones, as it comes under pressure to deliver new products. Bloomberg has the scoop here.

    BuzzFeed’s sources say that a group of Facebook engineers has formed an unofficial task force to review company’s role in promoting fake news, despite CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s public stance that the concern is vastly overblown. More here.

    Uber might have the last laugh over China. Here’s why.

    Detours

    The spy who added me on LinkedIn.

    Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg wows in opera debut.

    Retail Therapy

    French Toast Double Brown Ale. It’s what’s for breakfast if you’re still trying to get over this election. (We’re kidding! Okay, not really. We promise we’ll stop soon.)


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