• StrictlyVC: April 7, 2017

    Aaaand that’s a wrap!

    Before we go, a quick mention that the Harvard China Forum has assembled a remarkable line-up at the college April 21 through April 23rd, with speakers that include Xiaomi founder Lei Jun, former Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, Alibaba cofounder Peng Lei, Sequoia Capital China founder Neil Shen and many more. If you’re interested in attending, the forum is offering readers a discount here. Just type in “StrictlyVC subscribers.” (We’re trying to figure out if we can swing this ourselves.)

    We’re also looking for volunteers for our May 4 event at gorgeous NextWorld Capital. Let us know if you’d like to help.

    Hope you have a peachy weekend, everyone. See you Monday.:)

    Top News in the A.M.

    In court filings today, Uber claims that despite an engineering lead who’s been accused of stealing tens of thousands of secret documents from Google, those documents were never uploaded to an Uber-owned computer and therefore never used in the development of its LiDAR systems. TechCrunch has more here.

    New Fundings

    AeroMobil, a 6.5-year-old, Bratislava, Slovakia-based company at work on bringing a flying car to market, has raised  $3.2 million in fresh funding from individual investor Patrick Hessel. He’s a founder of c2i, a maker of aerospace and automotive parts that’s also a supplier for AeroMobil. TechCrunch has more here.

    Blendle, a three-year-old, Utrecht, The Netherlands-based company that allows media organizations to sell articles on an individual basis, has raised an undisclosed amount in funding from INKEF Capital and Nikkei. More here.

    Bus.com, a three-year-old, Montreal-based event shuttle management startup, has raised $5 million in Series A funding led by Jackson Square Ventures, with participation from BMW, Real Ventures, and Y Combinator. Bus.com was formerly known as Sharethebus. TechCrunch has more here.

    Konux, a 2.5-year-old, Munich-based industrial IoT startup, has raised $9 million in new Series A funding that brings the round’s total to $16 million. New Enterprise Associates led the newest tranche, joining MIG, Upbeat Ventures and individual backers, including Andy Bechtolsheim. Tech.eu has more here.

    Kymeta, a five-year-old, Redmond, Wa.-based satellite antenna company that originally spun out of Intellectual Ventures, has raised $73.5 million in new funding, shows a new SEC filing discovered by GeekWire. The company has now raised roughly $200 million altogether, including from Intelsat, a publicly traded satellite operator based in Luxembourg, Bill Gates, Lux Capital,  and Liberty Global, among others. More here.

    MAMA+, a 2.5-year-old, Beijing-based parent platform, has raised an undisclosed of Series C funding led by Eight Road Ventures (formerly Fidelity Growth Partners). Other backers include GSR Ventures, Lightspeed Venture Partners, and Steamboat Ventures. China Money Network has more here.

    Mic, a five-year-old, New York-based digital media startup focused on millennials, has raised $21 million in Series C funding led by earlier backer Lightspeed Venture Partners. Other participants include Time Warner Investments, kyu Collective, You & Mr. Jones and return backer Advancit Capital. TechCrunch has more here.

    Otonomo, a 1.5-year-old, Herzliya, Israel-based, cloud-based data platform that enables car manufacturers, drivers and service providers to share and monetize car data, has raised $25 million in Series B funding led by the automotive supplier Delphi. Other participants include earlier backers Bessemer Venture Partners, StageOne Ventures and Maniv Mobility. The company has now raised $40 million altogether. TechCrunch has more here.

    Remesh, a 3.5-year-old, Cleveland, Oh.-based company whose software integrates AI with market research to collect, analyze and present the opinions and thoughts of numerous people quickly and in real time, has raised $2.25 million in seed funding led by LionBird Ventures, with participation from Reimagine Holdings Group and individual investors. More here.

    Uptake, a three-year-old, Chicago-based predictive analytics platform founded by serial entrepreneur and investor Brad Keywell, has raised a fresh $50 million in funding from unnamed investors, closing its latest round with $90 million. Crain’s Chicago Business has more here.

    Vera Whole Health, a nine-year-old Seattle, Wa.-based chain of employer-funded onsite primary care clinics, has raised $24 million in Series D funding led by Leerink Transformation Partners, with participation from Archimedes Health Investors. More here.

    Toutiao, a five-year-old, Beijing-based personalized news recommendation app operator, has raised $1 billion in Series D funding led by Sequoia Capital and CCB International, an investment unit of China Construction Bank Co. China Media Network has more here.

    The Wing, a 1.5.-year-old, New York-based all-women social, co-working and networking club, has raised $8 million in Series A funding led by New Enterprise Associates, with participation from Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Built By Girls Ventures, and SoulCycle cofounders Julie Rice and Elizabeth Cutler. Forbes has more here.

    New Funds

    Felix Capital, two-year-old, London-based early-stage venture firm, has raised $55 million for its second fund, shows an SEC filing. We talked with Felix founder Frederic Court when he raised his debut fund; you can get a flavor for what it’s trying to do here.

    IPOs

    Okta priced its IPO last night; this morning its share price is already up more than 35 percent.

    People

    Venture investor (and Uber board member) Bill Gurley thinks it will be more than 25 years before the majority of rides in any major American city are performed by autonomous vehicles with no steering wheel.

    The White House said yesterday that it plans to nominate Derek Kan, a general manager for Lyft in Southern California, as under secretary of transportation for policy. Kan was previously policy adviser to Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, the husband of Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao. Kan is also on the board of Amtrack. (Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund is a Lyft shareholder, so possibly Thiel influenced this decision, too.)

    Renowned tech columnist Walt Mossberg is retiring in June. After 47 years of reporting, he’s “ready for something new.”

    Twitter cofounder Ev Williams is starting to sell some of his Twitter shares and would like reporters to know: there’s nothing to see here.

    Jobs

    Andreessen Horowitz is looking to hire an enteprise infrastructure partner. The job is in Menlo Park, Ca.

    Essential Reads

    More than three years after tangling with the FDA, 23andMe has received a green light from the agency to market 10 direct-to-consumer genetic health risk reports for Parkinson’s, late-onset Alzheimer’s, and celiac disease. The development is a BFD, suggest doctors.

    Google and Facebook are upping the fight against misinformation.

    Waymo versus Uber: Everything you need to know.

    Detours

    Why you should resist the urge to walk on escalators.

    Inside the world’s newest mega skyscraper.

    Octopuses and squids can rewrite their RNA. It could be why they’re so smart.

    Retail Therapy

    A cot for newborns that mimics a night drive. (Having spent an insane amount of time driving around our firstborn, we support this concept wholeheartedly.)

  • StrictlyVC: April 6, 2017

    Hi, hope you’re having a great Thursday, everyone. We’re a little short on time today, so you might notice a missing section or two. More tomorrow!

    Top News in the A.M.

    Car-hailing company (and Uber nemesis) Lyft has raised $500 million in new funding that pegs its value at roughly $7.5 billion, up from its previous valuation of $5.5 billion early last year, says the WSJ. No one seems to know yet who its newest backers are. The company’s previous investors include Alibaba, General Motors, Founders Fund, and Andreessen Horowitz, which previously sold part of its stake to Saudi Arabia’s Prince al-Waleed bin Talal and his Kingdom Holding Co.

    Renaud Laplanche is Back with $60 Million to Take on Lending Club

    Renaud Laplanche had a terrible no good very bad 2016. But the founder and longtime CEO of Lending Club is back with a new lending startup called Upgrade, along with the support of investors who’ve provided the company with $60 million in funding.

    It’s a comeback that’s been roughly one year in the making.

    It was in May of last year that Laplanche, who founded Lending Club in 2006 and took it public in late 2014, was forced to resign from his role as CEO. According to reports at the time, the company’s board lost faith in Laplanche after it was informed that $3 million in Lending Club’s loans had been sold to the bank Jefferies with falsified dates, and that Laplanche himself had undisclosed conflicts of interest.

    Specifically, reporters were told, Laplanche owned a stake in a fund called Cirrix Capital in which Lending Club later bought an interest at Laplanche’s urging — unaware that he was already a shareholder.

    The board later retracted that accusation, acknowledging that some, but “not all members” of the risk committee were aware of Laplanche’s investment.

    Laplanche’s role in an approved stock buyback was also reportedly under investigation by the SEC at one point.

    Laplanche said he wasn’t available to answer questions for this story, but in a Dealbook interview, he said disagreed with the board’s characterization of the problems at Lending Club last year and declined to discuss the issue further.

    A source close to Laplanche further says he doesn’t think that Laplanche was ever “personally being investigated” by the SEC.

    Either way, Laplanche wasted little time in launching a rival to Lending Club. By August of last year, Laplanche and several Lending Club veterans – including Jeff Bogan, who was among a group of senior managers who also stepped down or were dismissed when Laplanche resigned – rented offices in downtown San Francisco and began reaching out to financial institutions about their vision.

    They also started phoning investors.

    Those calls seem to have born fruit. Upgrade is reveaing today that it has raised $48 million in equity and $12 million convertible notes from Union Square Ventures, Credit Ease, FirstMark Capital, Noah Holdings, Ribbit Capital, Sands Capital Ventures, Silicon Valley Bank, Uprising, Vy Capital and Apoletto, which is the low-flying, early-stage venture vehicle of billionaire investor Yuri Milner.

    A source close to the company says the investors assigned Upgrade with a pre-money valuation of $120 million, suggesting they own a third of the company.

    More here.

    New Fundings

    Crunchbase, a 10-year-old, San Francisco-based database company spun out from TechCrunch in 2015, has raised $18 million in Series B funding led by Mayfield, with participation from earlier backers Emergence Capital and AOL. TechCrunch has more here.

    DrChrono, an eight-year-old, Mountain View, Ca.-based backend billing and scheduling and medical records platform for small medical practices, has raised $12 million in fresh funding. Runa Capital led the round, along with participation from Maxfield Capital, Quicken CEO Eric Dunn, and FundersClub. The company has now raise $19 million altogether. More here.

    Flow, a 1.5-year-old, Hoboken, N.J.-based platform that helps merchants configure their cross-border supply-chain requirements and fulfill their overseas demand, has raised $16 million in Series A funding led by Bain Capital Ventures. Other investors in the round include Forerunner Ventures, Fung Capital, and numerous individual investors, including The Honest Company’s Brian Lee, and Zola founder and CEO Shan-Lyn Ma. TechCrunch has more here.

    Mobvoi, a five-year-old, Beijing-based company that specializes in voice recognition and natural language processing, has raised $180 million from Volkswagen, though rather than a traditional capital raise, the money will be used for a joint venture intended to “develop and apply AI technologies to automotive industry.” TechCrunch has more here.

    Souche.com, a five-year-old, Hangzhou, China-based used car transaction platform, has raised $180 million in Series D funding led by Warburg Pincus, marking the firm’s second investment in China’s used car space so far this year. Other participants in the round include ClearVue Partners, Morningside Venture Capital, CreditEase New Financial Industrial Fund, Haitong International Securities Group and other, unnamed investors. China Money Network has more here.

    Trov, a five-year-old, Danville, Ca.-based provider of on-demand insurance for individual items, has raised $45 million from Munich Re HSB Ventures and Japan’s second largest insurer, Sompo. Previous backers Oak HC/FT, Suncorp Group, Guidewire, and Anthemis Group also joined the round, which brings the company’s total funding to roughly $90 million.

    Yumi, a two-year-old, L.A.-based organic baby food company that operates on a subscription model and was co-founded by former New York Times and Wall Street Journal reporter Evelyn Rusli, has raised several million dollars, reports Fortune. Backers include investor Ali Partovi, Automattic founder Matt Mullenweg, and Philip Krim, co-founder of mattress company Casper. More here.

    IPOs

    Elevate Credit‘s shares have been bouncing around on their first day of trading. The company priced its IPO at $6.50 per share — roughly half the expected range of $12 to $14 per share in apparent reaction to investor skepticism about online lending models and Elevate specifically. Currently, the shares are trading at around $8. CNBC has more here.

    Spotify is finally readying an IPO . . . that’s not an IPO. The WSJ explains here.

    People

    Amazon founder Jeff Bezos says he plans to sell $1 billion of his stock each year to fund his rocket venture, Blue Origin.

    Roger Chen has joined Silverton Partners as a principal. Roger was most recently an investor with Genacast Ventures.

    It’s official. Venture capitalist J.B. Pritzker has joined the Illinois governor’s race.

    Jobs

    The Financial Solutions Lab of the Center for Financial Services Innovation is looking to bring aboard a senior manager to help identify fintech startups that can improve the financial health of Americans. The job is in San Francisco.

    Essential Reads

    Uber has responded to an earlier New York Times piece about how the company psychologically manipulates its drivers.

    A new self-driving car startup just spun out of Udacity to challenge Uber with its own autonomous taxi service.

    Twitter has rolled out a “lite” service for emerging markets. More here.

    Detours

    RIP, Don Rickles.

    Here’s the biggest study yet on the differences between male and female brains.

    Excerpts From Books I Wrote, for Which I Did Zero Research.

    Retail Therapy

    You could use a ranch in Montana, right?

  • StrictlyVC: April 5, 2017

    Happy Wednesday, all!

    Quicklike, before we jump into the newsletter, we want to give a shout-out to our newest sponsor, Bullish, a strategic creative and consumer investment firm with a proposal for select StrictlyVC readers wanting to come to our May 4th event in San Francisco. Stay tuned to learn more! (Intrigue!)

    Thanks, too, to our other generous sponsors: Square 1 Bank, a bank for both entrepreneurs and investors; L.A.-based Rosebud Communications, which does PR for startups; and the early-revenue stage investor NextWorld Capital, which very nicely offered to host the evening at its beautiful space in the city. It takes a village, and we greatly appreciate everyone’s support.

    (We running low on seats, by the way, so don’t wait if you’re thinking of coming.)

    Top News in the A.M.

    Uber admitted today that it had found one of the documents that Waymo alleges was stolen by a former employee — on the employee’s personal computer.

    Cendana Capital, a Top Seed Fund Investor, Has Raised Big $$

    Michael Kim is pretty much killing it.

    Seven years ago, when he first approached investors with the idea of creating a fund-of-funds that would invest in seed-stage, or so-called micro VC, funds, they were cool to the idea. In fact, it took Kim — formerly a partner with the venture firm Rustic Canyon Ventures — roughly two years to raise the firm’s $28.5 million debut fund.

    Fast forward, and Kim’s Cendana Capital — which has backed venture firms Forerunner Ventures, SoftTech VC, IA Ventures, First Round, Freestyle Capital, K9 Ventures, Bowery Capital, and Lerer Hippeau Ventures, among others  — just closed on $260 million in fresh capital across a network of five funds.

    One vehicle is Cendana’s third and newest fund-of-funds, which works just like that $28.5 million debut fund, except it’s nearly three times as big, with $80 million in commitments.

    Kim also raised $35 million to make direct co-investments; a $60 million co-investment fund that he manages on behalf of The University of Texas Investment Management Company; a $75 million fund called Cendana Blackbird that Cendana manages on behalf of an unnamed pension fund (it invests in Cendana’s portfolio funds in cases where it can get a greater allocation); and a $10 million, late-stage fund called Cendana Kendall that’s being managed on behalf of an unnamed family office. (The idea is for Kim to plug the money into one or two breakaway companies in one of his fund managers’ portfolios.)

    Altogether, the San Francisco-based outfit now manages around $450 million — which says a lot about how much the market has changed. We talked with Kim — who runs Cendana with principal Graham Pingree — about that ongoing evolution yesterday.

    Cendana seems to be an investor in every major micro VC fund out there. How many funds are you involved with?

    We have 15 “core” relations, where we’ve invested $8 million to $10 million, then we have a pilot program where we invest $1 million in 8 or 9 groups that we like but we have some lingering questions about their strategy. For example, NextView Ventures in Boston and Mucker Capital in L.A. were part of our pilot program because we didn’t have a high conviction about either the Boston or L.A. ecosystems. Now we do, so they’ve become core.

    The hardware investment firms Bolt and Root Ventures also became part of that pilot program, because we had questions about whether seed was the right entry point for hardware investing.

    Which is the newest fund to join your pilot portfolio?

    Notation Capital in Brooklyn.

    Do all “pilots” become “core”?

    No. And we’ve ended up not continuing with some core funds as some have evolved from seed-stage to Series A stage funds, and backing them is not the mandate our LPs gave us, notwithstanding how amazingly they’ve performed for us. I won’t share publicly which those are, though.

    Where do you draw the line? So many of your managers are now investing two or three times the amount of their debut funds.

    More here.

    And Now, a Word from Our Sponsor . . .

    Today’s StrictlyVC is brought to you by John Gannon‘s VC jobs email list.  Join more than 3800 VCs (from Sequoia, Redpoint, and other top firms) and VC job hunters in using Gannon’s list to help them get jobs at top firms like Bessemer, General Catalyst, OpenView, and IVP. Click here to subscribe.

    New Fundings

    AdAsia, a one-year-old, Singapore-based online advertising startup, has raised $12 million in Series A funding from Japanese investor JAFCO. TechCrunch has more here.

    Armor, an eight-year-old, Richardson, Tex.-based managed security firm, has raised $89 million in funding led by Singapore Technologies Telemedia. The company had earlier raised funding from The Stephens Group. According to Crunchbase, the company has now raised roughly $150 million to date. More here.

    Aurora Innovation, a months-old, Bay Area-based stealth startup led by Chris Urmson, former CTO of Alphabet’s self-driving car project, has raised just more than $3 million in venture funding shows an SEC filing first flagged by Axios. The outlet has more here (including news about a lawsuit that could potentially slow Urmson down).

    Azitra, a three-year-old, Farmington, Ct.-based biotech company that’s using the skin’s microbiome to develop new treatments in dermatology and skin infections, has raised $2.9 million in Series A funding led by Bios Partners. FierceBiotech has more here.

    CheckRecipient, a nearly four-year-old, London startup that uses machine learning to help prevent emails from being sent to the wrong recipient, has raised $2.7 million in funding co-led by Accel Partners and LocalGlobe. Others participants include Winton Ventures, Amadeus Capital Partners and Crane. TechCrunch has more here.

    Coras, a 1.5-year-old, Dublin, Ireland-based event ticketing platform, has raised €1.9 million in funding led by Atlantic Bridge, with participation by U2 guitarist Edge, Hambro Perks, and Elkstone Capital. TechCrunch has more here.

    Dojo Madness, a 2.5-year-old, Berlin-based startup that sells analytics and coaching tools to casual and professional online gamers, has raised $6 million in new funding. Raine Ventures, the venture capital arm of The Raine Group, led the round, with participation from Kakao’s K Cube Ventures and earlier investors, including March Capital and DN Capital. The round brings Dojo’s total funding raised to $12.75 million. TechCrunch has more here.

    Platterz, a two-year-old, Toronto-based corporate catering platform, raised $6.7 million in seed funding, including from AltaIR Capital, Globalive Capital, and numerous angel investors, including investor Oren Zeev. BetaKit has more here.

    Qumulo, a four-year-old, Seattle-based developer of NAS storage systems, has raised $30 million in funding led by Northern Light Venture Capital. Other participants include Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Madrona Venture Group, Top Tier Capital Partners, and Tyche Partners. More here.

    SlashNext, a three-year-old, Pleasanton, Ca.-based cybersecurity startup, has raised $9 million in Series A funding co-led by Norwest Venture Partners and Wing Venture Capital. More here.

    Snowflake Computing, a nearly five-year-old, San Mateo, Ca.-based company that sells data warehousing as a service, has raised $100 million in Series D funding led by Iconiq Capital, with help from Madrona Venture Group. Early investors Altimeter Capital, Redpoint Ventures, Sutter Hill Ventures and Wing Venture Capital also participated. The company says it has now raised $205 million altogether. TechCrunch has more here.

    Street Contxt, a five-year-old, Toronto-based equity research company, has raised an undisclosed amount of new funding from Joe Lonsdale, Point72 Ventures, Palm Drive Capital and Portag3 Ventures. The company has now raised $15 million altogether. More here.

    Wecash, a nearly four-year-old, Beijing-based big data-based credit assessment company, has raised $80 million in Series C funding led by China Merchants VC Management, Forebright Capital, and SIG, with participation from Dongfang Hongdao Capital and Lingfeng Capital. China Money Network has more here.

    New Funds

    83North (formerly Greylock IL), which since 2008 has focused on backing startups in Europe and Israel, has closed its fourth fund with $250 million in commitments. TechCrunch has more here.

    Forward Partners, a 4.5-year-old, London-based venture firm firm, has closed its second fund with £60 million in commitments ($75 million). Interestingly, it says it has just one major institutional investor, though it’s declining to name who that is. TechCrunch has more here.

    IPOs

    Okta, the eight-year-old, San Francisco-based maker of identity access management software, has increased its proposed IPO price range from $13 to $15, to $15 to $17 per share. The company is expected to price its IPO on Thursday night. Nasdaq has more here.

    Exits

    Compete-Nickel, a Paris-based company that provides customers with an online payment account within 10 minutes via thousands of tobacco shops in the country, has been acquired by BNP Paribas for an undisclosed amount of money. According to Crunchbase, the startup had raised roughly $10 million in funding from Partech Ventures. TechCrunch has more here.

    Petco, the San Diego-based pet supply chain owned by the private equity firm CVC Capital, has acquired PetCoach, a Philadelphia-based startup whose app connects pet owners with veterinarians. Terms of the deal aren’t being disclosed. PetCoach raised $2.3 million in funding, including from Comcast Ventures, Maveron, and DreamIt Ventures. More here.

    Bankruptcy

    Payless ShoeSource is the latest retailer to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, adding its name to a growing list of chains that have struggled to compete against online and off-price retailers. CNBC has more here.

    People

    Fred Destin is transitioning out of Accel, the London-headquartered venture firm that he joined several years ago from Boston’s Atlas Venture. He tells TechCrunch he’s taking off to create his own franchise, either with a team or as a solo general partner. More here.

    Mark Friedman, a spent 12 years as a senior software engineer at Google, has joined year-old Thunkable as its VP of engineering. Friedman had co-createdApp Inventor, a collaboration between Google and MIT that became one of largest platforms for building Android apps; his fellow engineers on the project have since relaunched that platform as Thunkable.

    Anthony Pompliano, a venture capitalst in North Carolina, yesterday escalated a legal battle with Snap, where Pompliano worked for just three weeks in 2015 after being recruited away from Facebook. Axios has more here.

    Mike Swartz, an operations veteran who spent nearly a decade at Amazon before joining Instacart in February last year, has left the company. No word on his next moves. “He’s been a great asset to our team in the last year, and we wish him the best in his future endeavors,” Instacart said in a statement to TechCrunch. More here.

    Data

    Pitchbook and the NVCA published some first quarter data today, and it shows a funding slowdown. What they found: from January through March, investors plugged $16.5 billion into 1,797 venture-backed startups. That’s up from the fourth quarter, but it’s the fewest number of companies to receive funding since the fourth quarter of 2011.

    Essential Reads

    Amazon‘s robot war is spreading.

    Amazon is ready for some football.

    Detours

    Your work friends are faking it, says this cruel, workplace relationship expert.

    How to tell when Uber is secretly overcharging you.

    Parents, rejoice! Amazon will refund millions of unauthorized in-app purchases that kids made on mobile devices, having just dropped an appeal related to ruling last year.

    Retail Therapy

    When the future is so bright . . .

  • StrictlyVC: April 4, 2017

    Hi, happy Tuesday, everyone.:)

    Top News in the A.M.

    Tesla is trading up again today, surpassing GM’s market cap this morning to become the most valuable U.S. automaker.

    The Trump administration is cracking down on the H-1B visa program on which Silicon Valley depends heavily, with the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services agency yesterday issuing a memo that lays out new measures to combat “fraud and abuse.” Bloomberg has more here.

    This New Sentiment Index Aims to Help Founders Time Their Rounds

    new index aims to help consumer-oriented startup founders understand the health of the venture capital fundraising environment, and specifically when is a good time to seek funding — and when isn’t.

    How does it work? Created by the early-stage venture firm Goodwater Capital, the index starts by analyzing a trove of publicly available information, from the aggregate dollars raised by U.S.-based consumer tech startups during the current month, to related monthly M&A activity, to the amount of money VCs have raised in the previous year, to the amount of money they’ve invested in startups over the previous quarter. It also factors in the median price-to-earnings ratio of top public U.S. consumer tech companies during the current month.

    Not each is weighted equally, says the firm’s lead data scientist, Jimmy Li. Instead, the firm factored in historical sentiment over the last 20 years, creating a regression analysis using those five buckets to understand which variables matter the most over time. “It’s no one thing,” says Li. “In fact, the thing that most people see — deal volume — is a lagging indicator, not a leading indicator.”

    More here.

    And Now, a Word from Our Sponsor . . .

    Today’s StrictlyVC is brought to you by John Gannon‘s VC jobs email list.  Join more than 3800 VCs (from Sequoia, Redpoint, and other top firms) and VC job hunters in using Gannon’s list to help them get jobs at top firms like Bessemer, General Catalyst, OpenView, and IVP. Click here to subscribe.

    New Fundings

    Amino, a 3.5-year-old, San Francisco-based find-a-doctor app that competes with Zocdoc, has raised $25 million in Series C funding led by Highland Capital. Other participants in the round include Accel Partners, Aspect Ventures, CRV, Northwestern Mutual Future Ventures, and Pilot Wall Group. More here.

    Bizzabo, a six-year-old, Tel Aviv and New York-based event technology company, has raised $6.5 million in Series A funding. Zvi Limon, a founding partner of Magma Venture Capital, led the round, with participation from serial entrepreneur Avigdor Willenz, angel investor Danny Tocatly, and earlier backers, including LionBird and Kaedan Capital. More here.

    Cohesity, a nearly four-year-old, Santa Clara, Ca.-based company that helps enterprises store and manage all of the secondary data they create outside of their production apps, has raised roughly $90 million in Series C funding led by GV and Sequoia Capital. Other participants in the deal include Cisco Investments, HPE, Accel Ventures, ARTIS Ventures, Battery Ventures, DHVC, Foundation Capital, Qualcomm Ventures, Trinity Ventures and Wing Venture Capital. More here.

    Grokstyle, a two-year-old, San Francisco-based company that’s developing software for visual search to enable recognition of an object (like furniture or home decor from an old picture), has raised $2 million in funding. Investors include Canaan Partners, Amino Capital, Neuron.VC, and a long list of individual investors, including the former head of Google News, Krishna Bharat. More here.

    PhenixP2P, a 3.5-year-old, Chicago-based real-time video streaming service, has raised $3.5 million in Series A funding led by KB Partners. More here.

    Pluto AI, a year-old, Palo Alto, Ca.-based analytics platform for smart water management, has raised $2.1 million in funding Fall Line Capital, Refactor Capital, Unshackled Ventures, Comet Labs and additional angel investors. More here.

    Vimcar, a four-year-old, Berlin-based company that’s evolving into a digital fleet manager that oversees companies’ vehicles, has raised $5.5 million in Series A funding. Unternehmertum Venture Capital Partners and Coparion co-led the round, with participation from Groupe Arnault and various business angels. More here.

    Wellthie, a 3.5-year-od, New York-based insurtech startup, has raised $5 million in Series A funding led by IA Capital Group, with participation from Aflac Ventures, earlier backers, and unnamed insurance industry executives. More here.

    New Funds

    Data Collective, the six-year-old, San Francisco-based venture firm, has brought aboard John Cumbers, the founder of synthetic biology platform SynBioBeta , to invest in pre-seed and seed-stage biotech startups via a separate pool of capital called DCVC SynBioBeta Fund. Data Collective didn’t share with TechCrunch the size of the pool or whether it’s separate from the fund that the firm is currently investing. It does say that Cumbers is expected to invest in up to 20 deals, with check sizes ranging from $50,000 to several million dollars. More here.

    Resolute Ventures just closed its third fund with $65 million. It’s a sizable step up from its first two funds, which closed with $47 million and $45 million, respectively. The five-year-old firm, with offices in San Francisco and Boston, is run by just two general partners: Mike Hirschland, who spent 17 years with Polaris Partners before founding Resolute, and Ranaan Bar-Cohen, who joined Hirschland nearly two years ago after working most recently as a senior VP at WordPress parent company Automattic, and as an advisor at the early-stage venture firm True Ventures. More here.

    Tusk Ventures, the debut fund of political strategist turned startup whisperer Bradley Tusk, has held a first close on $25 million, according to one of the firm’s LPs, who says that first close came in October and that the fund will remain on the smaller side. So far, the vehicle, which includes backing from institutional investors, has been used to back four startups, via a variety of check sizes: the daily fantasy sports operator FanDuel (which announced plans to merge with DraftKings last year; apparently, the FTC is still analyzing the potential tie-up); the insurance company LemonadeNexar, a company whose app aims to keep cars from colliding; and a personalized vitamin company that operates on a subscription basis, called Care/of. Tusk spoke at our StrictlyVC event last month but shied from answering questions about the fund.

    Exits

    RobinHealth — a San Francisco-based online pharmacy startup that was founded in 2015 and raised an undisclosed amount of seed funding, including from the accelerator NFX Guild and iAngels  has quietly shut down, with its CEO, Elliot Poppel, off to Facebook as a product manager. We’d written about the company here a year ago.

    Yelp this morning announced it has paid $20 million in cash to acquire a five-year-old, Toronto-based Wi-Fi marketing company, Turnstyle, whose service allows businesses to connect with customers over a free Wi-fi network. Turnstyle had raised roughly $3.5 million from investors, shows Crunchbase. TechCrunch has more here.

    People

    Tim Berners-Lee, the man credited with inventing the world wide web, has been honored with the 2016 Turing Award. Often referred to as the Nobel Prize for the computing industry, the award is present annually by the Association for Computing Machinery to an individual who has made “major contributions of lasting importance to computing.” More here.

    Jenna Lyons is leaving J.Crew after 26 years. Fast Company ties her tenure to the startup world.

    Marissa Mayer will not be part of the new AOL-Yahoo combined company, which has been newly rebranded as Oath (to the chagrin of many).

    Entrepreneur-investor Kevin Rose is relinquishing his role as CEO of Hodinkee, a New York-based site for wristwatch enthusiasts, and moving back to California. According to a newly published Medium post, Rose will work as a venture partner at the early-stage venture firm True Ventures. More here.

    Data

    According to a new study involving more than 120,000 job offers transacted on Hired, a jobs marketplace for tech workers, the average female candidate is still making less than her male peers for the same work, and sometimes far less — especially if she’s black. More here.

    Essential Reads

    Anonymous messaging app Yik Yak is up for sale, according to Fortune, which reports that the company’s biggest shareholder, Sequoia Capital, has in recent weeks held deal talks with potential buyers for the Atlanta-based startup. Among the interested parties, says The Verge, is SquareMore here.

    Zocdoc, a so-called unicorn valued at $1.8 billion, may also be ailing, according to financials reviewed by The Information.

    And troubled Chinese giant LeEco is struggling to pay its U.S. employees. (Not good.)

    In the Trump era, encrypted messaging is the new regular messaging, says Recode. (It’s a theme we’ll be discussing with Confide cofounder Jon Brod at our upcoming StrictlyVC event.)

    Detours

    Young Americans are killing marriage.

    The Cubs are favored to win the World Series again.

    “She’ll take a small slice every day until eventually there is only one tiny piece, but you have to send that up, she wants to finish the whole of that cake.”

    Retail Therapy

    Bacon, bacon, bacon, bacon, bacon! (Bacon.)

  • StrictlyVC: April 3, 2017

    Hi, all, hope you had a great weekend! We’re back in San Francisco and very happy to announce our newest partner in StrictlyVC’s May 4 eventSquare 1 Bank, which provides financial services to startups, growth-stage companies and their investors. We love organizing these evenings for readers when we’re able, and we couldn’t put them together without the support of generous sponsors, so thank you, Sam Bhaumik and the rest of the gang at Square 1. We’re getting excited to see everyone next month.:)

    Speaking of sponsors: Today’s StrictlyVC is brought to you by John Gannon‘s VC jobs email list.  Join more than 3800 VCs (from Sequoia, Redpoint, and other top firms) and VC job hunters in using Gannon’s list to help them get jobs at top firms like Bessemer, General Catalyst, OpenView, and IVP. Click here to subscribe.

    No column today. (Calls.)

    Top News in the A.M.

    This morning, Tesla overtook Ford Motor Inc., the automotive pioneer that is exactly 100 years older, as the second-largest U.S. auto maker by stock-market value. The WSJ has more here.

    New Fundings

    Farmstand, a year-old, London-based sustainable, fast-casual food company, has raised $1.3 million in funding led by Quadia. More here.

    I Believe, a nearly five-year-old, Zhengzhou, China-based convenience store franchise operator, has raised $29 million in Series B funding led by ClearVue Partners. China Money Network has more here.

    LeafLink, a year-old, New York-based business-to-business cannabis e-commerce platform, has raised $3 million in seed funding led by Lerer Hippeau Ventures, with participation from Casa Verde Capital, Phyto Partners, Wisdom VC, and Wan Li Zhu and Paul Ciriello of Fairhaven Capital. More here.

    Nitro, a 12-year-old, San Francisco-based company that makes document and workflow management software, has raised $15 million in Series C funding led by earlier investor Battery Ventures, says Axios Pro Rata. Battery had also led the company’s $15 million Series B round in 2014. Other participants in the round include Regal Funds Management and Alium Capital. More here.

    Purely Elizabeth, an eight-year-old, Boulder, Co.-based natural foods company, has raised $3 million in funding from 301 INC, General Mills’s business development and venturing unit. More here.

    Robinhood, the 3.5-year-old, Palo Alto, Ca.-based zero-fee stock brokerage app that targets millennials, is raising an new round of funding led by Yuri Milner’s investment vehicle DST Global, according to TechCrunch. It says the round values the company at $1.3 billion. More here.

    Wag, a 2.5-year-old, San Francisco-based on-demand dog walking service, raised an undisclosed amount in funding from General Catalyst Partners and Sherpa Capital, says TechCrunch. More here.

    New Funds

    Cloud Apps Capital Partners, a 3.5-year-old, San Francisco-based Series A-stage venture firm, is looking to raise $100 million for its second fund, shows an SEC filing. The firm is led by Matt Holleran, a former Salesforce executive and a onetime venture partner at Emergence Capital Partners who had closed on $53.7 million in capital commitments for the firm’s debut fund in the fall of 2015.

    Israel Secondary Fund has raised $100 million for its second fund from Israeli and foreign institutions and family offices. Eight-year-old ISF acquires positions in Israeli funds and minority holdings in private companies from investors, founders and other shareholders. Reuters has a bit more here.

    IPOs

    Carvana, a four-year-old, Phoenix, Az.-based company that allows customers to pick up cars they buy on the internet from vending machine-like towers, has officially filed for an IPO, weeks after Reuters reported the company had tapped investment banks for an offering.  In its filing, the company said it will raise up to $100 million. Carvana has raised $300 million from investors, according to Crunchbase.

    As expected on Friday, the nine-year-old, big-data company Cloudera filed its S-1, revealing plans to raise up to $200 million in an IPO. More on its revenue, losses, and risk factors here.

    Zymeworks, a 13-year-old, Vancouver-based biotherapeutics company, has filed with Canadian and U.S. regulatory authorities for an IPO of its common shares. Last year, Zymeworks closed one of Canada’s largest venture capital rounds, raising about $61.5 million led by BDC Capital and Lumira Capital. According to Crunchbase, the company has raised roughly $125 million over the years. More here.

    Exits

    Grab, Uber’s biggest rival in Southeast Asia, will acquire Indonesian e-commerce startup Kudo for an undisclosed amount, striking its first deal since pledging to invest $700 million in its largest market. The purchase is aimed at beefing up payment services while expanding its reach across Southeast Asia’s largest country. Three-year-old Kudo had raised an undisclosed amount of funding, including from East Ventures and GREE Ventures. Bloomberg has more here.

    Japanese giant SoftBank is orchestrating a possible merger between struggling Snapdeal and its bigger rival, Flipkart, according to the Times of India. According to its sources, the companies have already agreed to the “broad contours of the deal,” which could close at month’s end. More here.

    People

    Mike Cassidy — formerly vice president at Alphabet’s X research lab and the former head of Project Loon, its high-altitude balloon-based internet access initiative — is ready to try the nuclear option, literally, reports Bloomberg. Along with Ben Longmier, the founder of a company called Aether Industries, which made equipment for high-altitude research and was acquired by Apple in 2015, Cassidy has founded Apollo Fusion, which says it’s making a “revolutionary hybrid reactor technology with fusion power to serve safe, clean, and affordable electricity to everyone.” More here.

    Jason Harinstein, Groupon’s M&A lead, is joining the GV-backed cancer research and tech startup Flatiron Health as its CFO. Recode has more here.

    Twitter’s head of its Asia Pacific business, Aliza Knox, is leaving the company, just less than five years after she joined it. The departure comes on the heels of numerous other high-profile Asia-based executives who’ve left in the last year. TechCrunch has more here.

    May Samali has joined the Uban Innovation Fund as an associate. The Urban Innovation Fund is a venture capital firm that provides seed capital and regulatory support to entrepreneurs solving urban challenges. Samali was most recently a director with the urban ventures accelerator Tumml.

    Roseanne Wincek has been promoted to principal at the late-stage venture firm IVP. Wincek had joined the firm in March 2015, after working previously as a principal at Canaan Partners.

    Data

    A new report from web analytics company Statcounter claims that Google’s Android has overtaken Windows as the internet’s most used operating system. More here.

    Essential Reads

    Apple own nearly 10 percent of British chip design company Imagination Technologies. Now it says it’s replacing Imagination’s graphics processing units — which Apple has used since 2008 — with chips that Apple plans to build itself. (With the help of some former Imagination execs who Apple has poached.) Imagination has lost 75 percent of its market value today the news. More here.

    How Uber is using behavioral science its manipulate its drivers into working harder and longer.

    Oracle says it is not buying Accenture.

    Detours

    Why cars with high-tech crash-prevention gear cost a fortune to insure.

    Five books people will be talking about this month.

    “Girlboss,” the Netflix show based on the life of Nasty Girl founder Sophia Amoruso, debuts April 21. Here’s the trailer if you’re curious.

    Retail Therapy

    Prime rib: it’s back en vogue.

  • StrictlyVC: March 31, 2017

    Happy Friday, everyone. Hope you’re in for a terrific weekend. See you back here on Monday.:)

    Today’s StrictlyVC is brought to you by John Gannon‘s VC jobs email list.  Join more than 3800 VCs (from Sequoia, Redpoint, and other top firms) and VC job hunters in using Gannon’s list to help them get jobs at top firms like Bessemer, General Catalyst, OpenView, and IVP. Click here to subscribe.

    Top News in the A.M.

    Last night, SpaceX succeeded in re-launching one of its Falcon 9 rockets for the first time. It’s the first-ever reflight of an entire orbital class rocket — by anyone. TechCrunch has more here.

    Snap just debuted its first major product since its IPO.

    CRV Puts Bioengineering on Its Shopping List

    CRV, an early-stage venture firm that made headlines last year for its stance on then-candidate Donald Trump’s campaign, is looking to get out a new (non-political) message: It’s diving more deeply into the business of AI-driven biotech.

    The move comes years after some other venture firms have taken a deep dive into biotech, including True Ventures and Andreessen Horowitz. But CRV general partner George Zachary would argue that CRV’s timing is pretty good, given both the burgeoning opportunity and the potential outcomes.

    Consider that late last year, Stanford researchers trained a computer to identify images of skin cancer moles and lesions as accurately as a dermatologist. Entrepreneur and computer scientist Sebastian Thrun — who was involved in the project as an adjunct professor in the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory — told us earlier this year that the researchers are forming a startup around their findings. (Natch.)

    Another young company, Viz, is applying deep learning to ultrasounds, which typically require either a radiologist or other technician’s expertise (which can translate into a long wait for anxious patients). More specifically, Viz’s software compares ultrasounds with millions of other images and videos, ostensibly empowering primary care physicians to interpret the images and quickly take action.

    And these are but two in a sea of examples that range from cancer screening to blood testing to human microbiome-focused startups (which alone number in the dozens).

    What finally captured CRV’s interest? In part, it was personal, says Zachary.

    More here.

    New Fundings

    ADVR, a year-old, San Francisco, Ca.-based discovery marketing engine for virtual and augmented reality applications, has raised $3 million in initial funding from undisclosed backers. VentureBeat has more here.

    Breathe Technologies, a 12-year-old, Irvine, Ca.-based developer of a ventilator system for patients with respiratory insufficiency and neuromuscular diseases, has raised $12.8 million in new funding, shows an SEC filing. Past investors include Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Johnson & Johnson Development Corp., Delphi Ventures, Synergy Ventures, DAG Ventures and Morgan Creek. More here.

    Decisely, a 1.5-year-old Alpharetta, Ga.-based HR and benefits platform for small businesses, has raised $60 million in funding from Two Sigma Private Investments and EPIC Insurance Brokers and Consultants. More here.

    Echo, a four-year-old, San Diego, Ca.-based maker of a hybrid microscope, has raised $7.5 million in Series A funding co-led by Dolby Family Ventures and Tech Coast Angels. More here.

    Optolexia, a nearly two-year-old, Stockholm, Sweden-based company that’s developing an eye-tracking test that screens for dyslexia in children, raised $5.6 million in funding. Gabriel Urwitz, the CEO of the private equity group Segulah, led the round, with participation from The Pomona Group. Mobi Health News has more here.

    SpyBiotech, a months-old, Oxford, England-based startup spun out of Oxford University that has developed a way to bond antigens to viruses and other particles to make vaccines, has raised $5 million from GV and Oxford Sciences Innovation, Oxford’s own venture fund. TechCrunch has more here.

    Stripe, the six-year-old, San Francisco-based payments company, just quietly tacked $5 million in equity onto its previous funding, according to an SEC filing that says the capital came from two investors. Stripe has raised more than $440 million to date, shows Crunchbase. Its backers include Sequoia Capital, General Catalyst Partners, and Thrive Capital, among others. It was assigned a $9 billion valuation late last year. More here.

    ZenJob, a year-old, Berlin, Germany-based on-demand staffing platform, has raised €3 million in funding led by Redalpine and Acton Capital Partners, with participation from 500 Startups and earlier investor Atlantic Labs. More here.

    New Funds

    Banyan Capital, a 3.5-year-old, Beijing-based venture firm that already manages at least three venture funds, has closed on new, $50 million fund, shows an SEC filing.
    Haystack Ventures, the seed-stage firm founded by investor, SVC advisor, and frequent summer columnist Semil Shah, is raising a $25 million fund, according to a new SEC filing. This will be Shah’s first institutional fund; his previous vehicles were closed via commitments from individual investors.

    WestSummit Capital, a growth-stage fund with offices in Menlo Park, Hong Kong, and Beijing (it funds both North American and China-based companies) is looking to raise a new, $300 million fund, shows an SEC filing. The firm closed its previous fund with $225 million in 2014.

    IPOs

    Cloudera, a nine-year-old, Palo Alto-based big data company that has raised roughly $1 billion from investors, is expected to file its S-1 today. According to Crunchbase, the company’s backers include Accel Partners, Greylock Partners, Meritech Capital Partners, Ignition Partners, T. Rowe Price, In-Q-Tel, and Intel Capital, among others. More here.

    Exits

    According to Fortune’s Term Sheet, Eventbrite, the event ticketing startup that’s valued at more than $1 billion and is expected to go public in the not-too-distant future, has quietly acquired Nvite, a year-old, Washington, D.C.-based competitor that had raised just $1 million from a group of local investors. More here.

    People

    Jeff Bezos is now the world’s second-richest person.

    Facebook says Oculus co-founder and Rift creator Palmer Luckey is leaving the company and will be “dearly missed.”

    Serial entrepreneur Dustin Moskovitz is funding the operations of a London charity that encourages entrepreneurs to commit to giving to worthy causes when they eventually exit their business.

    Essential Reads

    A judge said he’s inclined to slap an order on Uber that may impede its self-driving car program after being told its director, Anthony Levandowski, won’t testify on its behalf. Bloomberg has more here.

    As the U.S.’s top tech brands ramp up operations in India, they are running into unexpected resistance: Their Chinese equivalents are stepping in to bolster their Indian competitors. The WSJ has more here.

    Didi Chuxing still faces potentially costly fights with much smaller rival ridesharing firms in China even after defeating Uber in China. The Information has more here.

    Gulp. Snap could lose more than $2 billion this year — which is more than Twitter and Tesla combined. We’ll talk about this with Snap’s second-largest outside shareholders, Lightspeed Venture Partners, at our May 4 event in San Francisco.

    Detours

    Starbucks is testing a cafe in Seattle that is dedicated entirely to filling mobile orders.

    The most popular cosmetic procedures for men right now.

    How the rest of the world defines personal space.

    Retail Therapy

    Seventeen sneakers debuting this weekend and where to buy them.

  • StrictlyVC: March 30, 2017

    Thursday! Two more days of spring break with our very energetic kids, which makes us sad-relieved. (We know you feel us.)

    In today’s sponsorship news: Join more than 3800 VCs (from Sequoia, Redpoint, and other top firms) and VC job hunters on John Gannon‘s VC jobs email list. His readers have used his list to help them get jobs at top firms like Bessemer, General Catalyst, OpenView, and IVP. Click here to subscribe.

    Also, don’t forget to sign up for this. Roughly half our tickets are now gone.

    Top News Today

    Twitter just gave you more room to tweet.

    The food delivery startup Munchery is in trouble. According to Bloomberg, the company, which has raised $120 million over its seven year history, is receiving $5 million from its biggest investors — Menlo Ventures and Sherpa Capital — to stay afloat in a recap that pretty much washes out its founders and departed employees. More here.

    New Fundings

    Berkeley Research Group, a 17-year-old, Emeryville, Ca.-based strategic advisory and consulting firm, has raised $62.5 million in funding from affiliates of Endeavour Capital. More here.

    Cava Grill, a six-year-old, Rockville, Md.-based restaurant chain of fast-casual Mediterranean fare, has raised $30 million in funding from Revolution Growth, SWaN & Legend Venture Partners, and The Invus Group. Washington Business Journal has more here.

    Filament, a five-year-old, Reno, Nv.-based company that develops wireless industrial networks, has raised $15 million in funding co-led by Verizon Ventures and Bullpen Capital. Other participants include Intel Capital, JetBlue Technology Ventures, CME Ventures, Lab IX, Backstage Capital, Tappan Hill Ventures and earlier investors Samsung NEXT, Resonant Venture Partners and Digital Currency Group. FinSMEs has more here.

    Kuaicang, a three-year-old, Shanghai, China-based robotics company that makes robots and movable shelves for warehouses, has raised $29 million in funding from Softbank and Cainiao Network, an Alibaba-owned parcel tracking platform. AllChinaTech.com has more here.

    Icertis, an eight-year-old, Bellevue, Wa.-based company that sells cloud-based contract lifecycle management software, has raised $25 million in Series C funding led by B Capital Group, the venture fund started by Facebook co-founder, Eduardo Saverin. Earlier backers also joined the round, including Ignition Partners, Greycroft  Partners, e.ventures and Eight Roads Ventures. The company has now raised $46 million altogether. Times of India has more here.

    JoyRun, a 2.5-year-old, Santa Clara, Ca.-based peer-to-peer food and drinks delivery app that enables users to learn who, nearby, is already heading out to a restaurant that they like, then tack on an order of their own, has raised $10 million in Series A and seed funding. Floodgate led the $8.5 million Series A round, and Norwest Venture Partners led the company’s earlier $1.3 million seed round. Other investors joining both rounds include Visionnaire Ventures, Morado Ventures, CrunchFund, Triplepoint Capital, and individual angels. TechCrunch has more here.

    Ledger, a two-year-old, Paris, France-based startup behind a secure bitcoin hardware wallet (it makes hardware for users to store and maintain control over their cryptocurrency private key), has raised $7 million inSeries A funding. Investors include XAnge, Wicklow Capital, GDTRE, Libertus Capital, Digital Currency Group, The Whittemore Collection, Kima Ventures, BHB Network and Apple evangelist Nicolas Pinto. TechCrunch has more here.

    Looker, a six-year-old, Santa Cruz, Ca.-based business intelligence platform, has raised $81.5 million in Series D funding led by CapitalG, with participation from Goldman SachsGeodesic Capital and earlier backers KPCB, Meritech Capital Partners, Redpoint Ventures and Sapphire Ventures. TechCrunch has more here.

    Oodrive, a 17-year-old, Paris-based SaaS company providing secure data management services, has raised €65 million ($69.7 million) in new funding from Tikehau Capital, MI3, and NextStage. Tech.eu has more here.

    Pepper, an 11-month-old, Kansas City Mo.-based IoT platform and service provider, has raised $8.5 million in Series B funding from Leawood Ventures, the KCRise Fund, Royal Street Ventures, OpenAir Equity Partners and Comporium Communications. The Kanas City Star has more here.

    Promentis Pharmaceuticals, an 11-year-old, Milwaukee, Wi.-based  biopharmaceutical company that’s developing therapies to treat central nervous system disorders, has raised $26 million in Series C funding led by OrbiMed, F-Prime Capital Partners and Aisling Capital, with participation from earlier backers Black Pearl GmbH, the Golden Angel Network and individual investors. More here.

    New Funds

    Legend Capital, the Beijing-based private equity and venture capital arm of Legend Holdings, has closed its seventh fund with more than $400 million in capital commitments. Private Equity International has more here (subscription required).

    Toyota’s dedicated research organization, Toyota Research Institute, is investing $35 million into collaborative research efforts with a number of university and corporate partners focused on materials science. The idea is to boost its research in three key areas: fuel cell catalysts, batteries, and functional polymers designed for energy storage. TechCrunch has more here.

    IPO

    Blue Apron, the biggest U.S. meal kit company, has hired investment bankers to lead its 2017 initial public offering, according to Reuters. The five-year-old startup has raised roughly $193 million from investors, shows Crunchbase. Its backers include First Round Capital, Bessemer Venture Partners, Fidelity Investments, and Stripes Group, among others.

    Renaissance Capital just released is a first-quarter IPO review. Among its findings: 25 IPOs raised $10 billion in the first quarter and the average IPO gained 10 percent, with positive results across every sector but energy. More here.

    Exits

    Amazon yesterday announced plans to shut down Quidsey, formerly Diapers.com,  which it had acquired back in November 2010 for $545 million. It blamed an inability to turn the company profitable, but Recode think it’s was also likely a dig at Diapers.com co-founder Marc Lore, who went on to found (and sell) Jet.com, which competes with Amazon. More here.

    Audi plans to acquire Silvercar, a four-year-old, Austin, Tex.-based car sharing startup that addresses the high-end airport rental car market. This one should be easy; Silvercar’s fleet is already made up exclusively of Audi A4 cars. Further, Audi already owned a stake in the company. Terms aren’t being disclosed. According to Crunchbase, Silvercar had raised nearly $60 million from investors, including Austin Ventures, Velos Partners, and Facebook cofounder Eduardo Saverin. TechCrunch has more here.

    Yesterday might have been ruff for DogVacay, which just sold to its pet-sitting rival Rover in an all-stock deal. Terms of the deal aren’t being disclosed, but DogVacay’s investors, including BenchmarkAndreessen HorowitzFirst RoundSherpa Capital and Foundation Capital, are now Rover shareholders. (They’re messaging that they made out fine in this deal; we just wanted to use a dog pun.)

    LeEco’s $2 billion acquisition of U.S.-based TV maker Vizio has reportedly stalled. TechCrunch has more here.

    People

    Sound Ventures, the venture firm founded by Ashton Kutcher and Guy Oseary, has hired a new managing partner and COO: Effie Epstein, who most recently led global strategy at Marsh & McLennan subsidiary Marsh. TechCrunch has more here.

    The 22-year-old at the center of the self-driving car craze.

    Jobs

    Facebook is hiring a corporate development manager. The job is in Menlo Park, Ca.

    Data

    Mapped: Where American income has grown the most over the last 25 years.

    Essential Reads

    Buses are the new ride-share.

    Dropbox just lined up $600 million in debt from six banks.

    Engineering a venture capital market: lessons from China.

    Detours

    The mystery of James Dean’s “cursed” Porsche explained.

    Seven surprising facts about Prince Philip.

    What many famous scientists had in common.

    Retail Therapy

    Floor pillows.

  • StrictlyVC: March 29, 2017

    Wednesday!

    Today’s StrictlyVC is brought to you by Rosebud Communications, Silicon Valley’s premier PR firm specializing in venture-backed startups. Its areas of expertise include enterprise SaaS solutions, martech, ed-tech, and fintech. To learn more, email info@rosebudpr.io.

    Top News in the A.M.

    As expected/feared, the House of Representatives yesterday voted 215 to 205 to repeal broadband privacy rules that were established to protect U.S. subscribers.

    Aaaand Snap‘s shares are down again, falling 7 percent yesterday after Facebook announced it was beefing up its own camera features.

    This Venture Debt Firm Just Had Its Busiest Quarter in 37 Years

    Venture debt has been much in the news lately. Earlier this month, for example, we learned that ModCloth, an online company that sells vintage women’s apparel, is being acquired by Jet.com for less than investors poured into the company — largely because ModCloth was tripped up by unsecured bank debt. More recently, we learned that after failing to land an investor or buyer, the music streaming service SoundCloud decided to raise a $70 million debt round.

    Are desperate times beginning to call for desperate measures? That might be an overstatement; at the same time, the venture debt firm Western Technology Investment (WTI) has seen plenty of cycles over its 37 years in the business, and CEO Maurice Werdegar says the firm just finished its busiest quarter ever.

    We talked with him late last week in a chat that’s been edited for length.

    It seems like venture debt is popping up in more deals. True or not true?

    The long trend is definitely that venture debt continues to play a moderately increasing role. The role it’s intended to play is to complement a company’s equity strategy — to help extend [funding] from one round to the next, adding time and giving companies and their teams the optionality of having more data and reaching certain inflection points before heading into that next round.

    And you’ve traditionally focused on early-stage companies as a result. You provided debt to Jet.com as part of its massive Series A round, for example. But it seems like later-stage companies are using more debt, too.

    More here.

    New Fundings

    Aiden, a nine-month-old, London-based startup building a machine learning-powered personal assistant to save mobile marketers time and money, has raised $750,000 in seed funding from Kima Ventures and numerous angel investors, including Apple’s deep learning “ninja and evangelist,” Nicolas Pinto. TechCrunch has more here.

    Carbon Health, a 1.5-year-old San Francisco-based mobile healthcare network founded by Udemy cofounder Eren Bali, has raised $6.5 million in seed funding led by BuildersVC. Others of its backers include Javelin Venture Partners, Two Sigma Ventures and Bullpen Capital. We wrote more about it here.

    Cognoa, a 2.5-year-old, Palo Alto, Ca.-based digital health company that helps parents assess their children’s behavior, has raised $11.6 million in funding from earlier backer Morningside. We’d written company, which has raised more than $20 million since its founding, a while back.

    ControlUp, a five-year-old, Saratoga, Ca.-based startup that detects, troubleshoots, and remediates IT related issues in hybrid cloud deployments, has raised $10 million in Series B funding led by K1 Capital and Jerusalem Venture Partners. SiliconAngle has more here.

    Emergent Payments, a 10-year-old, Palo Alto, Ca.-based payments platform company, has raised $5 million in funding from Responsible Gold Holdings and earlier backers. More here.

    Emoticast, a three-year-old, London-based music-themed mobile messaging company, has raised $5 million from a gaggle of high-profile angel investors, including Sean Parker, producer and Black Eyed Peas co-founder will.i.am; and DJ and producer David Guetta. VentureBeat has more here.

    Freightos, a four-year-old, Jerusalem, Israel-based online freight marketplace, has raised $25 million in Series B funding led by GE Ventures, with participation from  Aleph VC, Annox Capital, Gold Lion Holdings, ICV, Master Toys, MSR Capital, and OurCrowd. Tech.eu has more here.

    Industrious, a four-year-old, Brooklyn, N.Y.-based company that helps businesses find, create and manage their workspaces, has raised $25 million in additional Series B funding led by Riverwood Capital. The round, which included earlier investors Outlook Development Capital and Maple Woodward Capital, now stands at $62 million. VentureBeat has more here.

    Inocucor Technologies, a decade-old, Montreal, Canada-based company that makes sustainable biological products for agriculture, has raised $29 million in Series B funding led by TPG Alternative and Renewable Technologies, with participation from Cycle Capital Management, Desjardins Innovatech, and Closed Loop Capital. More here.

    MapD, a 3.5-year-old, San Francisco-based data exploration platform, has raised $25 million in Series B funding led by New Enterprise Associates, with participation from earlier backers Nvidia, Vanedge Capital, and Verizon. The latest investment brings MapD’s total funding to about $37 million. Fortune has more here.

    Raise.me, a 4.5-year-old, San Francisco-based financial aid startup, has raised $12 million in Series A funding led by Redpoint Ventures, with participation from GSV Acceleration and earlier investors Owl Ventures, First Round Capital and SJF Ventures. TechCrunch has more here.

    Reputation.com, an 11-year-old, Redwood City, Ca.-based online reputation management platform, has raised an undisclosed amount of funding from Heritage Group. FinSMEs has more here.

    Rigetti Computing, a 3.5-year-old, Berkeley, Ca.-based quantum computing startup, has raised $64 million in Series A and B funding, it disclosed this week. The Series A round of $24 million was led by Andreessen Horowitz, with participation from Sutter Hill Ventures, Susa Ventures, Streamlined Ventures, Lux Capital, and Bloomberg Beta ; its $40 million Series B was led by Vy Capital, with participation from Andreessen Horowitz, Y Combinator’s Continuity Fund, Data Collective, FF Science, AME Cloud Ventures, Morado Ventures, and WTI. More here.

    RightHand Robotics, a 2.5-year-old, Somerville, Ma.-based company whose robots handle the task of picking individual items, has raised $8 million in Series A funding, including from Playground Global, Matrix Partners, Seven Seas Partners, Dream Incubator and angel investors. BostInno has more here.

    Ripjar, a 4.5-year-old, London-based analytics company, has raised $4.5 million in follow-on funding from earlier investor Winton, a British investment management company. More here.

    Storyhunter, a nearly five-year-old, New York-based platform for media production that features and connects  more than 20,000 freelance video producers and journalists across 180 countries, has raised $1.3 million in funding led by Draper Associates, with participation from Frontier Associates, Altair.vc, iAngels, NFX Guild and 500 Startups. The company has now raised $4.2 million altogether. More here.

    New Funds

    Arrowroot Capital, a three-year-old, Santa Monica, Ca.-based growth equity firm that’s focused on the software sector and closed its first two funds with $50 million (in 2014 and 2015, respectively) is now targeting $175 for its third fund, shows an SEC filing. More here.

    IPOs

    BuzzFeed is planning to go public next year, says a new report in Axios.

    CarGurus, an online auto shopping and research platform, has quietly picked Goldman Sachs and Allen & Co. to lead its upcoming IPO, says Axios. The CEO and founder of the Cambridge, Ma.-based company is Langley Steinert, who previously co-founded TripAdvisor. CarGurus seems to have taken outside capital just once, around the time of its founding in 2006. That round was $4.5 million from a group of entrepreneurs who’d previously co-founded TripAdvisor with Steinert.

    People

    Derek Handley, founding CEO of B Team, a not-for-profit initiative co-founded by Richard Branson, has joined the venture firm and startup studio Human Ventures as its chief innovation officer.

    Lyft cofounder John Zimmer‘s game plan for beating Uber centers in part on appealing more aggressively to women. As he tells Time of his company, “We’re a better boyfriend.”

    Jobs

    Mercedes Benz is looking to hire an innovation analyst into its R&D group. The job is in Sunnyvale, Ca.

    Essential Reads

    Uber was slow to release a report about its worker demographics, but it turns out its numbers aren’t so terrible comparatively; in fact, on an overall percentage basis, it employs more women than Facebook or Apple.

    Behind the fall of Quixey.

    Companies often pursue dual-track processes; right now, many are preferring to go public as acquirers refuse to pay the prices they want.

    Detours

    Seven ways you’re ruining your steak dinner.

    Here’s how long you have to work out to see results.

    Retail Therapy

    Don’t get squished.

    Everything you need to know about the new Galaxy S8.

  • StrictlyVC: March 28, 2017

    Tuesday! Greetings from our children’s spring break in Ohio, where we learned the hard way yesterday not to let a footloose seven-year-old drive the two-seat go-kart, no matter how relentless his badgering.

    Today’s StrictlyVC is brought to you by Rosebud. The tech-focused communications firm specializes in PR and analyst relations for leading startups. Its newest client, Akeneo, just closed its $13 million Series B round and is “taking the product information management (PIM) space by storm.” More here and here.

    Also, quick reminder that our next SVC event is coming up May 4 and you won’t want to miss it if you’re in SF that night. A bunch of you have signed up already. If you haven’t nabbed your seat yet, you can do that here. Our partners make these nights possible; if you’d like to team up with us on the event, you can reach us by replying to this email.

    Top News Today

    All that Softbank capital (or its access to it) seems to be burning a hole in the company’s pocket. Chinese ride-sharing giant Didi Chuxing is now weighing whether to take a $6 billion investment backed by SoftBank that could dilute earlier backers like Apple. Bloomberg says it isn’t clear whether or not the capital would come from Softbank’s Vision Fund. More here.

    Meanwhile, Tencent, Asia’s second highest valued tech firm, has bought a five percent share in Tesla. According to a filing, the Chinese firm scooped up 8,167,544 shares for around $1.7 billion to become one of Tesla’s largest shareholders. The news itself sent Tesla’s share price up three percent in pre-market trading today. TechCrunch has more here.

    Logistics Startup Turvo Zooms Out of the Gate with $25 Million in Funding

    Turvo, a two-year-old, Sunnyvale, Ca.-based company, is emerging today with an idea so ambitious that investors have provided it with $25 million in Series A funding to chase it.

    What it wants to do: connect people looking to have things shipped, which doesn’t sound so unlike what a lot of both traditional and newer companies want to do. Turvo is setting out to differentiate itself in a number of ways that may make it a compelling longer-term bet, however.

    First, unlike companies like the freight-forwarding company Flexport or the on-demand trucking startup Transfix, which we’ve also written about, Turvo isn’t looking to tackle just one part of the supply chain but rather to work across its entirety. The idea is for shippers, brokers, and carriers alike to work together in real time —  using a software interface on their desktops and mobile phones that’s too simple and convenient to resist.

    Toward that end, for example, it says its platform enables cross-company collaboration (think Slack, if Slack could enable employees to talk with employees of other companies about particular projects); real-time visibility (its mobile app tracks shipments from dispatch to delivery); and billing and payments (think digital invoices that can be shared instantly, and payments that can be scheduled).

    More here.

    New Fundings

    Antiva Biosciences, a 4.5-year-old, South San Francisco, Ca.-based biopharmaceutical company developing novel, topical therapeutics for the treatment of pre-cancerous lesions caused by human papilloma virus, has raised raised $22 million in Series C funding. Brace Pharma Capital led the round, with participation from NS Investment, Osage University Partners, Alexandria Venture Investments and earlier backers Canaan Partners and Sofinnova Ventures. FierceBiotech has more here.

    Bustle, a 3.5-year-old, Brooklyn-based female-focused media company founded by serial entrepreneur Bryan Goldberg, has raised $12 million in new funding led by earlier investor GGV Capital. The company has now raised $50.5 million altogether. The WSJ has more here.

    Coras, a 1.5-year-old, Dublin, Ireland-based event ticketing platform, has raised €1.9 million ($2 million) in funding led by Atlantic Bridge University Fund, with participation from Edge from U2, Hambro Perks, Elkstone Capital, and Dave Burke. More here.

    Creamfinance, a five-year-old, Warsaw, Poland-based consumer finance provider that operates in six countries, has raised €21 million ($23 million) in Series B funding from South Africa’s Capitec Bank. Crowdfund Insider has more here.

    Flourish, a year-old, London-based data visualisation platform designed to make it easier for companies to visualise and tell stories through data, has raised $1 million in seed funding from LocalGlobe and Founder Collective. TechCrunch has more here.

    MasterClass, a two-year-old, San Francisco-based online education platform that features classes taught by instructors such as Aaron Sorkin, Serena Williams, and Frank Gehry, has raised $35 million in Series C funding led by IVP, with participation from GSV Acceleration, Sam Lessin and earlier backers New Enterprise Associates, Javelin Venture Partners, Bloomberg Beta, Advancit Capital, Novel TMT, Yan-David Erlich, and Matthew Rutler (MX Investments). The company has now raised $56.4 million to date. TechCrunch has more here.

    Slacker, an 11-year-old, San Diego-based personalized radio company that enables listeners to chose from a broad selection of curated music, news and sports stations, has raised nearly $2 million in debt, shows an SEC filing that suggests the company is looking to raise up to $4 million altogether. The company had previously raised roughly $70 million in equity and debt, shows Crunchbase. Its earlier backers include Rho Capital Partners and Centennial Ventures. More here.

    Smyte, a 2.5-year-old San Francisco-based cyber security startup, has raised $4 million in Series A funding led by Avalon Ventures, with participation from Baseline Ventures, Founder Collective, Harrison Metal, Upside Partnership and Y Combinator. VentureBeat has more here.

    Tenfold, a three-year-old, Austin, Tex.-based company develops software that integrates CRM systems with other communication tools, has raised $15.8 million in funding led by Andreessen Horowitz, with participation from Geekdom Fund and Rackspace co-founder Pat Condon. Austin Business Journal has more here (subscription required).

    Tiger Brokers, a three-year-old, Beijing, China-based company that provides brokerage services for trading in local and overseas exchanges like the U.S. and Hong Kong, has raised $14 million in Series B funding led by China Growth Capital, with participation from earlier investor Zhen Fund. More here.

    Wrench, a two-year-old, Seattle-based startup, has raised $4 million in Series A funding for an app that sends certified auto mechanics to the customer’s door. The round was led by Madrona Venture Group. TechCrunch has more here.

    New Funds

    Phoenix Venture Partners, a San Mateo, Ca.-based venture capital firm focused on advanced materials, has raised an undisclosed amount for its first fund; investors reportedly include Pfizer, 3M, Corning Incorporated, and Solvay Group. FinSMEs has more here.

    Exits

    Canon has acquired Kite, a three-year-old, London-based print tech startup that lets developers add on-demand printing features to their apps. Terms of the deal aren’t being disclosed. According to Crunchbase, Kite had disclosed just $400,000 in outside funding from unnamed investors. TechCrunch has more here.

    People

    The top 20 VCs right now, according to CB Insights.

    GV, venture the investment arm of Alphabet, has brought aboard four new advisors: Craig Kornblau, former president of Universal Studios Home Entertainment; Guillaume Le Cunff, president of Nespresso USA; Sanyin Siang, the executive director of the Coach K Center on Leadership & Ethics at Duke; and former Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus.

    Elon Musk has launched a new company that hopes to link your brain to a computer.

    The early-stage venture capital firm Relay Ventures has brought aboard Irfhan Rawji as a venture partner, based in Calgary. Rawji was most recently a principal with the investment management firm Totem Capital.

    Android creator Andy Rubin yesterday teased a first look at the bezel-less smartphone of his newest company, Essential.

    Venture firm Next Coast Ventures in Austin has hired Zeynep Young as a venture partner. Young is also currently the CEO of a wellness and beauty company called milk + honey.

    Jobs

    Famed VC Vinod Khosla is looking to hire a chief of staff. Requirements: “broad tech chops,” two-plus years of experience in the startup world, and a desire to start a company. (Note: Khosla doesn’t mess around. He was at Y Combinator’s crowded Demo Day last week, along with many other heavy hitters. After doing some mingling during a break, he returned to his seat halfway through the next session and kicked someone out of it.) Interested parties should send email to cos@khoslaventures.

    Essential Reads

    Facebook has copied Snap a fourth time, and now all its apps look the same.

    Detours

    A software engineer starts an unlikely business: a weekly newspaper.

    Whole Foods traffic declines are “staggering,” say analysts.

    It may feel like your kids are aging you exponentially, but good news: you might live longer because of them.

    Retail Therapy

    What the what.

  • StrictlyVC: March 27, 2017

    Monday! Greetings from the Midwest, where we’re visiting family (so this week’s SVCs might be a little shorter than usual the next few days). Hope you’re in for a good week, everyone.:)

    Today’s StrictlyVC is brought to you by Rosebud Communications. The L.A.-based PR firm specializes in VC-backed startups and today announced their newest client, RealConnex.  To find out more about the coverage Rosebud secured for RealConnex and their latest announcement, click here.

    Top News Today

    Uber grounded its entire autonomous test fleet in the U.S. on Saturday, following an accident in Arizona that left one of its Volvo SUVs flipped on its side. But the cars are back up and running in San Francisco today.

    Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and JPMorgan Chase issued a raft of ‘buy’ or ‘neutral’ ratings on newly-listed Snap this morning, causing a pop in its share price. The banks were barred from publicizing their calls until today because they helped sell stock during Snap’s IPO earlier this month. More here.

    Hampton Creek Gets Good News

    The SEC and the Department of Justice, which had launched preliminary inquiries into the vegan food company Hampton Creek last summer, have officially closed their inquiries, according to founder and CEO Josh Tetrick. He informed the company’s 160-plus employees of the status change this morning in an email that you can find below.

    Tetrick called the news “the expected result by our leadership, board and investors.”

    Not everyone was so confident in a positive outcome after a two-part Bloomberg investigation attracted the government agencies’ attention. At the heart of Bloomberg’s findings was that Hampton Creek had executed on a campaign to buy back mass quantities of its eggless mayo product to artificially inflate demand and, potentially, dupe investors.

    In reaction, the company hired one of the Big Four accounting firms to examine Bloomberg’s claims, which the board has said it had no knowledge of until contacted by Bloomberg’s reporters last fall.

    A source close to the board told us at the time that if Tetrick and other managers were discovered to have been “buying back mayo solely for the purpose of juicing the numbers,” the board would be “livid.”

    Whether they’re now patting Tetrick on the back instead isn’t yet known. One of the company’s few board members didn’t respond to a request for comment earlier. A request for comment from Tetrick also went unanswered.

    The SEC’s decision may not come as a complete surprise to industry watchers.

    More here.

    New Fundings

    Arable, a three-year-old, Princeton, N.J.-based company that makes solar-powered sensors and software to help farmers produce more food with fewer resources, has raised $4.25 million in funding co-led by Middleland Capital and S2G Ventures, with participation from Chasefield, Spark Labs and Cantos VC. TechCrunch has more here.

    Cool Planet, a nine-year-old, biofuel-turned-biological ag products company, has raised $19.3 million in venture funding from earlier investors North Bridge Venture Partners and Agustín Coppel. More here.

    Lightform, a two-year-old, San Francisco-based augmented reality company that’s developing a computer and 3D scanning device that, when connected to any video projector, lets users scan complex scenes and turn any object into a screen, has raised $2.6 million in seed funding. Co-leads on the deal were Lux Capital and Seven Seas Partners. Other participants included several unnamed angel investors and the National Science Foundation. More here.

    Peakon, a two-year-old, London- and Copenhagen-based employee engagement platform, has raised €6.1 million ($6.6 million) funding led by EQT Ventures, with participation from earlier backers IDInvest, Sunstone and angel investor Tommy Ahlers. Tech.eu has more here.

    Placester, a nine-year-old, Boston-based maker of marketing tools for real estate professionals, has raised $50 million in Series D funding led by New Enterprise Associates. The company has now raised raised a total of $100 million to date. More here.

    Snapcart, a two-year-old, Jakarta, Indonesia-based cashback app that incentivizes consumers to take photos of their receipts in exchange for rewards, has raised $3 million in funding led by Vickers Venture Partners, with participation from earlier backers Wavemaker Partners and SPH Media Fund, the investment arm of Singapore Press Holdings. More here.

    Twist Bioscience, a three-year-old, San Francisco, Ca.-based developer of a DNA synthesis process for specialty chemical compounds and drug development, has raised $33 million in fresh funding from undisclosed backers. More here.

    New Funds

    Science, a 5.5-year-old, L.A.-based tech incubator, is raising up to $60 million for its second fund, shows an SEC filing. We talked with cofounder Mike Jones last year about fundraising and more.

    IPOs

    Elevate Credit, a somewhat controversial Fort Worth, Tex.-based provider of online credit to non-prime consumers, has set its IPO terms. Its biggest outside shareholders include Sequoia Capital and Technology Crossover Ventures. Business Insider has more here.

    Okta, a San Francisco-based provider of identity access management solutions, has also set its IPO terms. Its biggest outside investors include Sequoia Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, Greylock Partners, Khosla Ventures and Floodgate. Business Insider has more here.

    Exits

    Elevate Credit, a somewhat controversial Fort Worth, Tex.-based provider of online credit to non-prime consumers, has set its IPO terms. Its biggest outside shareholders include Sequoia Capital and Technology Crossover Ventures. Business Insider has more here.

    Okta, a San Francisco-based provider of identity access management solutions, has also set its IPO terms. Its biggest outside investors include Sequoia Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, Greylock Partners, Khosla Ventures and Floodgate. Business Insider has more here.

    People

    The New York Times profiles venture investor Kirsten Green, who has used her knowledge as a former retail analyst to create an enviable portfolio of new brands.

    Facebook has hired Michael Hillman, a 15-year veteran of Apple, as head of hardware for its Oculus VR division. More here.

    Elon Musk‘s billion-dollar crusade to stop the AI apocalypse, in Vanity Fair.

    Jobs

    Founder Collective is looking to hire a senior associate. The job is in Boston.

    Essential Reads

    Magic Leap is currently preparing its long-awaited AR eyewear for release later this year, according to the Financial Times. It reports that its eyewear is said to be smaller than Microsoft’s HoloLens, with a wider field of view, but larger than a regular pair of glasses. More here (subscription required).

    Amazon just delayed the opening of its cashier-less store owing to some technical kinks.

    According to a new report in The Information, Airbnb designers have experimented with ways to manufacture small homes for people’s backyards to beef up its inventory.

    Faraday Future, a three-year-old, L.A-based Tesla rival facing well-documented challenges in terms of capitalization, has scrapped plans to construct an assembly facility and showroom in Vallejo, Ca. More here.

    Detours

    Red-shirting your kids may be better for their mental health, says a new study.

    Photos of half of all U.S. adults are in a facial recognition database used by the FBI.

    Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner’s D.C. neighbors are starting to grow exasperated.

    Retail Therapy

    La Granja Ibiza. We could use a little of this right now.


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