Happy Thursday, everyone.:)

Binary Capital: Everyone is weary of hearing about it, we know, but we did want to correct an earlier report that we’d gotten wrong. We’d told you that LPs of the venture firm Binary Capital had accepted co-founder Jonathan Teo’s resignation in late June. That’s inaccurate, and we regret the error.

As you may know, last weekend, Jonathan Teo wrote two emails to Binary’s portfolio companies and to its LPs. In one of those notes, he said that LPs have not yet accepted his resignation. According to our original sources, who we pressed on this, Binary’s LPs had told them they were still planning to move forward with plans to find a new general partner to manage out the firm’s investments, but these sources had been told the process could take longer than expected, up to 90 days from 30, as originally explained to them.

Another source even closer to the fund planning now says the LPs have not made a final decision and that, in the meantime, they want to keep Teo in place for the sake of Binary’s employees and portfolio companies that are relying on the firm to continue functioning. Further, one CEO of a Binary-backed company has reached out to us to let us know he is fighting to keep Teo on as the firm’s managing director.

Obviously, there are clearly a lot of confusing elements and players involved in this story; again, we’re sorry for our part in advancing that confusion.

Top News in the A.M.

Uber is handing over the keys to its business in Russia, with the San Francisco-based company and Yandex merging their ride-hailing businesses. Specifically, Uber will invest $225 million and take a 36.6 percent stake in a new, yet-to-be named venture that will be valued at $3.73 billion, the companies said in a statement earlier. Bloomberg has more here.

Snap shares received a much-needed Wall Street upgrade today, after falling to a post-IPO low. Investment bank Stifel upgraded the shares to buy from hold, with analyst Scott Devitt saying in a note that some of the worries surrounding Snap could be overblown.

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StrictlyVC comes to you this week courtesy of First Democracy VC, a registered equity crowdfunding portal that’s powered by Indiegogo and MicroVentures. Equity crowdfunding lets anyone invest in innovative startups and growing companies. Interested in raising money for your startup?  Apply now. Interested in investing? Check out current investment opportunities here.

Saucey Raises $5.4M More from Investors to Delivery Booze On Demand

Saucey, an L.A.-based alcohol delivery company, has raised $5.4 million in Series A funding led by Bullpen Capital, with participation from earlier and new investors, including Blumberg Capital, Structure Capital and HashtagOne.

Saucey, which has now raised $10.2 million altogether, is competing against a dizzying number of alcohol-delivery companies. In addition to direct rivals like Drizly, Thirstie, and Swill, delivery companies like Postmates and Instacart are increasingly focusing on new categories, including alcohol delivery. Amazon is also beginning to offer beer and wine delivery in a growing number of cities.

Some CEOs might find the landscape daunting. In a chat with us yesterday, Saucey CEO Chris Vaughn didn’t seem deterred by his company’s many challengers, partly because the market opportunity these companies are chasing is humongous, and partly because he thinks Saucey can become the favorite of regulators in the states where it operates.

We chatted with Vaughn yesterday about the company. Our conversation has been edited for length.

You were working for a series of startups in L.A.; what motivated you to leave and start Saucey?

I guess I caught the tech bug in college, so after school, I wound up going to work for a couple of startups, including a company called textPlus, where I met and became super good friends with my Saucey cofounders.

As for the idea, my girlfriend at the time — now my wife — is an operating room nurse, and she’d come home and want something to drink. We’d be halfway through dinner and she ask, “Can you get some wine?” I found I was always running out to get this stuff, and that maybe 80 percent of the time, it was last minute, on impulse. I talked about that with Dan [Leeb, now Saucey’s chief product officer] and Andrew [Zeck, its CTO], and they were like, yes, let’s do it.

Were liquor stores easy to convince?

It was fall of 2013 when we got started, and we met with at least 40 to 50 liquor retailers who said no. Finally, a guy in his early 30s who’d inherited his dad’s West Hollywood store said within a minute, “Yeah, that’s awesome.” So we [started working with him]. He was doing about $300,000 a year in sales, and in that first year, we brought him an additional $600,000 in sales.

We were working night and weekends and eventually made the move and left textPlus. We were doing all the deliveries ourselves. Sometimes, there would be a spike in demand and we’d only realize afterward that, oh, “The Bachelor” season had started.

How many employees do you have today?

We have 25 full-time employees and work with 2,300 couriers.

Are these Uber and Lyft drivers and people who drive for other services?

Most have a professional courier background or drive for Postmates or Instacart and are used to interacting with customers and navigating around cities. We spend a lot of time optimizing our courier routes, so the average courier [delivers] substantially more orders than with these other services. When they’re going to the [liquor] store, the chances are they aren’t picking up one order but three or four, so they can be efficient with their time.

How are drivers paid?

On a per order basis; it’s a flat fee per order, plus a percentage based on how big the cart is. If they’re delivering a big order, they’ll get 50 cents for every additional item in the cart.

If we open a new territory or new zone, couriers are still paid per order, but we’ll guarantee an hourly minimum to ensure we have coverage no matter what.

Do you insure them? 

They bring their own insurance. We also do background checks on everybody.

What about your customers? How do you make certain they’re of legal drinking age?

We require an ID to be checked and scanned on every single order. It doesn’t matter if you’re a super loyal customer of ours or you’re 100 years old.

More here.

(More) New Fundings

Applitools, a four-year-old, San Mateo, Ca.- and Tel Aviv-based provider of cloud-based automated visual testing of web and mobile applications, raised $8 million in funding. Sierra Ventures led the round, with participation from Bessemer Venture Partners, Magma Venture Partners, iAngels and La Maison. More here.

BloomAPI, a two-year-old, Seattle-based startup that says it’s connecting patients, providers, and payers to data in thousands of previously disconnected systems, has raised $2.4 million in seed funding. The capital comes from Y Combinator, Slow Ventures, Founders’ Co-Op, Section 32 (Bill Maris’s new fund), Liquid 2 Ventures, Fifty Years Fund, TWB Investment Partnership, Wei Fund, Zenefits cofounder Parker Conrad and other angels. TechCrunch has more here.

Cover, a five-year-old, New York-based app that recommends homeowner’s insurance to users based on what’s photographed in their home, has raised $8 million in Series A funding led by Social Capital. TechCrunch has more here.