Hi, happy Friday, all! We’re publishing a little earlier today, as it’s a morning of planes, trains and automobiles for us.

Much thanks again to Semil Shah for offering to help here and there with StrictlyVC while we’ve been catching up with family and friends on the East Coast and Midwest. For today’s edition, he talks with Zach Supalla, the founder and CEO of Particle, a self-described “prototype-to-production platform for developing an Internet of Things product,” about what Supalla learned while raising the company’s Series A round. Hope you enjoy it.:)

Top News in the A.M.

Travis Kalanick has hit back at Benchmark in a court filing. You can read it here.

Sponsored By . . .

This weekend, it’s time to put an end to your buffering. eero was the world’s first home mesh WiFi system and the new 2nd generation is even better. With more power, a smaller form-factor, and Thread, new eero systems can blanket homes of any shape, size, or layout with WiFi so good, you’ll never think about it again. For StrictlyVC readers: use code StrictlyVC at checkout and select overnight shipping for free!

How I Raised It: Particle’s Zach Supalla on Landing a Series A

By Semil Shah

Zach Supalla is CEO and co-founder of Particle, a venture-backed start-up that’s making it easier to build internet-connected hardware. The company has so far raised roughly $35 million over six rounds, including from Spark Capital, O’Reilly AlphaTech Ventures, Qualcomm Ventures, Rincon Venture Partners, and Root Ventures. We talked with him recently about how he got the ball rolling.

As a founder, how do you define what a Series A means?

I would define a Series A as the first raise where you’re raising off of traction, not just a concept or vision. It can be tough to define seed versus Series A versus Series B financially, because a large seed round can be larger than a small Series A. But the way I see it, a founder typically needs to raise anywhere from a few hundred grand to a couple million dollars to get their product to market, at which point they can start collecting data about customer interest, and that’s the point at which they’re raising a Series A.

How many months did it take to raise the A, and how many meetings did it take?

It took me about six months to raise our Series A. I met with roughly fifty funds. Our Series A ended up being a bit complex; we brought in a total of $10 million, but it was a mix of two smaller equity rounds — $4 million plus $3 million plus another $3 million in venture debt. We were originally trying to raise between $10 million and $15 million in equity.

Looking back now, what were the biggest mistakes you made in raising  Series A and why? What are the most important lessons you learned in that process?

My pitch deck for the Series A felt like a seed deck – it was more focused on vision and less on traction and metrics. It took me a while to figure out what was most compelling to investors at this stage, especially because it can be challenging to extract real honest feedback from investors, so I had already burned half of my potential investors before I refactored the deck to make it more metrics-based.

I was also pretty cagey about sharing our financial model, based on some feedback I had gotten from other founders. The concept was that every Series A fund will put an associate on the deal who will be responsible for reviewing the financial model and poking holes in it. The less information you give them, the fewer holes they will be able to poke, so don’t share unless necessary.

The problem with that strategy is it slowed the process down a lot and created a perception of a lack of momentum. VC partners are influenced by their associates, but honestly, they’re more influenced by the social pressure around a raise that feels “hot,” so it’s better to optimize for speed than around managing the associate.

For our Series B raise, I was very aggressive with our data room; I filled it with a ton of information and data and gave it to investors before people even asked. It sped up the process significantly, and many investors told me that they really appreciated our transparency.

How about one last piece of advice for aspiring-seed-stage CEOs who are out there trying to raise a Series A round?

Remember you’re not in R&D anymore; you’re building a business. It should feel that way. You should be tracking metrics that are key to your business, and they should be improving month-over-month or quarter-over-quarter. If those things aren’t true, you’re not ready. Get your business in a good position so that you can raise from a position of strength and get good terms.

New Fundings

Boatsetter, a four-year-old, Miami, Fl.-based boat rental community connecting boat owners and capitals with prospective clients (it’s an Airbnb for boats), has added $4.75 million in funding to its December 2016 Series A round. The company has now raised $17.75 million altogether, including from Great Oaks Venture Capital, Nordic Eye Venture Capital, AMP Brickyard Ventures and numerous others. Notably, it’s is using some of its new funding to acquire a competitor, Boatbound, for undisclosed terms. TechCrunch has more here.

CareAcademy, a four-year-old, Boston-based startup that provides specialized online training for senior home care professionals, has raised $1.675 million in seed funding, including from Rethink Education, Lumina Foundation, and Techstars Venture Capital Fund. More here.

FilmTrack, a 10-year-old, Studio City, Ca.-based end-to-end rights management platform that helps media and entertainment companies manage and monetize their intellectual property, has raised $5.5 million in Series C Funding from Insight Venture Partners. The company has now raised $40 million altogether. CityBizList has more here.

Huochebang, a six-year-old, China-based truck logistics start-up that helps drivers find commodities to transport, facilitates truck sales, as well as provides other services to China’s trucking industry, has raised $56 million in “Series B-3” funding led by All-Stars Investment. The company has now raised $327 million, including a $156 million round involving Baidu that closed just three months ago. China Money Network has more here.

Immersv, a two-year-old, Bay Area-based mobile 360 VR ad network, has raised $10.5 million Series A led by Rogers Venture Partners, with participation from Foundation Capital, The Venture Reality Fund, Initial Capital, East Ventures, HTC Vive, MCJ Co., GREE, i-mobile, Metaps, and Gigi Levy. TechCrunch has more here.

LiftIgniter, a four-year-old, San Francisco-based startup that uses data science to help publishers and retailers optimize their websites and mobile apps in real-time, is raising $6.4 million in a round led by Storm Ventures. TechCrunch has more here.

Outdoor Voices, a five-year-old, New York-based recreational apparel — or “athleisure wear” — company, is raising $9 million in new funding and has collected at least $6.5 million toward that end, shows a new SEC filing. Outdoor Voices had raised $13 million in Series B funding just last year. Its investors include General Catalyst Partners, Forerunner Ventures, Collaborative Fund, and 14W. More here.

ThoughtSpot, a five-year-old, Palo Alto, Ca.-based startup whose business intelligence-powered tool, dubbed SpotIQ, suggests content to people based on past searches and likes, has raised $60 million in Series C funding led by Lightspeed Venture Partners. Capital One Growth Ventures also joined the round, along with earlier investors General Catalyst Partners, Geodesic Capital and Khosla Ventures. The company has now raised $160 million altogether. The WSJ has more here.

Unity Biotechnology, a year-old, Brisbane, Ca.-based biotechnology company that’s aiming to create therapeutics that prevent, halt, or reverse numerous diseases of aging, has raised an additional $35 million in Series B financing that brings the round — previously closed roughly a year go  — to $151 million. Its new Series B investors include INVUS Opportunities, Three Lakes Partners, Cycad Group, COM Investments, and Pivotal Alpha Limited. They joined the company’s earlier Series B investors, including ARCH Venture Partners, Baillie Gifford, Fidelity Management and Research Company, Partner Fund Management, and Venrock. More here.

New Funds

Gobi Partners, a China-based venture capital firm, has held a first close of its Southeast Asia-focused fund with $50 million in capital commitments, including from Malaysia Venture Capital Management, the Korean home shopping company GS Shop, and the Indonesian investment firm CKM. China Money Network has more here.

Leap Global Partners, a Palo Alto, Ca.-based cross-border venture capital firm that  looks to fund technologies created by entrepreneurs in Mexico and the U.S., has held a first close for its debut fund with $15 million in capital commitments. The firm, founded Goldman Sachs alums Roman Leal and Pablo Perez, invests in seed and Series A rounds and has backed four startups already, including Insikt, a fintech lending-as-a-service startup; and Listo, a consumer-facing company that offers financial services to underserved Latinos in the US. More here.

People

Mic.com, the millennial news site, laid off 25 staffers yesterday in what is part of a larger pivot to video that it will begin later this month.

Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg just transferred 590,000 shares of Facebook stock, worth just under $100 million, to a special fund she uses for charitable donations, according to a document filed yesterday with the SEC.

Three and a half years after his return, Chris Wanstrath says he will step down as CEO of the popular developer platform GitHub after leading the search to find his own replacement. Wanstrath reportedly made the announcement as the company passes $200 million in revenue.

Jobs

Aflac, the Fortune 500 insurance company known for its duck mascot, is hiring a venture capital associate. The right candidate can work from Charlotte, N.C.; Atlanta; or the Bay Area.

Essential Reads

Can Silicon Valley disrupt its neo-Nazi problem? (Relatedly, check out this illuminating report.)

Scientists at Johns Hopkins say they’ve developed a test that spots tiny amounts of cancer-specific DNA in blood and have used it to accurately identify more than half of 138 people with relatively early-stage colorectal, breast, lung and ovarian cancers. More here.

The Essential phone is now available.

Detours

A revealing look at CEO travel habits.

How to get through a workday on no sleep.

Retail Therapy

A skateboard by Hermès (priced around where you would guess).

Rare Apple shoes, yellowing from wear and age, and on track to sell for more than than $10,000 to one very hard-core Apple fan.

Thursday! Just a mention that we’ll be traveling tomorrow with our kids, so StrictlyVC will likely be either very short or very late. We’ll have much more for you Monday.:)

Also, in our rush to publish yesterday, we failed to mention that our friend Semil Shah had interviewed Mike Maples for the newsletter. Many of you wrote to let us know you enjoyed Maple’s advice; we just wanted to give credit where it’s due.

Top News in the A.M.

U.S. stocks are tumbling today and Treasuries rising on rising speculation that Donald Trump’s pro-growth policy agenda is imperiled following a rebuke by business leaders.

Sponsored By . . .

At eero, we believe the foundation of home technology has been broken for far too long. So in 2014, we assembled a team of the brightest engineers and designers with a singular goal: make WiFi so great it disappears. And that’s just what we’ve done. eero is simpler, performs better, and is more intelligent than any WiFi solution on earth. For StrictlyVC readers: get your eero whole-home WiFi system with code StrictlyVC at checkout and select overnight shipping for free.

Social Capital Brings Aboard a New Partner: Mike Ghaffary

If you’ve worked in tech in the Bay Area over the last decade or more, you quite possibly know Mike Ghaffary, a USC grad who nabbed both his MBA and JD from Harvard before beginning to work his way through a number of well-known institutions.

From his first stop at Summit Partners, to co-founder of the news and talk radio service Stitcher (sold to Deezer in 2014), to business development roles at TrialPay and Yelp to eventually CEO of Yelp Eat24, Ghaffary has seemingly been working toward a career as a venture capitalist since completing his degrees.

Now, with Yelp selling its food ordering service Eat24 to GrubHub for $287.5 million earlier this month (roughly twice what Yelp paid for it in early 2015), he has landed just that role.

To wit, Ghaffary just joined Social Capital as one of five full-time partners on the firm’s venture team.

It’s good timing for Social Capital, whose co-founder, Mamoon Hamid, left earlier this monthto join Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. In fact, it was Hamid who introduced Ghaffary to the firm, inviting him to an offsite retreat last year where Ghaffary had a chance to meet the entire team and spend more time with another Social Capital co-founder, Chamath Palihapitiya, who oversees the firm as its CEO.

We had a quick chat with Ghaffary yesterday and he sounds, understandably, excited about his new post, where he will be investing in both consumer and enterprise deals.

More here.

New Fundings

Alzeca Biosciences, a five-year-old, Houston, Tex.-based early-stage healthcare diagnostic company that’s trying to develop best-in-class imaging technologies for the early detection of Alzheimer’s Disease pathology, has raised $11 million in Series A financing from undisclosed sources. FierceBiotech has more here.

Codacy, a three-year-old, Lisbon, Portugal-based automated code review platform provider, has raised $5.1 million in Series A funding led by EQT Ventures, with participation from Faber, Caixa Capital, Join Capital, and Seedcamp. TechCrunch has more here.

Color Genomics, a four-year-old, Burlingame, Ca.-based genetic health screening startup, has raised $80 million in Series C funding from General Catalyst Partners, CRV, and Emerson Collective. The company has now raised $150 million altogether. CNBC has more here.

LVL Technologies, a six-year-old, Austin, Tex.-based company that’s developing proprietary sensor platforms for wearables (it was formerly called BSX Athletics), has raised $6.75 million in Series A funding. Samsung Catalyst Fund led the round, with participation from Maxim Integrated Products and other unnamed individual investors. More here.

Ripcord, a months-old, Hayward, Ca.-based company that uses machine vision, robotics, artificial intelligence and machine learning to digitize all of an enterprise’s records, has raised $40 million in Series B funding. The round was led by Icon Ventures, with participation from Kleiner Perkins, Lux Capital, and Silicon Valley Bank. The company has now raised $49.5 million altogether. More here.

Tokopedia, an eight-year-old, Jakarta, Indonesia-based online marketplace for individuals and business owners, has raised $1.1 billion in funding in funding led by Alibaba. TechCrunch has more here.

TuSimple, a two-year-old, Beiijing-based autonomous truck technology startup, has raised $20 million in funding led by Sina, with participation from Nvidia. TechCrunch has more here.

Wine.com, a San Francisco-based online wine retailer, says it has raised $15 million in funding from earlier investors. It didn’t name any outfits specifically, but the company is majority owned by Baker Capital, a New York-based private equity firm. More here.

ZingBox, a 2.5-year-old, Mountain View, Ca.-based startup whose software guards IoT devices from threats on the Internet, has raised $22 million in Series B funding led by Dell Technologies Capital and Triventures. More here.

Exits

Google has acquired AIMatter, a startup founded in Belarus that has built both a neural network-based AI platform and SDK to detect and process images quickly on mobile devices, and a photo and video editing app that has served as a proof-of-concept of the tech called Fabby. The company had raised approximately $2 million in venture funding from Haxus Venture Fund. Terms of the deal aren’t being diclosed, but TechCrunch reports that the service will continue to run, and that most of the company’s employees will join Google. More here.

ShapeShift, a three-year-old, Zug, Switzerland-based digital currency exchange platform, has acquired KeepKey, a Kirkland, Wa.-based hardware wallet for digital assets like Bitcoin and Ethereum. Financial terms weren’t disclosed but this was an “all bitcoin deal.” ShapeShift has raised roughly $13 million from investors, shows Crunchbase, including Earlybird Venture Capitaland Digital Currency Group. KeepKey doesn’t appear to have raised outside funding (or announced it, in any case). Reuters has more here.

People

National Economic Council Director (and former Goldman Sachs president) Gary Cohn is said to be “disgusted” by President Trump’s statements in the wake of the violence at a white supremacist demonstration in Charlottesville, Va. He isn’t going anywhere, though. (In you’re still confused over how Cohn landed at the White House in the first place, Vanity Fair published a piece this month titled, “The Untold Story of How Gary Cohn fell for Donald Trump.”)

Last night, Apple CEO Tim Cook sent an email to all global employees condemning racism and bigotry. More here.

WeWork has hired Shiva Rajaraman as its chief product officer. Rajaraman worked briefly at Apple earlier this year to help shape its video strategy. Before that, he held posts as the VP of Product at Spotify, and as a director of product management at Google. Dave Fano, previously WeWork’s chief product officer, will (somewhat confusingly) become chief product & growth officer.

Fortune just published its annual “40 under 40” list. You can check it out here.

Jobs

LaunchCapital, a seed and early-stage venture firm, is hiring an associate. The job is in New Haven, Ct.

Essential Reads

Facebook quietly shut down an internal discussion group at the end of last year, after employees reportedly used the anonymity within the group to make racist and sexist comments. Business Insider has more here.

A big, successful trial of probiotics at long last.

Detours

Inside Japan’s retro gaming shops, which are now drawing buyers worldwide. (Some are paying up to $18,000 per title!)

A masterful master shot.

The incredible, shrinking airline seat.

Retail Therapy

A mansion in L.A. that won’t sell, so its owners keep increasing its price.

Well, hello, and happy Wednesday. Do you have a solar-eclipse strategy yet? (We’re still working on ours.)

Top News in the A.M.

The most-liked tweet in history was published last night.

Top CEOs who were members of Donald Trump’s Strategic and Policy Forum just agreed to disband the group, following his comments yesterday that “both sides” were responsible for the violence initiated by neo-Nazis and white supremacists in Virginia this past weekend. The policy group had included IBM CEO Ginni Rometty, JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon, and GM CEO Mary Barra among a dozen others. “There really was nothing to debate,” one member told CNBC. More here.

Sponsored By . . .

At eero, we believe the foundation of home technology has been broken for far too long. So in 2014, we assembled a team of the brightest engineers and designers with a singular goal: make WiFi so great it disappears. And that’s just what we’ve done. eero is simpler, performs better, and is more intelligent than any WiFi solution on earth. For StrictlyVC readers: get your eero whole-home WiFi system with code StrictlyVC at checkout and select overnight shipping for free!

Mike Maples on How to Raise a Fund in Today’s Climate

By Semil Shah

Mike Maples founded the early-stage firm Floodgate roughly a decade ago and it’s fair to say that things have gone pretty well for him since. His bets include Twitter, Twitch.TV, Bazaarvoice, Spiceworks, Demandforce, and Okta. He’s been on the Midas List. And Maples was involved as a founder and operating executive at Tivoli Systems, acquired by IBM after going public, and Motive, acquired by Alcatel-Lucent after going public. (The firm has also benefited from an early bet on Lyft made by Ann Miura-Ko, who joined Maples a year later as cofounder.)

When Maples raised his first, $15 million, fund, it took just one month, and most of the capital came from one individual investor — though he lined up six altogether. We talked with him recently about that fund, as well as what aspiring fund managers need to keep in mind today. Our chat has been edited for length.

You raised your first fund fairly easily, based on your operating background.

I always had a pretty realistic view of the purpose of Fund 1. I saw it as a booster rocket for the future. Either it would propel Floodgate to escape velocity, or it would flame out quickly. Many first-time fund managers have a target to raise and they go out and try to raise it. In general, I disagree with this approach. Instead, I looked at my fund size as “that which I can raise from the true believers in 30 days or less.” My view was that if someone wanted to invest in my fund, they already had decided for the most part. So . . . rather than say “I’m raising $25 million” or $50 million or whatever,  I took the perspective of: I am new at this. I might lose money. I might not like managing a fund. You might not like how I manage a fund. What is an amount you would consider investing, given these realities?

If you don’t have a set of people who already believe, I hate to be the bearer of bad news: You are likely not ready to raise a fund.

When did you start talking with more traditional LPs, and how did you approach them?

I started building these relationships before I closed Fund 1 but did not pitch any of the more traditional LPs [for Floodgate’s second fund].  My view was that it was important to get to know LPs when I was not fundraising. It was more straightforward to have honest conversations and not try to sell around objections or try to out-guess what people were looking for.

One of the unanticipated benefits of this was that I really got to understand how some of the best LPs thought about investing in the very best firms. I could get data and insights about the types of portfolios that produced the winning returns and the best practices of building great teams and funding great founders.

You should never be in sell mode with a potential LP. You should  . . . use the meeting as an opportunity to test your ideas and improve them. When you have the chance to meet with a new potential LP and you are not in  sell mode and you get an objection about your strategy, you can say, “Interesting. Tell me more about that.” If the LP is right because they have more perspective or data, you’ll get better and smarter. If you disagree on a first-principles basis after receiving the feedback, you’ve dodged a bullet because you have different values. When your investors have different values than you, it’s a miserable existence.

Anything else you can tell folks who are out there in today’s market, trying to raise a fund?

First, you are not for everybody. Some people will see your advantage and value your advantage. Most will not. Just like a startup raising money, your early customers — in this case, LPs — are not the mainstream. They are the people who believe what you believe. Your task is to find these people. If most don’t believe what you believe, then that’s OK. Come back to them when they do.

Second, don’t try to outguess what people are looking for. Ask yourself honestly why you’re raising a fund and in what ways you’re going to be awesome in a crowded world of way too many VC dollars. You need a crystal clear answer to this, especially as a first-time fund manager, including to justify the use of your own time. A lot of people enjoy investing in startups and would like more money to invest in more. LPs don’t care about your desire to fund startups; they care about your unique strategy to get paid for the risk you take.

Third, turn off your happy ears. By the time you have decided to raise money, most of the people who will invest have already decided. If they are not willing to declare their commitment quickly, they are not ready. If the sum of the money of committed investors who believe in you right now does not add up to a fund, then you are either raising money too soon or trying to raise too much. Accept this, as well as the fact that if you are awesome, there will always be another chance down the road. But failure mode is pressuring and rushing people.

New Fundings

3Bar Biologics, a four-year-old, Columbus, Oh.-based company that uses living microbes to stimulate plant growth (its product is applied to seeds), has raised $2 million in funding, including from Rev1 Ventures, Maumee Ventures, Ohio TechAngel Funds, Queen City Angels, Carmen Innovations, and SVG Thrive Fund. More here.

Actionable Quality Assurance, a 3.5-year-old, Gainesville, Fla.-based software as a service platform for thorough monitoring of food safety for restaurants, has raised $2 million in seed funding from a private angel investment group. More here.

GeoTix, a two-year-old, Traverse City, Mi.-based ticketing platform that aims to help local and regional media companies grow their revenue, has raised $1 million in funding, including from Boomerang-Catapult and Casey Cowell, a co-founder of U.S. Robotics. More here.

HiScene, a five-year-old, Beijing-based startup that’s developing hardware and software products for augmented reality, has raised roughly $14 million in Series B funding led by Shanghai Cableway Investment, with participation from Sincere Capital, Vstar Capital and the Chinese smartphone and selfie app developer Meitu. China Money Network has more here.

ilos Videos, a two-year-old, St. Paul, Mn.-based provider of a video platform for the workplace, has raised $1.5 million in seed funding led by Active Capital, with participation from Ingram Content Group and Hyde Park Venture Partners. The company has now raised $3 million altogether. More here.

Kingo, a four-year-old, Ciudad de Guatemala, Guatemala-based solar energy technology company, has raised $8 million in Series B funding led by FCP (the innovation fund of Colombian utility EPM), ENGIE (a French utility), FMO (a Dutch development bank), Proparco (a French development bank), and H-Reff(a renewable energy fund). The company has now raised $19 million altogether. FinSMEs has more here.

Lift, a three-year-old, Toronto-based startup that helps customers find cannabis clinics and book appointments with them, has raised $3 million in Series A funding from undisclosed backers. More here.

MedAware, a five-year-old, Raanana, Israel-based company whose software performs real-time evaluations of prescribed drugs against up-to-date patient profiles to eliminate prescription errors, has raised $8 million in Series A funding. Backers included BD (Becton, Dickinson and Company), Gefen Capital, OurCrowd and Yingcheng City Fubon Technology. More here.

Options, a 23-year-old, New York-based provider of cloud-enabled managed services to the global capital markets, has raised roughly $100 million in growth funding from Bregal Sagemount, a New York-based private equity firm. More here.

Phil, a two-year-old, San Francisco-based, end-to-end prescription management and delivery service that connects patients with local pharmacies, has raised $10 million in funding led by Crosslink Capital. Other participants in the round include Eniac Ventures, Softtech VC, Forerunner Ventures, SV Angel, Silicon Valley Bank, and Transmedia Capital. More here.

Respond Software, a year-old, Mountain View, Ca.-based expert system that says it emulates the decision-making and judgement of a seasoned security analyst, has raised $12 million in Series A funding led by CRV and Foundation Capital. More here.

SnapApp, a six-year-old, Boston-based SaaS platform used by B2B marketers to create, publish, and measure interactive content, has raised $10.2 million in Series B funding, including from Providence Strategic Growth, the growth equity affiliate of Providence Equity Partners. Xconomy has more here.

YangTian, a two-year-old, Tianjin, China-based developer of light industrial robotic arms that are used for a variety of jobs like handling, assembling, polishing, and coating, has raised $7 million in “pre-A” funding from Lenovo Capital and the Incubator Group. GSR Ventures and Yinxinggu Capital also joined the round. China Money Network has more here.

New Funds

645 Ventures, a four-year-old, New York-based, seed-stage venture  firm, is looking to raise up to $30 million for its second fund, according to an SEC filing. The company was cofounded by Nnamdi Okike, a former principal at Insight Venture Partners, and Aaron Holiday, a former associate at DFJ Gotham Ventures and former entrepreneurial officer at Cornell Tech.

Andrew Ng, the cofounder of Coursera and formerly Baidu’s chief scientist, is looking to raise up to $150 million for a new vehicle called The AI Fund. TechCrunch has more here.

Round13 Capital, a six-year-old, Toronto-based tech-focused venture capital firm, has closed on $95 million in commitments for its newest fund, from backers that include high-net-worth individuals, family offices, National Bank, and the pension fund LiUNA. The firm funds growth-stage Canadian companies. More here.

IPOs

Despegar, an 18-year-old, Buenos Aires-based online travel company, yesterday filed to raise up to $100 million in an IPO on the NYSE. The company, a rare “unicorn” in Latin America, is owned in part by Tiger Global Management, which has been investing actively in Brazilian startups for years. Other shareholders include Expedia, General Atlantic, Sequoia Capital, Insight Venture Partners and Accel Partners. Reuters has the story here.

MongoDB, a 10-year-old, New York-based database startup that has raised more than $300 million from VCs, has confidentially filed to go public, says TechCrunch. At the time of its last private valuation in 2015, MongoDB was reportedly a $1.6 billion company. More here.

Exits

Netsertive, a Morrisville, N.C.-based marketing technology company, has acquired Mixpo, a Seattle-based video advertising software company. Financial terms weren’t disclosed. Mixpo had raised more than $10 million in funding from investors, including GrowthWorks Capital, Madrona Venture Group, and Yaletown Partners. Netsertive has raised roughly $38 million, including from RRE Ventures, Babson Capital Management, Harbert Venture Partnersand Greycroft Partners. GeekWire has more here.

People

Shelby Bonnie, the cofounder of CNet and more recently spent four years as a managing director with Allen & Co., is newly the CEO of Pylon, an artificial intelligence cmpany that’s building custom experiences for Amazon Echo and Google Home. Business Insider has more here.

Nicole Sanchez, co-founder and CEO of Credit Hero, has joined female founder-focused seed fund XFactor Ventures. More here.

Data

According to Facebook, 45 million people send birthday wishes on its platform each day. It just equipped them with some new features, too.

According to a poll by the public relations firm Weber Shandwick, roughly half of millennials believe CEOs “have a responsibility to speak up on issues important to society”— compared to just 28 percent of Gen Xers and Baby Boomers. (H/T: Fortune’s Alan Murray.)

Essential Reads

Uber is in talks to raise as much as $12 billion, according to Bloomberg. Approximately $1 billion to $1.5 billion would be used to acquire new shares, and anywhere from $2 billion to $10 billion would be used to buy out the shares of existing shareholders.

Apple is budgeting $1 billion to procure and produce original content over the next year, says the WSJ, a sign of how serious it is about making a splash in Hollywood.

Why Benchmark may want to cash out of Uber, in Dealbook.

Waymo may get an edge over rival Uber as the two head into an explosive trade secrets trial this fall. Today, a federal judge said he’ll likely tell the jury about how Uber’s lawyers “misled the court” and repeatedly failed to produce documents that could be important in the case. The SJ Merc has more here.

Detours

Millennials like vintage, but they haven’t inherited a love of antiques.

Jimmy Kimmel’s not-terrible idea to make Donald Trump king.

It’s always a Florida man.

Retail Therapy

Solar eclipse camps. (Hey, it’s one option.)

Hi, everyone! Hope you’re having a stellar Tuesday. (Sorry we’re a bit late in sending this out — busy day.)

Top News in the A.M.

Uber just settled an FTC investigation into data mishandling, privacy and security complaints that date back to 2014 and 2015, agreeing in to put in place a comprehensive privacy program, including undergoing regular independent privacy audits. The FTC’s order extends for a period as long as 20 years. TechCrunch has more here.

Snap employees were able to sell their stock yesterday for the first time since the company went public back in early March. Unsurprisingly, it was the fourth biggest day of trading volume so far. Recode has more here.

Sponsored By . . .

This week it’s time to put an end to your buffering. eero was the world’s first home mesh WiFi system and the 2nd generation is even better. With more power, a smaller form-factor, and Thread, new eero systems can blanket homes of any shape, size, or layout with WiFi so good, you’ll never think about it again. For StrictlyVC readers: use code StrictlyVC at checkout and select overnight shipping for free!

This Founder Wants to Find Biz Dev Jobs for One Million Americans

Fahim Fazal grew up in government housing. He worked, as do many students, at McDonald’s during high school. He didn’t go to college.

These aren’t the kinds of details that might excite a recruiter at a big tech company, yet Fazal has done just fine, including co-founding a company a decade ago that sold to Oracle, where he spent the next two and a half years; becoming an advisor at CodeNow, which works with underrepresented youth to teach foundational computer programming; and more recently, cofounding SVAcademy. What it does: find people like Fazal himself who are under-resourced but have no shortage of grit, and training them how to work in a professional tech setting. It’s getting them jobs, too, including at places like Salesforce, Box, and the still-private Zuora, which is a software company for subscription businesses.

Fazal, who cofounded SVAcademy with Joel Scott, an operator who spent the last decade with HP, leaving as VP of operations at Hewlett Packard Enterprise, is taking the wraps off the company today. He’s also disclosing that SVAcademy recently raised $2 million in funding from Bloomberg Beta, Rethink Education, Precursor Ventures, Uprising Ventures, 500 Startups and WTI, along with numerous angel investors. We talked with him yesterday to better understand how the outfit is working with employers to get nontraditional candidates into their workforces — and why they want to.

You say you want to give a million women, minorities, and under-resourced Americans high-paying jobs in sales, or business development. 

Yes, the types of students we’re looking for are incredibly diverse. So far, 60 percent of the roughly 1,000 people who’ve been qualified for the program have been first-generation college students, 50 percent have been women, and one-third have been African American or Latino.

What does your platform, or your programming, involve?

It’s entirely virtual. We want to provide access to students wherever they might be while also exporting Silicon Valley mentorship and experience throughout the country. It’s 15 months long. Once you get into the program, you spend the first three months working on the skills needed in field. That’s 250 hours spent with your class and a teacher and a mentor, learning the technical skills and social and emotional skills you need to perform business development and sales at a SaaS company.  If you pass, you get connected with a growing number of employers who are partnering with us, then we continue to coach and mentor you and help you close your skill gap for the first 12 months on the job.

Who pays for this programming?

More here.

New Fundings

Apli, a year-old, Mexico City-based on-demand talent-as-a-service platform, raised $1.5 million in funding, including from Allvp, Social Capital, Soldiers Field Angels, Ignia Partners and accelerator Numa Mexico. More here.

Pandora has appointed Robert Lynch as its new president and CEO. Lynch was the founding CEO of Dish’s Sling TV. More here.

Netflix’s cofounder has a crazy plan: let people visit the movie theater as often as they want each month — for the price of a single ticket.

Essential Reads

Travis Kalanick’s and Anthony Levandowski’s texts tell the tale of what Uber knew about Waymo‘s tech.

Amazon wants to cut delivery times down to mere minutes, allowing shoppers in select areas to pick up their items almost immediately after ordering them.

Detours

From emo meme to EDM king: James Van Der Beek.

Jim Carrey’s art.

Retail Therapy

The Klipsch Capital One speaker. Classic looks, modern components!

Hi, happy Monday, everyone! We’re still traveling with our family; to help out with the newsletter, investor and friend Semil Shah has a new “how I raised it” type interview for readers — this time with Homebrew, the seed-stage, San Francisco-based firm. Hope you enjoy it. More tomorrow.:)

Top News in the A.M.

Uber‘s board is in preliminary talks with three investor groups wanting to buy shares in the company. Dragoneer’s investment coalition wants to buy out shareholders at a discount to Uber’s current valuation. So does Softbank. Both groups would also purchase a small number of new shares at Uber’s $68.5 billion valuation to prop up that figure. A third group, led by early investor Shervin Pishevar, has apparently talked with an existing investor about buying its shares at the current valuation. The New York Times has the story here.

Sponsored By . . .

This week it’s time to put an end to your buffering. eero was the world’s first home mesh WiFi system and the 2nd generation is even better. With more power, a smaller form-factor, and Thread, new eero systems can blanket homes of any shape, size, or layout with WiFi so good, you’ll never think about it again. For StrictlyVC readers: use code StrictlyVC at checkout and select overnight shipping for free!

How We Raised It: Homebrew’s Founders on Raising Fund One

By Semil Shah

Satya Patel and Hunter Walk founded Homebrew in 2013 after respective tenures leading product at Twitter and consumer product management at YouTube. Homebrew’s broad focus is on startups supporting the so-called bottoms-up economy, which helps businesses, customers, and individuals drive growth and innovation through simpler, cheaper, and more direct access to technology, information, and customers.

We talked with both partners recently for their advice on how to get a debut fund off the ground.

You’ve both been operators at big-name companies. Satya, you’d also been a VC before, including at Battery Ventures, where you’d spent four years. How long did it take to raise Homebrew’s first fund? How many LP meetings did it take?

We raised Homebrew’s first fund in early 2013 and it took about 100 days from our first LP outreach to the single close of a $35 million fund, including a month of paperwork.

We started with a list of 40 LPs who fit the following criteria: institutional LPs who had already invested in early stage, sub-$100 million funds and specifically, our friends’ funds, so every introduction was a warm handoff to an LP who had a prepared mind for what Homebrew was going to pitch them. From the initial outreach list of 40 LPs, 20 converted into first meetings.

You closed that fund with $35 million. How much were you targeting?

We’ve always taken the perspective of funding a strategy – i.e.,  raise all we need but not more. Fund 1 is a $35 million fund [because that] was what we thought it would take to lead and co-lead seed rounds. It turned out to be a bit undersized given the increase in round sizes during 2013-2014 in particular. We right-sized in our second fund [raising a $50 million seed-stage fund and a $35 million fund for follow-on deals].

Did that second round of funds came together fairly easy?

We raised it in January 2015 and started investing out of it late spring 2015. The process of raising it was just a few weeks because LPs were investing “lines rather than dots.” We were still proving out Homebrew’s ability to be a great firm, but we had some data points that suggested we weren’t terrible or, as LPs say, “We were doing what we said we’d do.”

One thing we messed up – at the very least in our communications, if not our decision-making – was that we largely eliminated the “friend and family” allocations because we needed to try and fit in new institutional LPs. We didn’t do a very good job of explaining why some of the people who bet on us early couldn’t continue investing with Homebrew. If we could do it over, we at least would have put more thought and care into these conversations.

Can you offer a few more pieces of advice to aspiring fund managers out there in today’s market?

We get a lot of calls from people looking to raise first funds, and also lots of diligence requests from LPs looking at these funds. Three pieces of advice we always give are:

Have a compelling reason why you exist — why top founders want to take your money versus all the other sources available. Seed is perceived as lower barrier to entry because fund sizes can be smaller, which helps first-time managers, but it’s a stage where dealflow is dark and picking is hard.

Understand portfolio construction, reserve allocation, ownership dilution and so on. There are many folks coming from the operating side who don’t think about the investment manager aspect of this businesses. You need to understand how your fund size, check size, point of entry, target ownership percentage and so on, all work together in a consistent manner. Trying to make these decisions separately is like telling six different engineers to go into different rooms, each build a random different feature and then stick it together to make a product. It doesn’t work that way.

Be deliberate in your raise timeline and treat it like a sales pipeline where you’re trying to hit your quota for the quarter. We all coach our startups about fundraising and then sometimes don’t take our own advice. You need to create momentum, spend real time getting to know LPs during that period, but push people to make decisions. You’re not going to raise a fund in a week, but a year of fundraising with rolling closes is a distraction and perhaps a signal that you’re doing something suboptimally.

New Fundings

Altaeros, a 17-year-old, Somerville, Ma.-based rural broadband connectivity provider, has raised an additional $7.5 million in funding from SoftBank Group. More here.

Dragos, a year-old, Hanover, Md.-based industrial control system cybersecurity company, has raised $10 million in Series A round funding co-led by Allegis Capital and Energy Impact Partners. DataTribe, a cybersecurity startup studio that seed-funded Dragos, also joined the round. More here.

Er Geng, a three-year-old, Hangzhou, China-based short video content producer, has raised $14 million in Series A funding led by Yunfeng Capital, (a private equity firm cofounded by Jack Ma), with participation from Source Code Capital. China Money Network has more here.

Here Be Dragons, a two-year-old, L.A.-based production studio focused on virtual reality content, has raised $10 million in Series A funding at a pre-money valuation of $55 million. The round was led by Discovery Communications. More here.

IOpipe, a two-year-old, Seattle-based application operations platform for AWS’s Lambda service, has raised $2.5 million in seed funding from Madrona Venture Group, New Enterprise Associates and Underscore VC. TechCrunch has more here.

Poncho, a four-year-old, New York-based weather service, has raised $2.4 million in funding led by Lightspeed Venture Partners. Earlier backers also joined the round, including RRE Ventures, Comcast Ventures, andBetaworks. TechCrunch has more here.

Silversheet, a three-year-old, L.A.-based medical credentialing management platform, has raised $5 million in Series A funding led by Summation Health Ventures. The company has now raised $10.2 million altogether, including from Upfront Ventures, Rincon Venture Partners, SV Angel, Slow Ventures, BAM Ventures, Act One Ventures, and Cyan and Scott Banister. More here.

TuneIn, a 15-year-old, San Francisco-based online radio company, has raised $50 million in funding, reportedly at a post-money valuation of $500 million. The round was led by Marker, Institutional Venture Partners and Comcast Ventures. The company has now raised $140 million altogether. Bloomberg has more here.

Zuoyebang, a two-year-old, China-based, K-12 online education company that was spun out of Baidu, has raised $150 million in Series C funding led by H Capital, with participation from Tiger Global Management, Sequoia Capital, Legend Capital, GGV Capital and Xianghe Capital. China Money Network has more here.

New Funds

K9 Ventures, a nine-year-old, seed-stage venture firm that has become renowned in Silicon Valley circles for working closely with budding startups at the paper napkin stage, has closed its third fund with $42 million. The firm’s founder and its sole general partner, Manu Kumar — a serial entrepreneur with a PhD in computer science from Stanford — tends to invest less than a million dollars at the outset. But founders get his help building their teams, and their prototypes, in exchange. We have more for you here.

Exits

A Berlin-based fintech company, Savedo, has been acquired by Deposit Solutions, an open banking platform that’s backed by Peter Thiel. No terms were disclosed. Deposit Solutions, based in Hamburg, has developed a savings infrastructure platform for banks, as well as a savings product for customers. Tech.eu has more here.

IPOs

Rovio Entertainment, the company behind the “Angry Birds” mobile games and movie franchise, is planning an IPO as early as next month that could value it at $2 billion, says Bloomberg. More here.

People

Merck CEO Kenneth Frazier became the latest executive to cross Donald Trump when he quit a business council run by the White House, drawing an immediate rebuke from Trump on Twitter. Frazier was taking a stand against intolerance and extremism in the wake of the violent “unite the right” rally in Charlottesville, Va. — and Trump’s tepid response to it.

It’s not easy being the first and only Fox News host in Silicon Valley. But Steve Hilton, a tech entrepreneur who was once chief adviser to former Prime Minister David Cameron of Britain (and whose wife is PR powerhouse Rachel Whetstone), added that role to his résumé in June. More here.

Power VC Vinod Khosla just lost his very protracted battled to prevent access to a public beach that he closed off for his private use.

Ebay founder Pierre Omidyar wants to build a dairy farm on the island of Kauai. Here’s why, says the New York Times.

A former employee of the lending startup SoFi has filed a lawsuit alleging that he was fired for reporting sexual harassment of female coworkers. The plaintiff’s lawyer says a broader class-action lawsuit will be filed next week on behalf of mistreated SoFi employees. Fortune has the story here.

Essential Reads

Two reasons the virtual currency Bitcoin just surged past $4,000.

The Uber dilemma.

An artificial intelligence beat one of the world’s top Dota 2 players so badly in that he threw in the towel in the middle of a second game against the bot.

Detours

In Manhattan and Brooklyn, home sellers are getting a reality check.

Turns out it’s (probably) fine if you only exercise on the weekend.

Hah. How to make a blockbuster movie trailer.

Retail Therapy

Sneakers just made to be drawn on.

Friday! Pheeeww. Hope you have a wonderful summer weekend, everyone!

Top News in the A.M.

Benchmark, a major Uber shareholder, filed a lawsuit against recently ousted CEO Travis Kalanick yesterday in a remarkable move that may be unprecedented in Silicon Valley. Axios has the full lawsuit here. We’ve got some thoughts of our own below.

Shares of Snap have plunged 13 percent so far today —  to a new low — after the company reported worse-than-expected second quarter results. More here.

SoundCloud just closed the necessary funding round to keep the struggling music service afloat. More here.

Sponsored By . . .

Pollen VC addresses a universal pain point for mobile app and game developers – growth-crushing payment delays in a market where engaged users are notoriously short-lived. Long payment delays massively hinder your momentum, so why wait 2-3 months for payment when you could be funded on-demand? Pollen works with live apps that are earning $$$ through the app stores or via ads so that we can focus our expertise on what we do best – helping apps rapidly scale through a combination of growth financing and hands-on advisory. Try our robust LTV forecasting tool and visualize your potential growth, then head over to Pollen.VC to see how flexible capital can help you achieve rapid scale.

What Was Benchmark Thinking?

Yesterday, Benchmark, the powerful venture firm and a major Uber shareholder, filed a lawsuit against the company’s recently ousted CEO Travis Kalanick in a remarkable move. The suit seeks to remove Kalanick from the board, while eliminating three additional board positions that it says Kalanick sought (and won) approval for last year, partly by withholding crucial information from the board.

The central issue: When Kalanick resigned as CEO, he also resigned from his board seat, but he quickly re-appointed himself to one of those outstanding and “fraudulently procured” seats, says Benchmark. It now alleges that Kalanick ultimately hopes to “pack the board to facilitate his desired re-appointment as Uber’s CEO,” and it aims to stop that maneuver.

The suit casts Kalanick in a highly unflattering light yet again. But if I were an investor in Benchmark’s funds, I’d be just as furious with the venture firm. What was Benchmark thinking, giving Kalanick three new board seats and carte blanche to do with them whatever he liked? It’s beyond belief that the firm wasn’t acutely aware of Kalanick’s management style a year ago when it agreed to this crummy deal. It had front row seats into what was happening at the company — not to mention unfettered access to the endless media coverage that Uber’s controversial corporate culture has received since its initial launch in San Francisco. A February blog post by former Uber engineer Susan Fowler may have set off the chain of events leading to this moment, but nothing new transpired between last year and this year other than intensified media scrutiny combined with growing public outrage.

“It feels a little to me like they painted themselves into a corner, and now they’re crying about it,” says succession expert Jeff Cohn of Benchmark’s lawsuit. “It was poor and unusual governance practice, and now it’s come back to bite them.” Adds Cohn, “There was always doubt around Kalanick’s style.”

We reached out to Benchmark earlier this morning. The firm hasn’t responded to our request as of this writing.

Despite the unprecedented nature of the suit — Benchmark has been sued in the past by a former portfolio company but has never sued one of them, as far as we know — it isn’t surprising, looking back at the last decade or so.

More here.

New Fundings

AMP Americas, a six-year-old, Chicago-based company that turns cow manure into trucking fuel, has raised $47 million in funding from EIV Capital. The Chicago Tribune has more here.

Coinbase, the five-year-old, San Francisco-based cryptocurrency exchange, has raised $100 million in Series D funding at a $1.5 billion pre-money valuation led by Institutional Venture Partners. Other participants in the round include Spark Capital, Greylock Partners, Battery Ventures, Section 32 and Draper Associates. TechCrunch has more here.

Flyspaces, a two-year-old, Manila, Phillippines-based startup operating as a kind of Airbnb for office space rentals, has raised $2.1 million from Net Group co-president Raymond Rufin, along with other, unnamed players in the retail space. TechCrunch has more here.

Toutiao, a five-year-old, Beijing-based Chinese news aggregator, is reportedly raising around $2 billion at a valuation north of $20 billion, possibly led by General Atlantic. The company’s earlier backers include Sequoia Capital China and CCB International. Reuters has more here.

New Funds

HighBar Partners, a 22-year-old, Menlo Park, Ca.-based venture firm that was originally cofounded by Sun Microsystems co-founders Bill Joy and Andy Bechtolsheim, and which focuses on SaaS, enterprise software and infrastructure software, has closed its third fund with $208 million in capital commitments. More here.

Exits

India-based messaging app Hike has acquired Creo, a three-year-old, Bangalore-based hardware company that previously released smartphones, streaming devices and an operating system. According to Crunchbase, Creo had raised $3 million from investors, including Sequoia Capital, BEENEXT, and India Quotient. Hike has meanwhile raised at least $261 million, including from Tiger Global Management. Terms of the deal aren’t being disclosed. More here.

PayPal is acquiring Swift Financial, a 12-year-old, Wilmington, Del.-based company that extends credit to small businesses through loans and advances. No financial terms were disclosed. Swift Financial raised an undisclosed amount of venture funding, including from Village Ventures and Sutter Hill Ventures. More here.

WeWork has acquired Unomy, a five-year-old, Tel Aviv, Israel-based maker of sales and marketing intelligence software, for undisclosed terms. According to Crunchbase, Unomy had raised more than $2.4 million in seed funding, including from Janvest Capital Partners. TechCrunch has more here.

People

Uber SVP of Global Operations Ryan Graves will be leaving that full-time senior leadership role in the middle of September to “focus” on his role as a director of Uber’s board. More here.

In the last couple of days, a story lifted from Ashlee Vance’s biography of Elon Musk has been making the rounds on the internet, claiming that Musk fired his assistant of 12 years when she wanted a raise. Musk is now saying it’s “total nonsense.” More here.

Essential Reads

Google CEO Sundar Pichai canceled a much-anticipated meeting to talk about gender issues yesterday after some of its employees expressed concern over online harassment they had begun to receive.

Amazon is reportedly exploring a refrigeration-free prepared-meal technology for home delivery.

Detours

The death and life of helicopter commuting.

The key to day drinking like a pro.

Nine scandalous royal romances you may have forgotten about!

Retail Therapy

Eek.

Happy Thursday, everyone! We’re still on our work-ation, which we could more or less call “working odd hours in a new location every week.” In the meantime, we want to thank our friend and investor, Semil Shah, who offered to help us with SVC by interviewing founders and VCs about how they raised their first Series A rounds and first funds.

For today’s column, Semil talks with Paul Martino, cofounder of Bullpen Capital where, full disclosure, he was once a paid consultant. It’s worth checking out; Martino is fairly candid about LP priorities that you might not expect.

Top News in the A.M.

Facebook today launched a new home for original video content produced exclusively for it by partners; they’ll earn 55 percent of ad revenue while Facebook keeps 45 percent.

Sponsored By . . .

Pollen VC addresses a universal pain point for mobile app and game developers – growth-crushing payment delays in a market where engaged users are notoriously short-lived. Long payment delays massively hinder your momentum, so why wait 2-3 months for payment when you could be funded on-demand? Pollen works with live apps that are earning $$$ through the app stores or via ads so that we can focus our expertise on what we do best – helping apps rapidly scale through a combination of growth financing and hands-on advisory. Try our robust LTV forecasting tool and visualize your potential growth, then head over to Pollen.VC to see how flexible capital can help you achieve rapid scale.

How I Raised It: Bullpen’s Paul Martino on How to Close a Fund

By Semil Shah

Paul Martino is a founder and general partner at Bullpen Capital, a San Francisco-based, early-stage, post-seed venture fund investing in technology companies that have already been funded by super-angels and institutional seed funds. Prior to forming Bullpen, Paul Martino was the CEO of Aggregate Knowledge and, before that, the CTO of Tribe. We talked with him recently to learn more about how Bullpen got off the ground.

How many LP meetings did it take to raise Bullpen’s first fund, and what was its initial target?

It took around 200 LP meetings over two years. We started in 2011. Friends and family signed on quickly, but of the roughly 150 meetings, we held with new contacts, about 25 panned out. Our initial target was $50 million, and we raised $25 million in two closes. The first close was $8 million, and the second close of $17 million came a year and a half later. By that point, we could show some good companies like FanDuel. In the end, we closed with 65 LPs in that first fund and we wound up deploying it over three years, in 28 companies.

Was it mostly individuals? Did you have any traditional “institutional” LPs?

We had one traditional LP – Greenspring Associates.

Looking back now, were there mistakes you can share? Lessons learned?

Mistakes is the wrong word, but we learned some lessons. People who raise funds successfully tend to be experienced GPs who left big firms. If, like Bullpen, you’re a team of three new GPs without any significant LP relations, doors shut in ways you wouldn’t anticipate.

Duncan (Davidson), Rich (Melmon), and I had started a combined dozen companies, but we didn’t have a significant relationship with any traditional LPs, so we got outflanked many times by people with middling investment records who’d left larger, established funds. The lesson was to start a fund with someone who knows LPs – or expect a long and painful process. Especially in 2017 you better know some LPs if you want to raise a fund; there’s too much competition now.

You’ve raised two newer funds since. Was that a fundamentally different experience?

In 2014, we raised our second fund with pretty much the same set of LPs. It was $30 million, which was a frustratingly small increase. We thought we could get major LPs, but those relationships and our model required more time to get over the hurdle.

Our third fund took us from one institutional investor to over a dozen, raising $85 million. It took five years of building relationships and a track record. It’s not like raising money for a startup, which has a limited window. With a startup, VCs are in or out. If they wait a few extra months, they miss the boat. Most institutional LPs require GPs to show up at their office for several years in a row and keep the dialogues, progress, and updates going. Eventually the meetings start feeling more like, “The Bullpen team is here, good to see you again! I like when you visit.”

Have one last piece of advice for aspiring fund managers? 

Most LPs value brand over strategy. When we were raising our second fund, a potential LP said, “Tell me about your differentiators.” I talked about Bullpen’s post-seed model, which, to us, is the differentiator. “That’s nice,” he said, “but that’s not differentiation. How do you source deals? Who do you know? Who are you friends?” Basically, the question he was asking is, “How famous and connected are you?”

They prefer to work with sexy, famous GPs, but that doesn’t mean you can succeed without a differentiated model. Just be careful when an LP says the word “differentiation” as it might mean something very different to him or her than to you.

New Fundings

Amplitude, a five-year-old, San Francisco-based analytics company that helps teams better understand their user engagement, retention, and revenue, has raised $30 million in Series C funding led by Institutional Venture Partners, with participation from earlier backers Benchmark and Battery Ventures. The company has now raised $59 million altogether. TechCrunch has more here.

Big Squid, an eight-year-old, Salt Lake City, Ut.-based predictive analytics software company, has raised $6 million in Series A funding led by Signal Peak Ventures, with participation from Kickstart Seed Fund. More here.

Brayola, a four-year-old, New York-based marketplace for branded women’s intimate apparel, has added $2.5 million to a Series A round that had previously closed with $2.5 million. The round, which now stands at $5 million, includes The Firstime Fund and numerous individual investors. TechCrunch has more here.

Chef’d, a four-year-old, El Segundo, Ca.-based meal-kit company, has raised $25 million in Series B funding from pork producer Smithfield Foods. Additionally, Campbell Soup contributed $10 million in the round (a deal that was announced in May), with the remaining $200,000 coming from online grocer Fresh Direct. CNBC has more here on why the company has skirted venture capital funding.

Flipkart, the 10-year-old, Bangalore-based online shopping giant, has raised an undisclosed amount of funding from Softbank’s Vision Fund, just a week after its deal to acquire Snapdeal (which is backed by Softbank) fell through. Though terms aren’t being disclosed, various reports say Vision Fund is buying both primary and secondary shares and that it may have invested upwards of $2.5 billion. The deal is being called the largest private investment in an India-based tech company to date. More here.

GawkBox, a year-old, Seattle-based company that provides monetization for live streamers and other content creators, has raised $3.7 million in Series A funding. Madrona Venture Group led the round, and was joined by investors London Venture Partners and Erlend Christofferson. VentureBeat has more here.

Glint, a 2.5-year-old, London-based still-stealth fintech startup that says it will give users more control in the way they store, spend, exchange and transfer money, and which is launching in the fourth quarter, has raised £3.1 million ($4 million). Investors include Bray Capital along with numerous individuals. TechCrunch has more here.

Netlify, a two-year-old, San Francisco-based startup that’s trying to make it easier than ever for programmers to build a static website, has raised $12 million in funding from Andreessen Horowitz. Business Insider has more here.

Parse.ly, an eight-year-old, New York City-based internet analytics platform, has raised $6.8 million in Series B funding. Grotech Ventures and Blumberg Capital led the round, with participation from Felton Group, FundersClub and DreamIt. VentureBeat has more here.

PCCW, a Hong Kong-based video and music streaming services company, has raised $110 million in funding co-led by Hony Capital (which recently backed WeWork’s China business), Foxconn Ventures and Temasek. PCCW Media, which is listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, will retain its majority ownership stake in the spin-off. TechCrunch has more here.

New Funds

Betaworks Ventures, a $50 million seed and Series A stage fund, is sharing more information about where it’s shopping and who is involved. More here.

IPOs

Another day, another tumble in Blue Apron shares. They fell as much as 19 percent after the company reported earnings for the first time earlier today. Bloomberg has more here.

Exits

After receiving a $15 million lifeline from investors last year, Birchbox has reportedly held acquisition talks with several retailers, including Walmart, says Recode. More here.

TeamSnap, an eight-year-old, Boulder, Co.-based integrated sports management software company, has acquired Korrio, an eight-year-old, Seattle-based cloud service for organizing and sharing youth sports. Financial terms weren’t disclosed. According to Crunchbase, Korrio had raised roughly $8 million, including from Ignition Partners. TeamSnap has meanwhile raised roughly $50 million, including from Foundry Group and Northgate Capital. The Denver Post has more here.

Voices.com, a 14-year-old, Ontario-based voiceover marketplace that’s backed by Morgan Stanley Expansion Capital, is acquiring Voicebank.net, a 19-year-old, Beverly Hills, Ca.-based site that hires celebrities for voiceovers. Financial terms weren’t disclosed. BetaKit has more here.

People

Brian Pinketon, the top technology exec at the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, the philanthropic investment vehicle founded by Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan, is leaving the organization after less than a year. More here.

Data

The American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers surveyed over 250 American colleges and universities and found that 39 percent of Americans schools witnessed a decline in international applications in the last year.

Essential Reads

Tesla is working on self-driving technology specifically tied to its forthcoming electric semi-truck plans, says Reuters. The tech would allow the transport trucks to move in convoy formation with a lead vehicle providing guidance for autonomous follow trucks. (We’ll be talking about this at our September eventwith Alex Rodridgues, the cofounder and CEO of Embark, a young, self-driving truck company that’s on everyone’s radar.)

500 Startups continues to feel the impact of a sexual harassment scandal involving its co-founder and former managing partner Dave McClure. In May, the outfit announced a partnership in Australia with LaunchVic, a government-backed investing arm. Now, LaunchVic has terminated its partnership with the firm.

How Facebook squashes competition from startups.

Intel is building a fleet of more than 100 self-driving test cars starting later this year, but it plans to use them as a sales tool. More here.

Detours

A first look at the second season of “The Crown.”

The fascinating story behind America’s most expensive home (on the market now for $350 million).

The new way to tell your airline you hate it.

Retail Therapy

Shore House.

Happy Wednesday, everyone! Interesting news today — Roivant Sciences, whose founder and CEO spoke at our first StrictlyVC event of this year, just raised $1.1 billion from Softbank’s Vision Fund (which seems determined not to let that $93 billion burn a whole in its pocket!).

We obviously think the company is worth watching. More on its giant new round below.

Top News in the A.M.

Essential Products, the smartphone maker founded by Andy Rubin, just confirmed it has a new $300 million war chest as it prepares to take on Apple and Samsung. The WSJ has more here.

Sponsored By . . .

Pollen VC addresses a universal pain point for mobile app and game developers – growth-crushing payment delays in a market where engaged users are notoriously short-lived. Long payment delays massively hinder your momentum, so why wait 2-3 months for payment when you could be funded on-demand? Pollen works with live apps that are earning $$$ through the app stores or via ads so that we can focus our expertise on what we do best – helping apps rapidly scale through a combination of growth financing and hands-on advisory. Try our robust LTV forecasting tool and visualize your potential growth, then head over to Pollen.VC to see how flexible capital can help you achieve rapid scale.

Roivant, Which Saves Drugs Abandoned by Big Pharma, Just Raised $1.1B from Softbank

Roivant Sciences, a three-year-old, Basel, Switzerland-based company aiming to one day be a giant holding company for dozens of independent biopharmaceutical companies, has raised $1.1 billion in equity led by the Softbank Vision Fund — making it the latest in a string of enormous bets by Softbank, and putting the young outfit more squarely on the radar of the tech world.

Roivant focuses on developing and commercializing therapies by creating subsidiaries, all of which involve the word “vant.” To date, these include Axovant Sciences, which is focused on neurology; Myovant Sciences, which is focused on women’s health and endocrine diseases; Dermavant Sciences, which is focused on dermatology; Enzyvant Sciences, which is focused on rare diseases; and Urovant Sciences, focused on urology.

Roivant is also creating a new tech-focused subsidiary for the first time called Datavant, an AI-driven initiative that’s aiming to unlock insights in health care datasets by improving the design of clinical trials, creating virtual trials between similar drugs using pooled placebo groups, and developing new molecular targets to pursue for any given drug.

Softbank’s investment is in Roivant only — not its subsidiaries.

Roivant was founded by Vivek Ramaswamy, a biology major at Harvard who went on to nab his law degree from Yale before going to work as a hedge fund analyst, where he says he noticed pharmaceutical firms abandoning promising drugs for various reasons having nothing to do with their efficacy.

Seeing an opportunity to complete the development of some of these abandoned drug candidates and get them to market quickly, Ramaswamy struck out on his own in 2014.

More here.

(Other) New Fundings

Appboy, a six-year-old, New York-based marketing tech startup that’s challenging Salesforce and other business software giants, has raised $50 million in new Series D money led by Iconiq Capital. The company has now raised $93.6 million altogether. Fortune has more here.

BAMTech, a 17-year-old, Arlington, Va.-based video streaming company that grew out of the interactive media company of Major League Baseball, has raised a fresh $1.58 billion in funding from majority owner Disney, in a deal that values the company at $3.75 billion. TechCrunch has more here.

Buoy, a three-year-old, Boston-based startup that uses advanced artificial intelligence to resemble a chat with a favorite doctor to assess what’s wrong with someone, has raised $6.7 million in Series A funding. Backers include F-Prime Capital Partners, FundRx, and various angel investors. TechCrunch has more here.

Fanatics, a 17-year-old, Jacksonville, Fla.-based licensed merchandising marketplace, is reportedly about to seal up $1 billion in fresh funding led by Softbank‘s Vision Fund. The WSJ has more here.

Railsbank, a year-old, London-based startup offering an open banking and compliance platform aimed at helping companies that have global banking requirements and need to accessed programatically via an API, has raised $1.2 million. The seed round was led by Firestartr and included participation from Kima Ventures and numerous angel investors. TechCrunch has more here.

Socure, a five-year-old, New York-based company that uses digital identity verification (think email, phone IP, etc.) to authenticate people, has raised $13.9 million in Series B funding. Commerce Ventures led the round, and was joined by iSynchrony Financial, Flint Capital, Workbench, Santander InnoVentures and Two Sigma Ventures. Built In NYC has more here.

Super Evil Megacorp, a four-year-old, San Mateo, Ca.-based maker of competitive video games, including the online battle arena video game “Vainglory,” has raised $19 million in funding from undisclosed investors. Exactly two years ago, the company raised $26 million in funding led by Index Ventures, with Yuri Milner, Jim Breyer, and Korea Investment Partners, also participating. More here.

Exits

Carvana, a Phoenix, Az.-based online marketplace for used cars that went public in April, has acquired Carlypso, a San Carlos, Ca.-based platform for buying and selling used cars. Financial terms weren’t disclosed. Fortune has more here.

Enterprise software startup Huddle is selling to San Francisco-based private equity firm Turn/River, after months of financial struggles left it in dire straights. One Business Insider source estimated the deal at $89 million. The company was once reportedly valued between $250 to $300 million in a previous fundraising round.

Tableau, the 14-year-old, Seattle-based, publicly traded, business intelligence and analytics firm, has acquired ClearGraph, a Palo Alto, Ca.-based semantic search company, for undisclosed terms. According to Crunchbase, ClearGraph had raised $1.53 million from investors, including Accel Partners and Great Oaks Venture Capital. TechCrunch has more here.

People

James Damore, the 28-year-old former Google engineer who was fired over a memo he wrote about gender differences, said yesterday he’s exploring all his legal options and has already filed a labor complaint over his treatment.

Cack Wilhelm has joined Boston-based venture firm Accomplice as a partner based in San Francisco. She was previously a principal with Scale Venture Partners.

Jobs

Johnson & Johnson Innovation is looking to hire a director of new ventures. The job is in Menlo Park, Ca.

Data

According to new research just published by the data science team at jobs marketplace Hired, President Trump’s efforts to push an America-first philosophy is having a measurable impact on how comfortable tech companies feel in seeking out foreign-born workers. More here.

Essential Reads

The culture wars have come to Silicon Valley. (Interesting anecdote in here about Facebook board members Reed Hastings and Peter Thiel.)

Detours

Twelve secrets to keep in mind the next time you check into a five-star hotel.

Retail Therapy

Classic car go karts. (Amazing! Also, not cheap.)

Happy Tuesday!

Quick note: We’re nearing the point of selling out seats at our upcoming event, September 27, in San Francisco. We can still accommodate some of you (and want to!), but don’t wait too long (really). You can nab your seat here.

Much thanks again to our partners in the evening: Bolt, the hardware-focused venture firm, Ballou PR, the firm that many startups and VCs rely on to navigate the European media landscape, and Rosebud Communications, a scrappy L.A.-based firm that’s getting results for a number of young startup clients.

Top News in the A.M.

Google fired that engineer, and reactions have been mixed and highly charged. Here is CEO Sundar Pichai’s note to employees about the matter.

Sponsored By . . .

Pollen VC addresses a universal pain point for mobile app and game developers – growth-crushing payment delays in a market where engaged users are notoriously short-lived. Long payment delays massively hinder your momentum, so why wait 2-3 months for payment when you could be funded on-demand? Pollen works with live apps that are earning $$$ through the app stores or via ads so that we can focus our expertise on what we do best – helping apps rapidly scale through a combination of growth financing and hands-on advisory. Try our robust LTV forecasting tool and visualize your potential growth, then head over to Pollen.VC to see how flexible capital can help you achieve rapid scale.

Rothy’s, Whose Ballet Flats are All Over Social Media, Has Raised $7M in Funding

You’ve likely seen them plastered across your social media accounts, if not on someone’s feet in San Francisco, where the company is based: attractive women’s flats in bright red with black soles, or bright red with pink stripes and blue detailing, or a gray camo pattern with a red sole.

Rothy’s, available online only at the company’s site, suddenly seem to be everywhere.

What’s the appeal? In addition to their aesthetics, the shoes are highly eco-friendly. Founders Roth Martin and Stephen Hawthornthwaite — a former gallery owner and investment banker, respectively — say the company has now used more than five million plastic water bottles to create an undisclosed number of shoes. How? After sourcing the bottles from recycling centers, they are “hot-washed” and sterilized, chipped into tiny flakes, then shaped into pellets that are then melted into malleable, thread-like fibers that get weaved into shoes by car-size knitting machines.

Right now, the shoes are available in two silhouettes — a rounded and a pointed-toe version. Shoppers further have 20 patterns from which to choose.

Yesterday, TechCrunch talked with Martin and Hawthornthwaite about how, given their very different backgrounds, they came together to form this modern shoe company. We also talked about the company’s funding picture, including the $5 million that it quietly raised from Lightspeed Venture Partners in April. (The company had earlier raised $2 million in convertible notes, including from Finn Capital Partners, M13 and Grace Beauty Capital.) Our chat has been edited for length.

Neither of you worked in retail. How did Rothy’s come into being?

SH: I’d spent around 18 years focused on M&A [at various banks]. A lot of what I’d worked on was in e-commerce and highly relevant, and by 2010, I was ready to make a change and really wanted to build something on my own. Roth and I have been friends for about 10 years, and professionally, he was in the same place. He’d been running a gallery and wanted to bring his design aesthetic [to something new].

RM: We were at a dinner and started kicking ideas around. We both have a passion for consumer goods and discussed a number of ideas but settled on footwear based on a number of trends we saw developing, including women wearing workout clothes whether or not they were working out. We wanted to create a front-of-the-closet shoe that she [the customer] can gravitate toward, without knowing what’s happening on a particular day.

How did you decide to create knitted footwear, specifically?

RM: What drew us to knitting was the ability to create shaped art. Instead of cutting a circle from a square, one could knit a circle and eliminate waste in doing so. In typical manufacturing, 30 percent of materials can end up as waste. So we innovated by being able to program shaped parts. That drew us to knitting, then that drew us to footwear. [I will add that] the requirements of footwear in terms of fit and standardization is really complicated; we had no appreciation for that at the time.

Where are the shoes made?

SH: We have 100 employees in southern China, working in a 65,000-square-foot factory that we own. The shoes are made by knitting machines that are about the size of a car, and which we’ve been adding to quickly to keep up with demand. We have waitlists for certain items; demand is still outstripping our expectations, but we’re catching up.

What’s your marketing strategy? I can’t open Facebook without seeing a Rothy’s ad.

More here.

New Fundings

Altaeros, a seven-year-old, Boston-based startup that develops autonomous aerostats, has raised $7.5 million in new funding from SoftBank Group, which had also backed the company in 2014. TechCrunch has more here.

CarDash, a year-old, Menlo Park, Ca.-based startup offers an end-to-end concierge service for car owners who don’t have time to drop off their vehicles at a service center or pick them up at day end, has raised $5.3 million led by Index Ventures and Felicis Ventures. Y Combinator — in whose accelerator program CarDash is currently enrolled — also joined the round, along with Afore Capital, NextView Ventures and NextGen Venture Partners. TechCrunch has more here.

Careem, a five-year-old, Dubai-based Uber rival in the Middle East that’s valued at more than $1 billion, has raised an undisclosed amount of funding from the Chinese ride-sharing giant Didi Chuxing. TechCrunch has more here.

Guideline, a two-year-old, Burlingame, Ca.-based company that wants to make it easier for small and medium-size businesses to offer 401(k) retirement accounts, has raised $15 million in funding led by Felicis Ventures. The company has now raised $25 million altogether. TechCrunch has more here.

Jetty, a two-year-old, New York-based platform for rental insurance, has raised $11.5 million in Series A funding led by Valar Ventures, with participation from earlier backers Ribbit Capital, SV Angel, BoxGroup and Red Swan. AlleyWatch has more here.

Oryx Vision, an eight-year-old, Israel-based company at work on LiDAR tech that’s designed to be as simple as a digital camera, with greater reliability and sensitivity than existing LiDAR, has raised $50 million in Series B funding led by Third Point Ventures and WRV. TechCrunch has more here.

Pro.com, a four-year-old, Seattle-based company that formerly connected homeowners with home improvement and renovation professionals and today has its own teams in place in the cities where it operates, has raised $10 million. The growth round was led by DFJ, with participation from earlier backers Maveron, Madrona Venture Group and Two-Sigma Ventures. TechCrunch has more here.

New Funds

Innovations Endeavors, the Silicon Valley venture firm funded by Eric Schmidt, has merged with Israeli venture firm Marker LLC. More here.

People

Travis Kalanick will not again be appointed CEO of Uber, according to an e-mail to staff from co-founder and chairman Garrett Camp. Recode has more here.

Jobs

Kraken, a digital currency exchange, is looking to hire a head of corporate development. The job is in San Francisco.

Also Sponsored By . . .

Casper’s “pillow-in-a-pillow” is made of millions of fibers that are 1/20th the width of a human hair. The Casper pillow is resilient, supportive and soft. It’s universally comfortable, no matter what position you end up sleeping in. It’s the only pillow you need on your bed.

Essential Reads

The FDA is concerned that Impossible Food‘s secret sauce may be an allergen.

Uber plans to wind down its U.S. car leasing business, owing to unsustainably high losses.

The brands you had no idea that Amazon owns.

A year after tests with advertisers began, Pinterest is rolling out video ads to all advertisers targeted for both search results and feeds.

Detours

Being neurotic may help you live longer.

The colorful history of the best-selling Porsche 911.

Find out if President Trump would let you immigrate to America with this test. (We didn’t make the cut.)

Retail Therapy

Tile Pro. We need so many of these.