• StrictlyVC: February 1, 2018

    February! Rabbit, rabbit, rabbit!

     

    Top News

     

    Apple‘s cash pile is now a record $285.1 beellion.

     

    Amazon just reported nearly $2 billion in profit, blowing past Wall Street’s fourth-quarter expectations for the company.

     

    Alphabet‘s shares are tumbling after a fourth-quarter whiff.

     

    Airbnb‘s CFO is out the door, and the company says it’s most definitely not going public this year. The Information reported recently that the exec, Lawrence Tosi, had been clashing with cofounder and CEO Brian Chesky.

     

    Sponsored By …

     

    Betts Recruiting is the leading recruitment firm for revenue generating, marketing and people operations roles, from entry-level to VP. Are you or one of your portfolio companies looking to scale your organization? We have established networks of the highest-quality talent and execute quickly in San Francisco, New York, Austin, Palo Alto, and Los Angeles. Check out our 2018 Salary Trends Report, and connect with our Director of Sales, Allison Andrade, if you’re hiring!

     

    New Fundings

     

    Astound, a 1.5-year-old, Menlo Park, Ca.-based enterprise service management company, has raised $11.5 million in Series A funding co-led by Vertex Venturesand Pelion Venture Partners, with participation from The HiveSlack Fund and Moment VenturesMore here.

     

    Avrobio, a 3.5-year-old, Cambridge, Ma.-based clinical-stage developer of gene therapies for rare diseases, has raised $60 million in Series B financing co-led by Cormorant Asset Management and Surveyor Capital. Other investors in the round include AislingBrace Pharma CapitalEventide Asset Management,MorningsideAtlas VentureSV Health Investors and Clarus VenturesMore here.

     

    Bespin Global, a nearly three-year-old, China and South Korea-based cloud management company, has raised $27 million in new funding led by ST Telemedia, with participation from earlier investor Legend Capital. DealStreetAsia has more here.

     

    CanvasPop, a nine-year-old, Ottawa, Ontario-based print service, has raised $3.3 million in seed funding led by Celtic House Venture Partners and BDC’s Growth & Transition Capital group. Numerous angel investors also joined the round. TechCrunch has more here.

     

    Engine Biosciences, a Singapore-based biotech company that’s applying machine learning to genomics for drug discovery, has raised $10 million in funding co-led byDanhua Venture Capital and 6 Dimensions Capital. Other participants in the round include WuXi AppTecEDBIPavilion CapitalBaidu VenturesWI Harper and Nest.Bio Ventures. TechCrunch has more here.

     

    Factmata, a 1.5-year-old, London-based company working on an AI-driven “anti-fake” news platform, has raised $1 million in seed funding, including from Twitter cofounder Biz Stone and Craigslist founder Craig Newmark. TechCrunch has more here.

    Heilan Home Co., a China-based publicly traded menswear group, is reportedly raising up to $1.59 billion in a round that’s being led by Tencent Holdings and includes the e-commerce companies JD.com and Vipshop Holdings. In exchange for the investment, the syndicate will acquire less than 10 percent of the company, says Reuters. More here.

     

    Igneous Systems, a 4.5-year-old, Seattle-based SaaS company that streamlines its customers’ massive file systems, as well as protects their data and makes it recoverable, has raised $15 million in Series B funding co-led by Vulcan Capitaland Orca Bay CapitalMore here.

    Organica Water, a 19-year-old, Princeton, N.J. and Budapest, Hungary-based wastewater recycling company, has raised $21 million in Series D funding led byCITIC Capital Silk Road Fund, with participation from earlier backer Idinvest PartnersMore here.

     

    Platterz, a 1.5-year-old, Toronto, Ontario-cased on-demand corporate catering platform, has raised $15 million in Series A funding led by Aleph, with participation from earlier investors AltaIR Capital and Globalive CapitalMore here.

     

    Pulse Labs, a year-old, Seattle, Wa.-based startup whose testing platform and panel of testers generates UX feedback on voice applications, has raised $2.5 million in funding led by Madrona Venture Group, with participation from Amazon Alexa FundBezos Expeditions and Techstars Ventures. TechCrunch has more here.

     

    Tamatem, a 4.5-year-old, Mountain View, Ca.-based mobile games startup that creates versions of popular titles so that they resonate better with users in Arabic speaking countries, has raised $2.5 million in Series A funding led by Wamda Capital, with participation from Discovery Nusantara CapitalRaed Ventures,Vision Venture Capital, and Seed Equity Venture Partners. TechCrunch has more here.

     

    Wildmoka, a 4.5-year-old, Valbonne, France-based startup that wants to streamline video editing during live events, has raised $8 million in Series A funding led by Alven Capital, with participation from earlier backer Apicap. TechCrunch has more here.

     

    Sponsored By . . .

     

    Are you an entrepreneur, startup founder or CEO? We want to hear about your company-building journey! Norwest Venture Partners invites you to participate in a brief opinion survey. The survey is being conducted by Wakefield Research, an independent research firm, and all responses will remain anonymous. Thank you for your time!

     

    New Funds

     

    LDV Capital, a nearly six-year-old, New York-based venture fund that focuses primarily on visual technology startups, has closed on a new, $10 million seed fund that will be used to fund technical teams who leverage computer vision, machine learning and artificial intelligence to analyze visual data. Investors in the new fund include Instagram cofounder Mike Krieger and YouTube cofounder Steve Chen.More here.

     

    OurCrowd, the five-year-old, Jerusalem-based equity crowdfunding platform, just announced its 13th fund, called ADvantage. The $50 million fund (that we’re not sure has already been raised) will be solely focused on sports tech, says OurCrowd. It was co-founded with leAD Sports, a sports tech accelerator backed by the Adi Dassler Family OfficeMore here.

     

    Per Axios: “Hamet Watt, a serial entrepreneur (MoviePass, bLife) and board partner at Upfront Ventures, is launching a new startup foundry in Los Angeles called Share Ventures. Its first company is a stealthy effort co-founded by the foundry and actress Halle Berry, who yesterday told Upfront Summit that “the next evolution for me is becoming an entrepreneur.”

     

    A new venture capital firm called Trust Ventures has launched with the support of the Koch brothers and it’s reportedly looking for startups that will challenge government corruption and regulations. Fortune has more here.

     

     

    Exits

     

    The company behind Pokémon GO, Niantic, has announced that it is acquiring augmented reality startup Escher Reality. Escher Reality builds backend services for cross-platform mobile AR so users can interact with each other and objects in the environment. TechCrunch has more here.

     

    Intel reportedly plans to sell a majority stake in its augmented reality business, which aims to start offering smart glasses to consumers as soon as this year. Bloomberg has more here.

     

     

    People

     

    Former Stanford president John Hennessy has replaced Eric Schmidt as the chairman of Alphabet Inc. (You likely recall that Schmidt stepped down somewhat unexpectedly in late December.)

     

    Jeff Immelt, who ran General Electric for 16 years as CEO, has joined New Enterprise Associates as a venture partner, the investment firm announced this morning.

     

    Laurene Powell Jobs’s Emerson Collective is in talks to acquire a stake in BuzzFeed News, according to Bloomberg, which notes it wouldn’t be her first bet on the struggling publishing industry. In July, Emerson agreed to acquire a majority stake in the Atlantic.

     

    Paul Willard has joined the venture firm Storm Ventures as a partner. Willard was most recently a partner with Subtraction Capital and, before that, served as CMO at both Practice Fusion and Atlassian.

     

    Jobs

     

    Amazon is looking to add a principal to is corporate development team. The job is in Seattle.

     

    Data

     

    All-women teams received just $1.9 billion — or 2.2 percent — of the $85 billion total invested by venture capitalists last year, according to PitchBook data. All-male teams meanwhile received about $66.9 billion from VCs —roughly 79 percent. Fortune looks at what’s up here.

     

    Sponsored By . . .

     

    Valentine’s Day cards they’ll remember. Every Lovepop opens to reveal a beautiful, pop up, paper sculpture that is sure to surprise and delight. With a full collection of Valentine’s Day designs you can find the perfect card to connect with your special someone.

     

    Essential Reads

     

    Understanding why Snapchat is now selling hats and sweatshirts inside its app.

     

    Detours

     

    “I just said a prayer and stayed the hell away” — an owner of the Instant Pot, the best-selling all-in-one cooking pot that has users feeling terrorized.

     

    Standing desks really do help you lose weight.

     

    Inside the final days of Time, Inc.

     

    Retail Therapy

     

    1M Hauly. For after cashing out of some of those Bitcoin/Ripple/Litecoin holdings.

     

  • StrictlyVC: January 31, 2018

    Wednesday! Hope you’ve been enjoying yours.:)

     

    Top News

     

    Facebook said today that people are spending less time on its social network and that fewer people are coming to the service daily in North America, for the first time ever. Its shares fell.

     

    Meanwhile, Microsoft just beat Wall Street expectations again, as did PayPal.

     

    And Sequoia Capital, an early investor in Google and Apple, among many other tech giants, aims to raise up to $8 billion in its largest-ever fundraising, and it has set its sights on Chinese investors, according to Reuters. As the outlet notes, the capital would help Sequoia more effectively compete in pre-IPO funding rounds (including against Softbank’s massive Vision Fund). More here.

     

    Sponsored By …

     

    Betts Recruiting is the leading recruitment firm for revenue generating, marketing and people operations roles, from entry-level to VP. Are you or one of your portfolio companies looking to scale your organization? We have established networks of the highest-quality talent and execute quickly in San Francisco, New York, Austin, Palo Alto, and Los Angeles. Check out our 2018 Salary Trends Report, and connect with our Director of Sales, Allison Andrade, if you’re hiring!

     

    ICO Rounds are Coming

     

    Last summer, the news came in dribs and drabs about initial coin offerings, the crowd sales of new cryptocurrencies that give entrepreneurs access to funding. A warning here that some coins sold in ICOs could be considered securities. An alert there that celebrity endorsements of ICOs might be unlawful.

     

    Fast forward, and the warnings are starting to come with the kind of velocity that should give founders who are contemplating ICOs some pause. In fact, suggest some in the crypto industry, these founders would be smart to start structuring their ICOs more like traditional venture rounds.

     

    Certainly, it seems like things are headed in that direction.

     

    Just Monday, the SEC announced that it had obtained a court order to freeze the assets of Dallas-based AriseBank, a company that it says used social media, a celebrity endorsement, and other wide dissemination tactics to raise what it claims to be $600 million of its $1 billion goal in just two months. Just two of the many problems with this scenario, says the agency: AriseBank’s so-called offering lacked required SEC registration, and it claimed, untruthfully, that  it could offer investors FDIC-insured accounts.

     

    The SEC also spoke up last week to note that it’s monitoring companies that suddenly incorporate or market cryptocurrencies or blockchain technologies in an attempt to “capitalize on the perceived promise of distributed ledger technology…”

     

    Such actions are certain to have a chilling effect on ICOs, a slowdown of which actually began late last year, according to recent research produced by Ernst & Young.

     

    Element Group founder Stan Miroshnik, whose investment bank is focused on digital token crowd sales and ICOs, calls it the somewhat inevitable bifurcation between “tier one issuers and everybody else,” wherein the “big, quality offerings are drawing the majority of capital.”

     

    (Telegram, a messaging app that is planning to raise a staggering $1.2 billion in an ICO to build and support a payment system on its platform, is evidently among these.)

     

    Now, with the SEC plainly focused on ICOs, there’s reason to the offerings will evolve further still — from one-time financing events that almost anyone can participate in, to the very thing they looked to displace, which is companies that receive funding over a series of rounds, often from accredited investors only.

     

    We’re already partway there.

     

    More here.

     

    New Fundings

     

    Asana, the 10-year-old, San Francisco-based productivity and collaboration service cofounded by Facebook cofounder Dustin Moskovitz, has raised $75 million new funding led by Generation Investment Management, a London-based firm backed by former U.S. Vice President Al Gore. TechCrunch has more here.

     

    Bench, a 5.5-year-old, Vancouver-based bookkeeping service for small and mid-size businesses, has raised $18 million in Series B-1 funding led by iNovia Capital. Earlier investors, including Bain Capital VenturesAltos Ventures, and Silicon Valley Bank, also participated in the round. TechCrunch has more here.

     

    Busbud, a six-year-old, Montreal-based mobile app and platform that connects passengers to bus operators, has raised $11 million in Series B funding led byiNovia Capital. New investors backing the company include TeralysClaridge andPlaza Ventures. Earlier investor Real Ventures also participated in the round. TechCrunch has more here.

     

    Caffeine, a 1.5-year-old, Palo Alto, Ca.-basd new social broadcasting platform that was founded by a team of ex-Apple engineers and aims to take on Amazon-owned Twitch and Google’s YouTube, has raised $46 million from Andreessen Horowitzand Greylock Partners. TechCrunch has more here.

     

    Joymode, a 2.5-year-old, L.A.-based company that loans out products to subscribers interested in experiences, like a backyard movie night, has raised $14 million in funding from Naspers. The company was cofounded by Klout cofounder Joe Fernandez. TechCrunch has more here.

     

    Juniper Square, a 3.5-year-old, San Francisco-based company whose software aims to streamline fundraising, investment administration, and investor reporting for the real estate industry, has raised $6 million in Series A funding led by Felicis Ventures. TechCrunch has more here.

     

    Trifacta, a 5.5-year-old, San Francisco-based startup whose tools help businesses structure and analyze their own data, has raised $48 million in fresh funding from Columbia PacificDeutsche BörseEricssonGoogle, and New York Life, along with earlier investors Accel PartnersCathay InnovationGreylock PartnersIgnition Partners, and Ridge Ventures. The company has now raised $124 million to date. TechCrunch has more here.

     

    Sponsored By . . .

     

    Are you an entrepreneur, startup founder or CEO? We want to hear about your company-building journey! Norwest Venture Partners invites you to participate in a brief opinion survey. The survey is being conducted by Wakefield Research, an independent research firm, and all responses will remain anonymous. Thank you for your time!

     

    New Funds

     

    Polychain Capital, a cryptocurrency hedge fund founded by early Coinbase employee Olaf Carlson-Wee, is raising a traditional venture capital fund, shows an SEC filing processed this week. The company didn’t respond to our requests for more info, but Axios says the fund will be used to purchase equity in blockchain-related companies, as opposed to purchasing tokens. All existing Polychain investors were offered a spot in this fund, it adds.

     

    Speedinvest, the pan-European venture firm, has taken the wraps off a new vertical fund that is targeting €25 million in commitments (and says it has €20.5 million locked down already). The capital will be used to fund marketplace startups exclusively.  TechCrunch has more here.

     

    Exits

     

    Fujifilm announced this week that it’s set to take a majority stake in Xerox. More on what the move means here.

     

    Red Hat, known for its enterprise Linux products, has been making a big play for Kubernetes and containerization in recent years with its OpenShift Kubernetes product. Yesterday, the company decided to expand on that by acquiring CoreOS, a container management startup, for $250 million. More here.

     

    People

     

    CNet cofounder Halsey Minor tells Business Insider that he’s developing a distributed computing project for encoding, storing, and streaming video and that he plans to stage an ICO in March, giving investors a cryptocurrency called VideoCoin in exchange for their support. (You can never count Minor out of the game.)

     

    Streaming music service Pandora is laying off about five percent of its employee base and taking other cost-saving measures in an attempt to save about $45 million annually.

     

    Actress Maisie Williams, best known for her role as the ass-kicking Arya Stark on “Game of Thrones,” is the latest celeb to venture into tech entrepreneurship with the launch of a new company aimed at connecting creatives, called Daisie.

     

    Jobs

     

    Google is looking to hire a corporate development strategy and scouting manager to help identify potential M&A and investment opportunities. The job is in Mountain View, Ca.

     

    Essential Reads

     

    Uber is launching a bike-sharing service next week in partnership with JUMP, a startup that recently received the first and only permit to operate dockless bike-sharing in San Francisco. (Note: Jump was formerly known as Social Bicycles.) TechCrunch has more here.

     

    Facebook’s $19 billion acquisition of WhatsApp looks smarter by the month.

     

    Samsung is making chips for cryptocurrency mining.

     

    South Korea’s finance minister said yesterday the government has no plans to shut down cryptocurrency trading, welcome news for investors who worried it might follow in China’s footsteps and block virtual coin platforms.

     

    Detours

     

    This woman wanted to fly with her “emotional support” peacock. United said no.

     

    Orcas can imitate human speech.

     

    Photos of the highly photogenic super blue blood moon.

     

    Retail Therapy

     

    The one gadget that terrible sleepers should always pack.

     

  • StrictlyVC: January 30, 2018

    Hi, happy Tuesday.:) Running out the door but more tomorrow!

     

    Top News

     

    AmazonBerkshire Hathaway and JPMorgan Chase announced today that they are forming an independent health care company to serve their employees in the United States. The three provided few details about the new entity but they say the idea is to initially focus on providing simplified, high-quality, affordable health care for their employees and their families — a development that must have health insurers quaking in their boots in this morning. The New York Times has more here.

     

    And it is done. Wag, the three-year-old, L.A.-based on-demand mobile dog walking and dog care service, has raised $300 million in fresh funding from the SoftBank Vision Fund. Last week, The Information reported that this deal might not close — that SoftBank had not committed to the round after scaring off other potential investors with the amount of capital it wanted to plug into the company, so you can imagine that SoftBank turned the screws here. Indeed, SoftBank now owns 45 percent of the company, says Recode. It also installed a new CEO.

     

    Bitcoin just fell below $10,000 again. Here’s what’s happening.

     

    Sponsored By …

     

    Betts Recruiting is the leading recruitment firm for revenue generating, marketing and people operations roles, from entry-level to VP. Are you or one of your portfolio companies looking to scale your organization? We have established networks of the highest-quality talent and execute quickly in San Francisco, New York, Austin, Palo Alto, and Los Angeles. Check out our 2018 Salary Trends Report, and connect with our Director of Sales, Allison Andrade, if you’re hiring!

     

    New Fundings

     

    BrowserStack, a seven-year-old mobile and browser testing platform that’s headquartered in Mumbai, India, has raised $50 million in Series A funding — entirely from Accel Partners. TechCrunch has more here.

     

    Cake Technologies, a 1.5-year-old, Salt Lake City, Ut.-based developer of a swipeable browser built specifically for mobile devices, has raised $5 million in pre-Series A funding led by Peak Ventures, with participation from Pelion Venture Partners and Kickstart Seed Fund. TechCrunch has more here.

     

    Drop, a 2.5-year-old, Toronto-based startup whose app allows consumers to collect points for transactions they make and then receive reward offers, has raised $21 million in Series A funding led by New Enterprise Associates. Other participants in the round, which bring the company’s total funding to $26 million, include Sierra VenturesWhite Star Capitalff Venture CapitalPortag3 VenturesSilicon Valley Bank. TechCrunch as more here.

     

    Memphis Meats, a 2.5-year-old, San Francisco-based, so-called clean meat startup, has raised an undisclosed amount of funding from Tyson Foods. The company previously raised $22 million from investors, including DFJCargill andBill Gates. Fortune has more here.

     

    Next Trucking, a 2.5-year-old, Lynwood, Ca.-based online marketplace that connects truckers with shippers, has raised $21 million in Series B funding led bySequoia Capital, with participation from (unnamed) previous investors. VentureBeat has more here.

     

    TytoCare, a seven-year-old, New York-based online healthcare platform that connects people to clinicians for home examinations and diagnosis, has raised $25 million in funding led by Ping An Global Voyager Fund, with participation from Qure and earlier investors Cambia Health Solutions,WalgreensOrbimedFosun Pharma and LionBird. MedCity News has more here.

     

    Virzoom, a 2.5-year-old, Cambridge, Ma-based VR fitness company, has raised $5.5M in seed funding, including from cofounder and CEO Eric JanszenSkywood CapitalEastham CapitalFairhaven Capital, and Equity Resource InvestmentsMore here.

     

    Xperiel, a 4.5-year-old, Sunnyvale, Ca.-based startup that says its tools can connect technologies like AR, VR, and IoT with existing infrastructure in order to offer experiential content through mobile devices, has raised $7 million in Series A funding. Investors include Intuit cofounder Scott CookFounders FundWTI and the National Basketball Association’s Sacramento KingsMore here.

     

    Sponsored By . . .

     

    Are you an entrepreneur, startup founder or CEO? We want to hear about your company-building journey! Norwest Venture Partners invites you to participate in a brief opinion survey. The survey is being conducted by Wakefield Research, an independent research firm, and all responses will remain anonymous. Thank you for your time!

     

    New Funds

     

    Andrew Ng, the former chief scientist at Baidu and co-founder of Coursera, has officially closed his debut fund with $175 million in capital commitments, including from Greylock PartnersSequoia CapitalNew Enterprise Associates andSoftBank. TechCrunch has more here.

     

    Canopy, a Boulder, CO-based venture capital firm and business accelerator for products and services companies in the legal cannabis industry, is trying to raise $50 million for a venture fund that will target growth-stage companies. More here.

     

    LRVHealth, a nearly 18-year-old, Boston-based venture firm that was formerly known as Long River Ventures, is hoping to raise $100 million in capital commitments by the fall for its fourth early-stage venture fund. Modern Healthcare has more here.

     

    Exits

     

    American Express has acquired Mezi, a personal travel assistant app that helps consumers plan and book trips. The nearly three-year-old, Sunnyvale, Ca.-based company, which had raised roughly $12 million from investors (including, notably, American Express Ventures), should help Amex’s global network of travel counselors to facilitate more personalized, high-touch services for its Amex Card Members. Terms of the deal aren’t being disclosed. TechCrunch has more here.

     

    Microsoft has acquired PlayFab, a 3.5-year-old, Seattle-based maker of cloud-based tools for game developers. PlayFab had raised  $13 million in funding, including from BenchmarkMadrona Venture Group and Startup Capital Ventures. TechCrunch has more here.

     

    Software giant SAP has agreed to acquire Callidus, itself a publicly traded company that makes cloud-based sales and marketing software, for $2.4 billion, or $36 per share. TechCrunch has more here.

     

    People

     

    Ken Chenault, the outgoing CEO of American Express, has already joined the boards of Airbnb and Facebook in recent weeks. Behind the scenes, as it turns out, he also decided to join the venture firm General Catalyst as its chairman and managing director. It will be a full-time job, Chenault tells Dealbook.

     

    Michael Mashkautsan, the former chief of staff at the National Cyber Bureau in the Israeli Prime Minister’s office, has joined London-based venture firm LocalGlobe as a partner. More here.

     

    Meet Sunguk Moon, the CEO behind Blind, the anonymous chat app that has tech workers talking.

     

    Pinterest has hired Chuck Rosenberg, Google’s computer vision research lead, to be its head of computer vision and lead its visual search engineering team.

     

    Jobs

     

    Gradient Ventures, the relatively new firm within Google that’s investing in early-stage artificial intelligence start-ups, is looking to hire a principal. The job is in Mountain View, Ca.

     

    Sponsored By . . .

     

    Founded by two MIT grads, Milwaukee-based Bright Cellars is pulling ahead as a leader in wine ecommerce. They’re powered by a proprietary algorithm that matches individual members to wines they’ll enjoy by asking questions like “how do you prefer your coffee?”. Take their quiz to learn your top four wine matches.

     

    Essential Reads

     

    Google is launching a digital store offering cloud-based software to companies and other organizations, its latest effort to catch cloud leaders like Amazon Web Services. Bloomberg has more here.

     

    Facebook is banning all ads promoting cryptocurrencies — including bitcoin and ICOs.

     

    The U.S. Department of Justice and SEC are reportedly investigating whether Appleviolated securities laws concerning its disclosures about a software update that slowed older iPhone models. Bloomberg has more here.

     

    Detours

     

    The worker who sent that false Hawaii alert thought the threat was real, says the FCC.

     

    Inside the trippy, high-speed world of drone racing.

     

     

    Retail Therapy

     

    This would be very cool.

     

  • StrictlyVC: January 29, 2018

    Hi, happy Monday, all!

     

    A quick update about our first INSIDER event of 2018, coming up next month: founder, angel investor and now VC Caterina Fake has now joined the line-up, which also includes Brandless CEO Tina Sharkey, Cadre CEO Ryan Williams and HackerOne CEO Marten Mickos. We’re just so excited about how the night is shaping up.:)

     

    More to come. In the meantime, no column today. We’re still recovering from the last couple of days. (We spent *a lot* of time at the Apple Genius Bar.)

     

    Top News

     

    Dell could emerge as a public company through a reverse-merger with VMware, the $60 billion cloud computing company it already controls, according to CNBC. The reverse merger, whereby VMware would buy Dell, would allow Dell to be traded publicly without going through a formal listing. More here.

     

    The Trump administration insisted this morning that it currently has no plans to build its own ultra-fast 5G wireless network, despite publication of a memo in Axios yesterday that suggested the idea was under consideration.

     

    Sponsored By …

     

    Betts Recruiting is the leading recruitment firm for revenue generating, marketing and people operations roles, from entry-level to VP. Are you or one of your portfolio companies looking to scale your organization? We have established networks of the highest-quality talent and execute quickly in San Francisco, New York, Austin, Palo Alto, and Los Angeles. Check out our 2018 Salary Trends Report, and connect with our Director of Sales, Allison Andrade, if you’re hiring!

     

    New Fundings

     

    BehavioSec, a 10-year-old, Luleå, Sweden-based company focused on continuous authentication through behavioral biometrics, has raise $17.5 million in Series B funding led by Trident Capital Cybersecurity, with participation from Cisco InvestmentsABN AMRO, and earlier backers Octopus Ventures and Conor Venture PartnersMore here.

     

    BigID, a two-year-old, Israel-based private customer data identification startup, has raised $14 million in Series A funding from Comcast VenturesSAPClearSky Security Fund and BoldStart Ventures. TechCrunch has more here.

     

    Bodle Technologies, two-year-old, Oxford, England-based startup that’s developing a reflective smartphone display technology that promises to use less power, has raised £6 million ($8.4 million) in Series A funding led by Parkwalk Advisors. Other participants include Woodford Patient Capital Trust, and returning backers Oxford Sciences Innovation and the Oxford Technology and Innovations Fund. TechCrunch has more here.

     

    ContentSquare, a five-year-old, Paris, France-based insights platform that aims to help businesses understand how and why users are interacting with their app, mobile and websites, has raised $42 million in Series B funding. Canaan Partnersled the round. Earlier investors Highland EuropeEurazeo and H14 also joined the financing. More here.

     

    Cuberg, a 2.5-year-old, Berkeley, Ca.-based battery tech startup whose founding team includes Stanford University researchers, has raised an undisclosed amount of funding from HorizonX, Boeing’s investment vehicle. TechCrunch has more here.

     

    Dominode, a year-old, Boca Raton, Fla.-based startup making verified identity software for regulated industries, has raised $1.3 million in funding from Blockchange VenturesMore here.

     

    Duco, an eight-year-old, London-based startup that sells self-service data engineering software to the financial services sector, has raised $28 million in new funding from Insight Venture PartnersNEX OpportunitiesEight Roads Ventures and Cristóbal Conde. The Times has more here.

     

    Goxip, a three-year-old, Hong Kong-based social shopping service, raised $5 million in funding led by Meitu, with participation from Nan Fung Group. TechCrunch has more here.

     

    Hover, a seven-year-old, San Francisco-based platform that says it generates accurate, interactive 3D models of any property, has raised $25 million in Series B funding led by GV, with participation from The Home Depot and Standard Industries, the large roofing and waterproofing manufacturer. More here.

     

    Logikcull, a 14-year-old, San Francisco-based discovery platform for legal teams, has raised $25 million in new funding led by New Enterprise Associates, with participation from earlier investors OpenView Venture Partners and Storm VenturesMore here.

     

    Pay By Group, a 6.5-year-old, Mountain View, Ca.-based maker of group payments software, has raised an undisclosed amount of funding, including from Czar VenturesMore here.

     

    Protenus, a three-year-old, Baltimore, Md.-based healthcare startup that aims to protect patient privacy in electronic medical records by detecting privacy breaches in real-time, has raised $11 million in Series B funding. Kaiser Permanente Ventures and F-Prime Capital Partners co-led the round, with participation from earlier backers Arthur VenturesLionbird Venture Capital and Cognosante VenturesMore here.

     

    Ripple Foods, a three-year-old, Emeryville, Ca.-based maker of a milk-like drink from peas, has raised $65 million in new funding led by Euclidean Capital. Other participants in the round include Goldman SachsKhosla VenturesFall Line Capital and S2G VenturesMore here.

     

    Xiaopeng Motors, a nearly four-year-old, China-based electric vehicle company that’s sometimes described as a Tesla clone, has raised $348 million in Series B funding co-led by AlibabaIDG Capital and Foxconn. Other investors in the round include Yunfeng CapitalApoletto AsiaCICC and earlier backers GGV Capital,Matrix Partners China and Morningside Venture Capital. Electrek has more here.

     

     

    Sponsored By . . .

     

    Are you an entrepreneur, startup founder or CEO? We want to hear about your company-building journey! Norwest Venture Partners invites you to participate in a brief opinion survey. The survey is being conducted by Wakefield Research, an independent research firm, and all responses will remain anonymous. Thank you for your time!

     

    New Funds

     

    Thirty tech startups from over 14 countries that are part of 500 Startups’ summer 2017 program in San Francisco have announced a ICO called the 22X Fund, a token offering that they say will enable investors to invest in and own up to 10 percent equity in the group of startups. Entrepreneur has more here.

     

    Bonfire Ventures, a new venture firm created by longtime operators and investors, including former Rincon Venture Partners Jim Andelman, has raised $60 million for its debut fund. The capital will flow primarily to startups in Southern California. According to TechCrunch, the team has already backed nine startups. More here.

     

     

    Exits

     

    Another day, another near-billion-dollar deal in Canada’s marijuana industry, reports Bloomberg, which says that publicly traded cannabis producer Aphria has agreed to buy Nuuvera, another cannabis company, for roughly $670 million in cash and stock. Marijuana sales are expected to become legal in the country at some point this year, which explains some of these big deals.

     

    SoFi, the online lending company that last week appointed Anthony Noto as its new CEO, has acquired the engineering and product teams of mortgage startup Clara Lending, says Bloomberg. More here.

     

    The publicly traded unified communications company Avaya has agreed to acquireSpoken Communications, a 12-year-old, Seattle-based contact-center as-a-service company that had raised roughly $58 million in funding, including fromIgnition Partners and Riverwood Capital. GeekWire has more here.

     

    The RELX Group (formerly known as Reed Elsevier) say it is acquiring the digital identity platform ThreatMetrix for £580 million (about $817 million) in cash. This is a big exit for 13-year-old ThreatMetrix, which was last valued at around $237 million in its last funding round in 2014, according to PitchBook analysis. TechCrunch has more here.

     

    China’s Tencent is leading the acquisition of 14 percent of billionaire Wang Jianlin’sWanda Commercial Properties Co. for 34 billion yuan ($5.4 billion). It’s just Tencent’s latest foray into old-school retail. Bloomberg has more here.

     

    IPOs

     

    Cardlytics, a 10-year-old, Atlanta-based marketing analytics company, has set its IPO terms, revealing plans to sell 5.4 million shares at between $13 and $15 apiece, giving it a market cap of roughly $285 at the midpoint of that pricing. The company has raised more than $180 from investors, including Canaan PartnersPolaris Partners, and Discovery Capital. Nasdaq has more here.

     

    Huami, a four-year-old, China-based maker of wearable devices, has revealed plans to offer 10 million shares at between $10 and $12 in an upcoming IPO, a range that would give it a market cap of $662 in the middle of that range. Nikkei Asian Review has more here.

     

    Several mega-funded Chinese tech unicorns, including smart phone and electronics maker Xiaomi, are angling to go public later this year with huge, multibillion-dollar offerings, and behind the scenes, New York and Hong Kong are competing for these listings. At stake could be deals worth well more than a quarter-trillion dollars, notes CNBC. More here.

     

    People

     

    Famed former NFL quarterback Brett Favre is being sued for allegedly helping to conspire with other business partners to fraudulently induce an investor to put $16 million into a sports social media network that never took off.

     

    One of the great entrepreneurs of the 20th century, Ingvar Kamprad, the founder of IKEA, passed away yesterday at age 91.

     

    Thanks to Elon Musk‘s promotions on Twitter and Instagram, Boring Co. has taken orders for thousands of its $500 flamethrower. The total right now exceeds 10,000 units, worth $5 million, a spokesman tells Bloomberg, and Boring Co. plans to sell double that amount altogether. (This is going to look pretty bone-headed if someone is badly injured, though Musk insists he’d be “way more scared of a steak knife.”)

     

    “Social media has peaked as an influential player” in politics, says NBC Political News Director Chuck Todd, the moderator of “Meet the Press.”

     

    Over the weekend, Saudi officials released Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, one of the world’s richest men (before he was detained, anyway) and a favorite in tech circles. More here.

     

    Jobs

     

    Sapphire Ventures is looking to hire two people into its fund investments team, a group that makes primary investments in venture capital funds. Both of the roles — a vice president and an associate — are based in Palo Alto, Ca. More here.

     

    Essential Reads

     

    Facebook will start prioritizing local news in users’ feeds.

     

    SpaceX’s new beast of a rocket is a go for launch after more than five years of delays.

     

    How Apple built a chip powerhouse to threaten Qualcomm and Intel.

     

    Detours

     

    The best-dressed stars at last night’s Grammy awards.

     

    Intimate glimpses of everyday life in Iran.

     

    NASA will stream Wednesday’s rare lunar eclipse. (Yay.)

     

    Retail Therapy

     

    The Ritz Carlton, Langkawi, now on our to-do list. (Hey, we can dream.)

     

  • StrictlyVC: January 26, 2018

    Friday afternoon! [Forward somersault.] Hope you have a terrific weekend weekend, everyone.

     

    Also! We’re just so excited to see a bunch of you a little more than a month from now at our INSIDER event at the beautiful San Francisco offices of New Enterprise Associates. We still have a limited number of seats left, so don’t wait too long if you’re planning to come.

     

    We should have another announcement about the evening for you soon. In the meantime, thank you everyone who is already participating in the evening, including sponsors Anduin, a company cofounded by Joe Lonsdale and Alin Bui that helps companies close private market transactions, and the global law firm MoFo, which prides itself of giving startups expert advice without taking itself too seriously.

    More Monday.:)

     

    Top News

     

    Bitcoin prices are rebounding right now following possibly the largest cryptocurrency hack yet.

     

    The FT reported today that Kleiner Perkins and Sequoia Capital are keen to invest tens of millions of dollars in the messaging app Telegram, which claims to have 170 million monthly users and is planning to raise up to $1.2 billion(!) by selling its own digital currency through an ICO. More here.

     

    Sponsored By …

     

    Founders, innovators, and key Fortune 1000 leaders together with policy and regulatory thinkers are gathering to navigate today’s shifting business landscape, including the Genentech CEO Ian Clark, former DNC Chair and author Donna Brazile, Impossible Foods founder Patrick Brown, and former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie. One room. Three days. This is Shift Forum. February 26-28 in SF. StrictlyVC readers use CODE: STRVC for a 20 percent discount.

     

    A Young Startup with a Timely Offer: Fighting Propaganda Campaigns Online

     

    The prevalence of so-called fake news is far worse than we imagined even a few months ago. Just last week, Twitter admitted there were more than 50,000 Russian bots trying to confuse American voters ahead of the 2016 presidential election.

     

    It isn’t just elections that should concern us, though. So argues Jonathon Morgan, the cofounder and CEO of New Knowledge, a two-and-a-half-year-old, Austin-based cyber security company that’s gathering up clients who are looking to fight online disinformation. (Worth noting: the 15-person outfit has also quietly gathered up $1.9 million in seed funding led by Moonshots Capital, with participation from Haystack, GGV Capital, Geekdom Fund, Capital Factory and Spitfire Ventures.)

     

    We talked earlier this week with Morgan, a former digital content producer and State Department counterterrorism advisor, to learn more about his product, which is smartly using concerns about fake social media accounts and propaganda campaigns to work with brands that are eager to preserve their reputation. Our chat has been edited lightly for length and clarity.

     

    Tell us a little about your background.

     

    I’ve spent my career in digital media, including as a [product manager] at AOL when magazines were moving onto the Internet. Over time, my career moved into machine-learning and data science. During the early days of the application-focused web, there wasn’t a lot of engineering talent available, as it wasn’t seen as sophisticated enough. People like me who didn’t have an engineering background but who were willing to spend a weekend learning JavaScript and could produce code fast enough didn’t really need much of a pedigree or experience.

     

    How did that experience lead to you focusing on tech that tries to understand how social media platforms are manipulated?

     

    When ISIS was employing techniques to jam conversations into social media, conversations that were elevated in the American press, we started trying to figure out how they were pushing their message. I did a little work for the Brookings Institution, which led to some work as a data science advisor to the State Department — developing counter-terrorism strategies and understanding what public discourse looks like online and the different between mainstream communication and what that looks like when it’s been hijacked.

     

    Now you’re pitching this service you’ve developed with your team to brands. Why?

     

    The same mechanics and tactics used by ISIS are now being used by much more sophisticated actors, from hostile governments to kids who are coordinating activity on the Internet to undermine things they don’t like for cultural reasons. They’ll take Black Lives activists and immigration-focused conservatives and amplify their discord, for example. We’ve also seen alt-right supporters on 4chan undermine movie releases. These kinds of digital insurgencies are being used by a growing number of actors to manipulate the way that the public has conversations online.

     

    We realized we could use the same ideas and tech to defend companies that are vulnerable to these attacks. Energy companies, financial institutions, other companies managing critical infrastructure — they’re all equally vulnerable. Election manipulation is just the canary in the coal mine when it comes to the degradation of our discourse.

     

    More here.

     

    New Fundings

     

    Heetch, a four-year-old, Paris, France-based ride-sharing service, has raised $20 million in funding. Investors include Felix CapitalVia IDAlven Capital,Idinvest Partners and InnovAllianz. TechCrunch has more here.

    Occipital, a 10-year-old, San Francisco-based developer of mobile computer vision applications, has raised $12 million in Series C funding led by Foundry Group. The company has now raised $33 million altogether. TechCrunch has more here.

    Songtradr, a 3.5-year-old, Santa Monica, C.-based music licensing platform, has raised $4 million in Series A funding led by Richard White, the CEO and founder of WiseTech Global. Los Angeles Business Journal has more here.

     

    Sun Basket, a 3.5-year-old, San Francisco-based organic meal delivery service, has raised $42.8 million in Series D funding led by August Capital. The company separately secured $15 million in debt from Trinity Capital Investment. VentureBeat has more here.

     

    Sponsored By . . .

     

    Treble is a PR agency with a unique value prop for both VC firms and startups: we expedite exits. We like to partner early, carve out brand differentiation and reverse engineer your brand into breaking news. Headquartered in Austin, with Silicon Valley roots, we specialize in emerging tech (SaaS, AI, IoT, cybersecurity, blockchain, crypto and more). Contact us here.

     

    Exits

     

    ESPN, a unit of Walt Disney Co., is considering a sale or spinoff of the Nate Silver-founded FiveThirtyEight property, says The Big Lead. More here.

     

    Ford will acquire Autonomic and TransLoc, two of its partners, in deals that will help its new mobility business take shape. TechCrunch has much more here.

     

    People

     

    Amazon’s Super Bowl ad, featuring Jeff Bezos. It’s his first-ever appearance in an Amazon ad.

     

    Liza Landsman, president of Jet.com, is leaving the company just a little more than a year after she was elevated to her current role, multiple sources tell Recode. More here.

     

    Ryan Morris, a young investor who joined Global Founders Capital six months ago in the Bay Area, has joined Plus Capital, a new L.A. firm, as an associate. More here.

     

    The Department of Justice’s special counsel Robert Mueller and his office have interviewed Facebook staff as part of its Russia probe. Wired has more here.

     

    Jobs

     

    Sapphire Ventures to looking to hire two people into its fund investments team, a group that makes primary investments in venture capital funds. (Some of its current stakes include in August Capital, Point Nine Capital, and Data Collective.) Both of the roles — a vice president and an associate — are based in Palo Alto, Ca. More here.

     

    Essential Reads

     

    The dirty war over diversity inside Google.

     

    Dell is reportedly mulling a return to the market four years after going private.

     

    Lyft had its own “God View” and employees were reportedly using it track former paramours and celebrities, among other things.

     

    Lawyers are increasingly getting paid in cryptocurrency to show they’re aligned with their new clients.

     

    Detours

     

    Your sloppy bitcoin drug deals will haunt you for years.

     

    How to buy bitcoin with a credit card — though you probably should not.

     

    Selling airborne opulence to the upper, upper, upper class. (This is pretty fascinating.)

     

    Retail Therapy

     

    The Boring Company flamethrower. (Legal everywhere but California and Maryland.)

     

  • StrictlyVC: January 25, 2018

    Happy Thursday, everyone.:)

     

    No column today (too much news!).

     

    Top News

     

    Benchmark’s controversial, explosive lawsuit against cofounder and former CEO Travis Kalanick is officially history. A judge today permanently dismissed the venture firm’s case against the former Uber CEO following Benchmark’s agreement to dismiss the suit. Recode has more here.

     

    Sponsored By …

     

    Founders, innovators, and key Fortune 1000 leaders together with policy and regulatory thinkers are gathering to navigate today’s shifting business landscape. How will AI impact jobs? How will escalating education and healthcare costs impact business? Our economy? What is the responsible role of business in our society? This is the discourse you have been waiting for. This is Shift ForumDon’t miss it. February 26-28 in SF. StrictlyVC readers use CODE: STRVC for a 20 percent discount.

     

    New Fundings

     

    Allure Security, a seven-year-old, Waltham, Ma.-based company that’s developing data loss detection technology, has raised $5.3 million in seed funding led byGlasswing Ventures, with participation from GreycroftZetta Venture Partnersand Portage PartnersMore here.

     

    Arundo Analytics, a 2.5-year-old, Palo Alto, Ca.-based company that markets its big data and machine-learning-driven analytics to asset-intensive industries, has raised $25 million in Series A funding. Investors include Sundt ASStokke IndustriHorizonCanicaStrømstangenArctic Fund Management,Stanford-StartX Fund and Northgate PartnersMore here.

     

    Botkeeper, a 2.5-year-old, Boston, Ma.-based automated bookkeeping software startup, has raised  $4.5 million in seed funding led by Ignition Partners., with participation from a long list of individual investors, including former Microsoft CFOJohn ConnorsMore here.

     

    Carmudi, a 4.5-year-old, Berlin, Germany-based Rocket Internet-backed company that sells cars online in emerging markets, has raised $10 million to develop its business in Southeast Asia after shrinking its global footprint. The new funding was raised incrementally, including from Holtzbrinck VenturesTengelmann Ventures, and Asia Pacific Internet Group. TechCrunch has more here.

     

    Enertiv, a nine-year-old, New York-based company that uses sensors to track equipment performance within a commercial building, has raised $4.25 million in funding led by Fifth Wall Ventures, with participation from Rudin VenturesNew York AngelsCerium Technology and MetaProp NYC. The Commercial Observer has more here.

     

    EtaGen, an eight-year-old, Menlo Park, Ca.-based company that has developed a linear generator technology, has raised $83 million in Series C funding from 10 strategic investors, including American Electric PowerCentrica Innovations, and Statoil Energy Ventures. Earlier investors in the company include Bill Gatesand Khosla Ventures. More on the company, which has now raised $133 million altogether, here.

     

    Inprentus, a 5.5-year-old, Champaign, Il.-based precision optics company that makes blazed diffraction gratings for x-ray and extreme ultraviolet light  applications, has raised $2.5 million in Series A funding led by Flyover Capital, with participation from other investors that included Serra VenturesMore here.

    Nexar, a three-year-old, Tel Aviv, Israel-based startup that makes an AI-based dashcam app to monitor road safety, has raised $30 million in Series B funding led by Ibex Ventures. Other participants include Alibaba Innovation Ventures,Nationwide Insurance and earlier investors AlephMosaic VenturesSlow VenturesTrue Ventures and Tusk Ventures. TechCrunch has more here.

     

    Ring, a six-year-old, Santa Monica, Ca.-based maker of camera-enabled doorbell products, is raising $160 million at a valuation of nearly $1 billion, nearly double from only a year ago, according to a securities filing and investors. The Information has more here.

     

    Snowflake, a 5.5-year-old, San Mateo, Ca.-based cloud data warehouse startup led by former Microsoft exec Bob Muglia, has raised another $263 million of venture capital, giving it a valuation of $1.5 billion. Sequoia Capital led the round, which also included earlier investors Iconiq CapitalAltimeter CapitalCapital One Growth VenturesMadrona Venture GroupRedpoint VenturesSutter Hill Ventures and Wing Ventures. GeekWire has more here.

     

    StoreHub, a 3.5-year-old, Malaysia-based startup that helps retailers digitize their businesses, has raised $5.1 million in Series A funding led by Vertex Ventures. TechCrunch has more here.

     

    TeacherGaming, a seven-year-old, New York-based startup from the team behind MinecraftEdu, a company that helped teachers use Minecraft in the classroom and was subsequently acquired by Microsoft, has raised $1.6 million in seed funding. Leading the round is Makers Fund, with participation from Brent Hoberman’sFounders Factory. TechCrunch has more here.

     

    Tigera, a two-year-old, San Francisco-based startup that helps businesses connect and secure their container-based applications, has raised $10 million in fresh funding led by Madrona Venture Group, with participation from New Enterprise Associates and Wing Venture Capital. TechCrunch has more here.

     

    Tryb Group, a 1.5-year-old, Singapore-based organization focused on fintech services in Southeast Asia, has landed $30 million in funding from Makara Capital. TechCrunch has more here.

     

    XtalPi, a three-year-old, Cambridge, Ma.-based biotech firm that uses artificial intelligence to accelerate the development of new drugs, has raised $15 million fromGoogleSequoia China, and Tencent. TechCrunch has more here.

     

    Sponsored By . . .

     

    Treble is a PR agency with a unique value prop for both VC firms and startups: we expedite exits. We like to partner early, carve out brand differentiation and reverse engineer your brand into breaking news. Headquartered in Austin, with Silicon Valley roots, we specialize in emerging tech (SaaS, AI, IoT, cybersecurity, blockchain, crypto and more). Contact us here.

     

    New Funds

     

    DN Capital, one of Europe’s oldest venture capital firms with offices in Berlin and Menlo Park, Ca., has closed its fourth fund with €200 million in commitments. The firm invests primarily in seed-stage and Series A companies and is especially interested in marketplaces, SaaS, fintech, digital health and consumer mobile apps. TechCrunch has more here.

     

    It’s high times for the marijuana industry as more regions move to legalize its use. One beneficiary: Privateer Holdings, one of the big investors in the space, which says it just closed on $100 million in capital commitments to back more cannabis startups. TechCrunch has more here.

     

    IPOs

     

    Biotech’s next big IPO could unravel at the 11th hour. Here’s why.

     

     

    Exits

     

    AWS has purchased Sqrrl, a Cambridge, Ma.-based security startup with roots in the NSA. The company helps analyze a variety of sources to track and understand security threats quickly using machine learning. Financial terms of the deal aren’t known. TechCrunch has more here.

     

    Gfycat, a player on the smaller side of the consumer-facing explosion of GIFs, continues to build out its suite of creator tools with a new acquisition: MovieLala, which helps studios craft campaigns for their movies for fans. MovieLaLa had raised $1.4 million in seed funding roughly a year ago, including from Walt Disney CFO Jay Rasulo and former LucasFilm COO David Anderman. TechCrunch has more here.

     

    Square has acquired Entrees On Trays, a 32-year-old restaurant delivery platform. The plan is to expand the footprint of its on-demand food delivery service, Caviar, in the Dallas-Fort Worth, Texas area, says the company. TechCrunch has more here.

     

    Sotheby‘s, one of the world’s oldest and biggest art auction houses, has acquired AI startup Thread Genius, whose set of algorithms can instantly identify objects, then recommend images of similar objects to the viewer. Financial terms of the deal aren’t being disclosed, through Thread Genius was a three-person company and both founders and the data scientist they’d hired are joining Sotheby’s as part of the deal. TechCrunch has more here.

     

     

    People

     

    After being one of the first musicians to accept Bitcoin all the way back in 2014, Rapper 50 Cent (a.k.a. Curtis Jackson) appears to have accumulated a small fortune in the volatile digital currency. As TMZ first reported and Jackson seems to have confirmed, he left his Bitcoin sales untouched until rediscovering them some time recently.

     

    Ken Chenault, the longtime chairman and CEO of American Express, looks to have a busy (and lucrative) career as a director when he steps down from the company next month. Last week, Facebook said it has added Chenault to its board — the first new Facebook board member since WhatsApp CEO Jan Koum joined in 2014. Now Airbnb has also brought him onto its board as its first independent director. (Could Twitter, whose CMO came from Amex, be next? Stay tuned.) Dealbook has more here.

     

    Yikes. According to the New York Post, star Benchmark partner Peter Fenton has separated from his wife and is now dating entrepreneur Kate Greer, who earlier dated the star founder of both Twitter and Square, Jack Dorsey, for four years. Why it’s awkward, notes the Post: Fenton led an early round in Twitter and sat on its board until last May. The Post also spied a seething tweet published last fall by Fenton’s wife that read: “You know the guy who puts his family in a lower class of service on the plane, same guy puts his mistress in 1st #consistentlackofcharacter.”

     

    CNN’s attempt at expanding its digital news business by bringing in a top YouTube creator has failed, reports TechCrunch, CNN is closing down YouTube star Casey Neistat’s video business, Beme, which it bought for a reported $25 million back in 2016. In addition, the YouTuber and his co-founder, Matt Hackett, are also leaving the company. More here.

     

    One of Snap CEO Evan Spiegel’s top lieutenants, Tom Conrad, will leave Snapchat, and the whole tech industry, in March, roughly two years after he joined the company as VP of Product. Conrad tells TechCrunch that after more than 30 years in tech, it’s “time for me to put my energy outside of tech into music, food, photography and things closer to art than entrepreneurship.”

     

    Engineer Steve Yegge writes on Medium that he left Google after nearly 13 years because it has lost the ability to innovate.

     

     

    Jobs

     

    eBay is looking to hire a corporate development associate. The job is in San Jose, Ca.

     

     

    Essential Reads

     

    Ripple wants its XRP currency to be bitcoin for banks. But banks say they have no interest in using it.

     

    Twitter is working on a Snapchat-style video sharing tool.

     

    Detours

     

    These 12 camels were disqualified from a Saudi beauty pageant over Botox injections to make them more attractive. (True story!)

     

    Are you also familiar with the psychotic barf crying of a toddler?

     

    Twelve Winston Churchill quotes to live by.

     

    Retail Therapy

     

    balm for the soul (and the lips, elbows, and feet).

     

  • StrictlyVC: January 24, 2018

    Hi, all, happy Wednesday! (It’s Wednesday, right?)

     

    Top News

     

    The markets are about to get ugly according to these charts.

     

    Sponsored By …

     

    Founders, innovators, and key Fortune 1000 leaders together with policy and regulatory thinkers are gathering to navigate today’s shifting business landscape. How will AI impact jobs? How will escalating education and healthcare costs impact business? Our economy? What is the responsible role of business in our society? This is the discourse you have been waiting for. This is Shift ForumDon’t miss it. February 26-28 in SF. StrictlyVC readers use CODE: STRVC for a 20 percent discount.

     

    Founders Caterina Fake and Jyri Engestrom Make it Official with a New Fund: Yes VC

     

    Caterina Fake and Jyri Engeström have much in common beyond the home and family they share. Each has started — and sold — two companies. Fake famously cofounded the photo sharing site Flickr, which sold to Yahoo, before cofounding Hunch, which sold to eBay. Engeström cofounded Jaiku, a mobile social network thatsold to Google, before cofounding Ditto, a mobile local recommendations app that was acquired by Groupon.

     

    Each has angel invested over the years. Fake wrote early checks to Kickstarter and Etsy, among tens of others; Engeström’s various bets include a startup called Applifier that sold to Unity Technologies; Moves, an activity tracking app acquired by Facebook; and the popular clothing label Betabrand.

     

    More recently, both Fake and Engeström were also beginning to see more opportunities that seize on what Fake calls the “monumental changes” coming our collective way, including, in part, because of blockchain technologies.

     

    They realized what they needed was a fund.

     

    Enter Yes VC, a new, San Francisco-based pre-seed and seed-stage firm that’s targeting $50 million in capital commitments and already counts Supercell founder Ilkka Paananen, former Etsy CEO Chad Dickerson, and the family office of Nokia chairman Risto Siilasmaa, as limited partners.

     

    To learn more about what the fund — which the pair expect to close next month and they’ve already used to back some interesting startups — we talked with Fake yesterday in a conversation that’s lightly edited here for length and clarity:

     

    A decade ago, a recruiter told me he couldn’t talk you into becoming a VC.

     

    It’s true. A lot of the reason I wanted to become an entrepreneur and avoid working for others is that you get to create the world you want to live in, and the company you want to work for, and I’ve loved that. It’s a part of entrepreneurship that women should really embrace.

     

    I’ve also just been really busy. I joined the board of Etsy when it was just three founders and I helped recruit the COO and CTO, Chad Dickerson, who later became the CEO. Etsy was a big part of what I’ve been doing for the past 10 years.

     

    But there’s another [overriding factor] in the timing, which is this monumental change going on, and I feel it. My background has always been in online community — later renamed “social media.” I was about open culture. I was on the board of Creative Commons. Web 2.0 was largely about open APIs and the liberating of data across the Internet. But gradually, everything got locked up [behind walled gardens, including that of Facebook].

     

    And you weren’t interested in the internet as a social force.

     

    Because of the reasons we’ve finally seen. Trust has dissolved. Fake news is ubiquitous.

     

    More here.

     

    New Fundings

     

    BeliMobilGue, a year-old, Jakarta, Indonesia-based platform that wants to enable car owners in Southeast Asian countries to sell their vehicles securely online, has raised $3.7 million in seed funding led by Intudo Ventures. TechCrunch has more here.

     

    Blacklane, a seven-year-old, Berlin, Germany-based provider of limos and other high-end transportation, has raised between $40 million and $45 million in Series D funding led by ALFAHIM, with participation from earlier backers Daimler and btov Partners. TechCrunch has more here.

     

    Dianrong, a five-year-old, Shanghai, China-based peer-to-peer lending platform, has raised $70 million in new Series D funding that brings the round total to $290 million. New investors include Orix Asia Capital and CLSA. Reuters has more here.

     

    Front, a five-year-old, San Francisco-based company whose app aims to help teams collaborate more efficiently by unifying email, and customer communications channels, among other things, is raising a $66 million in Series B funding led bySequoia, with DFJ and earlier investors also participating. TechCrunch has more here.

     

    HomeShare, a 1.5-year-old, San Francisco-based startup that’s managing a growing number of moderately-priced, shared luxury apartments, has raised $5.7 million in a seed round led by Lightspeed Venture Partners. Axios has more here.

     

    Katerra, a three-year-old, Menlo Park, Ca.-based construction-tech company led by former Flex CEO Michael Marks, has raised a stunning $865 million in new funding led by SoftBank Vision Fund, at a valuation north of $3 billion. Other participants in the round include the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board and Soros Fund Management. The New York Times has more here.

     

    LindaCare, a Leuven, Belgium-based maker of remote patient monitoring software for chronic disease management, has raised €7 million ($8.6 million) in Series B funding from PhilipsPMV and earlier investors Capricorn Venture Partners and Connecticut InnovationsMore here.

     

    Ninja Van, a nearly four-year-old, Singapore-based logistics company, has raised at least $87 million in Series C funding, including from the European parcel delivery firm DPDgroup. Tech in Asia has more here.

     

    PrecisionHawk, a seven-year-old, Raleigh, N.C.-based enterprise drone platform, has raised $75 million in new funding led by Third Point Ventures. Others of the many investors in the round include Comcast VenturesSenator Investor GroupConstellation Technology VenturesSyngenta Ventures and earlier backers Intel CapitalMillennium Technology Value Partners, DuPont,Verizon VenturesUSAA and Indiana University’s Innovate Indiana Fund. VentureBeat has more here.

     

    Stem, an eight-year-old, Millbrae, Ca.-based behind-the-meter battery startup, has raised $80 million in Series D funding led by the growth equity firm Activate Capital. It was joined by Temasek and the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan. Greentech Media has more here.

     

    Sun Basket, a 3.5-year-old, San Francisco-based startup that sells meal kits with organic and sustainable ingredients, is looking to raise up to $51 million in a Series D round — and at a price equal to the previous fundraising round, according to November filing discovered by The Information. The company was previously valued at around $460 million, according to PitchBook. More here.

     

    Zylo, a nearly two-year-old, Chicago-area startup that provides business software to help track an excess of business software (really), has raised $9 million in funding from Bessemer Venture Partners and the venture arms of Salesforce and Slack. Forbes has the story here.

     

    Sponsored By . . .

     

    Treble is a PR agency with a unique value prop for both VC firms and startups: we expedite exits. We like to partner early, carve out brand differentiation and reverse engineer your brand into breaking news. Headquartered in Austin, with Silicon Valley roots, we specialize in emerging tech (SaaS, AI, IoT, cybersecurity, blockchain, crypto and more). Contact us here.

     

     

    (Other) New Funds

     

    MFV Partners, a new, Los Altos, Ca.-based venture firm, is looking to raise $75 million for its debut fund,  according to an SEC filing. The firm is managed by Kartheepan Madasamy, a former managing director at Qualcomm Ventures, and Anand Kamannavar, who was formerly an investor with Applied Materials. More here.

     

    IPOs

     

    Menlo Therapeutics, a seven-year-old, Redwood City, Ca.-based drug developer focused on chronic pruritus and chronic cough, has increased its proposed IPO terms from offering 5.7 million shares at $14 to $16, to offering 6.5 million shares at $16 to $17. The company has raised around $110 million in venture funding. Its biggest shareholders include Vivo Capital, which owns roughly 25 percent of the company; Remeditex, which owns 17.8 percent; and Presidio Partners, which owns 16.5 percent. Nasdaq has more here.

     

    Solid Biosciences, a five-year-old, Cambridge, Ma.-based drug developer focused on Duchenne muscular dystrophy, increased its IPO terms today from 5.9 million shares being offered at $16 to $18, to 7 million shares being offered at $18 to $19. The company has raised more than $50 million in funding; its biggest outside shareholders include JPMorgan, which hold an 11.4 percent stake in the company; Perceptive Advisors, which owns 11 percent; and Bain Capital Life Sciences, which owns 6.7 percent. Nasdaq has more here.

     

    Exits

     

    Canadian marijuana producer Aurora Cannabis is acquiring CanniMed Therapeutics in a sweetened $1 billion cash-and-stock deal that would be the largest merger yet in the country’s red-hot cannabis industry, reports Bloomberg. Much more here.

     

    Facebook is buying a two-year-old, Boston-based software company calledConfirm that specializes in authenticating government-issued identification cards, according to Business Insider. Confirm, which says on its website that it has more than 750 clients, will wind down its operations and its employees will join Facebook in Boston, according to its source. Crunchbase shows Confirm had raised at least $4 million in funding, including from Cava Capital and Rho VenturesMore here.

     

    Fiverr, a seven-year-old, Tel Aviv, Israel-based online marketplace where businesses can hire freelancers, is acquiring And Co, a New York City startup that’s been building online tools that freelancers can use manage their client relationships. (We talked with And Co., which was backed by Thrive Capital, in 2016.) More on the deal here.

     

    Web hosting giant GoDaddy is acquiring Main Street Hub, a nearly eight-year-old, Austin, Tex.-based social media marketing platform. The deal is for $125 million in cash, plus up to $50 million in potential future earnouts, and is expected to close late in the second quarter of this year. Main Street had raised $93 million in debt and equity financing from Silicon Valley BankVista Equity PartnersBessemer Venture Partners and other investors. TechCrunch has more here.

     

    KnightScope, a nearly five-year-old, Mountain View, Ca.-based maker of autonomous, street-patrolling robots (the company was recently criticized by San Francisco denizens for shooing away the homeless), has raised more than $25 million in new funding. Konica Minolta and Bright Success Capital joined the round, along with and 5,000 other investors through crowdfunding siteSeedInvest. The company has now raised $39 million altogether. Business Insider has more here.

     

    People

     

    Meg Whitman, one of Silicon Valley’s longest-serving female CEOs, has joined the new mobile media business founded by former animation studio chief Jeffrey Katzenberg. She’ll serve as CEO starting on March 1. NewTV, as the company is tentatively called, will be based in L.A. and aims to bring Hollywood-quality storytelling to videos that last 10 minutes or less, says Bloomberg. More here.

     

    Jobs

     

    FirstMark Capital, the early-stage venture firm, is looking to add a full-time associate to its investing team. The job is in New York.

     

    Essential Reads

     

    Apple is taking on its messaging rivals with the launch of Business Chat.

     

    Google X is launching a cybersecurity company called Chronicle.

     

    Why Twitter let Anthony Noto walk away.

     

    Facebook begins its downward spiral.

     

    Detours

     

    Grumpy Cat’s owner was just awarded $700,000 in a lawsuit.

     

    Does anyone actually work at WeWork?

     

    What to cook this week.

     

    Retail Therapy

     

    Tennis whites are great, but tennis blacks? Hm. Not so bad, either.

     

  • StrictlyVC: January 23, 2018

    Hi, and happy Tuesday, all.

     

    We’ve been on the phone (a lot) today, so no column. but much more tomorrow.:)

     

    Top News

     

    Twitter COO Anthony Noto has left the company to join the online lending company SoFi, whose cofounder and CEO, Mike Cagney, was forced to resign abruptly last September amid a sexual harassment investigation. Twitter cofounder and CEO Jack Dorsey wished Noto well in a tweet this morning, saying, “We love you.” TechCrunch has more here.

     

    Uber, whose losses have piled up in the quest for growth around the world, will be profitable in three years, CEO Dara Khosrowshahi told Bloomberg today in Davos. Khosrowshahi also said that Uber will be “leaning forward” and expanding into new markets, despite the recent suggestion by SoftBank executive and soon-to-be Uber director Rajeev Misra, who last week told the Financial Times that Uber should focus on more on core markets, including the U.S. (Drama!)

     

    Sponsored By …

     

    Founders, innovators, and key Fortune 1000 leaders together with policy and regulatory thinkers are gathering to navigate today’s shifting business landscape. How will AI impact jobs? How will escalating education and healthcare costs impact business? Our economy? What is the responsible role of business in our society? This is the discourse you have been waiting for. This is Shift ForumDon’t miss it. February 26-28 in SF. StrictlyVC readers use CODE: STRVC for a 20 percent discount.

     

    New Fundings

     

    Acellere, a nine-year-old, Frankfurt, Germany-based software technology company (we’re not sure of exactly what it does, even after reading its site), has raised $2.5 million in Series A funding led by Capnamic VenturesMore here.

     

    Barstool Sports, a 10-year-old, New York-based sports and lifestyle site geared toward young men, has raised $15 million in new funding from majority owner Chernin Group. Reportedly, the outfit will use the capital to create some new properties, including (potentially) branded alcohol or even its own bar. Bloomberg has more here.

     

    Bonti, a 2.5-year-old, Newport Beach, Ca.-based company that develops a Botox-like neurotoxin, has raised $15.5 million in Series C funding led by City Hill Ventures, a healthcare-focused firm based in San Diego. The Orange County Business Journal has more here.

     

    Cognovi Labs, a year-old, Dayton, Oh.-based SaaS service that tries to capture emotions in social media content, has raised $2.3 million in seed funding led byIkove Venture Partners, with participation from HBS Alumni Angels of Greater New York and Bossa Nova InvestimentosMore here.

     

    D-ID, a year-old, Tel Aviv, Israel-based startup whose deep-learning software protects identities from facial recognition technologies, has raised $4 million in seed funding. Pitango Venture Capital led the round, with participation from Y CombinatorFoundation CapitalFenox Venture CapitalMaverick Ventures, and unnamed angel investors. More here.

     

    Dremio, a 2.5-year-old, Mountain View, Ca.-based self-service data company, raised $25 million in Series B funding led by Norwest Venture Partners, with participation from Lightspeed Venture Partners and Redpoint VenturesMore here.

     

    Esports One, a year-old, New York-based data and analytics company focused on esports, has raised $3 million in seed funding co-led by XSeed Capital and Eniac Ventures, with participation from Crest Capital. Forbes has more here.

     

    Harbour BioMed, a 1.5-year-old, Shanghai, China-based developer of cancer therapeutics, has raised funding of an undisclosed amount of funding, including fromCDH Investments and Advantech CapitalMore here.

     

    Paytronix Systems, a 17-year-old, Newton, Mass.-based maker of loyalty, rewards, gift, mobile applications, and guest engagement analytics software, has raised $65 million in funding, including from Great Hill PartnersMore here.

     

    PrinterLogic, a 17-year-old, St. George, Ut.-based company that sells print management software and services, raised $15 million in Series A funding led byMercato PartnersMore here.

     

    Rainforest QA, a 5.5-year-old, San Francisco-based on-demand software QA service, has raised $25 million in Series B funding. Silicon Valley BankBessemer Venture PartnersSutter Hill CapitalRincon Ventures and Initialized Capitalall participated in the round. which brings the company’s total funding to roughly $42 million. TechCrunch has more here.

     

    SheerID, a 7.5-year-old, Eugene, Ore.-based verification technology company, has raised $18 million in Series B funding led by Centana Growth Partners, with participation from earlier backer Voyager Capital. GeekWire has more here.

     

    SmartHR, a Japan-based recruiting startup, has raised $13.3 million in Series B funding led by 500 Startups Japan. TechCrunch has more here.

     

    Springbuk, a 2.5-year-old, Indianapolis, In.-based company that makes employer-facing health intelligence software, has raised $20 million in Series B funding co-led by HealthQuest Capital and Echo Health Ventures, with participation from Lewis & Clark Ventures and Elevate VenturesMore here.

     

    Unravel Data a four-year-old, Menlo Park, Ca.-based maker of application performance management software, has raised $15 million in Series B funding led by GGV Capital, with participation from Menlo Ventures and Microsoft Ventures. The company has now raised $23 million altogether. TechCrunch has more here.

     

    Sponsored By . . .

     

    Treble is a PR agency with a unique value prop for both VC firms and startups: we expedite exits. We like to partner early, carve out brand differentiation and reverse engineer your brand into breaking news. Headquartered in Austin, with Silicon Valley roots, we specialize in emerging tech (SaaS, AI, IoT, cybersecurity, blockchain, crypto and more). Contact us here.

     

    New Funds

     

    David Barber, owner of the Blue Hill restaurant, farm, and hospitality consulting mecca and an active angel investor, has closed on $30 million in capital commitments for his first venture fund, called Almanac Investments. Barber will use the money to back companies that are developing products and services that improve the food and hospitality industries. TechCrunch has more here.

     

    Aspect Ventures, the three-year-old, San Francisco-based early stage firm, has finalized its second fund. The team, led by longtime VCs Jennifer Fonstad andTheresia Gouw, has closed on $181 million in capital commitments, up from the $150 million the firm raised for its debut effort. Among its newest limited parters:Melinda Gates and Cisco. TechCrunch has more here.

     

    IPOs

     

    The NYSE took a swipe today at its London rival in its battle to attract the foreign listing of shares in oil giant Saudi Aramco, saying it didn’t need to “bend over backwards” to lure what could be the world’s biggest IPO. Reuters has the story here.

     

    Exits

     

    Publicly traded ComScore, which tracks online viewership and box-office performance of Hollywood films, is exploring a potential sale, reports Bloomberg. The company, based in Reston, Va., apparently hasn’t held an annual meeting since 2015, amid an accounting probe into how it booked some types of revenue. More here.

     

    Paddle8, the seven-year-old, online art auctioneer, has had a rough 12 months, including the bankruptcy of its parent company, notes Dealbook. Now, it’s merging with Native, a Swiss technology and e-commerce company, and adopting the use of blockchain. More here.

     

    People

     

    Shawn Cheng has joined ConsenSys (founded by Ethereum cofounder Joe Lubin) as the head of partnerships and programs for its incubator, Labs. Cheng was previously a principal with Vayner/RSE.

     

    Uber has hired Bo Young Lee, the former global diversity and inclusion leader of insurance company Marsh LLC, to be its first-ever chief diversity officer.

     

    Jed Leidheiser has been promoted to vice president at the L.A.-based venture firm March Capital. Previously, Leidheiser focused on enterprise investing at Work-Bench Ventures in New York and before that, he was a senior manager at Accenture.

     

    The head of Facebook’s AI research is stepping down as it shakes up management.

     

    Elon Musk may have the boldest compensation plan in corporate history.

     

    Jobs

     

    Costanoa Ventures, an early-stage venture firm that invests primarily in enterprise tech, is looking to hire a full-time associate. The job is in sunny Palo Alto, Ca.

     

    Essential Reads

     

    Apple will release its $349 HomePod speaker on February 9th, though it starts taking pre-orders on Friday.

     

    Stripe just ended Bitcoin support because why bother if no one is going to spend theirs.

     

    Detours

     

    Vaping is bad.

     

    Tinder is also worse than you thought.

     

    Depression may have an evolutionary purpose.

     

    When your mom is “Tiger Mother” Amy Chua. (Love this.)

     

    Retail Therapy

     

    The Nike React Flyknit. Capable of bouncing off pillow-laden trampolines.

  • StrictlyVC: January 22, 2018

    Hey, hey, welcome back! Hope your day is going well (for a Monday).:)

     

    Top News

     

    Netflix hit a new milestone today; it’s worth more than $100 billion for the first time, after surprising industry observers with better-than-expected growth in its subscribers.

     

    SEC Chair Jay Clayton said this morning that the agency is paying special attention to public companies that change their name or business model in order to capitalize on blockchain-related hype.

     

    Sponsored By …

     

    Founders, innovators, and key Fortune 1000 leaders together with policy and regulatory thinkers are gathering to navigate today’s shifting business landscape. How will AI impact jobs? How will escalating education and healthcare costs impact business? Our economy? What is the responsible role of business in our society? This is the discourse you have been waiting for. This is Shift ForumDon’t miss it. February 26-28 in SF. StrictlyVC readers use CODE: STRVC for a 20 percent discount.

     

    Primary Data, Which Raised Roughly $100 Million from Investors, is Shutting Down

     

    A startup that’s operating in stealth mode raises an almost stunning amount of money before it releases a product. Investors write outsize checks to the outfit anyway because of the people involved in it, but before you know it, poof, the company is imploding, and the capital is gone.

     

    It’s a story that industry watchers know well at this point. Clinkle — the payments reward network that raised what was at the time the “largest seed round in Silicon Valley history,” then never released a product, remains the most widely mocked example of the genre. Another related flop: Airtime, a video chat service that was created by Napster founders Sean Parker and Shawn Fanning and launched with so much fanfare that you just knew it wasn’t going far.

     

    The latest example follows a similar trajectory. It’s not a consumer brand, though. Instead, Primary Data, a four-year-old, Los Gatos, Ca.-based data virtualization startup, is in the processing of shutting down after raising a whopping $100 million in equity and debt and attracting the likes of Apple cofounder Steve Wozniak to its management team.

     

    What happened? Neither the company nor the numerous investors who we’d reached out to over the weekend have responded to our requests for comment, but according to a trusted source close to the company, Primary Data’s problem from the outset was that its technology was never quite as compelling as it needed to be, given that it was trying to sell mission-critical software. (If it’s not up to snuff, data virtualization software can create challenges with manageability, usability, data quality and performance.)

     

    Certainly, the issue wasn’t one that Primary Data’s investors — including Accel Partners, Battery Ventures, Lightspeed Ventures Partners, and Pelion Venture Partners —  anticipated at the outset.

     

    With Primary Data, VCs were re-investing in a team that had brought them financial success with their previous startup: Fusion.io, a flash storage company that enjoyed a highly successful public offering in 2011. Indeed, when Fusion.io cofounders David Flynn and Rick White left in 2013, investors quickly provided the pair with $50 million to spin up their next thing. (It was separately becoming clear that Fusion.io was heavily reliant on two big customers. As those customers dialed back on their flash storage, Fusion.io’s share price began slipping, and it was acquired in 2014 by the chipmaker SanDisk.)

     

    We aren’t sure as of this writing why Primary Data’s software disappointed. What we do know is the company had brought aboard the founders’ longtime colleague, Lance Smith, as Primary Data’s new CEO in 2014. Smith had joined Fusion.io as its president and COO in July 2008 and spent six years with the company.

     

    Immediately upon joining Primary Data, Smith realized that its burn rate was out of control, particularly for a company with no revenue. But while the processes Smith instituted helped, they didn’t change the fact that Fortune 500 companies weren’t prepared to buy Primary Data’s technology — even after Wozniak joined the team shortly afterward as chief scientist. (Like Smith, Wozniak was also an alum of Fusion.io, where he’d been named chief scientist in 2009.)

     

    We’re told that the offerings from a Israel-based storage technology called Tonian that Primary Data acquired for undisclosed terms were expected to help address the problem but fell short. Meanwhile, a new version of Primary Data’s software that was rolled out in August apparently wasn’t compelling enough to bring aboard key customers, either.

     

    Primary Data’s lofty valuation out of the gate also apparently worked against the company. Though it announced funding this summer from insiders — it announced $20 million in follow-on funding and a $20 million line of credit that we understand was basically a bridge loan provided by its founders — we’re told that its backers more recently decided they’d rather shut down the company than re-invest on terms they found disagreeable.

     

    Specifically, they were asked to allow their preferred shares to be converted to common — and then reverse split 20:1. (In other words, management wanted to reduce the total number of shares outstanding and increase the share price by that same multiple.) The VCs said no. Soon afterward, the company’s website went blank.

     

    Reached last night via email, Wozniak said he hasn’t been “on top” of Primary Data’s day-to-day goings-on, largely owing to his public-speaking obligations.

     

    More here.

     

    New Fundings

     

    Apprente, a year-old, Palo Alto, Ca.-based AI technology company, has raised $4.75 million in seed funding, including from AME Cloud VenturesGreylock PartnersMorado VenturesPathbreaker Ventures, and StageOne VenturesMore here.

     

    Cargo, a two-year-old, New York-based startup that wants to let every ride-share driver sell convenience store offerings to his or her customers, has raised $5.5 million in seed funding from CRCM Ventures and eighteen94 capital, which is Kellogg’s venture capital fund. TechCrunch has more here.

     

    Maxi Mobility, a seven-year-old, Madrid, Spain-based startup behind ride-hailing app Cabify and Easy, has raised $160 million in funding at a post-money valuation of $1.4 billion. Investors include Rakuten CapitalTheVentureCityEndeavor CatalystGAT InvestmentsLiil Ventures, and WTI. TechCrunch has more here.

     

    Techcyte, a 3.5-year-old, Orem, Ut.-based cloud-based digital microscopy software platform, has raised $4.3 million in funding from unnamed investors. More here.

     

    VSORA, a two-year-old, Paris, France-based company that develops digital signal processing technology for chips used in 5G networks, has raised $1.7 million in Series A funding from Omnes Capital and Partech Ventures. Tech.eu has more here.

     

    Sponsored By . . .

     

    Treble is a PR agency with a unique value prop for both VC firms and startups: we expedite exits. We like to partner early, carve out brand differentiation and reverse engineer your brand into breaking news. Headquartered in Austin, with Silicon Valley roots, we specialize in emerging tech (SaaS, AI, IoT, cybersecurity, blockchain, crypto and more). Contact us here.

     

    New Funds

     

    There aren’t a lot of venture funds that are led by a single general partner who happens to be a woman, but Silicon Valley has a new one: Katalyst.Ventures, led by Susan Choe, who previously cofounded Visionnaire Ventures. According to an SEC filing, she has raised $34 million so far, too. TechCrunch has more here.

     

    Translink Capital, a Palo Alto, Calif.-based venture capital firm, has raised $107.5 million for its fourth fund, according to an SEC filing. More here.

     

    IPOs

     

    Chinese conglomerate Dalian Wanda Group has tapped three banks to work on a proposed IPO for its sports businesses, reports Reuters. More here.

     

    Exits

     

    Payroll provider ADP says it’s acquiring WorkMarket, a seven-year-old startup that specializes in workforce management software and operates across a wide range of employees and contractors. Terms aren’t being disclosed. WorkMarket had raised more than $50 million from investors, including Union Square Ventures andSpark Capital. TechCrunch has more here.

     

    Uber’s food delivery branch, Uber Eats, has made an acquisition that could see the company also producing more of the product it’s bringing to its customers. It’s gobbling up Ando, a two-year-old, delivery-only “restaurant” founded by Momofuku chef David Chang, for undisclosed terms. TechCrunch has more here.

     

    French healthcare group Sanofi has agreed to acquire the U.S.-based publicly traded hemophilia specialist Bioverativ for $11.6 billion in what amounts to Sanofi’s biggest deal in seven years. The move comes at a time of renewed interest by large drugmakers in smaller biotech firms. Reuters has more here.

     

    And, a little afield, but probably relevant for some of you: Rum giant Bacardi said today that it’s buying the maker of Patrón tequila for $5.1 billion. It’s one of the largest liquor deals in recent years. Fortune has more here.

     

    People

     

    Cryptocurrency trading platform Coinbase just announced that it’s hiring Tina Bhatnagar as VP of operations and technology. Bhatnagar comes from Twitter, where she was VP of operations and user services. She’ll oversee the company’s fast-growing (and often beleaguered) customer service division.

     

    Brian McClendon, a former engineering executive at startups and large tech companies, including Google and Uber, has announced his candidacy to run for the open seat of secretary of state of Kansas.

     

    The venture firm Osage University Partners has promoted four employees: Beth Grafstrom to VP of Finance, Claudia Dunnous to CFO, David Dorsey to Senior Associate, and Stephanie Stehman to Principal. More here.

     

    Sphero, the Boulder, Co.-based maker of those fun Star Wars droids, has laid off dozens of employees in a restructuring that will see it focus more on education.

     

    Jobs

     

    LaunchCapital, the seed stage venture firm, is looking to a hire an investment associate. (The firm is open to MBAs but you needn’t be one to apply.) The job is in New Haven, Ct. and involves frequent travel to New York and Boston.

     

    Data

     

    More than 10 percent of ICO proceeds to date have been stolen, according to new research by Ernst & Young.

     

    Essential Reads

     

    In the words of a concerned colleague of ours in Thailand: “Facebook is literally destroying Southeast Asia.”

     

    Investors are trying to buy secondary shares of Coinbase, but it doesn’t allow them to trade, according to Recode.

     

    The government of Shenzhen has banned the deployment in its city of bikes byBluegogo, the deckles bike-sharing start-up now controlled by China’s largest ride sharing firm Didi Chuxing. China Money Network has more the somewhat messy situation here.

     

    Detours

     

    Interesting. Help your kids study by having them pretend they’re on a YouTube show.

     

    How to apartment hunt from afar.

    Where to invest $10,000 right now.

     

    Retail Therapy

     

    One smart padlock.

     

  • StrictlyVC: January 19, 2018

    Happy Friday! [Biceps curls.] Hope you have a terrific weekend, everyone.

     

    Also, for those of you who were wondering, we have an event site that you can share, at long last(!). Thank you again NEAMoFo, and Anduin for your generous help with the evening, coming up Feb. 27.

     

    More soon. . .

     

    Top News

     

    Trump just signed into law a measure that reauthorizes powerful electronic surveillance tools for another six years.

     

    Amazon is increasing the monthly price for Prime from $10.99 to $12.99.

     

    Twitter revealed today that trolls tied to the Russian government spread far more disinformation during the 2016 U.S. presidential election than the company first reported.

     

    Sponsored By …

     

    Today’s StrictlyVC is sponsored by Siftery Track. As a reader, get free early access to track and easily optimize your team’s software expenditures. Simply sync your credit card or accounting system, and Siftery Track will automatically create beautiful visualizations of your historic and forecasted spend. You’ll also get alerts for new products, duplicate charges, unexpected increases in spend, and more.

     

    Moritz Sabotages Sequoia, Again

     

    Michael Moritz is legendary for many of the investments he has led throughout his long career with the venture firm Sequoia Capital. Among his biggest hits: Paypal, Zappos and Google.

     

    Moritz stepped away from managing the firm some time ago (now partner Roelof Botha is its primary steward) but continues to invest in startups and sit on boards. He’s a director at Instacart, Klarna, and Stripe, for example.

     

    Sequoia’s limited partners must be exceedingly happy that Moritz continues to play an active role in the firm, which is considered among the most successful in Silicon Valley. His mere presence on a board is a signaling event.

     

    Still, we’re beginning to wonder if Sequoia’s investment team might wish Moritz would also keep his mouth shut.

     

    Two years ago, Moritz attracted unwanted attention to Sequoia during a Bloomberg interview in which he was asked why Sequoia’s U.S. partnership hadn’t yet hired a female partner. Moritz told interviewer Emily Chang that the firm was looking for the right candidate but that it didn’t want to “lower its standards” simply to satisfy outsiders unhappy with its all-male team of investors.

     

    The answer quickly created a shit storm of negative criticism; smartly, less than a year later, the firm announced its first female U.S. investing partner, Jess Lee.

     

    Now Moritz, a skilled former journalist for Time who clearly still enjoys writing, has placed a target on Sequoia’s back once again by publishing a controversial opinion piece in the Financial Times, comparing Silicon Valley unfavorably to China. (That China is a de facto dictatorship doesn’t come up in his editorial.)

     

    To say it is extreme is an understatement.

     

    While Silicon Valley technology companies increasingly complain about striking the right work-life balance, Moritz notes approvingly that in China, top managers show up for work at 8 a.m. and frequently don’t leave until 10 p.m., sometimes seven days a week. In fact, he writes that it is “quite usual for the management of 10 and 15-year-old [China-based] companies to have working dinners followed by two or three meetings. If a Chinese company schedules tasks for the weekend, nobody complains about missing a Little League game or skipping a basketball outing with friends. Little wonder it is a common sight at a Chinese company to see many people with their heads resting on their desks taking a nap in the early afternoon.”

     

    Moritz (alas) continues on: “Many of these high-flyers only see their children — who are often raised by a grandmother or nanny — for a few minutes a day. There are even examples of husbands, eager to spend time with their wives, who travel with them on business trips as a way to maintain contact.”

     

    Then there’s this: “There is also a deep-rooted sense of frugality. You don’t see $700 office chairs or large flat panel computer screens at most of the leading technology companies. Instead, the furniture tends to be spartan and everyone works on laptop.”

     

    While I agree that Silicon Valley is changing in ways that are concerning (I’m particularly worried that people can no longer speak freely here), Moritz’s disdain for U.S. tech workers is not only shocking but impossibly out of touch.

     

    I’m sure my colleagues and many of you reading know of high numbers of startup employees who work their brains out, answering calls at 8 p.m. on a Saturday night, routinely taking two weeks of vacation or less, and receiving a large portion of their pay in the form of equity that will never be worth anything. They are living hand to mouth, often with more roommates than they would like, simply to be within commuting distance of the companies where they work.

     

    When was the last time Moritz spent 12 hours coding? How many family dinners did he have to miss? How many weekends did he have to give up to work on a new product release?

     

    More here.

     

     

    New Fundings

     

    Bolt Threads, a nine-year-old Portland, Ore.-based company that’s focused on producing spider silk on a large scale, secured $123 million in Series D funding led by the Scotland-based investment firm Baillie Gifford. The notable deal was announced the week before last (before SVC returned from vacation). More here.

     

    Floyd, a 3.5-year-old, Farmington Hills, Mi.-based online furniture company, has raised $5.6 million in Series A funding led by Beringea. Crain’s Detroit Business has more here.

     

    Highsnobiety, a 13-year-old, Berlin-based multimedia brand that caters to style-conscious men, has raised $8.5 million in funding led by Felix Capital. TechCrunch has more here.

     

    Pandion Therapeutics, a 1.5-year-old, Cambridge, Ma.-based developer of targeted immune modulator drugs, has raised $58 million in Series A funding fromPolaris PartnersRoche Venture Fund and Versant Ventures. FierceBiotech has more here.

     

    Defi Solutions, a five-year-old, Grapevine, Tex.-based loan origination software platform, has raised $55 million in Series C funding from Bain Capital VenturesMore here.

    Omni, a three-year-old, San Francisco-based on-demand storage company, has raised $25 million from Highland Capital Partners and Ripple execs Stefan Thomas and Chris Larsen. The WSJ has more here.

     

    Pandion Therapeutics, a newish, Cambridge, Ma.-based developer of targeted immune modulator drugs (it just emerged from stealth mode), has raised $58 million in Series A funding from Polaris PartnersRoche Venture Fund and Versant Ventures. FierceBiotech has more here.

     

    Restaurant365, a seven-year-old, Irvine, Ca.-based maker of restaurant-specific accounting, back office, and reporting software, has raised $20 million in Series A funding, including from Bessemer Venture PartnersMore here.

     

     

    New Funds

     

    Ring Capital, a brand-new VC firm based in Paris, has managed to close on $170 million in capital commitments for its debut fund (and might still be raising another $10 million or so, says TechCrunch). More here.

     

    Sponsored By . . .

     

    StrictlyVC is sponsored this week by Meld Valuation, a premiere independent valuation firm. We care about understanding the unique risk profile of your situation and most importantly making the quantitative reflect the qualitative story. Contact us today to learn about our services and how we can help you with everything from cap table management to complex valuation engagements.

     

    Exits

     

    Apple has made a quiet but interesting move in its longer-term strategy around courting more business from enterprises, reports TechCrunch. The company has hired the tech team — at least 18 people, including at least two co-founders, one of whom is the CEO — from a Mountain View, Ca.-based data science consulting firm called Silicon Valley Data Science. More here.

     

    TPG Growth, the middle market and growth equity firm, says it’s acquiring a majority stake in TRACE, a 15-year-old, multi-platform media and entertainment company centered around afro-urban music and entertainment. Evolution Mediaand Satya Capital also joined the round. The remaining stake will be owned by TRACE’s co-founder and management team. TechCrunch has more here.

     

    People

     

    Matt Galligan, who previously co-founded of Circa, SimpleGeo, & Socialthing, announced on Product Hunt today a new startup called Interchange, which he describes as an institutional-grade cryptocurrency portfolio management for funds and professionals. More here.

     

    Sapphire Ventures has promoted three employees — Rajeev DhamKevin Diestel and Anders Ranum — to partner. It also promoted Winter Mead to principal. More here.

     

    Tile, one of the best known item-tracking gadgets out there, has laid off some 30 people and reportedly froze the potential hires of another 10, TechCrunch has learned. The layoffs are reportedly due to disappointing sales over the holidays.

     

    Mark Zuckerberg did not buy a yacht, insists Facebook. However, you should still check out this yacht because it is amazing.

     

    Jobs

     

    Roku, the streaming TV company that went public last year, is looking to hire a VP of corporate development. The job is in Los Gatos, Ca.

     

    Essential Reads

     

    Whole Foods is facing a crush of food shortages that’s leading to empty shelves and furious customers, but frustrated employees say it’s not the fault of new owner Amazon.

     

    SoftBank still hasn’t committed to an investment in Wag, the app that helps people find dog walkers and was reported in talks last year to raise $100 million. If it eventually decides to pass, Wag will have to start looking for funding again reports The Information and worse, SoftBank may end up investing in a rival.

     

    The SEC sounded the alarm again yesterday about the safety of bitcoin-themed investments, telling the fund industry it wants answers to its concerns before endorsing more than a dozen proposed products based on cryptocurrencies.

     

    Detours

     

    Your emotional support duck is not welcome in seat 15C.

     

    What you (probably) don’t know about Versailles.

     

     

    Retail Therapy

     

    BuddyRider. For when your buddy is 30 pounds or less.

     


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