StrictlyVC: April 25, 2018

Wednesday! No feature story today. More tomorrow.:)
Top News
Perhaps you’ve noticed? The world’s most popular email service received a big overhaul today. 

So much for that user data scandal hitting Facebook’s bottom line. The company just reported its quarterly earnings, revealing that revenue is up a whopping 50 percent over this time last year.
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New Fundings
BigCommerce, a nine-year-old, Austin, Tex.-based company that powers e-commerce sites for Sony, Toyota and 60,000 other merchants, has raised $64 million in fresh funding led by Goldman Sachs. Other participants in the deal include General Catalyst, GGV Capital and Tenaya Capital. The company has now raised more than $200 million from investors. TechCrunch has more here. 

Castbox, a 2.5-year-old, San Francisco-based podcast app, has raised $13.5 million in Series B funding led by SIG China, with participation from earlier backers IDG Capital, Qiming Venture Partners, and GSR Ventures. The round brings the company’s total funding to $29.5 million. TechCrunch has more here. 

Catalyst, a 16-month-old, New York-based platform that integrates numerous, major SaaS services like Salesforce and Zendesk to create a unified dashboard for “customer success” data, has raised $2.4 million in funding led by True Ventures, with participation from Ludlow Ventures and Compound. TechCrunch has more here. 

Clark, a nearly three-year-old, Berlin and Frankfurt, Germany-based insurance robo-advisory firm, has raised $29 million in Series B funding co-led by Portag3 Ventures and White Star Capital, with participation from earlier investorsCoparion, Kulczyk Investments and Yabeo Capital. The company has now raised $45 million altogether. More here. 

Doctor on Demand, a five-year-old, San Francisco-based video telemedicine company, has raised $74 million in fresh funding co-led by Goldman Sachs andPrinceville Global, with participation from earlier backers, including Venrock,Shasta Ventures and Tenaya Capital. The company has now raised $160 million altogether. TechCrunch has more here. 

Fat Lama, a two-year-old, London-based peer-to-peer rental marketplace for almost anything, has raised $10 million in Series A funding led by Blossom Capital, with participation from Atomico and earlier backer Y Combinator. TechCrunch has more here. 

GitPrime, a three-year-old, Durango, Co.-based software engineering analytics platform, has raised $10.5 million in Series A funding led by OpenView, with participation from earlier investor Data Collective. More here. Hasura, a year-old, Bangalore- and San Francisco-based startup that’s developing managed Kubernetes software that’s designed to make life easier for developers (Kubernetes is a tool that helps companies that are running containers manage them), just raised $1.6 million in seed funding. Nexus Venture Partners led the round, with participation from GREE Ventures. TechCrunch has more here. 

Kidbox, a three-year-old, New York-based monthly subscription box filled with kids’ fashion items, has raised $15.3 million led by Canvas Ventures, with participation from earlier backers Firstime Ventures and HDS Capital, and from numerous individual investors. TechCrunch has more here. 

PlaySight Interactive, a five-year-old. Cresskill, N.J.-based startup that aims to make courts, gyms, fields and ice rinks “smart” by installing high-performance software and camera technology to record and analyze all sports action, has added $21 million to the $11 million in Series C funding that the company had raised in June of last year. New backers include SoftBank Ventures Korea and CE Ventures. More here. 

Pusher, a seven-year-old, London-based startup that provides tools and cloud infrastructure for developers to add real-time functionality to their apps (like push notifications), has raised $8 million in Series A funding. The round was led by Balderton Capital, with participation from Heavybit. TechCrunch has more here. 

Rocketrip, a five-year-old, New York-based startup that encourages employees to travel more cost effectively by giving them some of the savings they generate, has raised $15 million in Series C funding. GV led the round, participation from earlier backers Bessemer Venture Partners and Canaan Partners. TechCrunch has more here. 

Techtonic Group, a 12-year-old, Denver, Co.-based development services firm that operates an outsourced apprenticeship program to close skill gaps in high-tech fields, has raised $2 million in funding from University Ventures and Zoma Capital. TechCrunch has more here. 

Weimob, a five-year-old, Shanghai, China-based company that provides official account operation, training, marketing and other integrated supporting services for enterprises on WeChat, has raised $160 million in Series D funding. Backers include Tencent Double-Hundred Plan, Oriental Fortune Capital, Bohai Industrial Investment Fund Management Co., Chentao Capital, and PreIPO Capital. More here.
New Funds
Sinovation Ventures, one of China’s prominent funds (it’s helmed by former Google China head Kaifu Lee), has announced publicly that it is targeting $900 million for its newest fund, which will be its fourth vehicle and its largest to date. TechCrunch has more here.
IPOs
DocuSign just raised the price range of its pending IPO to between $26 and $28 per share, up from $24 to $26. With plans to sell 21.7 million shares, the IPO should raise $586 million and give DocuSign a fully diluted market value of $5 billion. GeekWire has more here.
Exits
Digg, the content aggregator more recently owned by Betaworks, has been sold to the little-known Boston-based ad-tech company called BuySellAds. According to Fast Company, it bought Digg’s assets, as well as its editorial and revenue teams, for an undisclosed amount. More here.
People
VC Bill Gurley would go long on Facebook and probably short Tesla, he said Monday night at a conference in New York. Here are some of his other picks. 

E-waste innovator Eric Lundgren has to spend 15 months in jail for producing tens of thousands of Windows restore disks intended to extend the lifespan of aging computers. (Argh.) More here and here. 

VC Peter Thiel has agreed not to bid on the assets of bankrupt Gawker Media in exchange for the web publisher’s promise to end an investigation into Thiel’s role in funding the lawsuit that led to its demise. Peter Thiel has separately agreed to take a meeting with entertainment mogul Kanye West, said Kanye West, in a series of seemingly unhinged tweets today.  

Uber remains mostly white and mostly male.
Jobs
E-cigarette maker JUUL Labs is looking to bring add a senior associate to its strategy and operations team. The job is in San Francisco.
Essential Reads
The U.S. startup visa, passed with much fanfare during the twilight of Barack Obama’s presidency, was supposed to draw thousands of foreign entrepreneurs. Instead, just 10 people have applied. Says one immigration lawyer who talked to Bloomberg, “It’s a waste of time and money.”
Detours
The company that Michael Cohen kept. 

Meet the new guru for the Goop set. 

The art of the feel. (In calling out Macron’s alleged dandruff, she said, Trump “did something called primate grooming.”)
Retail Therapy
There’s an Echo Dot for kids now. 

A newly completed “marvel” in Atherton, Ca., if you have $30 million to spare.

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