StrictlyVC: May 11, 2018

Friday!

We’re at UC Berkeley at the moment, where we just talked  robotics investing with Renata Quintini of Lux Capital, Rob Coneybeer of Shasta Ventures and Chris Evdemon of Sinovation Ventures. We’re super short on time but more Monday.:)
Top News
Snapchat has starting rolling out its redesigned redesign.
Sponsored By . . .
Introducing: Investor CRM for iOS. When Foundersuite launched in 2016, it was the first CRM specifically tailored for the needs of startups raising capital. Every element… from the funnel design, to the “kanban board” UI, to the investor database… was built to help CEOs raise capital more efficiently. And it’s worked — since launch, customers have raised over $750M in Seed and VC. Now this same power fits in the palm of your hand with the all-new Investor CRM iPhone App, available for free in the App Store.
New Fundings
Forever Labs, a three-year-old, Ann Arbor, Mi.-based startup that extracts and stores stem cells, just raised $2 million in funding from Northwestern Mutual, Silicon Badia VenturesBabel Ventures, and Aaron Hirschhorn, founder and CEO of DogVacay. Fast Company has more here

Luminary Media, a new, New York- and Chicago-based podcasting company, has raised $40 million in funding led by New Enterprise Associates and unnamed other investors. The WSJ has more here.  

NewTV, a months-old, L.A.-based company that was co-created by Hollywood mogul Jeffrey Katzenberg and plans to produce short-form, high-end content for mobile devices, has reportedly raised roughly $800 million from numerous media giants, including 21st Century Fox and Warner Bros. Bloomberg has the story here.
Sponsored By . . .
It’s Friday (yeah!). You want to have a beer, but you’re staring at some convoluted Excel spreadsheet with too many vlookups. There’s definitely an error, but you don’t know where, and the board meeting is on Monday. Don’t let this ever happen again. Contact Mammoth Growth and make all your data aggregation and reporting challenges disappear – fast.
New Funds
CRV, the now 48-year-old venture firm formerly known as Charles River Ventures, has closed its  17th fund with $600 million in commitments, capital it intends to use to fund enterprise, consumer and bioengineering startups. More here.
IPOs
Avalara, a 14-year-old, Seattle-based cloud-based maker of sales tax and compliance software, filed today with the SEC to raise up to $150 million in an IPO. GeekWire has more here

Dropbox‘s reported its first quarter’s performance as a public company and it was . . . fine. The company beat analysts’ expectations. The stock dipped a tiny bit. We talked about this and more yesterday if you’re looking for a podcast about the week’s biggest tech news. 

Shares of Huya, a China-based company that’s reminiscent of Twitch here in the U.S., saw its shares jump 34 percent today, its first day of trading. Investors Business Daily has more here.
People
Scout Ventures, a New York City based early-stage venture capital firm, has added a new partner, Wes Blackwell. TechCrunch has more here

Robinhood’s founders, Vlad Tenev and Baiju Bhatt, are now “worth” $1 billion a piece on paper (though their families would say they are priceless, of course).
Essential Reads
Facebook is reportedly planning to launch its own cryptocurrency

Sounds like the electric scooter company Bird just pulled a fast one on its competitors. 

A look at who pays the most, and the least, in Silicon Valley.
Detours
Woman discovers her dog is a fox

Man allegedly uses a change of address form to move a UPS headquarters to his apartment.  

They’re coming to get us

Nope.
Retail Therapy
Shoebox safe.

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