| Happy Tuesday, all.:) |
| Top News |
| Uber is getting rid of forced arbitration for riders, drivers and other employees who want to file a legal complaint against the company over claims of sexual assault. |
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| Sarah Guo Breaks Through at Greylock, Becoming One of the First Female GPs in the Firm’s 53-Year History |
| Sarah Guo didn’t necessarily set out to become a venture capitalist. She certainly didn’t imagine she would become one of the first general partners at one of the oldest venture firms in the country. Yet Guo is both of these things today. Indeed, the venture firm Greylock Partners, which Guo joined five years ago as a principal, is announcing her promotion this morning. Greylock, which closed its current, 15th, fund with $1 billion in October 2016, now has 12 general partners altogether. For Guo, the appointment caps a lifetime spent in the world of startups. Before joining Greylock, she worked as an analyst at Goldman Sachs, where she led much of the bank’s coverage of business-to-business tech companies and advised public clients, including Twitter, Netflix, Zynga, and Nvidia. A graduate (for both her undergraduate degree and MBA) of the University of Pennsylvania, Guo also worked previously at Casa Systems, a 15-year-old tech company that develops a software-centric networking platform for cable and mobile service providers and that — in a twist that we think is pretty neat — was founded by her parents. (Her father, CEO Jerry Guo, took the company public earlier this year.) In a conversation earlier this week, Guo said that growing up around entrepreneurship gave her an “understanding of how difficult” starting a company truly is. It also occurred to her early on that “something related to company building was what I wanted to do in the future.” Guo also said that not much will change with her promotion. Broadly speaking, she focuses on B2B applications and infrastructure, cybersecurity, AI, AR, and healthcare. She already sits on the boards of several companies, including the security startup Obsidian, which was founded by ex-Cylance and Carbon Black execs last year and quickly raised $9.5 million led by Greylock. She said she does hope to mentor more up-and-coming investors like herself, however. Guo first became acquainted with Greylock through Aneel Bhusri, a partner at Greylock and the cofounder and CEO of the software giant Workday. The two talked occasionally when Guo was covering internet and software startups at Goldman, and he’d encouraged her to meet some of his venture partners, she said. “I came in, not necessarily ready to venture forever. But I’m now very excited about it obviously,” she added with a laugh. More here. |
| New Fundings |
| AnyDesk, a five-year-old, Stuttgart, Germany-based remote desktop offering, has raised $7.7 million in Series A funding led by EQT Ventures. More here. Auth0, a five-year-old, Bellevue, Wa.-based startup that helps developers with a set of APIs to build authentication into their applications, has raised $55 million in Series D funding led by Sapphire Ventures, with help from World Innovation Lab and earlier backers Bessemer Venture Partners, Trinity Ventures, Meritech Capital and K9 Ventures. The company has now raised $110 million altogether. TechCrunch has more here. Beautiful.ai, a two-year-old, San Francisco-based software company that automates the visual design process, has raised $11 million in Series B funding led by Trinity Ventures, with participation from earlier backers Shasta Ventures and First Round Capital. More here. BrainQ, a two-year-old, Israel-based startup that aims to treat stroke victims and those with spinal cord injuries with the help of a personalized electromagnetic treatment protocol, has raised $5.3 million atop the $3.5 million the company previously raised. The company’s investors include Qure Ventures, crowdfunding platform OurCrowd, Norma Investments, IT-Farm and a number of angel investors. TechCrunch has more here. Celsius Therapeutics, a new, Cambridge, Mass.-based company translating single-cell genomic insights into precision therapeutics for autoimmune diseases and cancer, has raised $65 million in Series A funding led by Third Rock Ventures, with participation from GV, Heritage Provider Network, Casdin Capital, andAlexandria Venture Investments. Forbes has more here. Choosy, a six-month-old, New York-based on-demand social shopping platform, has raised $5.4 million in seed funding led by New Enterprise Associates, with participation from Forerunner Ventures, Innovation Global Capital,Entrepreneurs Roundtable Accelerator, XFactor Ventures, Supernode Ventures, and Bryan Rosenblatt. More here. Good Eggs, a seven-year-old, San Francisco-based online market that delivers fresh groceries, has raised $50 million in funding led by Benchmark, with participation from Index Ventures, Obvious Ventures, S2G Ventures, DNS Capital, Uprising and Collaborative Fund. TechCrunch has more here. MemSQL, a seven-year-old, San Francisco-based scalable database for enterprises, has raised $30 million in Series D funding co-led by GV and Glynn Capital, with participation from earlier backers Accel, Caffeinated Capital, Data Collective, and IA Ventures. The company has now raised $110 million altogether. TechCrunch has more here. Metawave Corporation, a year-old, Palo Alto, Ca.-based startup at work on high-performance radar capable of 3D imaging and vehicle-to-vehicle communications, has raised $10 million in funding. Investors include DENSO, Toyota AI Ventures,Hyundai Motor Company, Asahi Glass, Motus Ventures, Khosla Ventures, Autotech Ventures, Bold Capital, SAIC Capital, Western Technology Investment and Alrai Capital. More here. PegEx, a six-year-old, Fitchburg, Wi.-based hazardous waste removal online platform, has raised $8 million in Series B funding led by Plymouth Growth Partners, with participation from Capital Midwest Fund and WISC Partners. More here. Prisma, a two-year-old Berlin- and San Francisco-based startup focused on GraphQL, has raised $4.5 million in seed funding led by Kleiner Perkins, with participation from numerous angel investors. TechCrunch has more here. Rael, a two-year-old, Buena Park, Ca.-based maker of organic feminine care products, just raised $2.1 million in pre-Series A funding co-led by SoftBank Ventures Korea and Thrive Market Ventures. More here. Saildrone, a four-year-old, Alameda, Ca.-based company that sells high-resolution ocean data that it collects via unmanned surface vehicles, has raised $60 million in Series B funding. Horizons Ventures led the round, and was joined byCapricorn’s Technology Impact Fund, Lux Capital, Social Capital, and The Schmidt Family Foundation. More here. Welcome to the Jungle, a four-year-old, Paris, France-based recruiting startup, has raised $8.4 million in fresh funding from XAnge, Bpifrance and Kima Ventures, along with earlier backers Jean-Paul Guisset and Michael Benabou. TechCrunch has more here. |
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| New Funds |
| New Enterprise Associates is reportedly trying to sell $1 billion in aging stakes by selling them to another firm it is looking to create. The WSJ has more here. OpenView, a Boston-based expansion-stage investor, has closed its fifth fund with just less than $300 million, shows a new SEC filing. Crunchbase News has a bit more here. AppDynamics cofounder Jyoti Bansal, and John Vrionis, a former VC with Lightspeed Venture Partners, have taken the wraps off their new seed-stage venture firm, Unusual Ventures, and its $160 million debut fund. As industry observers will remember, AppDynamics sold early last year for $3.7 billion to Cisco just as it was preparing to go public. TechCrunch has more here. |
| IPOs |
| PluralSight, a 14-year-old, Farmington, Ut.-based cloud-based learning platform, says it plans to raise $269.1 million in an IPO of 20.7 million shares priced between $12 to $14, up from a previously stated range of $10 to $12. The firm’s biggest outside shareholders include Insight Ventures Partners, which owns a whopping 53 percent of the company, followed by ICONIQ Capital, which owns 9.3 percent. Reuters has more here. |
| Exits |
| Eli Lilly is pulling out its checkbook again to acquire another cancer drug developer, this time inking a deal for early-stage company AurKa Pharma. Under the agreement announced yesterday, two-year-old, Montreal-based AurKa will sell for $110 million upfront and up to another $465 million more in milestone payments. Xconomy has more here. |
| People |
| Chad Boeding, a cofounder of ICONIQ Capital (best known for managing the money for numerous prominent Silicon Valley families), has left the 6.5-year-old outfit to launch a rival firm called EPIQ Capital Group. Both firms are based in San Francisco. More here. Ted Eliopoulos is stepping down as chief investment officer at CalPERS, the nation’s largest public pension, with more than $300 billon under management. Eliopoulous was named CIO of CalPERS four years ago but has spent the last 11 years with the organization. He says he’s now moving to New York to be closer to family. Beth Seidenberg joined Kleiner Perkins 13 years ago to focus on life sciences for the storied venture firm. Now, she’s heading off to start her own life sciences venture fund in L.A. where she lives. |
| Data |
| Since 2008, less than half of all-female founding teams have secured follow-on capital for their startups, compared more than half of all-male founding teams, according to PitchBook. Axios has more here. While women still represent only about 15 percent of decision makers at Silicon Valley’s major venture capital firms, another subset of the industry, corporate venture capital, has a higher proportion of women calling the shots, reports The Information. |
| Jobs |
| Greenspring Associates, a venture capital platform that invests in established and emerging venture capital fund managers, is looking to hire multiple analysts to help it analyze and make investments. The firm is based in Owings Mill, Md. |
| Essential Reads |
| A look at the “black hole” that’s sucking up Silicon Valley’s money. Act like a jerk, and Twitter will start limiting your tweets’ visibility. Snapchat just rolled out ads that viewers can’t skip. |
| Detours |
| So this time, a family realizes their pet dog might be a bear. RIP, Tom Wolfe. |
| Retail Therapy |
| Four cameras for following your furry friends. |