| Tuesday! |
| Top News |
| Amazon has been quietly selling facial recognition technology to police. |
| For Madrona Venture Group, Four IPOs in 20 Months, and a New Fund |
| Madrona Venture Group typically flies under the radar of Silicon Valley reporters, partly because it’s in Seattle. But the 23-year-old, early-stage venture firm has been having a pretty good run of late — success it just used to close its seventh fund with $300 million, the same amount it raised for its sixth fund in 2015. Among its investors: Bezos Expeditions, Vulcan Capital, and billionaire John Stanton, who is the chairman of the board of Trilogy International Partners (as well as the majority owner of the Major League Baseball team the Seattle Mariners). Madrona’s momentum didn’t build overnight. Four Madrona portfolio companies that have IPO’d over the last 20 months — the cloud software companies Smartsheet and Apptio, the real estate site Redfin, and the RFID chip maker Impinj — took on average 12 years to get into the hands of public market investors. More here. |
| New Fundings |
| Honor, a four-year-old, San Francisco-based home care company, has raised $50 million in Series C funding led by Naspers Ventures. MobiHealthNews has more here. Insightin Health, a two-year-old, Gaithersburg, Md.-based digital health platform that allows health plans to identify and acquire their best member prospects and engage them with personalized content, has raised $2 million in seed funding. Health Catalyst Capital Management led the round, with participation from Revolution’s Rise of the Rest seed fund, TEDCO, SaaS Ventures, TCP Ventures and angel investors. More here. Iora Health, a seven-year-old, Boston-based primary care provider that focuses on Medicare patients over the age of 65, has raised $100 million in Series E funding. Investors include .406 Ventures, Devonshire Investors, F-Prime Capital, Flare Capital Partners, GE Ventures, Humana, Khosla Ventures, Polaris Partners and Temasek. Xconomy has more here. LockState, a 13-year-old, Denver, Co.-based company whose subsidiary, RemoteLock, is a cloud platform for smart locks, has raised $5.8 million in a new funding. Iron Gate Capital led the round, and it was joined by Kozo Keikaku Engineering, Nelnet, and Service Provider Capital. VentureBeat has more here. Okera, a two-year-old, San Francisco-based startup that aims to simplify data governance within companies, just raised $12 million in Series A funding led by Bessemer Venture Partners, with participation from earlier investors Felicis Ventures and Capital One Growth Ventures. TechCrunch has more here. OM1, a three-year-old, Boston, Ma.-based health outcomes and technology company, has raised $21 million in Series B funding led by Polaris Partners, with participation from earlier backers General Catalyst and 7wire Ventures. More here. Pensa Systems, a two-year-old, Austin, Tex.-based company that gives retailers and manufacturers an automated view of what’s on retail shelves using autonomous vision capture, has raised $2.2 million in seed funding led by ATX Seed Ventures, with participation from ZX Ventures, Mick Mountz and Yechiam Yemini. More here. Quit Genius, a three-year-old, London-based cognitive therapy app that helps users quit smoking through content, including audio sessions and interactive exercises, has raised a fresh $1.1 million in funding that brings its seed round to $2 million. Village Global VC, Pioneer Fund, Arab Angel VC, and numerous individual investors joined the round. TechCrunch has more here. Real Vision, a four-year-old, Grand Cayman-based media platform for finance and business, has raised $10 million from what it vaguely describes as several prominent hedge fund managers and investors. The company has now raised $15 million altogether. TechCrunch has more here. SignalFx, a five-year-old, San Mateo, Ca.-based company that works with companies to solve the challenges they face in operating modern infrastructure technologies like AWS, Docker, Mesos, Kafka, and Cassandra, just raised $45 million in Series D funding. General Catalyst led the round, with participation from earlier investors Andreessen Horowitz and CRV. The company has now raised $103.5 million altogether. More here. StoreDot, a five-year-old, Herzeliya, Israel-based nanotechnology and fast charging energy-storage technology developer, has raised $20 million in strategic funding from BP Ventures. CNBC has more here. Tear Film Innovations, a four-year-old, Carlsbad Ca.-based company that makes a system to treat evaporative dry eye and related syndromes, has raised $8.5 million in Series B funding led by Visionary Ventures Fund and Bluestem Capital. More here. Terminal, a year-old, Kitchener, Ontario-based company that helps U.S. companies access Canadian tech talent and tax credits, has raised $10 million in Series A funding. The capital comes from Lightspeed Venture Partners, Thiel Capital, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Atomic, Craft Ventures and angel Jerry Yang. More here. Valimail, a three-year-old, San Francisco-based maker of an email trust platform aimed at stopping fraud, brand abuse, and data theft, has raised $25 million in Series B funding led by Tenaya Capital, with participation from earlier backersShasta Ventures, Flybridge Capital Partners, and Bloomberg Beta. TechCrunch has more here. Vervoe, a two-year-old, New York-based based advanced interviewing platform, has raised $3.5 million in venture funding led by the publicly traded jobs platform company Seek, with participation from numerous angel investors. More here. Vitamin Packs, a year-old, Seattle- and Greenwich, Ct.-based developer of personalized vitamins that are partitioned into individual packets, has raised an undisclosed amount of funding from L Catterton, the consumer-focused private equity firm. More here. |
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| New Funds |
| Renaissance Venture Capital Fund, a 10-year-old, Michigan-based venture capital fund-of-funds, raised $81 million of new capital for its third vehicle. Silicon Prairie News has more here. |
| Exits |
| Sony is spending more than $2 billion to take control of the major music publishing company EMI. CNN has more here. |
| People |
| Tesla has hired Snap vice president of monetization engineering, Stuart Bowers, to be its vice president of engineering. Paul Levine, most recently Trulia’s president and COO, has joined Sapphire Ventures as a partner focused on consumer tech companies. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg was able to cherry-pick the questions he wanted to answer from EU Parliament today, after it spent an hour taking turns rattling off queries in bulk, then giving him 30 minutes for batched responses. |
| Jobs |
| Tribeca Venture Partners is looking to hire an associate. The job is in New York. |
| Data |
| People really love streaming services. |
| Essential Reads |
| Facebook is full of could-be CEOs — but no one ever leaves. Instagram is adding a mute button but shhh, we won’t tell your unbearable friends. Did you know? Charging electric scooters is a cutthroat business |
| Detours |
| A bad lip reading of the royal wedding. How many objects can be juggled? “Cities of Lies” (trailer). The red phone box, a British icon, stages a comeback. |
| Retail Therapy |
| Mercedes Benz is going to make a second electric vehicle at the same plant that has spit out Smart cars for the last 20 years. |