| Friday. Looks like we made it. Hope you have a most wonderful weekend, everyone, and week. We’ll see you Monday, August 13th, when we’re back from a quick vacation from our computer screen.:) |
| Top News |
| Peloton, a six-year-old, New York-based company that makes a $2,000 stationary bicycle and charges its sticky customer base $39 a month to stream live classes (it’s also launching a treadmill soon), has raised $500 million in fresh funding in a deal that values the company at $4 billion. TCV, a new investor, poured $150 million into the round, with TCV’s founding general partner Jay Hoag taking a board seat. The company says the round is likely its last before an IPO. The WSJ has more here. |
| Sponsored By . . . |
| Oracle just launched a Startup Growth Program in the U.S., a dedicated initiative to enable startups to scale with Oracle enterprise customers. If you are interested in the equity-free program, you can attend the final Ask Me Anything Webinar today, and apply here by next Tuesday, August 7th. |
| Foundry Group Has Quietly Raised a Big Fat Fund |
| Foundry Group, the Boulder, Co.-based venture firm cofounded 11 years ago by startup whisperer Brad Feld, has raised a $750 million seventh fund to target early-stage and growth-stage companies, as well as to invest in other venture funds. It sounds like — and is — a lot of money, though the firm notes that it encompasses all of its various investment strategies, whereas its last fund, a $500 million vehicle that it closed in 2016, was used to invest in other venture funds and growth-stage companies alone; Foundry was separately managing its early-stage bets in a different fund. Foundry was founded by Feld, Ryan McIntyre, Jason Mendelson, and Seth Levine — “four equal partners,” as Feld describes them. With this newest fund, he says, Foundry now has “seven equal partners.” More here. |
| New Fundings |
| Calcivis, a six-year-old, Edinburgh, Scotland-based medical device company focused on tooth decay, has raised $4.1 million in funding, including from Archangel Investors, Julz and the Scottish Investment Bank. More here. CureFit, a two-year-old, Bengaluru, India-headquartered health and fitness company that operates offline workout centers; a subscription-based food delivery business, a meditation app, and(!) a telemedicine platform, has raised $120 million in Series C funding. The company’s investors include IDG Ventures, Accel Partners and Kalaari Capital, as well as Chiratae Ventures and Oaktree Capital. The Economic Times has more here. Karuna Pharmaceuticals, a nine-year-old, Boston-based startup that’s funding a Phase II clinical trial for a schizophrenia drug, KarXT, that derives from an investigational therapy made by Eli Lilly & Co,, has closed on $42 million in Series A funding. Participants include ARCH Venture Partners, PureTech Health, the Wellcome Trust, Third Rock Ventures partner Steven Paul and others. MedCity News has more here. League, a four-year-old, Toronto, Canada-based company that provides a digital employee health benefits platform, has raised C$62 million (about $47.5 million) in new funding led by TELUS Ventures. Other participants in the round include Wittington Ventures and earlier backers OMERS, RBC Ventures, Real Ventures, Infinite Potential Group and BDC IT Venture Fund. MedCity News has more here. Stampli, a four-year-old, Mountain View, Ca.-based interactive invoice management platform for mid-size and large enterprises, has raised $6.7 million in Series A financing led by SignalFire, with participation from Bloomberg Beta, Hillsven Capital, and UpWest Labs. TechCrunch has more here. Worklete, a three-year-old, San Francisco-based digital health platform designed to prevent musculoskeletal injuries within labor-intensive workforces, has raised $6.5 million in Series A funding. Trinity Ventures led the round, with participation from Launch Capital, River Park Ventures, Aspect Ventures, Kapor Capital, and individual investors Dave Yarnold and Gokul Rajaram. More here. Xpeng Motors, a four-year-old, Guangzhou, China-based electric car startup, has raised 4 billion yuan ($587 million) in new funding that values the company at $3.6 billion. Primavera Capital Group led the round, and was joined by investors including Morningside Venture Capital and Xiaopeng He. Reuters has more here. |
| (Other) New Funds |
| Flipkart co-founder and former chief executive Sachin Bansal is considering raising a fund of $700 million to upwards of $1 billion for investing in startups, reports LiveMint. Bansal, who is set to make $1 billion in cash after leaving Flipkart in May, could contribute up to 40 percent of the fund, according to the outlet’s sources. More here. New York has a new venture fund in The Fund, a new, seed-stage vehicle that’s being funded solely by New York founders — 75 of whom have already pitched in a collective $3.2 million. The vehicle is headed up by four founders: Matthew Brimer, who cofounded the early co-working company General Assembly; Adam Carver of Battlestar Capital and AngelList; Katie Hunt of Warby Parker; and Jenny Fielding of Switch-Mobile. Forbes has more here. |
| Exits |
| Ride-share giant Didi Chuxing and Alibaba’s Ant Financial are in talks with Ofo, the China-based bike-sharing startup, for a joint buyout offer that could value Ofo at up to $2 billion, says Reuters. That’s slightly less than the company has raised over six rounds of funding. Also worth noting: Alibaba is already a major shareholder in the company. Rival Mobike was snapped up a few months ago in a $2.7 billion deal by Meituan-Dianping, the Chinese group buying website with links to Tencent, a backer of Mobike. More here. |
| People |
| Jeff Bezos, style icon. Tesla shares surged yesterday after Elon Musk apologized to Wall Street analysts over his behavior on the company’s previous conference call in May, when he told one analyst that “boring, bonehead questions are not cool.” (Musk had been asked about Tesla’s capital requirements at the time.) |
| Jobs |
| Salesforce Ventures is looking to hire a senior associate. The job is in San Francisco. |
| Essential Reads |
| How Google arrives at its names in maps is often mysterious, but, no question, it has people pissed off. Why Snap’s first “shareholder meeting” disappeared almost as soon as it began. Starbucks and Microsoft are teaming up with one of the world’s biggest exchange operators, Intercontinental Exchange, which just created a venture called Bakktdesigned to more tightly integrate digital currencies into global commerce. Muchmore here. |
| Detours |
| A math theory for why people hallucinate. The case for puns. Lance Armstrong and Ashley Olsen?! What is even going on. |
| Retail Therapy |
| Workplace essentials to cow your coworkers. |