Thursday! We’re so excited to see everyone who’s coming tonight!

We have some last-minute prep to do, so we’re sending out a short edition this morning; we’ll have more for you tomorrow.:)

Top News in the A.M.

Treak out the popcorn. Angered by Apple‘s decision to stop paying it billions of dollars in licensing fees for smartphone chips, Qualcomm is planning to ask a U.S. trade agency to ban the imports of iPhones, says Bloomberg. More here.

Imagination Technologies, a U.K.-based chip designer that Apple plans to ditch in 2019, is gearing up for a fight with the tech giant, too, says Ars Technica.

Sponsored By . . .

StrictlyVC is sponsored this week by the Bay Area firm Greenbrier. Scandal; injury; breach; litigation; presidential tweet. Crises can damage your corporate brand, personal reputation, employee morale and have lasting financial impacts. That’s why you need Greenbrier. We provide crisis planning, strategic advice and tactical execution to clients facing complex image, marketing, branding, media, legal and political challenges. With more than 30 years experience predicting, mitigating, managing and building resilience against reputational risks, Greenbrier can help.

Despite Setbacks, Soylent Laps Up $50M in New Funding

Soylent, a four-year-old, L.A.-based company that’s centered around what it calls a meal replacement drink, has taken its licks in recent years. But a group of investors is betting Soylent’s best days are ahead of the company; they just provided it with $50 million in fresh funding in a round that brings Soylent’s total funding to $74.5 million.

GV’s Andy Wheeler — who focuses in part on GV’s food and agriculture-related investments — led the round and joins Soylent’s board of directors as part of the deal. Other participants in the new funding include Tao Capital Partners and earlier backers Lerer Hippeau Ventures and Andreessen Horowitz.

Silicon Valley is notorious for funding companies that are the subject of ridicule. Even still, this new funding may take some industry watchers by surprise.

From the outset, Soylent has been an easy target for people who enjoy food. When Soylent CEO Rob Rhinehart appeared on comedian Stephen Colbert’s show a few years ago, Colbert asked, “What was the inspiration for this? Did you see someone in a coma with a feeding tube, and you thought, ‘I’ll have what he’s having‘?”

Customers lost their humor last year when they became violently ill after consuming Soylent’s powder mix and protein bars. The company, which determined the cause was algae-based ingredients, quickly reformulated the powder. It has yet to re-introduce its bars.

Just last week, Soylent received yet more unwanted attention after issuing a voluntary recall. The reason, said the company; it discovered that a small amount of milk product may have slipped into some batches of one of its powders that’s advertised as free of lactose and milk products.

Over the phone with us yesterday, Rhinehart said the company has learned from its mistakes and that it’s “gone a long way in improving our ingredient and supplier diligence.”

More here.

(Other) New Fundings

Crew, a 2.5-year-old, San Francisco-based communications platform for mobile workers, has raised $25 million across two previously unannounced rounds led by Greylock Partners. Forbes has more here.

Fastdata.io, a year-old, Santa Monica, Ca.-based data processing company that has yet to launch publicly, has raised $1.5 million in seed funding, including from Nvidia. More here.

Hi, happy Wednesday!

Top News in the A.M.

Apple reported its first quarter results yesterday and they were, meh. Revenue rose just 5 percent to $52.9 billion, and iPhones sales have been slipping. Bloomberg has more here.

Cloud communications company Twilio has also had better Tuesdays. Yesterday, it lost more than a quarter of its valuation in the first 20 minutes of after-hours trading after reporting a lower-than-expected outlook and “changes in the relationship” with its largest customer, Uber. SiliconAngle has more here.

Facebook says it’s now hiring 3,000 more people to monitor Facebook Live and keep murders, suicides and other horrifying content off the platform.

Sponsored By. . .

StrictlyVC is sponsored this week by the Bay Area firm Greenbrier. Scandal; injury; breach; litigation; presidential tweet. Crises can damage your corporate brand, personal reputation, employee morale and have lasting financial impacts. That’s why you need Greenbrier. We provide crisis planning, strategic advice and tactical execution to clients facing complex image, marketing, branding, media, legal and political challenges. With more than 30 years experience predicting, mitigating, managing and building resilience against reputational risks, Greenbrier can help.

How Softbank Became Tech’s Phantom Buyer

SoftBank is making quite a name for itself, but in ways it might not expect. Hardly a week has passed in 2017 when a headline hasn’t reported that SoftBank — the multinational conglomerate currently raising a stunning $100 billion fund — is in financial talks to invest in yet another tech company.

This week, SoftBank is reportedly in discussions to pour $1.4 billion into the India-based digital payments company Paytm. Last week, it was reported to be close to an investment in Improbable Worlds, a London-based virtual reality startup backed by Andreessen Horowitz. Last month, the reports centered on talks that SoftBank is having with coworking giant WeWork about a new round of funding that could reach into the billions of dollars. (So far, $300 million has come through.)

Even news of the ostensible closing of SoftBank’s new Vision Fund — which is unprecedented in its size — was leaked in February. The reality, say sources familiar with the fund, is that it could be another six to nine months before every i is dotted and t is crossed, given how many investors, countries and regulators are involved.

Certainly, some of these deals will happen as widely anticipated. SoftBank’s negotiations with Didi Chuxing, China’s ride-hailing giant, were leaked to the media nearly one month ago; the deal was made official this week.

Last October, it was reported that SoftBank was in talks with the satellite internet startup OneWeb about a strategic tie-up. SoftBank invested $1 billion in the company two months later. (In February, it invested another $1.7 billion into a merger that will see OneWeb combine with competitor Intelsat.)

Still, the internet is littered with stories of companies that were reportedly on the verge of sealing a deal with SoftBank and that did not. Last month, it scrapped a planned $100 million investment it was to make in renowned entrepeneur Andy Rubin’s newest startup. In 2014, it was reported to be eyeing an investment in the mobile giant Vodaphone Group; nothing came of it. Last year, at least a dozen outlets reported that SoftBank was in talks to buy a 20 percent stake in the beleaguered Indian handset maker Micromax Informatics for up to $1 billion. That deal never closed, and one source familiar with SoftBank’s thinking says it was “all bullshit. There was zero chance they  would even consider investing in Micromax.”

Talk Talk

For venture industry watchers, such leaks are highly unusual, to say the least. The typical modus operandi in VC land is to “keep quiet if you have an inside track on an investment, because you don’t want to create competition,” notes Tom Peters, the founding partner and managing director of the advisory services firm Inverness Advisors.

“Obviously, there are [venture] players that pay attention to each other and compete for deals and have relationships with the same founders, and they’d rather keep what they’re doing quiet until a deal is done.”

More here.

New Fundings

Abundant Robotics, a year-old, Hayward, Ca.-based company whose apple-picking robots could eventually be adapted to harvest other fruits, has raised $10 million in Series A funding led by GV, with participation from BayWa AG, Tellus Partners, and earlier backers Yamaha Motor Company, KPCB Edge and Comet Labs. TechCrunch has more here.

Agolo, a 4.5-year-old, New York-based company that aims to help companies fight information overload through its AI-powered summarization software, has raised $3.5 million in seed funding co-led by Microsoft Ventures and CRV, with participation from Point72 Ventures and Franklin Templeton. VentureBeat has more here.

AltSchool, the four-year-old, San Francisco-based experimental school operator that has also begun licensing its educational tools, just raised roughly $40 million in a new round of funding that could reach $80 million, shows an SEC filing. The company had previously raised just over $133 million from investors, including Andreessen Horowitz, First Round Capital and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Axios has more here.

Bonsai, a two-year-old, Berkeley, Ca.-based AI enterprise development startup, has raised raised $7.6 million in funding co-led by Microsoft Ventures and New Enterprise Associates, with participation from Samsung, Siemens, and ABB Technology Ventures. VentureBeat has more here.

Cerevance, a 1.5-year-old, Cambridge, Ma.-based neuroscience drug discovery company, has raised $5 million in funding from The Dementia Discovery Fund. More here.

Decibel Insight, a three-year-old, U.K.-based startup whose analytics aim to help large companies understand how customers interact with their sites and apps, has raised $9 million in Series A funding led by Eight Road Ventures, with participation from John Simon, via his Ventureforgood investment entity. TechCrunch has more here.

Fornova, a nine-year-old, Israel-based company that makes market intelligence software for the travel and retail markets, has raised $17 million in Series B funding. Deutsche Telekom Capital Partners led the round and was joined by Waypoint Capital and return backer JAL Ventures. TNooz has more here.

Lantern Pharma, a four-year-old, Dallas, Tex.-based biotechnology company at work on cancer therapeutics, has raised $3.7 million in Series A funding co-led by Bios Partners and GPG Ventures. More here.

Next Insurance, a year-old, Palo Alto, Ca.-based digital insurance company that partners with existing insurance providers and caters to small to medium businesses, has raised $29 million in Series A funding led by Munich Re/HSB Ventures, with participation from Markel and Nationwide. VentureBeat has more here.

PreparedHealth, a two-year-old, Chicago-based health engagement platform that aims to help patients recover more quickly outside of the hospital, has raised $4 million in funding led by Chicago Ventures, with participation from Pritzker Group Venture Capital, Beverly Capital, and Meridian Street Capital. Crain’s Chicago Business has more here.

Spindrift, a seven-year-old, Waltham, Ma.-based maker of fruit-flavored sparking waters, has raised $10 million in growth equity funding led by VMG Partners, with participation from Prolog Ventures and Karp Reilly. More here.

WuXi NextCODE, a four-year-old, Shanghai, China and Cambridge, Ma.-based contract genomics company, has raised $75 million in Series B funding. Yunfeng Capital and Temasek co-led the round, and were joined by Amgen Ventures and 3W Partners. Bloomberg has more here.

Yieldify, a five-year-old, London-based company that builds tools to increase conversions on sites and through email campaigns, has raised $6 million in new funding led by Binomial Ventures, with participation from Tom Singh, founder of the fashion chain New Look; and John Giuliani, CEO of the digital marketing company Conversant, who also joined the board. Earlier backers did not participate in the new round; Yieldify has now raised $20 million altogether. TechCrunch has more here.

New Funds

VC David Mount and his clean tech investing team at Kleiner Perkins are spinning out from the firm, shows an SEC filing. The new firm, called G2VP is looking to close its debut fund with $275 million and has already held a first close, says Term Sheet. Contact info is here if you’re looking to get in touch with them.

Longtime investors Maia Heymann and Nilanjana Bhowmik have created their own Boston-based venture firm, Converge, to focus on business-to-business opportunities. Heyman was most recently a general partner at Converge Venture Partners, a separate firm in Cambridge, Ma.; Bhowmik was a general partner at Longworth Venture Partners in Waltham. The Boston Globe has more here.

IPOs

ShotSpotter, a 22-year-old, Newark, Ca.-based public safety technology company that’s best known for its gunshot location systems (and that more recently renamed itself SST Inc.), has filed to go public, revealing initial plans to raise $34.5 million. Its biggest outside shareholder is Lauder Partners, which owns 37.4 percent of the company. According to Crunchbase, the company has raised roughly $68 million altogether over the years. More here.

Exits

Publicly traded Quotient Technology has agreed to acquire Crisp Mobile, a 16-year-old, New York-based mobile marketing and advertising company, for $53 million. According to Crunchbase, Crisp had raised $16 million in funding, including from Meritage Funds, Intel Capital and EDB Investments. The New York Business Journal has more here.

After shutting down its public cloud last year, Verizon is now selling its private cloud business to IBM. ZDNet has more here.

Whirlpool Corporation, the home appliance company, is acquiring Yummly, a Redwood City, Ca.-based food discovery platform for undisclosed terms. Yummly had raised $22.8 million from investors, including First Round Capital, Harrison Metal, Intel Capital, Physic Ventures, and Unilever Ventures. In a press release, Whirlpool explained away the seemingly strange move as a way to strengthen its ability to “bring purposeful, consumer-relevant innovations to market in the emerging IoT space.” More here.

Publicly traded, L.A.-based Spark Networks and privately held, Berlin-based Affinitas GmbH, are a match made in heaven, it seems. The two companies, both of which operate online dating platforms, are merging to create a new company that will be based in Berlin and known as Spark Networks SE. More here.

People

Jay Clayton received Senate approval yesterday to become the next SEC chair. We wrote in January why Clayton will likely be welcomed with open arms by Silicon Valley.

There’s been a shakeup in Etsy’s leadership, with CEO Chad Dickerson and CTO John Allspaw departing. TechCrunch has more here.

Happy Tuesday, everyone!

Top News in the A.M.

Microsoft just introduced a new, pricey laptop that has people excited.

A Word from Our Sponsor

StrictlyVC is sponsored this week by the Bay Area firm Greenbrier. Scandal; injury; breach; litigation; presidential tweet. Crises can damage your corporate brand, personal reputation, employee morale and have lasting financial impacts. That’s why you need Greenbrier. We provide crisis planning, strategic advice and tactical execution to clients facing complex image, marketing, branding, media, legal and political challenges. With more than 30 years experience predicting, mitigating, managing and building resilience against reputational risks, Greenbrier can help.

This Real Estate Focused VC Firm Just Raised $212M from Real Estate Giants

It isn’t easy to find white space in the world of venture capital, where every venture firm must have a specific vision to sell to the universities, pension funds and family offices that tend to fund them. But Brendan Wallace and business partner Brad Greiwe have a fresh pitch, as well as nontraditional investors. Their L.A.-based venture firm, Fifth Wall Ventures, invests in startups that are benefiting from changes in the real estate market, and they turned to the country’s largest real estate companies to fund it.

Just some of the heavy-hitting limited partners to contribute to the firm’s $212 million debut fund include CBRE, the brokerage and real estate services giant; Equity Residential, the largest owner of apartments in the U.S.; Hines, a major developer of office buildings in the U.S.; Lowe’s, the home improvement franchise; Host Hotels & Resorts, a real estate investment trust (REIT) spun off from Marriott in 1993; Lennar, one of the nation’s largest homebuilders; Macerich, which is the third largest mall operator in the U.S.; and the warehouse operator Prologis.

“Often, new solutions in real estate aren’t hard to build from a tech perspective,” explain Wallace. “You can put vendor management tools in the cloud.  You can demonstrate a positive ROI. What’s harder is go-to-market and distribution risk,” he continues. “If you can’t sell to one of the big [real estate] incumbents, it’s hard to succeed. A handful of these companies really dictate outcomes.”

Fifth Wall is betting its backers’ vested interest in its portfolio companies will naturally help them vault past competitors. Meanwhile, these industry giants are betting on the pair because of their own, somewhat unique backgrounds.

Wallace, who says he grew up in a real estate family, worked first an analyst at Goldman Sachs, then in real estate private equity at Blackstone Group after graduating from Princeton. After attending business school at Stanford, he says he invariably “caught the entrepreneurship bug.” First, along with some Stanford classmates, he cofounded  a recruitment data and analytics company called Identified that sold in 2014 to Workday for undisclosed terms. Again with classmates, he says he later cofounded (but never worked for) Cabify in Madrid, Spain, which is among the larger ride-share services in Latin America.

Greiwe also says he grew up in a real estate family.

More here.

New Fundings

Axonics Modulation Technologies, a four-year-old, Irvine, Ca.-based developer of a rechargeable medical system for the treatment of urinary and fecal dysfunction, has raised $14.5 million in a first close of its Series C round. Backers include Edmond de Rothschild Investment Partners, Advent Life Sciences, Cormorant Asset Management, Legend Capital, NeoMed Management, and a group of private individuals. More here.

Bitfusion, a 2.5-year-old, Austin, Tex.- and Sunnyvale, Ca.-based maker of AI infrastructure management software, has raised $5 million in Series A funding led by Vanedge Capital, with participation from Sierra Ventures and earlier backers Data Collective, Resonant VC, and Geekdom. TechCrunch has more here.

Dinova, an eight-year-old, John Creeks, Ga.-based online marketplace that connects expense account diners to restaurants nationwide, has raised $40 million in growth funding from the Charlotte, N.C.-based private equity firm Frontier Capital. More here.

ExoCoBio, a three-month-old South Korean developer of cosmeceuticals and biopharmaceuticals for skin and tissue regeneration, has raised $11 million in Series A funding from SBI Investment, Atinum Investment, ID Ventures, and Dt&Investment. More here.

Iconixx, a six-year-old, Austin, Tex.-based maker of sales compensation software, has raised $4.2 million in funding led by earlier backers Ballast Point Ventures, Harbert Growth Partners, S3 Ventures, and the Iconixx management team. More here.

Morty, a 1.5-year-old, New York-based mortgage marketplace that’s trying to provide borrowers with more options and transparency, has raised $3 million in funding led by Thrive Capital, with participation from SV Angel, Techstars, FJ Labs, Corigin Ventures, MetaProp and numerous angel investors. TechCrunch has more here.

One, an 11-year-old, Folson, Ca.-based company that develops cloud-based software for the insurance industry, has raised $15.5 million in financing co-led by American Family Ventures and Centana Growth Partners, with participation from earlier investors AXA Strategic Ventures and MassMutual Ventures. The company has now raised $52 million altogether. More here.

Orbital Insight, a four-year-old, Mountain View, Ca.-based geospatial analytics startup that we wrote about at some length last year, has raised $50 million in Series C funding led by Sequoia Capital. Envision Ventures, Balyasny Asset Management, Geodesic Capital, ITOCHU Corporation and Intellectus Partners also joined the round, along with earlier backers GV, Lux Capital and CME Ventures. The company has now raised $78.7 million altogether. More here.

Wavedash Games, a 1.5-year-old, Oakland, Ca.-based game development company, has raised $6 million in funding led by March Capital, with participation from Lowercase Capital, Advancit Capital, CourtsideVC, Machine Shop Ventures, Luma Labs, and Cherrytree VC. TechCrunch has more here.

New Funds

Moderne Ventures, a 1.5-year-old, Chicago-based early stage firm that writes checks of between $200,000 and $3 million to real estate, finance, insurance, and home services companies, has closed its debut fund with $33 million in commitments. The firm was founded by Constance Freedman, who was previously the head of strategic investments at the National Association of Realtors, where she launched and managed its investment arm, Second Century Ventures, and founded its accelerator program. More here.

Salesforce has committed to invest another $100 million via a fourth investment fund meant to help startups develop apps that work with its business software services. John Somorjai, executive vice president of corporate development and Salesforce Ventures, talked with the WSJ about the new pool here.

Exits

Airbnb has quietly acquired for undisclosed terms Deco Software, a two-year-old, San Francisco-based company that helps developers build mobile apps in less time. The company didn’t disclose outside funding if it raised any. TechCrunch has more here.

Cisco announced yesterday that it’s paying $610 million Viptela, a four-year-old company whose networking technology lets companies connect their branch offices to corporate data centers. Viptela was founded by former Cisco engineers and had raised raised nearly $110 million from investors. Fortune has more here.

Hi, everyone! Hope you had a great weekend. We’re still recovering from an almost comically sports-packed weekend. (We’d guess we’re not the only ones now tallying the weeks, prisoner-style, until the end of our kids’ baseball and soccer seasons.):)

Top News in the A.M.

President Trump intends to huddle with top technology executives in early June to discuss ways to modernize the federal government. The gathering is part of a new effort, called the American Technology Council, commissioned by Trump in an executive order signed this morning. Recode has more here.

A Word from Our Sponsor

StrictlyVC is sponsored this week by the Bay Area firm Greenbrier. Scandal; injury; breach; litigation; presidential tweet. Crises can damage your corporate brand, personal reputation, employee morale and have lasting financial impacts. That’s why you need Greenbrier. We provide crisis planning, strategic advice and tactical execution to clients facing complex image, marketing, branding, media, legal and political challenges. With more than 30 years experience predicting, mitigating, managing and building resilience against reputational risks, Greenbrier can help.

Peixe Urbano’s Cofounder Has a New Startup Backed by Benchmark

Between Thumbtack, Yelp, Angie’s List and Amazon, it wouldn’t appear that the world needs a new platform that matches customers with service professionals. That’s not the way Julio Vasconcellos sees it, clearly. Vasconcellos has spent the last year-plus working on a services platform called Prefer that relies exclusively on trusted referrals, replacing the wisdom of crowds with the wisdom of one’s friends when it comes to hiring a babysitter or accountant or housekeeper. In fact, if Prefer has its way, it will eventually become users’ go-to source for every service professional with whom people tend to have a close, ongoing relationship.

It’s an intimidatingly tall order, but Vasconcellos would seem to have the right experience. After graduating from Stanford with a business degree, the native Brazilian headed home to help grow Facebook’s reach in Brazil as a country manager. Eight months later, he was at work on his own startup, Peixe Urbano, Brazil’s first online daily deals company. In 2014, the company sold to China’s Baidu for undisclosed terms. Vasconcellos — who remains on its board — then joined early Peixe investor Benchmark as an entrepreneur-in-residence, where he was soon creating Prefer with venture partner Scott Belsky. (Belsky is Prefer’s executive chairman.)

We talked with Vasconcellos this morning about where the service is available, how it works and why he thinks it can pierce an already noisy landscape. Our chat has been edited for length.

You’ve been working on this for how long?

JV: We’ve been working on it for more than a year now, and we’ve been running a beta program in New York since the end of last year. The service is still only available in New York and that will remain the case for the foreseeable future. We want the network to grow organically and to grow the right way, and I think once we feel like we’ve gotten to the right size, we’ll think about [next steps].

Benchmark led your Series A, which you never announced. How much did you raise and when did that round close? And were there any other investors involved in the deal?

It closed almost a year ago, and there were other friends and seed funds that Scott and I knew from over the years [that participated].

Are you raising a Series B now? How many employees do you have?

JV: We’re not looking for any funding. We have 13 employees in New York and San Francisco. Our product lead was our first product manager at Peixe. Several people from our five-person engineering team are former mobile leads from Tumblr. Our founding designer was the first designer at Twitter. We have a lot of great people who’ve worked on marketplace and network products.

How does Prefer work?

From the perspective of the client, you join the platform, usually because you’re looking for someone where trust matters a lot. Once you join, you connect to friends of yours on the app — through your address book but also because we recommend friends you might know through your existing network. You in turn can recommend professionals you know.

Is this mandatory? Do you ask people to recommend a certain number of professionals as they’re joining Prefer?

More here.

New Fundings

Airwallex, a 1.5-year-old, Melbourne, Australia-based international payments company, has raised $13 million in Series A funding led by Tencent Holdings, with participation from Sequoia China and MasterCard. TechCrunch has more here.

Calysta, a six-year-old, Menlo Park, Ca.-based company that’s developing what it considers to be a sustainable, alternative feed ingredient for fish, livestock and pets, has raised $40 million in Series D funding led by Mitsui & Co., with participation from Temasek and earlier backers Cargill, the Municipal Employee Retirement System of Michigan, Walden Riverwood Ventures, Aqua-Spark and Pangaea Ventures. More here.

Cars45, a year-old, Lagos, Nigeria-based car buying service, has raised $5 million in Series A funding from Frontier Cars Group, a holding company whose backers include Balderton Capital, EchoVC, TPG Growth, and New Enterprise Associates. More here.

Catalia Health, a three-year-old, San Francisco-based patient care management company whose small in-home robots aim to support patients with chronic illness, has closed a seed extension round of $2.5 million. The financing was led by earlier backer Khosla Ventures, with participation from NewGen Capital, Macnica Ventures, Q Venture Partners Limited, InnoLinks Ventures, Abstract by Flight.VC, DeNA and Lucky Capital. The company had previously raised $1.25 million in seed funding in 2015. More here.

Convene, an eight-year-old, New York City-based workplace-as-a-service company that competes with WeWork, has raised $68 million in Series C funding led by earlier investor Brookfield Property Partners, with participation from Conversion Venture Capital  ArrowMark Partners, the Durst Organization, and Elysium Capital Management. Convene had previously raised $45 million in funding. Fortune has more here.

Head InfoTech, a 12-year-old, Hyderabad, India-based online gaming company, has raised $73.7 million in funding, including from Clairvest Group, says Fortune. More here.

Live.me, a Beijing, China-based live video streaming platform and subsidiary of publicly traded Cheetah Mobile, has raised $60 million in funding from investors that include Matrix Partners China, Evolution Media China, Gobi Partners, IDG Capital, and Welight Capital. Variety has more here.

Rubrik, a three-year-old, Palo Alto, Ca.-based cloud data management company, has raised $180 million in Series D funding led by Institutional Venture Partners, with participation from Lightspeed Venture Partners and Greylock Partners. (We’d let you know this deal was in the works a week or so ago, which is why it might sound familiar.) Rubrik has now raised $292 million altogether and is valued at $1.3 billion. More here.

Truck Alliance, a nine-year-old, Liaoning, China-based Uber-type service for trucks that’s known as Huochebang, is near an agreement to raise about $156 million led by Baidu Capital, says Bloomberg. More here.

Exits

Jive, a 16-year-old Palo Alto, Ca.-based community collaboration software company that went public in 2011, is being acquired by Wave Systems for $462 million. TechCrunch has more here.

Bridj, a three-year-old, Cambridge, Ma.-based on-demand bus service that catered to Boston-area customers, is winding down after funding talks with a major car company fell apart, says its CEO. Bridj had raised roughly $4 million in venture funding from investors including Accomplice, Atlas Ventures, FreshTracks Capital, and NextView Ventures.

People

Dubai-based business-tycoon Mohamed Alabbar is weighing buying into venture capital firms in the Middle East to help kick start his $1 billion technology fund.

Amazon’s Jeff Bezos is just a few billion dollars away from becoming the world’s richest person.

Friday!! [Handstand forward roll, front tuck, hitch kick.]

Fun new development for next Thursday night. Celebrated San Francisco chef Traci des Jardins is now coming, too, to talk about culinary leadership and food science alongside Impossible Foods CEO Pat Brown. Squeak!

Top News in the A.M.

Amazon shattered earnings expectations yesterday. Revenue hit $35.7 billion in the first quarter and the company said it remained profitable for the eighth straight quarter in a row.

Qualcomm just revealed that Apple is cutting off licensing payments related to the iPhone until their legal dispute is settled, forcing the chipmaker to lower forecasts it gave just last week and sending its shares tumbling this morning.

A Word from Our Sponsor . . .

StrictlyVC is sponsored today by the Bay Area firm Greenbrier. Scandal; injury; breach; litigation; presidential tweet. Crises can damage your corporate brand, personal reputation, employee morale and have lasting financial impacts. That’s why you need Greenbrier. We provide crisis planning, strategic advice and tactical execution to clients facing complex image, marketing, branding, media, legal and political challenges. With more than 30 years experience predicting, mitigating, managing and building resilience against reputational risks, Greenbrier can help.

For OpenGov, President Trump is a Boon for Business

OpenGov, a Redwood City, Ca., company whose software helps local governments keep transparent financial records, has been picking up speed in a variety of ways, and co-founder and CEO Zac Bookman traces some of that momentum to the election of Donald Trump as U.S. president.

“We had the best Q1 in company history. It’s typically a quiet quarter, and we blew the top off” our internal projections, says Bookman.

He adds that OpenGov has seen a 20 percent surge in job applicants, too.

It’s easy to see why Americans may be growing more focused about transparency than in recent years. In just one small example of how things have changed under the new administration, the White House announced earlier this month that it will no longer disclose the logs of those who visit, a meaningful shift in stance compared with the Obama administration, which disclosed more than 6 million related records.

White House communications director Michael Dubke told reporters that the decision owes to the “grave national security risks and privacy concerns of the hundreds of thousands of visitors annually.” (The previous administration also redacted some records on a case-by-case basis.)

The Trump administration has also removed the “Open Government” section from the White House website, and, more recently, Walter Shaub, director of the Office of Government Ethics, which advises federal agencies on how to ensure that employees comply with federal ethics laws, very publicly complained about the lack of transparency into potential conflicts of interest arising across the executive branch.

To hear Bookman tell it, local governments are largely moving in the opposite direction, partly in reaction to these White House moves, but also because it’s easier than ever to make public data seeable and searchable.

In fact, according to the five-year-old, 120-person company, there are now 1,400 public agencies across 47 states using OpenGov’s software, which helps governments create budgets and perform analytics, and allows residents to see what is being spent and where.

Bookman half-jokingly suggests that a third reason that city and state governments are embracing its services is peer pressure.

More here.

New Fundings

3D Robotics, an eight-year-old, Berkeley, Ca.-based early drone player turned aerial analytics play, has raised $53 million in Series D funding, including new equity funding and conversion of debt equity. Atlantic Bridge led the round, joined by Autodesk Forge Fund, True Ventures, Foundry Group, Mayfield and other undisclosed investors. TechCrunch has more here.

Avedro, a 10-year-old, Waltham, Ma.-based ophthalmic pharmaceutical and medical device company focused on corneal remodeling, has raised $42 million in equity and debt funding. The equity piece was led by HealthQuest Capital, with participation from earlier backers OrbiMed Advisors and InterWest Partners. The debt comes from an affiliate of OrbiMed. More here.

Cubigo, a six-year-old, Hasselt, Belgium-based interactive online care platform for senior people, enabling them to access products, services, and applications that hopefully enable them to live independently longer, has raised €4 million (4.4 million) in funding, including from veteran entrepreneur Urbain Vandeurzen and Transvision. More here.

Deep Sentinel, a 16-month-old, Pleasanton, Ca.-based home security startup, has raised $7.4 million in Series A funding led by Shasta Ventures, with participation from Bezos Expeditions, Lux Capital and UP2398. More here.

Domo, a six-year-old, American Fork, Ut.-based business software maker, has added $100 million in Series D funding to its coffers from earlier investor BlackRock, along with international family offices in Europe and Asia. The company, now valued at $2.3 billion, is looking to raise as much as $200 million as it holds off on an IPO, says Bloomberg. More here.

Epic Sciences, a nine-year-old, San Diego, Ca.-based developer of liquid biopsy tests to predict drug response in cancer patients, has raised $40 million in Series D funding led by Hermed Capital, with participation from Altos Capital Partners, Domain Associates, Genomic Health, Pagoda Investment, Reach Tone Limited, RMI Partners, Sabby Capital and VI Ventures. More here.

Mech Mocha, a 3.5-year-old, Bangalore-based mobile game maker, has raised $5 million in Series A funding led by Accel Partners and Shunwei Capital. The outlet Bizztor India has more here.

Me.me, a San Francisco, Ca.-based meme search engine, has raised $1.5 million in funding, including from Arjun Sethi from Social Capital, Peter Rojas from Betaworks Ventures, Danhua Capital, Mirarmar Ventures, and others. More here.

Data

Thursday!  Thanks very much to those of you who wrote in yesterday; we’ve given away the handful of tickets we had courtesy of Bullish, and our event is pretty much packed to the max at this point. For those who might be interested, in the “product you can’t do without” category, we had lots of votes for the iPhone, along with earbuds and a car tracking application called Automatic that sends reminders to move your car for street cleanings. (The company just sold to SiriusXM, incidentally. More on that below.) What the majority of readers wish would go away, a little to our surprise: Facebook and their Fitbits.

Top News in the A.M.

Apple appears to be working on a person-to-person payment service.

A Word from Our Sponsor . . .

StrictlyVC is sponsored today by the Bay Area firm Greenbrier. Scandal; injury; breach; litigation; presidential tweet. Crises can damage your corporate brand, personal reputation, employee morale and have lasting financial impacts. That’s why you need Greenbrier. We provide crisis planning, strategic advice and tactical execution to clients facing complex image, marketing, branding, media, legal and political challenges. With more than 30 years experience predicting, mitigating, managing and building resilience against reputational risks, Greenbrier can help.

Barry, Dave, Bob: More Startups ‘Humanize’ Their Offerings

Naming companies is a daunting task, as anyone who does it for a living can attest. “It’s difficult to criticize a name,” says S.B. Master, a Berkeley, Ca.-based founder who has launched two naming companies in her career, one of which is nearly 30 years old. “From choosing a name, to getting a team to agree to it, to clearing that name from a trademark and URL and social media standpoint — it’s a pain.” By “triangulating around these difficulties, people end up someplace, which is better than no place,” she adds sympathetically.

Interestingly, the place where a growing number of startups seems to be landing is on a person’s name that may have nothing to do with their business.

This week, for example, a year-old, L.A.-based company called Dave raised $3 million for an app that predicts upcoming expenses and alerts users if their bank balance is low. Its founders say that people often ask friends or family for short-term loans to cover shortfalls; they want their customers to think of their startup as a pal who’s also looking out for their best interests.

Another company, U.K.-based Hibob (for “Hi, Bob”), raised $17.5 million in Series A funding this week for its cloud-based HR and benefits platform.

Other companies have taken the same tack in recent years, including an app called Barry that lets users save full-length webpages, the tech-focused health insurance company Oscar and Clara, the virtual assistant company, whose name probably makes the most sense of the bunch, given that assistants have historically been actual people.

Indeed, assigning tech startups human names dates back at least five years. Alex Friedman, president of Ruckus Marketing in New York, points to Casper, the mattress and bedding company whose brand evokes the friendly ghost who helps keep his friends safe while they sleep. There’s also Harry’s, the shaving gear company whose name evokes, of course, hair. And founders have named companies after themselves for as long as anyone can remember, in tech or otherwise. The online education company Lynda.com is named after co-founder Lynda Weinman. Philz Coffee is named after founder Phil Jaber.

Still, assigning companies human names simply to make tech products more approachable is a  newer trend, and it’s poised to escalate quickly in the age of artificial intelligence. Branding experts can’t quite agree on whether it’s an approach to emulate or avoid, either.

More here.

New Fundings

HealthVerity, a three-year-old, Philadelphia, Pa.-based health IT Platform, has raised $10 million in Series B funding co-led by earlier investors Flare Capital Partners and Greycroft Partners, with participation from Foresite Capital. Technically Philly has more here.

Lynk, a four-year-old, Hong Kong-based data-driven curation and knowledge sharing platform that connects enterprise users to experts in a variety of fields, has raised $4 million in Series A funding round led by Hong Leong Group. Other investors in the round include include Cyberport, Zhuhai Da Heng Qin and CRE Venture Capital. DealStreetAsia has more here.

Propel, a three-year-old, Brooklyn, N.Y.-based startup that helps food stamp recipients manage their benefits, has raised $4 million in seed funding from Andreessen Horowitz, Omidyar Network, Kevin Durant’s The Durant Company and Max Levchin’s SciFi VC, as well as from previous investors Jay Borenstein, WinWin and the Financial Solutions Lab at the Center for Financial Services Innovation. TechCrunch has more here.

Riskmethods, a 2.5-year-old, Munich, Germany-based SaaS company focused on discovering risk exposure in supply chains, has raised €13.5 million ($14.7 million) in Series B funding. Digital+ Partners led the round, with participation from earlier backers EQT Ventures, Senovo and Bayern Capital. EU Startups has more here.

UiPath, a five-year-old, London-based company whose apps help businesses automate repetitive functions like processing insurance claims or employee onboarding, has raised $30 million in Series A funding. The round was majority led by Accel Partners, with participation from Earlybird, Credo Ventures and Seedcamp. TechCrunch has more here.

WorkMarket, a nearly seven-year-old, New York-based freelancer-management startup, has raised $25 million in fresh funding from Accenture and Foundry Group. The company has now raised $56 million altogether. The WSJ has more here.

Zeta Global, a 10-year-old, New York-based marketing tech company, has raised $140 million in Series F funding ($115 million of it in equity and $25 million in debt). Backers include GPI Capital, as well as funds sponsored by Franklin Square Capital Partners. TechCrunch has more here.

New Funds

Origin Ventures, an early-stage, 18-year-old venture firm based in Chicago, has closed its fourth fund with $80 million in commitments. The fund is twice as big as the firm’s third fund, which closed in 2013. The sum is even more meaningful when compared to the outfit’s first two funds. One of those was a $1.5 million fund that cofounder Steve Miller pooled together with a cofounder in 1999 to try his hand at venture. (He was previously involved with his family’s office products business, Quill Corp., which sold to Staples in 1998.)  A second fund, with outside funding, closed in 2005 with $15.5 million. More here.

Warburg Pincus, the private equity firm where former Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner is president, is targeting $1.6 billion for its first fund dedicated to financial services, reports Bloomberg, which says the firm aims to close on the capital in December. More here.

Exits

SiriusXM has acquired Automatic, the six-year-old, San Francisco-based smart driving assistant company (it makes the Automatic Pro and Automatic Lite connected car OBD-II port accessories). Sirius is paying a little more than $100 million, says its CFO. Automatic’s brand will remain separate. According to Crunchbase, Automatic had raised $24 million from investors, including Y Combinator, Lumia Capital, USAA, Comcast Ventures, and Anthemis Group, among others. TechCrunch has more here.

People

According to Reuters, Tesla executive Klaus Grohmann was ousted last month after a clash with CEO Elon Musk over the strategy of Grohmann’s firm, which Tesla had acquired in November. The carmaker is counting on Grohmann Engineering’s automation and engineering expertise to help it ramp up production to 500,000 cars per year by 2018, but Musk was reportedly pressuring Grohmann to focus on Tesla at the expense of legacy clients like Daimler and BMW.

Naspers Ventures has brought aboard Martin Tschopp as its COO, based in San Francisco. Tschopp joins the firm from Kiva.org, where as CEO for just less than two years and, before that a VP and GM with eBay.

Mark Zuckerberg is definitely not planning to run for president. Probably.

Jobs

Samsung is looking to hire an investment director for its Catalyst Fund, which is focused on components and subsystems. The job is in Menlo Park, Ca.

Also Sponsored By . . .

StrictlyVC is also sponsored today by the Financial Solutions Lab at the Center for Financial Services Innovation, which is closing applications for its next class today. Financial Solutions Lab was the first investor in Propel, which is today announcing $4 million in seed funding led by Andreessen Horowitz. (See “New Fundings.”) Note that winning companies receive $250,000 in capital, plus access to incredible fintech resources. If you’re a fintech innovator with a solution that can help more Americans achieve financial health — or know someone who is — apply today. Seriously. Applications are due today.

Essential Reads

A new version of Apple Music is coming.

Alphabet could bring home $47 billion in cash if President Donald Trump’s tax plan goes through.

Speaking of the president’s tax plan: we’d written about this late last year, when Trump was promising his campaign supporters a 15 percent business tax for members of partnerships and other pass-through business entities. The experts we’d spoken with at the time warned that the tax is so low that pretty much every business in the U.S. would look to restructure itself into a pass-through business if it came to fruition, quickly destroying the economy. (Kansas passed a similar law in 2012. Now the head coach of the University of Kansas’ men’s basketball team — who reportedly makes more than $2.75 million a year — pays almost no income tax because he receives the bulk of his annual compensation through an LLC.) One tax specialist had noted that the rate was “not remotely practical when you consider the deficit challenges going forward” and called Trump’s plan “little more than an aspirational blueprint.” That sounds right to us, but stay tuned.

Detours

Meet the woman who took Bill O’ Reilly down.

Why most middle school friendships are doomed to fall apart.

How a misquotation is born.

Retail Therapy

White socks are back, Scooter.

Wednesday!

Bullish, a StrictlyVC sponsor and self-described creative venture firm (that we’re seeing recently received a nice write-up in Adweek, btw), has five last tickets to release to readers who want to join them — and us — next Thursday night at NextWorld Capital in San Francisco.

To land them, just let us know in one or two sentences: what’s one consumer product you can’t do without, and one you wish would go away. (We’d probably say our iPhone for obvious reasons, and tropical shirts, also for obvious reasons, though Brad Feld pulls these off quite nicely.)

Our other partners in the evening include: Square1Bank, the bank for entrepreneurs and investors; L.A.-based Rosebud Communications, PR for growing number of startups, and Haystack, seed-stage capital for innovators. Thank you all — we’re excited for this.:)

Top News in the A.M.

Instagram says it’s growing faster than ever and now has 700 million users.

Ride-hailing giant Didi Chuxing is reportedly nearing an agreement to raise $5 billion to $6 billion in a deal that would make it the most valuable startup in China.

And, it’s now official: the ride-hailing app Gett has acquired New York rival Juno. The price? $200 million. More here.

A Word from Our Sponsor . . .

This week’s StrictlyVC is brought to you by Greenbrier. Scandal; injury; breach; litigation; presidential tweet. Crises can damage your corporate brand, personal reputation, employee morale and have lasting financial impacts. That’s why you need Greenbrier. We provide crisis planning, strategic advice and tactical execution to clients facing complex image, marketing, branding, media, legal and political challenges. With more than 30 years experience predicting, mitigating, managing and building resilience against reputational risks, Greenbrier can help.

New Fundings

AIdoc Medical, a year-old, Israel-based company that has built what it describes as an AI that can spot visual abnormalities in medical scans, has raised $7 million in funding led by TLV Partners, with participation from previous investors, including Magma Ventures and Emerge. TechCrunch has more here.

EverFi, a nine-year-old, Washington, D.C.-based education software startup, has raised $190 million in funding — one of the biggest ed tech rounds ever — including $120 million from Rise, the social impact investing fund established last year by TPG Growth. Other investors include TPG Growth (which kicked in another $30 million), MainStreet Advisors, and numerous earlier investors, including Jeff Bezos and Eric Schmidt. Fortune has more here.

Huddly, a three-year-old, Oslo, Norway-based startup whose camera for remote company meetings (or huddles) aims to help managers glean better data from those meetings, has raised $10 million in Series B funding from undisclosed sources. More here.

Ivalua, a 17-year-old, Redwood City, Ca.-based web-based spend management software company, has raised $70 million in growth equity minority funding from KKR, with participation from earlier investors, including Ardian. SiliconAngle has more here.

MarcoPolo Learning, a 4.5-year-old, New York-based mobile-based early childhood education company, has raised $8.5 million in a first round of funding led by Boat Rocker Ventures, a division of Boat Rocker Media. Other investors in the round include Horizons Ventures, Seedcamp, the managing partners of DST Global, and numerous other individual investors. VentureBeat has more here.

OverOps, a six-year-old, San Francisco-based application reliability and log intelligence company, has raised $30 million in Series C funding led by earlier investor Lightspeed Venture Partners, with participation from another earlier investor, Menlo Ventures. The company has now raised $52 million altogether. TechCrunch has more here.

Oyo Rooms, a four-year-old, Gurgaon, India-based online hotel booking platform, is reportedly closing a $250 million round that will value the company at $850 million, led by earlier investor Softbank Group. Earlier investors aren’t pleased, reportedly. The Economic Times has more here.

Quovo, a seven-year-old, New York-based company behind an API management toolkit for individual financial managers and financial services companies, has raised $10 million in new funding from F-Prime Capital and Napier Park Global. TechCrunch has more here.

Robinhood, the four-year-old, Palo Alto, Ca.-based stock brokerage that allows customers to buy and sell U.S. stocks and ETFs without paying commission fees, has raised $110 million in Series C funding at a $1.3 billion valuation. DST Global led the round, with participation from Thrive Capital, Greenoaks Capital, and earlier backers New Enterprise Associates, Index Ventures, and Ribbit Capital. TechCrunch has more here.

Tmon, a seven-year-old, Seoul-based mobile e-commerce company whose verticals include a grocery shopping service and travel meta-search platform, has raised $115 million in funding from Simone Investment Managers, with participation from earlier shareholders, including a number of sovereign wealth funds. VentureBeat has more here.

Token, a two-year-old, San Francisco-based startup that helps financial services companies comply with EU regulations, has raised $15.7 million in Series A funding from EQT Ventures, Octopus Ventures and OP Financial Group. Tech.eu has more here.

Token (yes, a separate Token), a year-old, New York-based gift recommendation app that offers end-to-end service for customers, has raised $2.5 million in seed funding led by Upfront Ventures, with participation from Slow Ventures and Human Ventures. TechCrunch has more here.

Twistlock, a two-year-old, San Francisco-based maker of cloud container security software, has raised $17 million in Series B funding led by Polaris Partners, with participation from earlier backers YL Ventures, TenEleven and Rally Ventures. More here.

WiBotic, a two-year-old, Seattle-based company that develops wireless charging platforms specifically for robots, has raised $2.5 million in seed funding led by Tsing Capital, with participation from Comet Labs, Digi Labs, and earlier investors W Fund, WRF Capital and Wisemont Capital. More here.

Exits

Gojimo, a eight-year-old, London-based app that helps U.K. high school students prepare for exams, has been acquired by Telegraph Media Group, the publisher of The Daily Telegraph and The Sunday Telegraph newspapers. Terms of the deal remain undisclosed; Gojimo is believed to have raised roughly $3 million, including from Index Ventures and JamJar Investments. TechCrunch has more here.

Infor, a privately held software company in San Francisco, has acquired Birst, a San Francisco-based business intelligence platform. Financial terms weren’t disclosed, but the price has been pegged at $100 million. According to Crunchbase, Birst had raised $129 million in funding across three rounds, including from Sequoia Capital, DAG Ventures, Wellington Management, and Northgate Capital. Infor has raised at least $2.5 billion. Fortune has more here.

Spotify has acquired the Brooklyn-based blockchain startup Mediachain, whose team will join the company’s office in New York where they will work on developing better technology for connecting artists and other rights holders with the tracks hosted on Spotify’s service. Terms aren’t being disclosed. According to Crunchbase, Mediachain had raised just $1.5 million in seed funding, including from Andreessen Horowitz and Union Square Ventures. More here.

Vantiv, a Cincinnati, Oh.-based publicly traded payment tech company, is acquiring Paymetric, a 19-year-old, Roswell, Ga.-based electronic payments software company. Terms aren’t being disclosed. According to Crunchbase, Paymetric had raised $30.5 million from investors, including Palomar Ventures, Francisco Partners, and Austin Ventures. ZDNet has more here.

People

Sergey Brin is (of course!) working on his own secret airship. (Remember, this has been a fascination for the Google cofounder since way back when.)

Advisors representing Gawker Media are now exploring whether they can bring a lawsuit against Peter Thiel.

Investor Chris Sacca says he’s getting out the startup investing game.

Ivanka Trump tells Axios that she plans to launch a fund that will benefit female entrepreneurs around the globe, and she says the capital will come from both countries and companies.

Uber is being sued by the widow of an engineer who killed himself after working for the company for just five months. Her lawyer says his death was prompted by work-related stress.

The cast and creators of HBO’s “Silicon Valley” explain how they keep the show fresh.

Settlements

Palantir Technologies will pay $1.66 million to settle a hiring discrimination complaint brought by the U.S. Labor Department. The payment is designed to cover back wages, stock options and other compensation for Asian engineers who applied for, but didn’t receive jobs at the data analytics startup. The company has also agreed to extend job offers to eight people who were unfairly denied jobs, according to a statement by the Labor Department. Bloomberg has the story here.

Also Sponsored By . . .

StrictlyVC is also sponsored today by the Financial Solutions Lab at the Center for Financial Services Innovation, which is accepting applications for its next class until tomorrow, April 27. “Winning companies receive $250,000 in capital, plus access to incredible fintech resources. If you’re a fintech innovator with a solution that can help more Americans achieve financial health — or know someone who is — apply today.  Applications are due tomorrow, so hurry!

Essential Reads

Uber is making it easier to see your rider rating.

Silicon Valley hires the most alumni of these 10 universities, and none of them are in the Ivy League.

A Waymo filing relating to its suit against Uber has revealed details about its lidar technology. You can learn more here.

Detours

Hi, everyone, hope you’re having a great Tuesday. (No column today; we’re in the middle of a few things but none is done quite yet.)

Top News in the A.M.

The Nasdaq composite just passed 6000 for the first time ever.

Gett — the taxi-hailing service backed by $300 million from Volkswagen — is acquiring New York-based Juno, one of the latest ride-hailing upstarts, at a valuation of around $250 million, according to TechCrunch. More here.

Uber plans to test self-driving cars within three years.

A Word from Our Sponsor . . .

Today’s StrictlyVC is being brought to you by Greenbrier: Scandal; injury; breach; litigation; presidential tweet. Crises can damage your corporate brand, personal reputation, employee morale and have lasting financial impacts. That’s why you need Greenbrier. We provide crisis planning, strategic advice and tactical execution to clients facing complex image, marketing, branding, media, legal and political challenges. With more than 30 years experience predicting, mitigating, managing and building resilience against reputational risks, Greenbrier can help.

New Fundings

AltheaDx, an eight-year-old, San Diego-based commercial stage molecular diagnostics company specializing in the field of personalized medicine, has raised $27 million in Series D funding from undisclosed sources. More here.

Babylon Health, a three-year-old, U.K.-based mobile healthcare consultation app, has raised $60 million in Series B funding from the Sawairis, an Egyptian billionaire business family, earlier backers AB Kinnevik and Hoxton Ventures, and Deepmind founders Demis Hassabis and Mustafa Suleyman. The Financial Times has more here.

Dave, a year-old, L.A.-based U.S.-only app that predicts upcoming expenses and alerts users if their bank balance is low, has raised $3 million in seed funding, including from billionaire Mark Cuban, SV Angel, The Chernin Group, and numerous others. TechCrunch has more here.

Doc Halo, a seven-year-old, Cincinnati, Oh.-based real-time communications platform for physicians, nurses and other hospital staff, has raised $11 million in Series A funding led by Bain Capital Ventures, with participation from Refinery Ventures. The round marks the company’s first outside funding. More here.

Faasos Food Services, a 13-year-old, Pune, India-based fast-food restaurant chain and online food delivery company, has raised $6.2 million from earlier backers Lightbox Ventures, Sequoia Capital India, RuNet South Asia and RB Investments. Times of India has more here.

Forge Therapeutics, a 2.5-year-old, San Diego-based company that’s developing antibiotics to treat multi-drug resistant bacteria, has raised $15 million in Series A funding led by MagnaSci Ventures, with participation from Evotec AG, Alexandria Venture Investments, MP Healthcare Venture Management, Red Apple Group and WS Investments. More here.

Hibob, a year-old, U.K.-based cloud-based HR and benefits platform, has raised $17.5 million in Series A funding led by Battery Ventures, with participation from Eight Roads Ventures, Arbor Ventures, and earlier backer Bessemer Venture Partners, which led the company’s seed round of $7.5 million last June. More here.

Kidfresh, a 10-year-old, New York-based maker of all-natural frozen kids meals, has raised $10 million in Series B funding led by Monogram Capital Partners, with participation from earlier investors Emil Capital Partners and AccelFoods. More here.

Kuiu, a six-year-old, Dixon, Ca.-based maker of high-end hunting gear, has raised $50 million from the San Francisco-based private equity firm Main Post Partners in exchange for a 23 percent stake in its business. Fortune has more here.

LoveCrafts, a four-year-old, London-based e-commerce marketplace and social network for home crafters, has raised $33 million in Series C funding led by Scottish Equity Partners, with participation from earlier backers Highland Europe and Balderton Capital Partners. TechCrunch has more here.

Nutriati, a four-year-old, Richmond, Va.-based food tech company focused on the research, development and commercialization of plant-based food ingredients, has raised $8 million in funding led by London-based Tate & Lyle Ventures, which invests in food sciences and enabling technologies. Powerplant Ventures, an L.A.-based venture firm that invests in companies leveraging the power of plants to deliver better nutrition, joined the round, too, along with a Richmond, Va., firm called NRV, and San Francisco-based Blueberry Ventures. More here.

POPxo, a three-year-old, New Delhi, India-based digital publication targeted at young women, has raised $3.1 million in Series B funding round led by GREE Ventures, with participation from earlier backers Kalaari Capital and IDG Ventures India. The Economic Times has more here.

Prescient, a 4.5-year-old, Arvada, Co.-based company that says it can plan, design, manufacture, build and operate multi-unit buildings far less expensively than has been possible previously, has raised $40 million in Series D funding from undisclosed sources at a pre-money valuation of $475 million, it says. The company has now raised $80 million altogether. More here.

RapidSOS, a five-year-old, New York-based emergency technology startup, has raised $14 million in Series A funding led by Highland Capital Partners, with participation from Motorola Solutions Venture Capital, A3Ventures (a subsidiary of AAA), The Westly Group, Two Sigma Ventures, Responder Ventures, and several notable angel investors, including three former FCC chairs (Tom Wheeler, Julius Genachowski, and Dennis Patrick). More here.

Rubrik, a three-year-old, Palo Alto, Ca.-based data management software company, is reportedly raising between $150 million and $200 million at a $1 billion valuation. The company previously raised around $110 million from investors, including Khosla Ventures, Greylock Partners and Lightspeed Venture Partners. TechCrunch has the story here.

Science37, a 2.5-year-old, L.A.-based platform that enables qualified patients to participate in clinical studies from the comfort of their own home, has raised $29 million in Series C funding led by Glynn Capital, with participation from GV and prior investors Lux Capital, Redmile Group, dRx Capital, and Sanofi Ventures. The company has now raised $70 million altogether. TechCrunch has more here.

Two Pore Guys, a 6.5-year-old. Santa Cruz, Ca.-based molecule biosensor developer, has raised $24.5 million in Series A funding led by Khosla Ventures. FierceBiotech has more here.

New Funds

SeedPlus, an early-stage, Singapore-based investment firm backed by Singapore’s Jungle Ventures, has closed its debut fund with roughly $18 million in commitments from limited partners that include Cisco and Eight Roads Ventures, the investment arm of Fidelity. According to TechCrunch, the outfit is looking to invest in up to six deals per year, with check sizes that range from around $350,000 to $725,000. More here.

The state of Ohio has a new accelerator in Fintech71, which will welcome is inaugural class in September. The outfit is backed by KeyBank, Progressive, The Kroger Co., Grange Insurance, Huntington, FifthThird, First Federal Lakewood, Root Insurance, and Safelite, among others. More here.

IPOs

Cloudera‘s IPO pricing might not be as bad as it looks.

Exits

Suitcase, a three-year-old, Antwerp, Belgium-based fashion e-commerce startup that specializes in menswear, has been acquired by fashion house FNG. Terms for the deal weren’t disclosed. It isn’t clear that Suitcase raised outside funding. Tech.eu has more here.

TeleSign Corp., a  12-year-old, Marina del Rey, Ca.-based company that makes security software that works to prevent online fraud,  is being acquired for $230 million by BICS, an international communications company. TeleSign will continue to operate independently as a wholly owned subsidiary of BICS. TeleSign had raised $78 million from investors over the years, including Telstra Ventures, Summit Partners, March Capital Partners and Adams Street Partners. More here.

Unilever, the giant food and consumer product company, is buying Sir Kensington’s, a seven-year-old, New York-based small condiment maker whose ketchup, mustard and mayonnaise is sold in Whole Foods, among other places. Terms aren’t being disclosed. The company was funded by the founders’ friends and family, along with Verlinvest, a Belgian family investment firm. Dealbook has more here.

Billionaire Bernard Arnault’s LVMH is buying Christian Dior for $13 billion.

Also Sponsored By . . .

Today’s StrictlyVC is also sponsored today by the Financial Solutions Lab at the Center for Financial Services Innovation, which is accepting applications for its next class until April 27. Winning companies receive $250,000 in capital, plus access to incredible fintech resources. If you’re a fintech innovator with a solution that can help more Americans achieve financial health — or know someone who is — apply today.  Applications are due April 27, so hurry!

People

Marissa Mayer will make a stunning $186 million off Yahoo’s sale to Verizon.

Home-sharing service Airbnb has assembled an in-house humanitarian team headed by designer Cameron Sinclair to help it achieve its aim of providing temporary housing for 100,000 people within five years.

Jobs

Blumberg Capital is looking to hire an analyst, a role that’s “intended as a two-year position.” The job is in San Francisco.

Draper Associates is also looking to hire an analyst for a similar role. The job is in Menlo Park, Ca. Email karen@dfj.com to apply.

Essential Reads

Yesterday, Apple announced that it’s reducing the commissions it pays on apps and in-app purchases from 7 percent to 2.5 percent, effective May 1st. The move strikes many as a bit harsh.

Google‘s self-driving cars have followed Uber to Arizona.

Why Juicero‘s press is so expensive.

Huddle, an 11-year-old, London-based content collaboration platform that has raised roughly $90 million from investors, needs to raise at least $5 million by month’s end, reports Business Insider.

Detours

How to become well-connected.

Three high school bullies describe their reigns of terror.

54 stocks deep in the, ahem, weeds.

Retail Therapy

Shipping container pools.

Hi, happy Monday, everyone; hope you had a terrific weekend. We’re so excited to see many of you next Thursday. Later this week, we’ll be giving away one last set of tickets, courtesy of the creative agency Bullish, so stay tuned.:)

Top News in the A.M.

Amazon has created a 12-person team focused on driverless-vehicle technology, reports the WSJ. For now, say its sources, Amazon doesn’t intend to build a fleet of vehicles; instead, the team serves as an in-house think tank to figure out how to leverage autonomous vehicles. More here.

Square just acquired the team from the struggling social app Yik Yak. Bloomberg has the story.

Ofo, the three-year-old, Beijing-based dockless bike-share company, has raised yet more funding, just two months after closing a $450 million round. (Ofo investor Atomico suggested to us in a recent, related story, that this was coming.) The undisclosed amount of funding comes from Alibaba’s financial arm, Ant Financial, which will be partnering with Ofo on e-payments. TechCrunch has more here.

A Word from Our Sponsor . . .

Today’s StrictlyVC is brought to you by Greenbrier. Its message to readers: Scandal; injury; breach; litigation; presidential tweet. Crises can damage your corporate brand, personal reputation, employee morale and have lasting financial impacts. That’s why you need Greenbrier. We provide crisis planning, strategic advice and tactical execution to clients facing complex image, marketing, branding, media, legal and political challenges. With more than 30 years experience predicting, mitigating, managing and building resilience against reputational risks, Greenbrier can help.

This Startup Sells Hotel Rooms by the Minute, and JetBlue Just Backed It

Recharge, a two-year-old, San Francisco-based company whose app enables users to book a stay in a hotel for just 66 cents a minute, is opening in select New York hotels today, after testing its service over the last year in San Francisco.

The company has also raised an undisclosed amount of funding from JetBlue Technology Ventures, the corporate venture arm of airline JetBlue, which began providing seed funding to early-stage tech, travel, and hospitality startups roughly a year ago.

Recharge’s earlier investors include Binary Capital, Floodgate, entrepreneur Rick Marini, Eniac VC, Expansion VC, investors Scott and Cyan Banister and early Google engineer Harry Cheung. They’d provided the company with $2.3 million in seed funding as of June of last year.

Recharge is an interesting startup, one that we’ve half-kiddingly compared in the past with hotels that have long rented rooms by the hour for illicit activities. Given the caliber of the hotels with which it’s partnering, however, it’s seemingly time to rethink its place in the world. In New York, customers can now book rooms at The Pierre, W New York, The Knickerbocker and 1 Hotel Central. In San Francisco, it has struck partnerships with 15 properties, from the downtown Hilton hotel to the five-star hotel Taj Campton Place.

According to cofounder and CEO Emmanuel Bamfo, Recharge, which has been used by at least 25,000 people to date, has several primary use cases. These include business travelers who may want to freshen up before heading into a meeting; families who might be doing some shopping and dining and need a place to relax; and local commuters who don’t have the time or inclination to ride home between work and evening engagements.

Recharge’s partnership with JetBlue is purely financial for now, but Bamfo sees a day, too, when airlines use Recharge as a perk to offer for first-class travelers. You can imagine the business traveler whose flight is delayed being given a Recharge voucher, for example.

According to the 10-person company, the average stay is two hours. Customers of its most expensive hotels pay $3 a minute for the service, money that it shares with the hotel. Bamfo says the revenue split depends on the day and the time and the time of month. (Hotels are always trying to maximize RevPAR, or the revenue pulled in from each available room.)

More here.

New Fundings

Farmdrop, a five-year-old, London-based, farmer-friendly online grocery platform, has raised £7 million (nearly $9 million) in Series A funding led by Atomico. Other backers include SwiftKey CEO Jon Reynolds, Hoopla founder Alex Chesterman, and Asos cofounder Quentin Griffiths. TechCrunch has more here.

IceKredit, a two-year-old, Shanghai, China-based credit assessment platform that evaluates credit for both individuals and small and mid-size businesses, has raised $16 million in Series A funding led by China Creation Ventures with participation from Lingfeng Capital. China Money Network has more here.

Improbable Worlds, a five-year-old, London-based virtual reality startup focused on creating hyper-realistic simulations, is reportedly nearly a deal to land backing from Softbank Group. The company had previously raised $20 million in funding, led by Andreessen Horowitz. Bloomberg has more here.

MJ Freeway, a nearly seven-year-old, Denver, Co.-based company that makes business management software for the cannabis industry, has raised $3 million in fresh Series B funding from earlier backers Roger McNamee and Tao Capital Partners. It brings the previously closed round to $11 million altogether. More here.

Quora, an eight-year-old, Mountain View, Ca.-based online Q&A site, has raised $85 million in fresh funding at a roughly $1.8 billion valuation. Collaborative Fund and Y Combinator’s Continuity Fund co-led the round. Other investors include Tiger Global Management, Matrix Partners, and Facebook cofounder Dustin Moskovitz. According to Crunchbase, the company has now raised $226 million altogether from investors. TechCrunch has more here.

Hope you have a dynamite weekend, everyone.

Before we go, a quick reminder that our next Insider evening is suddenly less than two weeks away(!). Thanks very much to our generous sponsors Square 1 Bank, Rosebud Communications, Bullish and (newly) Haystack. (Semil Shah is insisting on buying drinks for all of you.) We couldn’t organize these evenings without your support.

We’re also very excited about our amazing speaker line-up, including The RealReal’s Julie Wainwright, Impossible Foods’s Pat Brown, Confide’s Jon Brod, and Lightspeed Venture Partners’s Ravi Mhatre and Barry Eggers, with help from our colleague over at TechCrunch, Emerging Tech Editor Lora Kolodny. There’s a lot to fascinating stuff to discuss — e-commerce, food tech, secure messaging, trends in VC. And we couldn’t ask for nicer place to do it than NextWorld Capital‘s beautiful home in San Francisco. (Thank you, NextWorld!)

We’re hitting capacity, but the more the merrier at these parties; if you’d like to come, you can still grab a seat here.

Top News in the A.M.

In addition to phones, self-driving cars, and augmented reality, Apple may be looking to get into the business of satellites, too.

A Midas List VC on the Problem with the Midas List

Earlier this week, Forbes published its annual Midas List, which showcases who the outlet believes to be the top investors in the world. Stuart Peterson of Artis Ventures was on the list — very far down, behind the many VCs whose names are instantly recognizable to founders, like Chris Sacca and Peter Fenton and Mary Meeker.

The way Peterson tells it, that’s the way he likes it. There’s a reason he didn’t put his name on the door 17 years ago when he left the hedge fund Cypress Funds in L.A. to open his own firm in Silicon Valley. “I’m not crazy about being the center of attention. I never wanted to do this by myself. I think you can be successful if you’re part of a successful team.”

Certainly, Artis has seen its share of success. In one of its most notable deals, it invested in YouTube before the company sold to Google in 2006. A family connection seemingly helped. At the time, Artis employed David Lamond, son of renowned VC Pierre Lamond, who spent 30 years with Sequoia Capital, another early YouTube investor.

Artis also invested alongside Sequoia in a number of other deals, including Aruba Networks, which went public in 2007 and was acquired by Hewlett Packard Enterprise in 2015. Lamond left Artis in 2012 to form his own firm.

Artis — whose newer bets include troubled Juicero , along with  Zenrez, a company that sells pricing technology and tools to fitness studios — more recently made a killing off the sale of cancer drug developer Stemcentrix to AbbVie last year for $10.2 billion.

Artis led Stemcentrix’s Series A round and Peterson sat on the company’s board. In fact, though Founders Fund has received much attention for leading the company’s Series B round (it reportedly returned $1.4 billion off a $300 million investment in the company), Peterson says Artis made “just less than $1 billion” from its $35 million investment in the company.

Asked how he landed the deal, Peterson points to a 2010 event to unveil a social app’s fund created by Kleiner Perkins. At the time, famed VC John Doerr was hosting a panel that included Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, and Doerr asked Bezos what advice he had for investors and founders.

“If I were coming out of school today,” said Bezos, “I think I would be very passionate about genetic engineering, synthetic life, I think these are incredible areas . . .”

Doerr, confused by the change of subject, interrupted, “On social networks?”

“No,” Bezos continued, “I’m talking about test tubes and engineering real biological organisms to solve clean energy and a whole bunch of interest issues.”

“I was blown away by that,” says Peterson, whose firm has invested roughly a billion dollars since its inception, some of it in life sciences companies, and much of it via special purpose vehicles whose funding has come from CEOs, CFOs, actors and sports stars. Says Peterson, “They love the idea of access, and they’ve added a tremendous amount of value to companies that we’ve funded.”

So where is Peterson — who plans to raise a fund for Artis next year — getting his leads today? We asked him that and much more in a wide-ranging conversation yesterday. Here’s an outtake:

More here.

A Word from Our Sponsor

Today’s StrictlyVC comes to you courtesy of Treble, a data-centric PR agency specializing in securing targeted media coverage for an array of global venture-backed startups and venture capital firms, including Mercury Fund, Next Coast Ventures and Signal Peak Ventures. With its proprietary scalable retainer model and team of experienced PR professionals and ex-journalists, Treble operates as a newsroom by reverse-engineering thought leaders into the news cycle. The founder of Treble penned a piece on how startups can capitalize on PR to accelerate the path to exit. Check out media coverage highlights here.

New Fundings

Consortia Health, a three-year-old, Austin, Tex.-based health care company helping physicians treat patients with pelvic disorders, has raised $2 million in funding led by Ponil Ventures, with participation from Golden Seeds and Belle Michigan. More here.

DreamCheaper, a two-year-old, Berlin-based startup that helps users re-book their hotel reservations for less money, has raised €1.5 million ($1.6 million) in funding, including from Holtzbrinck Ventures and TruVenturo. Tnooz has more here.

Groq, a new, Bay Area-based stealth next-gen computing startup led by former members of Google’s Tensor Processing Unit (which is itself at work on new computer processors that squeeze more power onto less silicon), have raised $10.3 million in funding from Social Capital. (For what it’s worth, a highly regarded founder and investor told us last night that, on the spectrum of “real” to “bullsh_t” investments, investment in chips capable of powering AI is “real.”) CNBC has the scoop here.

Pitchy, a 3.5-year-old, Paris-based personalized video company, raised €4 million ($4.3 million) in funding from Seventure Partners and the Fonds Ambition Numérique. Tech.eu has more here.

SenseTime, a three-year-old, Beijing, China-based facial recognition tech developer, has raised $60 million in funding led by Sailing Capital. China Money Network has more here.

Swingvy, a year-old, Singapore-based HR platform for small and mid-size businesses, has raised $1.1 million in seed funding from Big Basin Capital and Walden International. TechCrunch has more here.

RotoQL, a 1.5-year-old, New York-based daily fantasy sports data and analytics company, has raised $1.2 million in seed funding from Boston Seed Capital, top-ranked fantasy sports player Saahil Sud, and DraftKings CEO Jason Robins. VentureBeat has more here.

New Funds

The family office of former Walgreens CEO Gregory Wasson and a team of entrepreneurs have formed a new outfit, Innventure, which aims to develop businesses around new technologies created inside big corporations. Its first partner is Procter & Gamble. Dealbook has more here.

IPOs

Netmarble Games of South Korea, the ninth-largest game publisher in the world, is set to raise as much as $2.3 billion after pricing its IPO at the top of its targeted range. The company’s public offering will be Korea’s biggest since Samsung Life Insurance in 2010. Bloomberg has the story here.

Exits

Microsoft is reportedly in talks to buy Cloudyn, an Israel-based cloud computing developer. Cloudyn has raised more than  $20 million in funding, including from Carmel Ventures and Infosys. Fortune has more here.

Snap just paid $7.7 million for a patent on “geofilters,” or photo filters based on location, which advertisers can buy. It acquired the patent from the Israeli company Mobli, an Instagram competitor launched six years and that had patented the idea of geo-photo filters in 2012. TechCrunch has more here.

People

Jeff Dunn, the former Coca-Cola executive who became CEO of Juicero last year, said yesterday that customers can return their pricey juicers to the company for a full refund (now that it’s become plain that the juicers are kinda superfluous). Note: the offer expires in 30 days.

Elon Musk has just taken on a third CEO role. As they say in “Fargo,” uff da.

Hyperloop One, the company trying to create a tube-based, high-speed transport system, has lost its chief marketing officer, Kimberly Salzer, to a robotics company.

Essential Reads

How Amazon will become the first $1 trillion stock.

Startups rarely file for bankruptcy, but that might change.

New allegations about Theranos. (Another day, another tidbit!)

Driver retention at Uber is horrible, evidently. According to The Information, just 4 percent of people who sign up to drive for the company are still driving a year later.

Detours

The best undiscovered beaches in the world.

A speedy workout that changes your brain.<

Retail Therapy

Sony’s Alpha a9 camera. Wired calls it the company’s “most beastly shooter yet.”