Hello, Friday! Have a great weekend, everyone. See you back here next week with some good stuff, including more with Index Ventures’ Mike Volpi (below), who shares how decisions are made at Index, whether the firm believes in price “sensitivity,” and what he makes of Bitcoin mania.

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Top News in the A.M.

Remember when Target let us know that up to 40 million customers’ personal information might have been stolen? Scratch that; the company now believes as many as 70 million customers were impacted by the data breach.

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Index Ventures’ Mike Volpi on the Pitfalls of VC Marketing

Index Ventures is widely perceived to be amid the best venture firms by other VCs. Among its active investments are Sonos, the wireless music system company; Dropbox, the popular online storage service; and Hortonworks, a commercial vendor of Apache Hadoop.

The goal for Index now is to raise its profile with U.S. entrepreneurs, many of whom still consider the firm — which launched in Geneva in 1996 and opened a London office in 2001 — to be a European venture fund.

Step one involved opening an office in San Francisco in late 2011, where general partners Danny Rimer and Mike Volpi have been sewing up deals left and right. The second part of Index’s evolution involves giving the press a (slightly) better look into its thought processes. Indeed, I sat down with Volpi at Index’s sunny offices yesterday morning, where we talked about how the historically quiet firm plans to more visibly plant its flag in the U.S. and the Bay Area in particular.

We’ve been sitting here talking about the professionalization of venture marketing. What is Index’s philosophy when it comes to selling itself?

Venture capital is changing. It’s different. And being good at marketing is an important asset today, when it just wasn’t 10 years ago.

Index certainly isn’t as ‘out there’ as some firms. Will that change?

There’s an inherent conflict that exists in doing a lot of marketing for one’s own firm, because in one dimension, being out there helps attract people to you. In theory, saying, “So and so is backed by X Venture Capital” helps the company.

But one of our key cultural tenets is that we’re supporting the entrepreneur and we want the entrepreneur to be the story, not us. So we’re not trying to take the light away from the entrepreneur. Inherently, we see a little bit of a cultural conflict. Who is in front of the parade? Is it the VC or the entrepreneur? I think if the VC firm gets too far ahead of the parade, the smart entrepreneurs might get uncomfortable with that, so we try to strike a balance.”

How exactly?

Presumably, over time, [things will take their] natural course if we do our job properly But we don’t want to put steroids on [our marketing strategy]; we don’t want to bang on every journalist’s door, saying, “Pay attention to us.”

If you’re an entrepreneur, you want your own signature on the project you’re working on and you don’t want to be overshadowed. If you don’t have a signature to speak of, then you rely on somebody else’s. It’s a gray zone for sure, but I think it’s an important line to draw.

New Fundings

Aethon, a 13-year-old, Pittsburgh, Pa.-based maker of autonomous mobile robots for hospitals and health systems, has raised $3 million from Mitsui & Co., which had invested a separate, $4 million round in Aethon in April 2012. Aethon has raised more than $20 million altogether, according to SEC filings.

Atara Biotherapeutics, a 1.5-year-old, Brisbane, Calif.-based drug development company focused on treating end-stage renal disease among others, has raised $52 million in Series B financing. Investors included Alexandria Venture Investments, Amgen Ventures, The Baupost Group, Celgene Corp., DAG Ventures, Domain Associates, EcoR1 Capital and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers.

CAN Capital, a 16-year-old, New York-based, non-bank alternative capital provider to small businesses in the U.S. and Latin America, has raised $33 million in funding led by Meritech Capital Partners. Previous investor Accel Partners also participated in the round, along with new investors Ribbit Capital and QED Investors. CAN has now raised roughly $63 million to date, according to Crunchbase.

Clementia Pharmaceuticals, a three-year-old, Quebec-based company that’s developing a drug for a genetic condition called fibrodysplasia ossificans progressiva, has raised a $22.5 million in Series A financing led by OrbiMed Advisors, with participation by existing investor BDC Venture Capital.

FIRE1, a new, Dublin, Ireland-based company, has raised an undisclosed amount of Series A funding from Covidien, Lightstone Ventures, and New Enterprise Associates. FIRE1 was launched byThe Foundry, a Dublin-based medical device incubator; the company will be focusing on developing novel therapeutic devices.

Glooko, a three-year-old, Palo Alto, Calif.-based company that enables smartphone users to easily collect and view the information needed to control their blood glucose levels, has raised $7 million in Series A-1 funding from Samsung Ventures and Lifeforce Ventures. Previous investors Social + Capital Partnership and individual investors also participated. Glooko has raised $11.5 million to date, according to Crunchbase.

MN&C Supply Links Retail, a 1.5-year-old, Mumbai-based company that operates an online supermarket called LocalBanya.com, has raised an undisclosed amount in Series A funding from Karmvir Avant Group, a real estate developer in Mumbai.

Proterra, a 10-year-old, Greenville, S.C.-based maker of zero-emission-battery electric buses, has closed the second round of its Series C funding, raising more than $10 million, which brings the total round to rougly $34 million. The funding was led by new backer Tao Invest (the family firm of Nick and Joby Pritzker). Previous investorsEdison Energy, Constellation, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers,GM Ventures, Mitsui & Co., Vision Ridge Partners, Hennessey Capital and 88 Green Ventures also participated. Proterra has raised more than $120 million to date.

Radius Intelligence, a young San Francisco-based firm, has raised $13 million in funding from Formation8 Partners, says VentureWire. Radius collects and analyzes information on small businesses in an effort to compete with incumbents like the small business information provider Dun & Bradstreet.

Volta Industries, a four-year-old, Toronto-based maker of advertising-supported electronic vehicle charging stations, has raised an undisclosed amount of seed funding from EPIC Ventures and existing investor Blue Startups. Volta has raised $1.9 million to date, including from 500 Startups.

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New Funds

Good morning! Hope your Thursday is off to a promising start. We have some good stuff coming up in the next few days, so stay tuned!

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Top News in the A.M.

Apple and Samsung have agreed to attend a mediation session to be held on or before February 19, as they prepare to clash in court in March over smartphone patents.

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Pricing in Deception

Yesterday, TechCrunch reported that a 2.5-year-old Boston-based social shopping startup, Kickscout, is being acquired by another shopping app, Mobee, for an undisclosed “combination of cash and stock.” TechCrunch wrote that as part of the arrangement, Kickscout’s founder (and sole employee), Michael Sheeley, is joining Mobee as its chief product officer.

Most likely, the story would have gone unnoticed, but Boston Globe columnist Scott Kirsner tweeted soon after the piece was published, “Sorry, TechCrunch, this story is actually: Boston-based Mobee hired a smart guy whose startup didn’t take off.” Kirsner continued on Twitter, “If your app is being shut down and you are going to work for someone else’s company, that means you got HIRED, not ACQUIRED.” Kirsner – who seems to have a healthy sense of humor — then added, “Deal was a ‘combination of cash & stock’ – yeah, like [taxi] fare to Mobee’s office and some stock options.”

Assuming that Kirsner is right – that Sheeley was just plucked from a bad situation – it’s easy to understand his aggravation. Silicon Valley’s compulsively sunny, rah-rah spirit can be nauseating. Talk to an entrepreneur or VC, and everything is proceeding as planned.

Still, it’s hard to see the downside in allowing someone to save face in this situation or the many others we’ve seen in recent years, where struggling founders have been swooped up by another company that’s looking to lock in their talent for a while. I like that a person who has tried and failed can receive a fresh set of cards instead of shutting down their business with nothing but debt (which, by the way, still happens with the vast majority of startups).

As for the argument that it’s unhealthy to portray face-saving maneuvers as successes, I’d argue that by now, we’re all acclimated to the culture of spin in which we live. We’ve basically been in an arms race of good news since TechCrunch was founded in 2005.

Anyone following the industry is already pricing in some deception, so why bother getting upset about it?

New Fundings

Aereo, a two-year-old, New York-based company whose customers access live broadcast TV on Internet-connected devices via its remote integrated antenna/DVR technology, has raised $34 million in Series C financing. Previous investors IAC, Highland Capital Partners, andFirstMark Capital were joined by new investors Himalaya Capital Management and Gordon Crawford, long the chief media stockpicker for the L.A-based money-management firm Capital Research & Management Co. Aereo has now raised nearly $100 million altogether.

Chromatin, a 13-year-old, Chicago-based agricultural technology company, has held a first close on its Series E financing round, which is expected to total $36 million. Wood Creek Capital Management led the round, joined by GE Capital. Previous investors BP Alternative Energy, IllinoisVentures, the State of Wisconsin Investment Boardand Adventures IV also participated. With the Series E round, Chromatin has raised more than $70 million, says the company.

Compliance Science, a 10-year-old, New York-based company that sells online regulatory compliance technology and services, has raised $8.25 million in Series A funding from Edison Ventures. It’s the first outside capital that Compliance Science has received.

FlatFrog Laboratories AB, a seven-year-old, Lund, Sweden-based maker of a patented in-glass touch technology, has raised $10 million in Series C funding from Invus, Sunstone Capital and Intel Capital, all of whom participated in the company’s Series B round. FlatFrog has raised $53.4 million altogether, according to Crunchbase.

Forus Health, a three-year-old, Bangalore-based medical device company that focuses on the ophthalmology space, has raised $8 million from Asian Healthcare Fund and its existing investors Accel Partnersand IDG Ventures. Forus is looking to develop affordable technology that can be used by minimally trained technicians. It has raised $13 million to date.

Immedia Semiconductor, a five-year-old, Andover, Mass.-based company that develops semiconductor-based ISP and video compression technology for consumer electronics applications, has raised $11.9 million, shows an SEC filing. Listed on the form are David Aronoff of Flybridge Capital Partners and Louis Toth of Comcast Ventures.

Intellinote, a year-old, Reston, Va.-based note taking app that incorporates social collaboration, project management, and e-mail integration, has raised $4.3 million in Series A led by Grotech Venturesand Boulder Ventures.

Lumiata, a year-old, San Mateo, Calif.-based healthcare IT startup that applies big data to patient data to optimize health care interactions, has raised $4 million from Khosla Ventures.

Maverix Biomics, a two-year-old, San Mateo, Calif.-based software company focused on analysis of next-generation genomic sequencing data, has raised $6 million in Series A funding from Asset Management Ventures, Andreas Bechtolsheim and Andrew Yang, among others.

MobStac, a Bangalore-based startup that helps publishers build and manage their mobile websites and apps, has raised $2 million in Series B funding from Accel Partners and Cisco. The round brings MobStac’s total venture financing to $3.1 million.

Mswipe, a three-year-old, Mumbai-based maker of mobile, point-of-sale technologies, has raised an undisclosed amount of Series B funding from Matrix Partners and Axis Bank, both of which have provided Mswipe with (an also undisclosed amount of) funding previously.

QingCloud, a two-year-old, Beijing-based company that operates an on-demand real-time cloud computing platform, has raised $20 million in Series B funding led by Lightspeed China Partners with participation from Matrix Partners China. BlueRun Ventures, QingCloud’s Series A investor, also participated in the round.

Renrendai, a 3.5-year-old, Beijing-based Internet banking service platform where borrowers can get credit ratings on all loans, has raised $130 million in Series A funding from Trustbridge Partners andHonghe Venture Capital.

Yotpo, a three-year-old, Israel-based company that enables e-commerce sites to add a social layer for product reviews, has raised $10.7 million led by Blumberg Capital. Participating in the round were prior investors Rhodium, Gandyr Group, Oliver Jung, 2B Angels,Magna Capital Partners, Plus Ventures, Zohar Gilon and other investors. The company has raised $13 million to date.

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New Funds

Silicon Valley venture capitalist Asha Jadeja, who founded the small venture firm Dot Edu Ventures in 2000, has reportedly “set aside” a fund of “around $8 million” that she intends to invest specifically in India across a period of six years, says the Business Standard.

Jadeja, who was born in Ahmedabad, has already invested about $100,000 in regional companies, including GridAnts in Ahmedabad, which makes a location-based application, and Gaatha in Gujurat, an e-commerce site that sells handcrafted goods. Indeed, she tells Business Standard that she’s seeing a “lot of start-ups emerging out of Gujarat and India” that can become a “powerful force in social impact.”

Jadeja had earlier founded and run iScale, a networking company. She was also married to Raveej Motwani, the famed computer science professor at Stanford who was among Google’s earliest advisors. Motwani passed away in 2009.

Prashant Shah, who spent nearly a decade at the San Francisco-based venture firm Hummer Winblad Venture Partners, is now managing TiE LaunchPad, a Santa Clara, Calif.-based accelerator for enterprise-focused startups. Shah has raised $4.8 million to invest seed funding in those companies, too, shows an SEC filing. For more details, click here.

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People

Square’s CFO, Sarah Friar, has joined the board of New Relic, an application performance management company that’s eyeing an IPO. Before joining Square in 2012, Friar worked as a managing director at Goldman Sachs and as a senior VP of finance and strategy at Salesforce.com.

David Nosal, a former Korn/Ferry executive who infiltrated his former employer’s computer system after leaving to form his own firm, has been sentenced to one year and one day in prison.

Elliott Sigal has joined NEA as a venture partner and senior advisor. Sigal is a former EVP and director for Bristol-Myers Squibb. He served as the company’s chief scientific officer and president of R&D from 2004 to 2013.

Paul Sloan, most recently editor in chief at CNET, has joinedCoupons.com as head of communications, reports the Silicon Valley Business Journal. Coupons.com — which has raised approximately $230 million over its 16-year history — is valued at more than $1 billion and is widely expected to go public this year.

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IPOs

Flexion Therapeutics, a seven-year-old, Burlington, Ma.-based company that’s developing injectable pain therapies for osteoarthritis, plans to raise up to $86 million in an IPO, shows an SEC filing. Pricing terms weren’t disclosed. The company has raised at least $62 million over the years. Versant Venture Capital owns 29.7 percent of the company; Sofinnova Capital owns 19.3 percent; Pfizer owns 17.3 percent; 5AM Ventures owns 15.5 percent; and Novo A/S owns 11.2 percent.

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Job Listings

Facebook is looking to hire a manager of corporate development in Menlo Park, Calif. The job requires four to six years of experience, with two to three years of experience in venture capital, banking, consulting, or corporate development at a top consumer Internet company.

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Data

Pitchbook has some new data on the funnel effect we’re seeing in startup financings. According to its findings, the Bay Area saw a 10.6 percent drop in deal flow last year, with 1,225 rounds completed compared with 1,370 financings closed in 2012. Meanwhile, investors pumped more money into that smaller pool of Bay Area companies, committing $13.4 billion last year up from $12.5 billion in 2012. More on the trend here.

Israel is apparently booming. According to a report about the high tech sector released this week by IVC Research, the combined value of Israeli high-tech start-ups that were sold in 2013 reached $6.64 billion last year, a 10-year high. Here’s more on the report.

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Essential Reads

The Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group said yesterday it won’t allow the sale of Bitcoins on its platform, “in the interest of consumer protection,” a spokeswoman told the New York Times.

Reddit’s Ask Me Anything format: How a weird Internet thing became a mainstream delight.

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Detours

Of the saying that children grow up too fast, Jerry Seinfeld tells fellow dad Louis C.K, “I feel like I can only take one year of each year. [It’s like] ‘No more of you as a nine-year-old. I’ve had it.’”

Improv Everywhere’s “No-Pants Subway Ride” is planning its 12th installment in New York this Sunday. Plan accordingly.

Floor plan porn: The Swigs of 740 Park Avenue.

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Retail Therapy

This Chronos safe is constructed of “true military-grade ballistic armor plate.” Because you want to know that while you’re tweeting from CES, some lousy crumb isn’t getting into your cherished collection of Swiss timepieces.

You love your new(ish) iPad Air. Treat it right by carrying it inside thissupple leather case constructed from two solid pieces of vegetable-tanned English bridle. (Disclaimer: This simple piece that’s truly “ready for years of wear,” has no padding. Dropping it to the ground from a standing position may cause horrified gasps, followed by sickness and nausea.)

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Happy Tuesday! A quick reminder that you can always reach out to me about anything at connie@strictlyvc.com or on Twitter. If you’re looking to sign up for the newsletter, you can click right here.

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Top News in the A.M.

Apple has just announced that app store sales topped a whopping $10 billion in 2013. More here.

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Nick Hanauer on Why VCs Should Fight for a Higher Minimum Wage

For at least the last six months, Seattle-based venture capitalist Nick Hanauer has been arguing for a higher minimum wage and citing stats that underscore the myriad ways that growing income inequality will bring everyone down.

Hanauer was one of Amazon’s first investors and cofounded the ad tech company aQuantive, which sold to Microsoft for $6.4 billion in 2007. He’s also the chairman of Pacific Coast Feather Company, a privately held family business that produces down pillows and bedding for clients such as Sealy and Eddie Bauer.

Although Hanauer clearly isn’t living paycheck to paycheck, he has turned his sights on raising the minimum wage to $15 and is pointedly criticizing Bay Area venture capitalists for their inaction, noting that if they don’t start doing more to stem the “rising inequality in our society,” they are “idiots.”

“VCs have a huge stake in a thriving middle class,” Hanauer told me over the phone yesterday afternoon. “If workers don’t have enough money, they can’t buy from our companies.” Leading the charge for higher wages is an “easy lift” for technology companies and VCs “because we get none of the pain and all of the benefit. If you’re running or funding a venture-backed company, you aren’t paying anyone a minimum wage. On the other hand, you’re hoping to sell your products to everybody.”

I raise the oft-cited argument that many Bay Area companies are making it easier and cheaper to do things, and I can practically see Hanauer rolling his eyes. “There’s this Valley-based libertarian idea that as long as we’re businesspeople, we’re doing enough for our community — which is self-aggrandizing and just utter horseshit,” he says.

Asked for concrete advice on how VCs can take part in the minimum wage debate, Hanauer suggests that the Bay Area look north. In November, voters in the city of SeaTac, Washington, narrowly approved a labor-backed measure that would require a $15 minimum wage for approximately 6,300 workers in the airport, hotel, and rental car industries. Hanauer is himself now part of a working group organized by incoming Seattle mayor Ed Murray to implement a $15 minimum wage in Seattle, and “I think it will happen,” Hanauer says.

In California, Hanauer says more investors should throw their support behind Ron Unz, publisher of the libertarian-leaning magazine The American Conservative, who has poured his own money into a ballot measure to increase the minimum wage in California to $10 an hour in 2015 and $12 in 2016. The initiative, which will be voted on in November, would make California’s minimum wage the highest in the nation. (California’s current minimum wage is $8.)

“There are a lot of fine people in Silicon Valley,” says Hanauer, “but there’s this really creepy thing happening down there where people are making stratospheric amounts of money and leaving everyone else behind. We need to ensure the economy enfranchises as many people as possible, and we need more civic leadership coming out of the venture community.”

If it takes seeing low-wage workers as potential customers, so be it. “A rising tide lifts all boats,” he says.

New Fundings

LegalZoom, the 14-year-old, Glendale, Calif.-based provider of online legal documents and services, has a new, partial owner. European private equity firm Permira has acquired $200 million of LegalZoom’s existing equity in a secondary transaction that will provide liquidity to existing investors, and to a lesser degree management and employees,reports PandoDaily.

Mashable, the nine-year-old, New York-based independent news outlet, has raised $13.3 million in its first outside funding round. The financing was led by Updata Partners, reports CNN, which has much more here.

Plated, a two-year-old, New York-based company that sends recipes and the fresh ingredients needed to prepare them to its subscribers, has raised $5 million in Series A funding led by ff Venture Capital. Other participants in the round included Lerer Ventures, Founder Collective,Great Oaks Venture Capital and various angel investors. The company had previously raised $1.4 million in seed funding.

Remitly, a 2.5-year-old, Seattle-based mobile payments service that enables consumers to make person-to-person international money transfers from the U.S., has raised $5.5 million led by QED. Other investors in the round included Trilogy Partnership, Founders Co-Op,TomorrowVentures, Bezos Expeditions, and individual investors. The company has raised $10.5 million altogether, according to Crunchbase.

Soft Tissue Regeneration, a six-year-old, New Haven, Conn.-based maker of regenerative orthopedic devices for tendon and ligament repair, has raised $5 million in financing. Existing backers Connecticut Innovations and Launch Capital led the round with participation fromThe Vertical Group. The company had previously raised around $11 million in equity and debt, according to Crunchbase.

View, an eight-year-old, Milpitas, Calif.-based company that makes dynamic glass that’s capable of intelligently adjusting to external conditions and users preferences, has raised $100 million in funding from Madrone Capital Partners. Madrone, in Silicon Valley, specializes in growth capital investments.

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New Funds

Launch Angels, a new Boston-based investment platform that plans to invest in startup deals sourced from equity crowdfunding sites, says it has raised “nearly $1 million” for its first venture fund, named Where Angels Fund. The pool’s LPs are associates from the mobile technology company Where, bought by PayPal for $135 million in 2011. The outfit will focus on early-stage companies with an emphasis on mobile and consumer Internet startups; it intends to back between eight and 12 companies over the course of one year. Launch Angels is also right now gathering commitments for a second and third fund, called the Early Traction Fund and Women-Led Fund, respectively.

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People