Good Wednesday morning! Quick weekly reminder: You can reach me anytime at connie[at]strictlyvc.com or on Twitter.

Top News in the A.M.

Longtime Google Ads exec Susan Wojcicki is YouTube’s new boss.

Google has reached a settlement to end the European Union’s three-year antitrust probe, after offering to display results from rival search services

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Ajay Chopra of Trinity Ventures: Mine Your Portfolio Companies

ike a lot of venture capitalists, General Partner Ajay Chopra of Trinity Ventures has a number of ways to “turn down the noise” of a clamorous startup ecosystem without, hopefully, tuning out the next billion-dollar opportunity.

Chopra — who joined Trinity in 2006 after selling the company he’d cofounded, Pinnacle Systems, to Avid Technology for roughly $460 million — talked with me yesterday about some of the tactics he uses.

You recently wrote about why it’s important to turn down entrepreneurs the right way. Why spell it out?

The point was that because we turn down 99 percent of the people we meet, it makes sense to be prompt about [a no] — which many VCs are guilty of not doing — give them feedback, and be helpful to them by just pointing them in a couple of right directions. It doesn’t take that long and it really does leave a lasting impression.

How much effort can you put into the process, practically speaking?

Well, first, I think the VC business is about how do you separate the signal from the noise. VCs do it in a variety of ways. For example, if I’m only investing in digital media, I’m not looking at clean tech or healthcare deals. If I’m only looking at Series A and B deals, I’m not looking at growth-stage companies. Even still, you could spend a lot of time focusing on the wrong things, so we focus a lot of building relationships, including mining our portfolio.

Meaning what, exactly?

We talk to employees at the VP level, the director level, even the product manager level while [they’re employed by a startup we’re backing]. We get to know the management teams and we ask, “Who are your best guys?” because we want them to have a relationship with us.

That doesn’t threaten your CEOs?

Not if you do it with the CEOs’ consent. I think most CEOs who are confident company builders don’t have any issues with it. Companies with hidden agendas from their board members might, but then they usually have other issues to worry about.

I do think it’s good for product managers to be meeting with venture capitalists. And I think it’s a good retention tool for CEOs. In fact, I often get an invitation from a CEO, saying, “Hey, this person did a great job. Can you reach out to them or have coffee with them or send them an email?” Everyone knows there’s a board, and there’s a light level of touch whether you like it or not. The best CEOs use it to their advantage and to benefit their employees.

Do you take product managers out for lunch? How does it work?

We invite people in specific areas to events, like marketing people or product management people or infrastructure people or VPs of operations — people who are sometimes underserved and not recognized. We have a speaker usually, and we let the CEOs pick three top people to [send to one of these events to] award them. Recently, for example, we had [Zulily founder] Mark Vadon talk with a group about his background and career development and how to handle conflict. Hopefully, it left a subliminal impression about Trinity, so that three or five or six years from now, when these employees’ current ventures have proven successful and they’re ready to step out, they’ll think, “Let’s call Ajay; I feel comfortable with him.”

Interesting that you think these employees might themselves become founders. So you don’t subscribe to the theory that entrepreneurs are born, not made?

Not at all. Entrepreneurship isn’t about being able to hack or code or build the best [user interface] as a teenager. It’s about passion and the determination to fulfill a vision. The overwhelming indicator of the best entrepreneurs is that they’re passionate and driven by the idea that they’re chasing. I might hate the idea. I might think it’s crazy. I’ll tell someone that, too. But if they say they’re going to chase it anyway, that they aren’t going to give up, well, that’s a good entrepreneur.

New Fundings

Adar IT, a 16-year-old, Lincolnwood, Il.-based cloud IT services company that’s focused on small to medium-size businesses, has raised $2.4 million in funding from MK Capital.

Confide, a months-old, New York-based confidential messaging app designed for professionals, has raised $1.9 million in seed funding led byWGI Group. Other investors to participate in the round include Google Ventures, First Round Capital, SV Angel, Lerer Ventures,CrunchFund, Lakestar, Marker, David Tisch’s BoxGroup, Yelp CEO and co-founder Jeremy Stoppelman, Entourage creator Doug Ellin, and Access Hollywood host Billy Bush.

Datadog, a four-year-old, New York-based company behind a SaaS monitoring and data analytics platform, has raised $15 million in Series B funding led by OpenView Venture Partners. Earlier investors Index Ventures, RTP Ventures, Amplify Partners, IA Ventures and Contour Ventures also participated in the round. The company has raised roughly $21 million to date, shows Crunchbase.

DataRank, a three-year-old, Bentonville, Ar.-based company that helps companies track online conversations about their brands and perform other competitive analysis, has raised $1.4 million in seed funding led by New Road Ventures, with participation from FundersClub and other angel investors. The company had earlier raised money from Y Combinator.

Dataxu, a 3.5-year-old, Boston-based media management platform for digital ad campaigns, has raised roughly $10 million in new funding, according to an SEC filing. The funding brings the capital raised by the company to roughly about $55 million. Previous investors includeThomvest Ventures, Atlas Venture, Flybridge Capital Partners, andMenlo Ventures.

Elementum, a 2.5-year-old, Mountain View, Ca.-based mobile supply chain software provider, has raised $44 million in Series B funding fromLightspeed Venture Partners and Flextronics.

Foodpanda, a two-year-old, Berlin-based Rocket Internet-incubated take-out ordering service, has raised fresh $20 million in funding led byPhenomen Ventures. The company and its affiliate, Hellofood, have now raised nearly $50 million, including from Kinnevik of Stockholm and iMena Holdings, which partnered with Rocket Internet last fall to expand Hellofood’s Middle Eastern operations.

Foursquare, the five-year-old, New York-based mobile app company, had received a $15 million investment from Microsoft last year as part of a funding round that valued the company at more than $600 million, says a new Bloomberg report. Microsoft, said the report, is adding features to its Windows Phone software in an effort to compete with Apple iPhone and Google’s Android software.

Jivox, a 6.5-year-old, Redwood City, Ca.-based multiscreen ad tech platform, has raised $5.8 million in Series C funding led by Fortisure Ventures. New investor Shah Capital also participated in the round alongside earlier investors Diaz Nesamoney, Opus Capital and Helion Advisors. The company has raised just north of $31 million to date.

Lumos Pharma, an Austin-based, early-stage biopharmaceutical company that’s aiming to treat autistic behavior and other medical problems, has raised $14 million in Series A funding co-led by Sante Ventures and New Enterprise Associates. Dow Jones has much more on the company here.

Noom, a three-year-old, New York-based company behind a popular health and wellness app, has received $7 million in Series A financing led by RRE Ventures.

OnShift, a 5.5-year-old, Cleveland, Oh.-based company that makes staff scheduling and shift management software, has raised $7 million in Series C funding led by HLM Venture Partners and earlier investors, Draper Triangle Ventures, Early Stage Partners, Fifth Third Capital, Glengary LLC, and West Capital Advisors. The company has raised $13.8 million altogether, shows Crunchbase.

Primus Power, a 4.5-year-old, Hayward, Ca.-based energy-storage company, has raised $20 million in Series C funding led by Anglo American Platinum. The company has now raised around $31 altogether, including from Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Chrysalix Energy.

REGEN Energy, an 8.5-year-old, Toronto-based startup that’s turning thousands of rooftop AC units into smart, networked building and grid-responsive energy assets, has raised $7 million in Series B funding led by an unnamed “international energy company.” Earlier investors also participated in the round, including BDC Venture Capital and NGEN Partners. REGEN has raised about $15 million altogether, its CEO tells Greentech Media.

Tapingo, a two-year-old, San Francisco-based mobile shopping platform, has raised $10.5 million in Series B funding led by Khosla Ventures, with participation from existing investor Carmel Ventures. The company has raised $14 million to date.

Unitas Global, a four-year-old, L.A. based company that offers enterprise cloud service to organizations, has raised $5.7M in funding, shows an SEC filing. No non-executive directors are listed.

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New Funds

Draper Fisher Jurvetson, the 29-year-old, Sand Hill Road firm, announced in a blog post yesterday that it has closed its newest early-stage venture fund, DFJ Venture XI, with $325 million. In the post, the team noted that founding members Tim Draper and John Fisher will not be investing partners in the new effort, though both “will remain on DFJ’s management committee and will be significant personal investors in our fund…” The fund is slightly smaller that its immediate predecessor, DFJ’s $350 million Fund X, closed in 2008. According to peHUB, one of its biggest LPs is the San Francisco Employees’ Retirement System, which committed $25 million to the effort.

Drive Capital, the two-year-old, Columbus, Oh.-based early-stage firm of former Sequoia Capital partners Mark Kvamme and Chris Olsen, has closed its inaugural fund with $250 million. Reuters has more on the vehicle, which will invest in tech, healthcare, and consumer businesses. In November, StrictlyVC had reported on a bit of controversy surrounding Drive Capital’s fundraising efforts.

Expa Capital, a months-old, San Francisco-based investment vehicle founded by serial entrepreneur Garrett Camp, is raising up to $75 million, according to an SEC filing first flagged by TechCrunch. Camp disclosed his plans for Expa last May, telling TechCrunch that it will be structured like a holding company, as with Obvious, Betaworks, and Science, among others outfits that help to build companies simultaneously. Camp famously founded the online discovery service StumbleUpon; Uber CEO Travis Kalanick has also credited Camp with dreaming up Uber, which Camp cofounded.

Luminari Capital, a year-old, Menlo Park, Ca.-based firm focused on digital media, is raising $40 million for its first fund, according to an SEC filing. Luminari was founded by Daniel Leff, who’d previously spent more than five years as an investor with Globespan Capital Partners. A source tells StrictlyVC that the fund has already held a first close and that its LPs include British Sky Broadcasting Group, which is also an investor in the TV streaming platform Roku, on whose board Leff sits.

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Exits

BlueKite, a two-year-old, Miami, Fla.-based company that helps facilitate cross-border payments, has been acquired by the publicly traded digital money transfer company Xoom Corp. for approximately $15 million in cash and equity. BlueKite had raised $1.5 million in seed funding from the Miami-based investment firm PeopleFund.

Crescendo Bioscience, a 14-year-old, South San Francisco, Ca.-based company, has been acquired by Myriad Genetics, a Salt Lake City, Ut.-based diagnostics company. The price tag is $270 million in cash, minus a $25 million loan Myriad made to Crescendo in 2011, reports Xconomy. Crescendo makes a molecular diagnostic test that measures the level of disease activity in patients with rheumatoid arthritis. It has raised roughly $100 million over the years, including from Aeris Capital AG, Skyline Ventures, Safeguard Scientific, Mohr Davidow Ventures and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers.

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People

Ethan Beard, who ran developer relations and product marketing for Facebook’s platform, has joined Greylock Partners as an entrepreneur-in-residence. Beard, who left Facebook after its May 2012 IPO, tells Bloomberg that his “goal it start a company. This gives me the ability to have a pulse on what Greylock is seeing, to step back and have a broader perspective.”

Dan Clancy, a longtime Google executive and former NASA Ames research director, has joined the local social networking startup Nextdooras its VP of engineering. Re/code has more here.

Kent Goldman, a VC who has spent the last five years at the early-stage venture firm First Round Capital (and several years at Yahoo before that), is launching his own investment fund. Goldman isn’t sharing many details yet, including the name of his new venture, but in a blog post yesterday, First Round founder Josh Kopelman said he plans to “make a significant personal investment” in Goldman’s new fund.

Roy J.E.M. Raymann, a sleep research expert, has been hired away from Philips Research by Apple in a move believed tied to Apple’s highly anticipated iWatch. The outfit 9to5mac has the story.

Ted Schlein, the veteran managing partner of Kleiner Perkins, spoke about cyber attacks during a Wall Street Journal conference yesterday. Said Schlein, “I have been in the security business for three decades and it only gets worse. I don’t think it is a battle you win. You hope to get to a draw, so [the attacks] move on to someone else.”

Google Chairman Eric Schmidt has lots of new reasons to celebrate, observes USA Today. In a new filing, Google disclosed that it’s awarding Schmidt stock valued at $100 million, plus a discretionary cash bonus of $6 million. The company characterized the windfall as “recognition of (Schmidt’s) contributions to Google’s performance in the last fiscal year.” Forbes pegged Schmidt’s wealth at around $8.3 billion last year. Google shares closed at $1,138.16 yesterday.

Brian Wilcove has joined the East Palo Alto, Ca.-based venture firm Artiman Ventures as a managing director. Wilcove was previously a VC at Sofinnova Ventures and TeleSoft Partners; before becoming an investor, he cofounded Virtela, a networking company that was acquired by NTT. Artiman focuses on “startups with no identifiable competitors” says Silicon Valley Business Journal.

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Job Listings

Newly public Care.com is looking for a VP of corporate development in Waltham, Mass. Apply here.

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Happenings

Registration for the MIT Technology Review Digital Summit, held on June 9 and 10 in San Francisco, is now open. More here.

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Data

Last year saw 206 percent more $10 million+ size Series A deals than 2009, reports CB Insights. Andreessen Horowitz and Accel Partnershave led the most outsize Series A rounds over the past five years; here’s a quick look at their co-conspirators.

Separately: Using data collected from the 1996 to 2013 proxy seasons, the law firm Fenwick & West has tracked the number of women serving on boards and executive management teams of companies in the Silicon Valley 150 index, and its findings suggest the Valley is trailing behind its broader corporate peers when it comes to gender.

Among Fenwick’s findings: that last year, 56 percent of Silicon Valley 150 companies (which average 8,500 employees) had at least female director. Comparatively, 98 percent of companies in the S&P 100 (which average 170,000 employees each) had at least one female director.

In related news, Zendesk, the 6.5-year-old, San Francisco-based maker of cloud-based customer service software that’s expected to go public this year, announced three new board members yesterday, all of whom happen to be women: Caryn Marooney, vice president of technology communications at Facebook; Betsey Nelson, former CFO of Macromedia; and former Amazon general counsel Michelle Wilson.

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Essential Reads

srael is a cybersecurity powerhouse, and that’s partly thanks to investor-entrepreneur Shlomo Kramer. “He is my first call in terms of bouncing ideas and brainstorming in terms of security,” Greylock‘s Asheem Chandna tells Bloomberg.

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Detours

Son, it’s time we talk about where startups come from.

Hilarious journalist tweets from Sochi: “For those of you asking, when there’s no lobby in your hotel, you go to the owner’s bedroom to check in.”

Looking to buy a sprawling, unfinished getaway in Bel Air with your IPO riches? You may be in luck. Private equity tycoon Tom Gores is selling hissemi-completed 29,000-square-foot mega mansion for $50 million. (On the upside, that’s less than he spent to acquire it in 2009).

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Retail Therapy

The Mariachi Ski Suit. We wants one. We needs one. (Why should Mexican Olympian Hubertus von Hohenlohe have all the fun?)

Sometimes it’s better not to execute on a particular idea.

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To sign up for StrictlyVC, click here. To advertise, click here.

Hi, everyone, StrictlyVC ran out of time to write a column this a.m, but there’s lots of useful intel below, as well as some good stuff around the corner. Quick reminder, too, that to sign up for the email, you can click on this link right over here. Happy Tuesday!

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Top News in the A.M.

Microsoft has a new CEO: Satya Nadella.

A new pair of bills have been introduced to the Senate and House to protect net neutrality after a circuit court ruling struck down the FCC’s previous rules earlier this month.

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New Fundings

AccuVein, a seven-year-old, Huntington, N.Y-based company whose hardware-and-software scanning device helps medical practitioners locate veins, has secured an $8 million loan from Horizon Technology Finance Corporation. In 2011, the company had raised $22.5 million from MVM Life Science Partners and Bessemer Venture Partners.

Flashnotes, a four-year-old, Boston-based ed tech startup, has raised $3.6 million in Series A funding led by Stage 1 Ventures, with Runa Capital, SoftBank Capital and Atlas Venture also participating in the round. Flashnotes’ platform enables college students to buy and sell course-specific study materials, such as their notes, flashcards and study guides. It has raised $6.9 million to date, according to Crunchbase.

Mojn, a four-year-old, Copenhagen, Denmark-based startup whose email product is designed for e-commerce marketers, has raised $4 million in Series A funding led by Northzone, Notion Capital, and Zoar Invest.

NanoPharmaceuticals, a months-old, Rensselaer, N.Y.-based startup that appears to be a spin-out of the Albany College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences, has raised $2.6 million from investors, according to anew SEC filing. The Form D doesn’t list any non-executive directors.

Newgen Software, a 21-year-old, New Delhi, India-based company that sells business process management software and enterprise content management software, has raised an undisclosed amount of funding fromIDG Ventures India and Ascent Capital. In 2008, the company had raised $7.65 million from HSBC Private Equity and SAP Ventures.

PillPack, a year-old, Manchester, N.H.-based online pharmacy that aims to simplify medication management, has raised $4 million from Atlas Venture and Founder Collective. The company had previously raised $300,000 from Techstars.

Ravel Law, an 18-month-old, Palo Alto, Ca.-based company that uses visualizations, analytics and collaboration tools to aid in legal research, has raised $8.1 million in funding led by early investors New Enterprise Associates and North Bridge Venture Partners, with participation fromThe Experiment Fund and Work-Bench. The company has raised $9.2 million to date.

Red Zebra Analytics, a 2.5-year-old, London-based loyalty start-up, has raised a seven-figure investment from the fin-tech venture firm SBT Venture Capital, whose principal backer is the Russian banking giantSberbank.

Remind101, a 2.5-year-old, San Francisco-based online communication platform that gives teachers a way to text students and stay in touch with parents, has raised $15 million in Series B financing led by Kleiner Perkins Caulfield & Byers, which was joined by The Social+Capital Partnership and First Round Capital. Kleiner’s John Doerr has joined the board. The company has raised $18.5 million altogether, shows Crunchbase.

Spiceworks, an eight-year-old, Austin, Tx.-based social business network for IT managers, has raised $57 million round of funding that it expects to be its last before an IPO. The round was led by Goldman Sachs, which was joined by earlier investors. The company has raised $111 million altogether, including from Adams Street Partners, Austin Ventures,Institutional Venture Partners, Shasta Ventures and Tenaya Capital.

Sqor, a year-old, San Francisco-based sports content platform and social media company that connects fans directly to more than 1,200 professional and amateur athletes, has raised $4.4 million from investors, shows an SEC filing that suggests the company is targeting $13.5 million. Among those listed on the Form D are legendary Green Bay Packers quarterback Brett Favre, who became a board member last year, andJohn Durham, CEO of the San Francisco-based marketing consultancyCatalyst SF.

TrackMaven, an 18-month-old, Washington, D.C.-based company that helps big brands benchmark, track, and improve their digital marketing, has raised $6.5 million in funding led by New Enterprise Associates, with participation from earlier investors including Bowery Capital andAcceleprise Ventures. The company has now raised roughly $7.8 million altogether.

Zenput, a 2.5-year-old, San Francisco-based startup formerly known as NextPunch, has raised $1.5 million for its mobile data collection for businesses with field employees, shows an SEC filing. MHS Capital, a small, San Francisco-based venture fund, appears to be the lead investor.

New Funds

More evidence that VCs are gravitating to AngelList: Several new SECfilings show Assure Equity Partners, a venture firm in Salt Lake City, is raising money to participate in, if not lead, some deals in the platform.

Nano Ventures, a new, Williamston, N.C.-based seed-stage venture firm, has raised $2.8 million of an expected $7.5 million round, an SEC filing shows. Peter Geiger, one of the directors listed, is currently a VP of finance at DSM, a Dutch-based multinational life sciences company.

Greenpoint Global Mittelstand Fund, a new, Madison, Wi.-based early-stage venture fund looking to back Midwest startups has raised $1.5 million, according to an SEC filing that shows it is targeting up to $30 million. Interesting/alarming backstory here: The Milwaukee-Wisconsin Journal Sentinel reports that until recently, the fund’s founders oversaw a fund called Wisconsin Funeral Trust that managed the money of customers who prepay their funeral costs. But it was placed into court-ordered receivership in September after state officials disclosed it had a shortfall of tens of millions of dollars. (Where do we sign up?)

In (geographically) related news: a venture capital fund that prominent Milwaukee-area investors Tim Keane and Trevor D’Souza had been trying to pull together since 2012 isn’t going to come together, Xconomy has learned. More here.

Tribeca Ventures Partners, the 2.5-year-old, New York-based seed and early-stage investment firm, has raised it second fund, closing on $10 million, shows an SEC filing. The firm’s managing partners are Brian Hirsch and Charles Meakem. Hirsch was previously a managing partner at GSA Venture Partners. Meakem was a managing director with Kodiak Venture Partners.Their newest publicly disclosed investment was made in the textbook publishing business Flat World Knowledge, which announced a $9 million round last week.

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IPOs

Brazil’s Investimentos e Participações em Infra-Estrutura SA will delay its IPO until the second quarter, a source tells Reuters. Invepar, which operates toll roads and a subway road, among other things, is hoping to raise around $833 million. But it would face a highly tumultuous market right now. “Rising borrowing costs, weak growth, a presidential election, and the withdrawal of monetary stimulus in the United States have left investors skittish,” notes Reuters. Over the last 13 months, Brazil’s Bovespa stock index has fallen 23 percent, and investors have withdrawn roughly $12.6 billion from domestic financial markets, adds its report.

Zalando, a five-year-old, Berlin-based online clothing retailer, has lined up three banks to advise it on what is expected to be Europe’s biggest Internet IPO. The company, incubated by the Samwer brothers’ Rocket Internet, has raised more than $200 million in equity and debt. Its investors include Investment AB Kinnevik, DST Global, JPMorgan Chase, and Quadrant Capital. As of last June, the company’s implied valuation was roughly 2.9 billion euros.

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People

Scott Belsky, founder of Behance — a platform to showcase and discover photography, graphic design, illustration, and fashion that Adobe acquired for $150 million in 2012 — has joined the Founder Collective as a “founder partner.” Belsky is also keeping his day job at Adobe, where he has been vice president of products and community since Behance’s sale. Fortune’s Erin Griffith has more here.

Ben Horowitz participated in a “fireside chat” with fellow VC Mark Susterlast night, and shared some of the questions Andreessen Horowitz asks entrepreneurs during a pitch meeting. He also said of the firm name: “It had to be Andreessen Horowitz and Andreessen had to come first. Marc had all the name recognition. He was Beyonce and I was Kelly Rowland.”

Y Combinator‘s Jessica Livingston says the popular incubator has just funded its most diverse class ever — and that she may have director David Fincher to thank. “We honestly saw an increase in applications after the movie ‘The Social Network’ came out,” Livingston tells Forbes. “It sounds so silly, but just having parents see doing a startup as an option for their kid makes it more normal. When we first got started we had parents who were like, ‘Wait, you got into Stanford grad school. You’re not doing this thing called Y Combinator!’ But now starting a startup is becoming more mainstream, so we’re seeing different types of people doing it.”

Neill Occhiogrosso has joined the two-year-old, Palo Alto, Ca.-based, early-stage venture firm Costanoa Venture Capital as its second partner. In a statement, firm founder Greg Sands said that it “felt like the right time to double down…” Occhiogrosso joins Costanoa from an evergreen fund called Investor Growth Capital (IGC). Before joining IGC, he spent four years at Highland Capital Partners, focused on enterprise investments.

Ben Veghte is the new vice president of communications for the National Venture Capital Association. Veghte was previously a longtime director of strategic communcations at The Glover Park Group in Washington, D.C.

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Job Listings

Greylock Partners is looking for an associate or senior associate to join the firm’s enterprise software team. Apply here (quickly).

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Happenings

500 Startups is hosting an invite-only Demo Day in Mountain View, Ca., tomorrow for the startups in its current accelerator batch. You can learn more here.

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Essential Reads

Last month, Google last month launched a free catamaran service to carry Googlers back and forth between San Francisco and the South Bay. Next week, the company will test out a new route, ferrying workers from Alameda, Ca., to Redwood City.

Speaking of Google, it has to move its mystery barge from an island in the middle of the San Francisco Bay because the permits aren’t in order, a state official said Monday. He added that the company can resolve the issue by moving the barge to a fully permitted, nearby construction facility.

How much equity should a chief marketing officer get? You might be surprised.

In corporate America, there’s no question over whether economic inequality is deepening. Businesses that appeal to the middle class are shrinking as the top tier pulls even further away.

Looks like teens are using Facebook after all. At least, according to new findings by the Pew Research Center, 73 percent of Americans ages 12 to 17 are on the platform, compared with 57 percent of all U.S. adults (the majority of whom visit Facebook daily).

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Detours

What $2,800 a month in rent will get you in New York City.

Reflections on a culture that rejects boys’ need for privacy.

Robert Frost: Real estate addict.

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Retail Therapy

The game “Clue” now comes in a luxury edition that features “exquisitely furnished” Victorian rooms in a stately wooden cabinet. Can you think of a better way to spend $200? (Oh, you can? Hundreds of better ways, you say? Okay, then. )

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Good Monday morning!

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Top News in the A.M.

Super Bowl ads: a retrospective.

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Lunch with Mr. Marketplace

Josh Breinlinger could have easily been a hardware investor. One of his first assignments out of M.I.T., where he graduated with a mechanical engineering degree, was working for a management consulting company, where he was tasked with dreaming up better fryolators for Burger King and helping design armor for army helicopter pilots.

But a college friend convinced Breinlinger to become the fourth employee of the online staffing company oDesk in 2004 (which merged with archrival Elance last year), and he became completely hooked on marketplaces.

In fact, since entering the world of venture capital a few years ago as a venture partner at Sigma West, Breinlinger has made it his mission to seek out the next big marketplace, leading investments in OfferUp, a Seattle-based mobile marketplace that’s trying to take on Craiglist; and Contently, a New York startup that’s helping companies produce articles that appear on their own websites, in native ad placements, and across social media. (OfferUp will be disclosing the details of a new funding round soon; Contently has raised $12 million, including a $9 million newly closed Series B led by Sigma West.)

Last week, I asked Breinlinger to tell me more about his ideal deal over lunch near Sigma West’s San Francisco office, and he offered up both the obvious and unexpected.

For example, like every other VC on the planet, Breinlinger looks for high recurring usage. (“It’s why Uber is so phenomenal,” said Breinlinger, tucking into his lemon grass beef dish. “I use it all the freaking time.”)

Also appealing to him: any marketplace that sees irregular usage and that can lock users into a subscription as a result. “Most people want housecleaners to come on a very regular basis and they have a relationship with that provider,” he noted. “On the other hand, when it comes to babysitters, it’s probably more irregular and as a result, you’re never going to have someone on demand, whenever you want.”

Breinlinger highlighted the success of Care.com, an online service for hiring nannies and other at-home caregivers that went public a couple of weeks ago. It shares were priced at $17 a piece; today they’re trading at $28.

Breinlinger’s time at Odesk also helped form some other specific views on what makes marketplaces click. He might not have funded the freelance labor force TaskRabbit, for example, primarily because the “best marketplaces lower costs, and TaskRabbit doesn’t meet that criteria for me because I used to be able to pick up my groceries for free [and paying for someone to pick up those items for you] is an added cost.”

Breinlinger cares about a startup’s Net Promoter Score, a customer satisfaction metric that centers on the question, “On a scale of 0 to 10, how likely would you be to refer X to a friend or colleague?”

And he’s exceedingly interested in the value that marketplaces add to relationships after they’ve made a match between a buyer and a service provider or product. As he told me, “The test we always used at oDesk was, ‘Could we find a buyer and a freelancer who have an existing relationship and get them to move their work to the Odesk platform because it would be easier and better for both of them?’”

Breinlinger said he thinks more marketplaces need to focus on internal feedback systems and a lot less on the “normal” starred feedback systems that are commonplace but wildly imbalanced, in his experience. “There’s no incentive for someone to rate someone a one, unless they’re really mad for some reason,” he noted. Meanwhile “everyone else gets a five.”

To learn who is actually good at their job and who isn’t, more startups should be building in a lot of internal reviews that include private, anonymous feedback.

“That’s how you improve the product. And when you build the system correctly, you can grow as fast as you want.”

New Fundings

Boombotix, a 3.5-year-old, San Francisco-based company that make s a line of “intelligent” speakers, has raised $4 million from new investors Social+Capital Partnership, Baseline Ventures, Red Hills, Great Oaks Venture Capital and Grishin Robotics. Earlier investors Walden Venture Capital and David Dolby also participated in the round, which brings the company’s total funding to just more than $5 million.

GetYourGuide, has added $4.5 million to the $14 million Series A round that it closed last year. Its new investors include Kees Koolen, former CEO of online hotel reservation agency Booking.com; Fritz Demopoulos, founder and former CEO of Chinese-based Qunar.com, and Sunstone Capital, a Nordic venture firm.

Nanomix, a 16-year-old, Emeryville, Calif.-based nanotech company focused on next-generation diagnostic tests, has raised $12 million in fresh funding from an unnamed strategic corporate partner and existing investors.

Vinted, a four-year-old, Vilnius, Lithuania-based social, mobile marketplace for second-hand clothes, has raised $27 million in Series B funding led by Insight Venture Partners, with participation from existing investor Accel Partners. The company has raised $33.6 million to date, according to Crunchbase.

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New Funds

Amadeus Capital, a 16-year-old, U.K.-based early-stage venture fund,has raised $44.7 million for Amadeus IV Early Stage Fund, a pool that will be used to back enterprise-focused startups in the U.K. Amadeus’ biggest LP is British Business Bank. The firm’s founder is Austrian entrepreneur Hermann Hauser. Amadeus’ last fund was a $13.5 million seed fund.

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IPOs

Castlight Health, a six-year-old, San Francisco-based company that provides employees with personalized shopping tools for healthcare benefits, has confidentially filed paperwork with the SEC for an initial public offering, according to Fortune’s Dan Primack. The company was founded by Todd Park, an Athenahealth co-founder who has since become the country’s U.S. chief technology officer. Much more here.

Coupons.com, the 16-year-old, Mountain View, Ca.-based network for online and printable coupons, just filed its S-1. The company, valued at a billion dollars when it closed its most recent, $200 million, round of financing in 2011, has raised $277 million altogether, including fromPassport Capital, which owns 22.6 percent of the company. Others of its principal shareholders include T. Rowe Price, which owns 11.66 percent of the company; entities affiliated with Warren Spieker, Jr., which own 8.41 percent; Abu Dhabi Investment Council, which owns 5.82 percent; and American Funds Smallcap World Fund, which owns 5.25 percent.

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Exits

CollabNet, a 14-year-old, Brisbane, Ca.-based agile development platform, has been acquired by the tech-focused private equity firm Vector Capital from its existing venture investors and other stakeholders, including Benchmark, Norwest Venture Partners, and Intel Capital. CollabNet had raised roughly $31 million in equity and $2.5 million in debt. Terms of the deal aren’t being disclosed but concurrent with the buyout, Vector has also made a growth equity investment in the 300-person company, including to accelerate its product development and enable add-on acquisitions.

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People

Twitter cofounder Jack Dorsey hasn’t tweeted since January 7. This is reportedly causing some a bit of a panic.

Bing Gordon of Kleiner Perkins, tells CNBC where he sees the next big trend in tech. “I predict in 10 years, 10 percent of people connected to the Web are wearing some kind of visual wearable [such as Google Glass],” says Gordon. “These things that measure the quantified self are addictive, fun, useful, and social.”

Y Combinator cofounder Paul Graham has announced a change in the way his outfit invests in the startups that pass through the program. Specifically, to minimize signaling risk, YC Partners will no longer participate in the first $500,000 unless it’s at least three weeks past startups’ “Demo Day.” Graham says too many investors had begun to follow YC Partners’ lead, backing what they back and avoiding those startups it didn’t.

Investor Peter Thiel talks to the Globe and Mail about how he chooses which dreamers to back. His simple calculation, he says: “How many leaps are required for your solution to work? Having to invent one or two major things, that’s doable. More? Doubtful.”

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Jobs Listings

Attorney readers, take note: One Kings Lane, the very well-funded home decor company, is looking for an associate general counsel in San Francisco. Apply here.

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Happenings

500 Startups is hosting an invite-only Demo Day in Mountain View, Ca., this Wednesday for the startups in its current accelerator batch. You canlearn more here.

The Innovation Forum is launching its first Innovation Leaders Conference at Cambridge University on February 27th and 28th. The conference aims to promote the translation of cutting edge research into commercial products and services. More details here.

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Data

This morning, Cambridge Associates and the National Venture Capital Association released new performance numbers through last September 30, and they show continued improvement, but VCs are still getting bested by the DJIA, Nasdaq, and the S&P 500 over the one-year, three-year, and five-year period. Things flip at the 10-year mark, where VC returns have hit 8.6 percent, outpacing public indices slightly. You can see the numbers right here.

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Essential Reads

Batteries, long the “poor cousin to computer chips in research-obsessed Silicon Valley, are now the rage,” says the New York Times in a report that suggests our smartphones could eventually pull energy from the air or power themselves through TV, cellular or Wi-Fi signals.

According to Yale University, Johnson & Johnson is providing the Yale University Open Data Access (YODA) project access to its clinical trial information vault, meaning researchers across the globe will be able to use the company’s data in their clinical trials.

The Economist has put together a 16-page report on the rise of technology startups around the world. It’s well worth reading, as TechCrunch notes.

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Detours

Inside “Billionaires Row”: a look at nearly $500 million worth of rotting, derelict mansions in London.

Social psychologists say it takes 36 days after a tragedy before jokes about it become funny. The New Republic on the science of humor.

The operating system played by Scarlett Johansson in “Her” has far more emotional intelligence than Siri does today. Can Siri catch up? Maybe, butdon’t hold your breath, says Siri’s cofounder.

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Retail Therapy

Magic wallets. Cheap, functional, and fun. Available at J.Crew or here.

Ah, yes, our kind of tent.

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