Good Monday morning, everyone! Hope you had a stellar weekend.

—–

Top News in the A.M.

The six juiciest documents from the Apple-Samsung trial that kicked off last week.

—–

Know Your Hardware Incubator: Highway1

Creating a hardware device is hard; making it in large quantities is exponentially harder. A reminder of this hard truth appeared on Friday on the Indiegogo page of Scanadu, a medical device startup that began shipping its long-awaited Scout product to its backers last week, then stopped, saying the device isn’t working as expected.

It’s exactly the problem that Highway1, a nearly year-old incubator program in San Francisco, promises to solve. Here’s how it works: Twice a year, Highway1 invites 10 or so teams to work at its offices for four months. In exchange for 3 to 6 percent of their companies, it provides them with $20,000, access to $3 million in prototyping tools, and an education – including in Shenzhen, China — about how consumer electronics are made. Highway1 should know; it’s backed by PCH International, a 5,000-person, China-based company that handles manufacturing contracts, packaging, and shipping for major electronic brands, and which has strong relationships with Asian manufacturers as a result.

Highway1’s program isn’t for everyone. To gain entry, a team has to have at least one working prototype (however crude), and it has to have enough financial muscle to pay for its production run. (The $20,000 it receives from Highway1 won’t cut it.) Late last week, I talked with the head of the program, Brady Forrest — who is an engineer, operator, and former VC — to learn more about his requirements, and when Highway1 is accepting its next batch of companies. Our chat has been edited for length.

You liken Highway1 to Amazon Web Services, which helps software companies scale.

There’s a concept called the Smiling Curve [whose points are marked by “create,” then “make,” then “sell”]. And VCs don’t want to invest in the “make” part. They don’t want to spend a lot of money on you building out a line. So our thesis is: let PCH be that AWS with hardware. We’re a supply chain company; we have 500 engineers in Shenzhen who manage factories for companies of all size. We [can] design the line and build that NRE (for non-recurring engineering, which refers to the one-time cost to research, develop, design and test a new product). We can handle credit terms and take payment…

You also help these teams pitch to investors at a demo day.

Yes, 200 attendees came to our most recent demo day and seven of 11 companies presented: three that are public and four that are in stealth. Two others opted out and two didn’t get far enough along; maybe they’ll demo one day; I’m not sure.

What types of companies are you most keen on helping? Are wearables overdone? Reportedly, people don’t wear their wearables for very long — at least, not their Galaxy smartwatches.

Wearables are totally of interest. That piece, reporting on the Galaxy, was like picking on the weak kid in the litter. If you bought a Galaxy Note [smart phone], it came free with purchase. In other words, people have been trying to sell something they received for free on eBay, so that’s not quite fair [to hold up as evidence that wearables are troubled]. Either way, if people aren’t happy with their wearables, it means there’s an opportunity to do it right.

I’m also bullish on the connected kitchen, and we’re always looking for more enterprise-type companies. I’m not afraid of teams that say, “We’re not a hardware company.” That means they’re looking beyond just hardware to the services and data set behind the hardware, and that’s really how you make hardware more useful and something that people need and love.

When do people need to apply for your next class?

We start accepting applications on April 17 and the program will start anew in September, though some companies are already coming in to talk with us. One team that has $800,000 in funding was just here and [the founder] and I were chatting and he told me they were going to go to tooling in two months. I had to run into another meeting but I had one of our engineers chat with him. [The engineer] told him, “You’re doing this out of order. If you go to tooling, you’re going to waste $50,000. You first need to do a prototype that takes these two factors into account, then do a 3D printing of this initial run.” And so on. And you could kind of see them saying, “Oh, sh_t. We just got schooled.”

New Fundings

AdsNative, a 1.5-year-old, San Francisco-based startup that helps online publishers like Politico incorporate native ads, has raised $2 million in seed funding led by InterWest Partners. Other participants in the round included ONSET Ventures, Foundry Group Angel (Foundry’s AngelList syndicate), and KBS+ Ventures.

BioConsortia, a new, Davis, Ca.-based agricultural biotechnology company that’s developing a technology to improve crop yields, has raised $15 million in Series B funding co-led by Khosla Ventures and Otter Capital. TechCrunch has a nice write-up of the company here.

Bjond, a two-year-old, Columbus, Oh.-based software company that makes workflow-management and decision-support software, has raised $3.25 million in Series A funding led by Draper Triangle Ventures. TriStar Technology Ventures and Hopen Life Science Ventures also participated in the funding.

Carsquare, a two-year-old, Washington, D.C.-based car search engine platform that aggregates new, used, and leased car listings from multiple auto sites, has raised an undisclosed amount of Series A funding led by Robert Hisaoka, a local car dealer executive and angel investor.

Dropbox, the 6.5-year-old, San Francisco-based online storage company, has lined up more than $500 million worth of debt financing, says the Financial Times. The funds, which Re/code is trying to confirm, add to $350 million in equity funding that DropBox raised from venture capital and private equity investors a couple of months ago.

Germin8, a two-year-old, Mumbai, India-based analytics company that helps businesses develop insights based on what people are saying about their brand on social media and beyond, has raised $3 million in Series A funding from Kalaari Capital.

Neurovance, a three-year-old, Cambridge, Ma.-based clinical-stage neuroscience company focused on treating adult attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, has raised an additional $6.3 million for its Series A round, bringing its total funding to $10.5 million. Its investors include Novartis Venture Fund, Venture Investors, H&Q Healthcare Investors, H&Q Life Science Investors, GBS Venture Partners, and the State of Wisconsin Investment Board.

NoteVault, a six-year-old, San Diego-based company that sells voice-to-text-based mobile reporting services to the engineering and construction industry, has raised an undisclosed amount of funding from West Partners.

RefleXion Medical, a five-year-old, Burlingame, Ca.-based company that’s developing a radiation therapy system for cancer treatment, has raised $11.6 million in Series A funding led by Paris-based Sofinnova Partners, which was joined by Pfizer Venture Investments and Venrock.

Scytl, a 13-year-old, Barcelona, Spain-based digital voting services company, has raised $40 million from Vulcan Capital, the growth fund of Microsoft co-founder Pau Allen. Scytl had previous raised capital from Balderton Capital, Nauta Capital and Spinnaker SCR. (Crunchbase pegs that earlier funding at roughly $10 million.)

Sungevity, a six-year-old, Oakland, Ca.-based residential solar service company, has raised $70 million in financing led by Jetstream Ventures. The European utility E.ON also participated in the round, alongside earlier investors that include GE Ventures, Brightpath Capital Partners and Vision Ridge Equity. The company has raised $246 million altogether, shows Crunchbase.

Vapotherm, a 15-year-old, Exeter, N.H.-based maker of respiratory care devices, has raised $24 million in fresh funding led by Gilde Healthcare Partners. New investor Adage Capital Management also participated in the round, as did earlier investors 3×5 Special Opportunity Fund,Morgenthaler Ventures, Kaiser Permanente, Integral Capital Partners, QuestMark Partners and Cross Creek Capital.

—–

New Funds

Canada’s federal government is injecting a lot of new capital into the country’s tech sector, reports the Hollywood Reporter. On Friday, it announced that through the Business Development Bank of Canada, it will invest $300 million in venture capital for Canada-based digital companies and another $200 million to support small and medium-sized businesses with digital technology adoption. (In U.S. dollars, the total is $455 million.)

Less than two years after spinning off North Hill Ventures, a venture capital unit that Capital One launched in 1999, the financial services giant is planning to launch another VC group to invest in early-stage financial technology companies, according to peHUB. CapitalOne won’t be raising a fund for the unit but will rather be investing off its own balance sheet, one source tells the outlet. Capital One had spun off North Hill Ventures after the Volcker Rule provision in the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial reform law made it difficult for banks to invest in such funds; North Hill has since replaced Capital One as its only LP with investors that include Hamilton Lane, Fort Washington Capital Partners and the Oregon Investment Council.

Mohr Davidow Ventures is out marketing a fund in the neighborhood of $200 million with just three investment partners, reports Venture Capital Dispatch. The reason, in part: Mohr Davidow is ditching its focus on life sciences and clean tech and focusing exclusively on information technology startups. The firm closed its last fund, $670 million Fund IX, in 2007. Partners who are not going forward with the new fund include Jon Feiber, Nancy Schoendorf, Jim Smith and Josh Green, says the report.

—–

IPOs

New tech issuers had a pretty good Friday. GrubHub, the online food ordering company, priced its IPO shares at $26 per share late Thursday and finished the day on Friday with a 31 percent gain. Opower, which sells consumer energy efficiency software to the utility industry, priced its shares at $19 and finished the day at $23 — a 21 percent gain. And Five9, whose on-demand software enables cloud-based call centers, which priced its shares at $7 (downwardly revised from an original range of $9 to $11), closed up 9 percent at $7.64. An issuer that didn’t land in positive territory was Corium, which develops patches used in drug delivery. It had priced its shares at $8 (revised from $10 to $12) and closed at $7.95 on Friday, down .63 percent.

Matomy Media Group, a Tel Aviv-based digital advertising firm, announced late last week that it won’t proceed with plans to raise $100 million in an IPO in London, citing sector volatility and low investor interest.

TrueCar, an eight-year-old, Santa Monica, Ca.-based car pricing information site, filed for an IPO on Friday. The company has raised roughly $170 million from investors over the years, shows Crunchbase. Its biggest shareholders include Capricorn Management, which owns 16.02 percent of the company; Upfront Ventures, which owns 15.23 percent; Anthem Ventures, which owns 9.31 percent; Vulcan Capital, which owns 9.08 percent; and Peppy Capital Partners, which owns 6.62 percent. Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan Securities will serve as lead underwriters.

China’s Twitter-like messaging service Weibo, owned by Sina Corp, said in a regulatory filing on Friday that it expects its IPO offering of 20 million American Depository Shares to be priced at $17 to $19.

—–

Exits

AdGenie, a seven-year-old, U.K.-based advertising retargeting company has been acquired by Ve Interactive, a London-based software company that promises to optimize online merchants’ transactional capabilities, in a deal described in reports as a “multi-million pound acquisition.”

—–

People

Business Insider has come up with a list of “21 rising stars of New York venture capital.”

David Allison, a principal at Split Rock Partners in Menlo Park, Ca., for four-and-a-half years, has joined San Francisco-based Versant Venturesas a principal, according to Dow Jones. Allison has a PhD in bioengineering from Rice University, where he studied heart valve disease; today, he focuses on medical devices and other life sciences opportunities.

Ari Horie, a veteran of IBM, is helping women entrepreneurs launch and scale companies through her Women’s Startup Lab in Menlo Park. Silicon Valley Business Journal profiles her here.

Colin Kroll, who cofounded Vine, a video capture tool that Twitter acquired in late 2012, is stepping down from his position as Vine’s general manager. He isn’t saying yet what’s next.

Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg is no longer a billionaire. (For now.)

Keith Rabois, the former Square executive who joined Khosla Venturesearly last year, is working on a startup idea that he says has been marinating for 11 years. Code named HomeRun, the data-driven company plans to make it possible to sell a house within minutes and expects to launch “in the summer, maybe earlier,” he tells VentureBeat.

In unrelated Keith Rabois news, he offers his take on who he thinks are the most influential young people in Silicon Valley. (At the top of his list:Adam D’Angelo and Charlie Cheever, Quora’s cofounders.)

Kevin Rose of Google Ventures was called a “parasite” and a “leech” by protestors who — very alarmingly — stood outside his San Francisco home yesterday afternoon and accused him of helping to fuel the “tech startup bubble that is destroying San Francisco.”

In 2005, Mark Zuckerberg gave a talk to computer science students at Harvard (and answered questions) and only about a dozen students bothered to show up. You can see his presentation here.

—–

Job Listings

Santé Ventures, an Austin, Tex.-based healthcare and life science venture capital firm that invests in early-stage companies, is looking for a senior analyst. Email your CV to resumes@santeventures.com.

—–

Essential Reads

eBay now allows users to sell virtual currency like bitcoin, as well as mining contracts. TechCrunch has the story.

Yahoo plans to acquire the kind of programming that typically winds up on high-end cable TV networks or streaming services like Netflix, reports the WSJ.

The FBI has warned Boston-area tech companies and research facilities against partnering with foreign venture capital firms from Russia. Apparently, the agency is concerned that the government-sponsored funds are trying to gain access to classified, sensitive and emerging technology from the companies.

—–

Detours

The world’s ten costliest apartment homes.

Ten houses made from shipping containers.

The guilt of the video-game millionaires.

—–

Retail Therapy

Wired really digs the Porsche 918 Spyder that you’ve been reading about for years and which is now for sale. (Warning: You need a very deep pocket for this one.)

Erm, a little too-high-tech dress.

—–

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

 

Happy Friday!

—–

Top News in the A.M.

Despite the torrid pace of IPOs, some signs of investor wariness are beginning to appear, reports Dealbook. Renaissance Capital’s IPO exchange-traded fund, which tracks the stock performance of recent offerings, has lagged behind the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index for most of the last month, in part because of poor performers.

—–

Orphaned Entrepreneurs

When the news broke that Jonathan Teo and Justin Caldbeck were leaving their respective venture firms to create a new firm called Binary, their peers cheered them on, maybe wondering if they might also spin off on their own someday. After all, Teo and Caldbeck are just the latest in a growing string of investors — Tim Connors, Aileen Lee and Kent Goldman among them — to fly the coop.

For Siqi Chen, though, the development presented worrying questions. Chen is a serial entrepreneur who sold his company Serious Games to Zynga in 2010 and today runs Heyday, a two-year-old startup that puts out a personal journal iPhone app. To date, Heyday has attracted $5.5 million from top funds, among them General Catalyst Partners. The concern for Chen was that Teo — Heyday’s board member — was now leaving General Catalyst. Who would be Heyday’s advocate at the firm?

Chen soon learned he needn’t fret: Teo could remain on his board, General Catalyst told him. But Chen knows that plenty of entrepreneurs lose cherished board members in such transitions and that for them, a venture industry in flux isn’t always good news. We chatted about these orphaned entrepreneurs yesterday afternoon. Our conversation has been edited for length.

How did you meet Jonathan Teo?

I met him through an introduction. [After Serious Games was acquired by Zynga], I worked with Andy Tian, who was GM of Zynga’s China business, for about a year. After I left, Jonathan asked Andy to introduce him to interesting ex-Zynga people and Andy gave him my name. He tried our demo in 2012 and continued to use it and give us really useful feedback, and he finally made us an offer we couldn’t refuse.

So he was one of your earliest champions.

Definitely. A firm like Andreessen Horowitz can double down on traction. Then there are VCs who can smell something at the most nascent stages, before they gain traction. Jonathan has a really intuitive consumer nose. He sourced Twitter and Instagram [while a principal earlier in his career] at Benchmark. He also sourced Snapchat [for General Catalyst] and made a personal investment in the company. If you look at his track record, he’s made very few investments, and they’ve been spot on. He identifies opportunities early and [pursues them] aggressively, which is increasingly rare in institutional VC.

Has he been as active on your board as he was before leaving General Catalyst?

Yes. He’s still affiliated with General Catalyst in the role of venture advisor … and though he’s been gone for a few months now, and he still comes to every board meeting and is just as involved as before.

What happens if they eventually transition him away from the company? It is General Catalyst’s board seat.

We’ve received reassurances on both sides, so for the foreseeable future, he’ll be on our board. But it’s never easy; I can’t imagine any entrepreneur saying [that having a board member replaced] is a good thing. When entrepreneurs pitch VCs, part of [the allure] is the brand. But a large part of your decision is around the partner you’ll be working with. If that person leaves, it’s a big blow. I think any employee who has had a manager be fired or leave knows that feeling, and it’s an even bigger issue if you’re working with investors. You’re losing your biggest fan.

Do you think there can be repercussions beyond personal disappointment?

All things being equal, I think it can be a little harder for a venture firm to follow on [and invest more in a company whose lead investor has left], which can create signaling issues. It all depends on a company’s traction.

What kind of courtesy would you expect a venture firm to give an entrepreneur who will be losing his or her board member? How much notice is fair, and should the entrepreneur have a say in who their new director will be?

I’d expect at least two quarters of notice. [A change like that] could affect your fundraising plans or your timing.

As for other expectations, I’m not sure there are any norms or expectations that a founder can interview the rest of the partners. But I’d want a say in it. I’d want it to be a conversation, at a minimum.

New Fundings

AirXpanders, a 7.5-year-old, Palo Alto, Ca.-based company focused on tissue expansion technologies (like saline-filled implants) for use after reconstructive surgeries, has raised a $7 million credit facility from GE Capital. The company has raised $45 million in venture funding to date, including from Vivo Ventures, GBS Venture Partners, Prolog Ventures, Heron Capital and Shalon Ventures.

Artsy, a five-year-old, New York-based company puts high-quality images and information about art online in one website, has raised raised $18.5 million in Series B funding led by Thrive Capital, reports the WSJ. Other participants in the round included Peter Thiel, Wendi Deng, art dealerLarry Gagosian, and Earthlink founder Sky Dayton. The company has raised around $26 million to date, shows Crunchbase.

Bloglovin, a 5.5-year-old, New York-based blog aggregator, has raised $7 million in Series A financing led by the European investor Northzone. Betaworks, Lerer Ventures, White Star Capital, and Bassett Investment Group also participated in the round, which brings the company’s total funding to $8 million.

Boundary, a three-year-old, Mountain View, Ca.-based cloud service that helps companies understand their applications so they can avoid downtime, has raised $22 million in Series C funding led by Adams Street Partners. Other participants in the round included new investor Triangle Peak Partners and earlier investors Lightspeed Venture Partners and Scale Venture Partners. Boundary has raised $41 million altogether so far.

Ceros, a 6.5-year-old, New York- and San Francisco-based SaaS company that provides brands with layout and animation tools and real-time analytics so they can create attractive interactive content, has raised $6.4 million in new funding from Sigma Prime, Starvest Partners, and Greycroft Partners. Fortune has much more here.

Clari, a two-year-old, Mountain View, Ca.-based customer relationship management software company, has raised $6 million in funding from Sequoia Capital. TechCrunch has much more on the company here.

GemShare, a year-old, San Francisco-based service recommendation application, has raised $1.2 million in seed funding from Greylock Partners and Second Avenue Partners. Numerous individual investors also joined the round, including Rich Barton, Jennifer Fonstad, Lloyd Frink, Ellen Levy, Sonja Perkins, William Quigley, Mika Salmi.

Health Digital Systems SAPI de CV, an 11-year-old, Mexico-based electronic health records company, has received a $25 million investment from Northgate Capital.

Hike, a two-year-old, New Delhi, India-based cross-platform instant messaging app, has raised $14 million from BSB, a joint venture between Bharti and SoftBank Corp. The company has raised $21 million altogether.

Holaira, a 5.5-year-old, Plymouth, Mn.-based medical device company focused on treating obstructive lung diseases, has raised $42 million in Series D funding led by Vertex Venture Holdings. Other participants in the round included Windham Venture Partners, two strategic investors, and all of Holaira’s existing venture investors: Advanced Technology Ventures, Morgenthaler Ventures, Split Rock Partners, and Versant Ventures. Holaira has raised roughly $70 million in funding altogether.

Jiuxian, a five-year-old, Beijing-based company that sells wine online, has raised RMB425 million ($68.5 million) in two rounds of financing, according to Chinese Money Network. Investors of the two rounds include earlier investors Rich Land Capital, Oriental Fortune Capital and Sequoia Capital. Jiuxian previously received $20 million in Series A funding from a Guangzhou-based alcohol company, Yuekeung Winery, in April 2011. It also received “tens of millions” of dollars in Series B funding from Oriental Fortune Capital and Sequoia in late November 2011. In 2012, Rich Land Capital led an undisclosed Series C found for the company.

Levels Beyond, a 6.5-year-old, Denver, Co.-based company behind a content inventory platform, has added $2.5 million to its Series A funding led by TCV Capital, bringing its total to $7 million.

Otologic Pharmaceutics, a five-year-old, Oklahoma City, Ok.-based biopharmaceutical company focused on treating hearing disorders, has raised $4.1 million in Series A funding led by Accele Venture Partnersand i2E.

Plan B Funding, a 3.5-year-old, Bristol, England-based company that sells digital marketing services to banks and other financial institutions, has raised roughly $500,000 in seed funding from The North West Fund for Digital & Creative, managed by AXM Venture Capital.

Social Finance, a three-year-old, San Francisco-based peer-to-peer lending company, has raised $80 million in Series C financing led by Discovery Capital Management. Other participants in the round included Peter Thiel and Wicklow Capital. Silicon Valley Business Journal has much more on the company here.

Tango Card, a four-year-old, Seattle-based customer and employee loyalty rewards platform, has raised $3.3 million in new funding. Allegro Venture Partners, Floodgate, Swan & Legend Venture Partners,Western Technology Investment and Innovation Endeavors participated in the round. The company has raised $9.7 million altogether.

TrackIf, a year-old, Minneapolis, Mn.-based technology that helps users create their own personalized web alerts based on their interests, has closed $3 million in debt funding. The investors included Chicago Ventures, Wisconsin Investment Partners, New Capital Fund and Confluence Capital.

—–

New Funds

Quadrivio, a 14-year-old, Milan, Italy based venture capital firm, has launched a €100m ($166 million) venture capital fund, according to reports. The fund, Fondo TT Venture Due, will invest in tech startups focusing on life sciences, med tech, new materials and clean tech. More here.

—–

IPOs

It’s a big day for tech IPOs. GrubHub, the 10-year-old, Chicago-based online platform for restaurant pick-up and delivery orders, hits the market today. So does IMS Health Holdings, a five-year-old, Danbury, Ct.-based healthcare information company; OPower, the 6.5-year-old, Arlington, Va. energy software company; and Five9, a 13-year-old, San Ramon, Ca. maker of cloud software for contact centers.

—–

Exits

Datamonk, a three-year-old, Berlin-based mobile targeting and analytics platform, has been acquired by the Berlin-based incubator HitFox Group. (HitFox helps build game companies.) Terms of the deal weren’t disclosed.

EventSneaker, a 10-month-old, London-based company whose technology connects the ticketing, social, and email platforms used by event organizers to provide an integrated experience, has been acquired by the event publishing firm Evvnt for an undisclosed amount. EventSneaker had raised a small amount of funding from Searchcamp, a 12-week accelerator program in England.

Novauris Technologies, a 14-year-old, U.K.-based automatic speech recognition technology company, was quietly acquired by Apple some time last year for an undisclosed amount, TechCrunch reports.

—–

People

Steve Case, the former chairman of America Online and cofounder of the investment firm Revolution, made an abrupt decision yesterday to invest $100,000 in each of 10 startups he’d seen describe their businesses at an event sponsored by Google on Wednesday in Mountain View, Ca. “I was so inspired by the consistent quality of each of the pitches that I made an on-the-spot decision to support each company,” Case said in a statement.

Brendan Eich resigned yesterday from his newly appointed post as CEO of the for-profit Mozilla and the nonprofit foundation that owns it. Eich had been pressured to step down from the moment he was given the job, including because of his support of California’s anti-gay marriage law, Proposition 8. Re/code has more here.

Josh Felser, a renowned Bay Area entrepreneur and investor, launched the newest of his projects yesterday: a nonprofit called #climate that connects online “influencers” with nonprofits whose profiles they can help raise. The invite-only app is already being used by Twitter CEO Dick Costolo, former Vice President Al Gore, and actor Mark Ruffalo, a clean energy advocate who used it to publish tweets yesterday about the Vote Solar Initiative, among other causes. “Not only does it drive traffic to the nonprofits, but it also injects climate change into a mass-market conversation,” Felser told Re/code. “We’re taking the message to where people already are, on Twitter and Facebook.”

Sujay Jaswa, a VP at Dropbox who joined the company is 2010, has been promoted to chief financial officer of the online-stage startup, ending a months-long search process.The WSJ has more here.

Elon Musk and other Sequoia Capital-backed founders talk about their first checks from the venture firm in this new video clip (that’s worth the five minutes it takes to watch).

Mark Spiering, long the product head of U.S. online photo-hosting site Flickr, has left for EyeEm Mobile of Berlin, which operates a free photo-sharing app.

—–

Job Listings

Glocap, the boutique search firm, is looking for a director for its venture capital and growth equity practice. The role is the organization’s most senior position after the CEO.

—–

Data

Deal activity in the payments tech space hit a five-year high last year, as traditional and corporate VCs plugged $1.2 billion into 193 deals. CB Insights breaks down the deal activity here.

Fully 90 percent of companies that tapped the public markets for the first time last year used confidential registration, reports American Lawyer.

—–

Essential Reads

More than 330 million new shares of Google hit the U.S. equity market yesterday, completing a two-year process through which Sergey Brin and Larry Page are cementing control of the world’s third-biggest company.

Facebook‘s Page reach is decreasing. TechCrunch looks at why.

—–

Detours

The 10 least expensive properties for sale in San Francisco’s tony Pacific Heights neighborhood.

Don’t help your kids with their homework, and other insights from a ground-breaking study of how parents impact children’s academic achievement.

“You and Your F__king Coffee,” co-starring “Silicon Valley” creator Mike Judge.

Tiny crocheted animal figures.

—–

Retail Therapy

Good luck with this.

—–

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

Good morning! Hope your Thursday is off to a great start.

—–

Top News in the A.M.

Nearly four years ago, the U.S. government put the final touches on a secret plan to build a social media project aimed at undermining Cuba’s communist government, the AP is reporting. But the legality of the fake Twitter it created is far from clear.

Pavel Durov, the founder of the Russian social network Vkontakte, who earlier this week announced he was quitting his job as its chief executive, is saying this morning that it was an April Fool’s joke. United Capital Partners, which has fought with Durov since buying a 48 percent stake in Vkontakte from two other co-founders last April, doesn’t think Durov is hilarious. “Needless to say, we do not consider it funny, especially taking into account that the board of Vkontakte is meeting at the moment in Riga [in Latvia] to discuss candidates for Durov’s replacement,” the company told the WSJ.

—–

Despite an Abundance of VC, Lighter Capital Finds Takers

Lighter Capital emerged on the scene nearly four years ago when money was tight and its business — offering revenue-based financing to nascent, cash-strapped tech startups — seemed perfectly timed. Startups that didn’t want to agree to onerous venture terms yet weren’t candidates for small business loans suddenly had a third choice.

Of course, times have changed. Not only are traditional VCs now looser with money and terms friendlier, but you can’t swing a cat without hitting an angel investor, a micro VC, or an accelerator program. To find out how the Seattle-based company — which last disclosed a $6 million Series A in 2010 — is faring, I called its CEO, B.J. Lackland, last week to learn more.

Lighter Capital is kind of like an OnDeck but focused more exclusively on small software-as-a-service startups. Why?

We really like things with recurring revenue. That’s what we see as the asset that we’re fundraising against.

Explain how your service works to startups unfamiliar with revenue-based loans.

We’ll [loan] a startup that has more than $200,000 in annual revenue and 50 percent in gross margins between $50,000 and $1 million. Say we give them $100,000. They’ll pay us a set percentage of monthly cash receipts — maybe it’s 5 percent — until they’ve paid us a multiple of the $100,000 that we loaned them [depending on the business, its team, and its revenue]. Our interest rates vary from 1 to 10 percent, and we cap the [final payout] at 2.5x.

How long do you give companies to pay you in full?

As long as it takes, though if we can help accelerate [the time it takes to get paid in full], we get a better IRR out of it, so we’re happy to help them if we can. The way we interact [with our customers] is halfway between a bank and a VC.

What’s your pacing like, and what types of entrepreneurs are turning to you?

We’re doing three deals a month, though we’re staring to accelerate the volume. We’re targeting 8 to 10 deals a month now that we’ve really nailed down the instrument and the target. Our entire shtick is that can we use technology to make capital available faster; we can go from loan application to deal in one month.

There’s a lot of interest in the gap we’re filling between banks, VCs and angels. VC are shooting for 10x to 100x. Banks are just looking to not lose their money [so won’t always lend to our targets]. And angels want to own more of a startup, while a lot of our entrepreneurs own their entire businesses or else they’ve raised angel funding already but don’t want to become even more diluted [including as they work their way toward a Series A round].

Your product is money, which begs the question: Are you raising another round this year?

Actually, we just completed a financing — a larger, involved deal — that probably won’t be public for a while.

Will you expand beyond lending to software, Saas, and technology companies? OnDeck, which you mention, seems to be doing pretty well by lending to a range of businesses.

We’ll expand eventually, though we want to focus on our beachhead market and really refine the investing strategy and all that. We also intend to bring out new financial products. We think there’s still a huge gulf between us and banks, and that there’s an opportunity to create more lending offerings to companies — either more money or by lending money to slightly larger entities. There’s still very much a need for that.

New Fundings

Gear Systems, a 1.5-year-old, San Francisco-based startup that’s building gesture recognition technology, has raised $1.9 million in venture capital from K9 Ventures, Intel Capital, and CrunchFund, says TechCrunch.

Catarizm, a two-year-old Tokyo-based online booking service for tours and activities like sightseeing and motor sports, has raised $1.93 million from Globis Capital Partners and Jafco Ventures.

Creads, a 5.5-year-old, Paris-based advertising agency platform that invites brands to state their requirements, and for freelancers and outside agencies to address them, has raised $4.1 million from CM-CIC Capital Privé.

ElasticBox, a 2.5-year-old, Mountain View, Ca.-based startup that aims to make developing and deploying apps on any cloud infrastructure easier, has raised $9 million in Series A funding from Nexus Venture Partners and Intel Capital. The company had previously raised $3.4 million in seed funding from Nexus Venture Partners, Andreessen Horowitz, Intel Capital, AngelPad, Sierra Ventures and Caffeinated Capital.

EyeSee360, a 16-year-old, Pittsburgh-based maker of a panoramic video camera, the 360Fly, has raised an undisclosed amount of funding from Catterton Partners. The company originally formed as an offshoot of Carnegie Mellon University’s Robotics Institute, where its tech was developed.

FiscalNote, a year-old, Bethesda, Md.-based analytics platform that aggregates information about government regulations in real time, is in the market for new funding, says cofounder Tim Hwang. The company — which raised a $1.2 million seed round in September from Mark Cuban, New Enterprise Associates, First Round Capital, and AME Cloud Ventures — is looking for up to $8 million to scale its sales team and expand its reach into Europe and South America.

Fonemine, a nine-year-old, Sunnyvale, Ca.-based whose technology helps enterprises build and manage mobile apps, has $4.5 million in Series B funding led by Michigan eLab, an Ann Arbor, Mi.-based venture capital firm.

Fresh Direct, a 12-year-old, Long Island City, Ny.-based food and grocery delivery service, has raised $10 million in funding, according to an SEC filing. The company has raised at least $91 million to date, shows Crunchbase. Among those listed on the filing is portfolio manager Jeff Deutschman of Apollo Global Management.

GameChanger Media, a five-year-old, New York-based company that makes scorekeeping software for amateur baseball, softball and basketball teams, has raised $6.8 million led by Trilogy Equity Partners. Earlier investors, including Tenfore Holdings and Costanoa Venture Capital, also participated. The company has raised roughly $10.5 million altogether, according to Crunchbase.

Imgur, a five-year-old, San Francisco-based photo sharing service that’s grown very popular in recent years, has raised its first institutional funding in the form of a $40 million investment from Andreessen Horowitz. The round also included a smaller contribution from Reddit, the company says. The New York Times looks at the company, and the deal, here.

Lyft, the 6.5-year-old, San Francisco-based ridesharing service known for the pink moustaches its drivers sport, has raised $250 million in fresh funding, led by the hedge fund Coatue Management, which was joined by the Chinese Internet company Alibaba and hedge fund Third Point Management. Earlier investors Andreessen Horowitz, Founders Fund and Mayfield Fund also participated. The company has now raised $332.5 million altogether.

Newlight Technologies, an 11-year-old, Irvine, Ca.-based company using a microorganism-based biotechnology process to convert air and greenhouse gas into carbon-negative thermoplastics, has raised $9.2 million in Series C funding from (unnamed) new and existing investors, bringing the company’s total capital raised to date to $18.8 million.

Nujira, a 12-year-old, U.K.-based fabless semiconductor company, has raised $20 million in fresh funding from existing investors including Amadeus Capital Partners, Climate Change Capital, Environmental Technologies Fund, SAM Private Equity and NES Partners. The company has raised previously raised roughly $38 million, shows Crunchbase.

OpenFin, a 3.5-year-old, New York-based financial app technology startup, has raised $4 million in Series A funding led by Bain Capital Ventures. OpenFin’s secure runtime technology promises to improve trading and real-time data applications at financial institutions. The company has now raised $7 million to date, it says.

Personal Genome Diagnosis, a 3.5-year-old, Baltimore, Md.-based company that provides cancer genome analysis to oncology researchers, has raised $2.8 million from several undisclosed private investors. The company had raised at least $100,000 in seed funding in 2010, according to an SEC filing.

The Roberts Group, a 33-year-old, New York-based company that provides market data cost and inventory management solutions to the financial services industry, has received an undisclosed amount of funding from Polaris Partners.

Somo, a five-year-old, London-based mobile marketing and advertising company, has raised $5.5 million in funding. The money comes from MMC Ventures, a London-based venture firm that has previously provided Somo with an undisclosed amount of funding.

WealthForge Holdings, a 4.5-year-old, Richmond, Va.-based licensed broker-dealer and investment banking firm that focuses on private investments in small companies, has raised $2.5 million in Series A funding. New Richmond Ventures, a Richmond-based investment firm, and SenaHill Partners, a New York City-based merchant bank, were the lead investors in the round.

Wealthfront, a six-year-old, Palo Alto, Ca.-based online investment management company, has raised $35 million in new funding led by Index Ventures and Ribbit Capital. Earlier investors The Social+Capital Partnership, Greylock Partners and DAG Ventures also participated along with numerous individual investors, including Marissa Mayer, Kevin Rose, Paul Kedrosky, Mark and Ali Pincus, Alison Rosenthal and Tim Ferriss. The round brings total funding for the company — which was formerly known as kaChing Group and changed its name to Wealthfront in October 2010 — to $65 million.

—–

New Funds

Visionnaire Ventures, a new, San Carlos, Ca.-based seed and early-stage venture firm, has raised a debut fund of $80 million, according to an SEC filing. The firm makes seed, early and growth-stage investments in startups that “leverage technology to evolve consumer interactive entertainment experiences,” according to its site.

Visionnaire was cofounded by Taizon Son, the youngest brother of SoftBank founder Masayoshi Son. The younger Son is also cofounder of the Japanese video game company GungHo Online Entertainment. (Now a publicly traded company, Gungho reportedly made Son a billionaire last year. Indeed, Gungho and Softbank — an early investor in Gungho — used some of the run-up in Gungho’s stock to acquire a 51 percent stake inSupercell, the Helsinki-based mobile gaming company, last year.)

Visionnaire’s site says that it invests in both the U.S. and Asia. Its managing partner is Susan Choe, who previously cofounded an online gaming company called Outspark and spent several years in a variety of roles at Yahoo.

—–

IPOs

Cheetah Mobile, a 4.5-year-old, Beijing-based security software maker, a unit of the Chinese software company Kingsoft Corp., filed to go public yesterday. Reuters has much more on the company and why it hopes to list in the U.S. here.

Lumena Pharmaceuticals, a three-year-old, San Diego-based developer of treatments for serious liver diseases, has also filed to go public, just a few weeks after raising $45 million in Series B funding. The company, which has raised roughly $70 million from VCs, is looking to raise $75 million in its offering. Its principal shareholders include Alta Partners, which owns 34 percent of the company; New Enterprise Associates (17 percent); RiverVest Venture Partners (14.9 percent), Pappas Ventures(12.2 percent); and Adage Capital Partners (7.9 percent).

Rubicon Project, the venture-backed, digital ad tech company, saw its shares rise nearly 34 percent yesterday after it priced its shares at the low end of its estimated price range of between $15 and $17 a share. Investors Business Daily has more here.

—–

Exits

AccessClosure, a 12-year-old, Mountain View, Ca.-based company that makes extravascular closure devices, is being acquired by publicly traded Cardinal Health for $320 million in cash. AccessClosure had raised at least one round of funding, according to Crunchbase, which shows a $2.8 million round led by New Leaf Venture Partners and Three Arch Partners.

Big Frame, a 2.5-year-old, Hollywood, Ca.-based media company that works with YouTube influencers to create and market video content ,has been acquired by AwesomenessTV, the digital media arm of Dreamworks Animation, for $15 million. Big Frame had raised a $3.4 million round in 2012 from Anthem Venture Partners, DFJ Frontier, Pritzker Group Venture Capital, Lowercase Capital, and Launchpad LA, among others.

Sociomantic Labs, a 4.5-year-old, Berlin-based ad tech firm that specializes in programmatic and retargeting advertising with an emphasis on e-commerce, has been acquired by Tesco, the world’s second-largest retailer after Walmart. The companies are disclosing the acquisition price, but sources tell TechCrunch it’s in the “low hundreds of millions of dollars.”

—–

People

Caterina Fake is one of 16 entrepreneurs whom Bloomberg has asked the question: How do ideas really happen? Fake, who cofounded the photo-sharing site Flickr, tells the outlet it’s less than sudden, despite perceptions otherwise. “Most often, ideas evolve over time .. With my current startup, Findery, I thought I had the idea when I was camping with my daughter in 2010. But then my ex-husband reminded me that I’d actually talked about doing that in 2005.”

Michael Skok, a general partner with North Bridge Venture Partners, says his firm, one of few still stationed in the Boston suburbs, is moving to Boston or Cambridge later this year. According to the Boston Globe, Battery Ventures, Polaris Partners, Atlas Venture, Bessemer Venture Partners, Highland Capital Partners, Charles River Ventures, and Matrix Partners have all moved (or are on the cusp of moving) out of the burbs and into the city, as the venture industry has shifted from a lean-back to lean-in model (i.e., closer to entrepreneurs).

Nick Solaro is the newest partner of Drive Capital, the Columbus, Ohio, venture firm launched by former Sequoia Capital partners Mark Kvammeand Chris Olsen. The WSJ has the story. Solaro has spent the last four years working in business development at Google in Mountain View, where he focused on Android. Before Google, Solaro cofounded a pet care site called PetWave. Solaro has also spent time as a junior investment professional at Technology Crossover Ventures and as an analyst at Goldman Sachs and UBS.

—–

Happenings

The VentureScape conference is coming up in a few weeks, and it’s pretty clear that its chair, Venky Ganesan of Menlo Ventures, isn’t messing around. This year, for example, venture-backed entrepreneurs are invited to attend. (Note: their VCs have to be NVCA members.)

The two-day, San Francisco-based event, taking place May 13 and 14, will also feature some high-wattage speakers, including former Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice, who’ll give an hour-long keynote address; GE honcho Jeff Immelt, who will be interviewed by venture capital honcho Peter Thiel; and academic Vivek Wadhwa, who will go toe-to-toe with reporter-entrepreneur Kara Swisher of Re/code in discussing racial and gender discrimination in Silicon Valley.

Ganesan also says to look for an LP panel, featuring Peter Dolan of Makena Capital, as well as panels designed around cybersecurity, corporate venturing, young VCs, female VCs, growth-equity investing, and CFOs, among others.

As for entertainment, among other acts, veteran VC Ray Rothrock will be performing with his son in their band Up and to the Right. “His son is really good,” says Ganesan. “Ray,” he adds, “is okay.”

—–

Job Listings

Bessemer Venture Partners is looking for a full-time associate in Menlo Park, Ca.

—–

Data

Dow Jones did some number crunching to determine which cities, outside the U.S., are the biggest startup hubs. What it found: London is leading the pack, with Paris following closely behind. But Berlin and Moscow are catching up to both. Venture-capital investors closed 104 deals with Berlin-based startups in 2013, a 22 percent increase over 2012 and an 89 jump from 2011. Investors in London, meanwhile, closed 135 deals with startups in the U.K. capital last year — which is 2 percent fewer than from 2012 but up 26 more than closed in 2011. Overall, says Dow Jones, European companies raised $7.26 billion in venture capital last year across 1,330 deals, which is 16 percent of the deals done globally.

—–

Essential Reads

Tech columnist Farhad Manjoo takes readers for a tour inside Stanford University’s Virtual Human Interaction Lab.

Microsoft is trying to be your friend – and it’s kind of working.

According to an as-yet unpublished study, the Mayo Clinic has found that incorporating a smartphone app into cardiac rehabilitation can reduce emergency room visits and hospital readmissions by 40 percent.

—–

Detours

Extreme adventures in work avoidance.

Women who stay up late tend to have similar risk-taking tendencies as men, according to researchers from the University of Chicago.

At 23, many people around the world are still in college. Gossy Ukanwoke, “Nigeria’s Mark Zuckerberg,” has instead launched one: Beni American University, Nigeria’s first private online university.

—–

Retail Therapy

Vibrant maps.

Pillow cases for nut jobs.

—–

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

Happy Tuesday, everyone!

—–

Top News in the A.M.

Apple is back in U.S. court with Samsung this week, suing the Korean software maker for $2 billion. Here’s a quick look at the five reasons why.

—–

Accel Backs Father-Son Team in Sookasa

Sookasa, a 2.5-year-old, 12-person startup in San Mateo, Ca., is taking the wraps off its business today, as well as unveiling $5 million in Series A funding led by Accel Partners, which it closed on last August.

No doubt Accel was attracted to the startup’s technology, which promises to dramatically simplify the protection of sensitive files across popular cloud applications and mobile devices. As services like Dropbox and Box become increasingly ubiquitous and more employees use them to share files with each other and people outside their companies, businesses in particular need a better way to manage and protect that data. Sookasa, a cloud-based offering, says it make the process of encryption so easy that even a sole practitioner can get up and running as easily as he or she can sign up for Dropbox itself.

Yet Sookasa is interesting for another reason. In addition to cofounders Madan Gopal and Chandra Shetty — both senior engineers from Cisco, formerly — Sookasa’s founders are a father and son who serve as CTO and CEO, respectively. Israel Cidon was long a professor at Technion in Israel; he also founded four prior companies, including Actona Technologies, acquired in 2004 by Cisco. Asaf Cidon, a PhD candidate at Stanford, spent a year working in R&D at Google after spending three years in the intelligence section of the Israel Defense Forces.

Asaf Cidon talked with StrictlyVC the other day about the company and what it’s like to work with his dad.

You want to allow professionals in regulated industries, like health care, finance and legal, to use their favorite cloud services in a secure way. How is your service different from what already exists?

The issue with other types of solutions is that they’re only good as long as you’re accessing the cloud through a company computer or company network. If you’re sharing with someone outside of company, they can’t access the files. We encrypt files anywhere they go.

What was the impetus for the company?

Dad and I are both geeks who’ve been mucking around for years on crazy ideas and we were [storing] a lot of our documents on Dropbox. And we asked ourselves: Where is our data? Where are all the copies of these files and who can access them? What we found was those are really hard questions to answer. These services keep a lot of different copies and it isn’t clear who can access them. It’s an interesting problem to address for consumers, but even more so for businesses, where you can get fined $5 million for a HIPAA breach, for example.

Not many entrepreneurs launch companies with their dads. What it’s like?

There probably aren’t many cases where founders have started a tech business with family members — though Mendel Rosenblum cofounded VMWare with his wife [Diane Greene], which is an even more precarious situation. [Laughs.] My dad and I really get along, though. We’re also very different. He’s a professor who’s really interested in hard problems; he’ll obsess for a week over [some aspect of] encryption architecture. I love the business side and how we find the right business positioning and sales, which I didn’t always know I would.

You raised $5 million in Series A funding in August, after raising $1.7 million in seed funding in 2012. Why announce it now?

First, we had to go through extensive security and HIPAA audits by [the audit firm] Praetorian, to [ensure we meet all the technical safeguard requirements]. We also wanted to wait until the product was simple enough for the public to use. We have customers, but an encryption product isn’t necessarily easy to explain to a doctor or nurse or even a lawyer. Now the product is in a state where you put your folder in Dropbox and it’s encrypted, it’s done. You don’t even know it’s there.

For inquiring minds, will be you be in the market for more funding this year?

We’re not right now looking for a Series B, but we’ll need funding to expand. We’ll probably need inside sales [staff] pretty soon. With our ambitions, we’ll be going through at least one more round — to put it mildly.

New Fundings

Bima, a 3.5-year-old, Stockholm, Sweden-based company providing mobile-delivered insurance to emerging markets, has raised $22 million from its earlier investors Kinnevik New Media, LeapFrog Investments, and Millicom Systems.

Boatbound, a 1.5-year-old, San Francisco-based peer-to-peer boat rental marketplace, has raised $2.5 million in funding led by Brunswick Corp., with participation from the Israeli crowdfunding platform OurCrowd and angel investors. The company has raised $4.3 million to date, shows Crunchbase.

Buzz Points, a 4.5-year-old Austin, Tex.-based loyalty and rewards programs company, has raised $19 million in new Series D funding led by Lead Edge Ventures. Discover Financial Services, along with earlier backers KEC Ventures and Greycroft Partners, also joined the round.

Cabify, a 1.5-year-old Madrid, Spain-based on-demand car service in Spain and Latin America, has raised $8 million in Series A funding led by Seaya Ventures. The company has raised roughly $10 million to date, including from Red Swan, the Hit Forge, Emerge, and Resolute Partners.

ClassPass, a 10-month-old, New York-based fitness membership startup has raised $2 million in seed funding from angel investors including SV Angel, Fritz Lanman, Hank Vigil, Blake Krikorian, Gordy Crawford, and Dave Tisch. ClassPass enables users go to any class at any gym with a monthly $99 subscription.

DerbySoft, a12-year-old Shanghai-based travel information technology company, has raised more than $9 million in Series B funding from DCM, according to Chinese media reports. DerbySoft raised $6.5 million series A funding from Northern Light Venture Capital in 2009 and “tens of millions” of dollars from Northern Light and Keytone Ventures in 2011.

Intarcia Therapeutics, a 17-year-old Boston-based biotechnology company that’s developing match-stick-size mini-pumps that subcutaneously deliver the company’s new type 2 diabetes and obesity drug, has raised $200 million in funding. New investor RA Capital led the round, and was joined by Farallon Capital Management, Foresite Capital, Franklin Templeton, Fred Alger Management, New Leaf Venture Partners, Quilvest, and three institutional investors that weren’t identified. Intarcia has raised roughly $390 million in equity to date, according to Crunchbase.

PayStand, a 4.5-year-old, Santa Cruz, Ca.-based online payment and e-commerce checkout system, has raised $1 million in seed funding, including from Cervin Ventures, Serra Ventures, Central Coast Angels, and TiE LaunchPad.

Transcend Medical, an eight-year-old, Menlo Park, Ca.-based medical device company focused on treating glaucoma, has raised $22 million in Series C funding from existing investors, along with an unnamed pharmaceutical and medical device company. Some of the company’s backers include Finistere Ventures, HLM Venture Partners, Kaiser Permanente Ventures, Latterell Venture Partners, Morgenthaler Ventures, Split Rock Partners, and Technology Partners.

—-

New Funds

Foresite Capital, a 2.5-year-old, San Francisco-based growth equity firm focused on healthcare investing, has closed its second fund with $300 million in capital commitments. The company’s debut fund closed with $100 million in January of last year. Foresite was founded by Jim Tananbaum, who was previously a partner with Prospect Ventures and, earlier in his career, Sierra Ventures.

Intel is creating a new, $100 million fund focused on China, reports the WSJ. At an event for developers today, the company is announcing that Intel Capital will establish the fund to help accelerate the creation of new devices that use its chips. Intel says it is also setting up an innovation center in Shenzhen, where the gathering is being held.

—–

IPOs

GrubHub, the 10-year-old, Chicago-based online food delivery services company, yesterday raised the expected price range for its IPO to $23 to $25 per share from $20 to $22. The offering of 7 million shares is now expected to raise about $176 million, based on the top end of the price range. GrubHub, backed by Lightspeed Venture Partners, Benchmark Capital and Origin Ventures, among others, is valued at about $1.95 billion at the top end of its expected price range.

Imprivata, a 14-year-old, Lexington, Ma.-based company whose software that helps doctors access IT systems and patients’ electronic health records in a fast, secure way, has filed its S-1 paperwork for a proposed $115 million IPO. The company has raised around $50 million over the years; General Catalyst Partners, Highland Capital Partners, and Polaris Partners each own 25.3 percent of the company, shows the filing.

—–

Exits

Apple is reportedly in talks with Japan’s Renesas Electronics to take over a unit that designs chips for smartphone displays. Says the Nikkei Asian Review: “With its share of the smartphone market slipping, Apple seems to want to bring this core technology in-house rather than cede development to the supplier as the U.S. company has for much of its growth.”

Lovely, a three-year-old, San Francisco-based online rental marketplace, has been acquired for $13 million in cash by RentPath, a vertical search company for apartment and home renters. Lovely had raised two rounds of funding, only one of which –a $2 million seed round — was publicly disclosed. (The company raised its second round last November in connection with its own acquisition of a startup called Rentmatic.) Lovely’s backers include Felicis Ventures, Founder Collective, and Keith Rabois, among others. RentPath is a TPG portfolio company.

Playground.fm, a music playlist app, has been acquired by the hardware company Jawbone, Jawbone confirmed yesterday to TechCrunch, saying the deal closed last year. Playground.fm had raised an $865,000 seed round in 2011 when it was called Noise Toys. Its backers included DCM, Guitar Hero cofounder Charles Huang, and Andie Simon, a former VP of Warner Music.

Telentrada, a nearly 20-year-old ticketing sales service, has been acquired for an undisclosed amount by the four-year-old Spanish ticketing startup Ticketea. Telentrada was owned by the Spanish bank CatalunyaCaixa, which is shedding its non-banking activities, reports TechCrunch. Ticketea has raised roughly $5.7 million from investors, including Seaya Ventures.

Twitter yesterday announced that it has acquired two companies: 2.5-year-old, Bristol, England-based SecondSync and three-year-old, Paris-based Mesagraph, both TV analytics firms that track social chatter about broadcasts. Neither company had reported outside funding. Both will now work out of Twitter’s London office.

—–

People

Kevin Bitterman, a PhD who joined Polaris Partners 10 years ago, has been promoted to partner at the firm. Before joining Polaris, Bitterman cofounded Sirtris Pharmaceuticals (sold to Glaxo Smith Kline in 2008) and Genocea Biosciences, which is now publicly traded. Bitterman is currently the interim CEO of Polaris-backed Editas Medicine.

Marc Diouane has joined Zuora, the subscription commerce, billing and finance company, as its EVP of global field operations. Diouane was most recently the EVP of global services and partnerships at the 2D and 3D design software company PTC.

Pavel Durov, the founder of VKontakte.com, announced yesterday that he has stepped down as the head of the social network — Russia’s largest, with over 100 million users — after ownership changes put pressure on its freedom of speech ethic. TechCrunch has the story here.

Brendan Eich, Mozilla‘s new CEO, talks with CNet about growing calls for him to step down over his 2008 donation to Proposition 8, an effort to ban gay marriage in California. “I prefer not to talk about my beliefs,” says Eich, who adds that he isn’t going anywhere. “I am CEO, and I’m confident I am the best person for the job right now. I serve at the board’s pleasure. If that should change, I’ll do something else. I don’t think it’s good for my integrity or Mozilla’s integrity to be pressured into changing a position.”

Konstantin Guericke, a co-founder of LinkedIn, has joined the Berlin-based early-stage venture firm Earlybird as a Palo Alto, Ca.-based partner, after spending the last two years as a venture partner with the firm. Guericke, who is helping the firm’s four other partners invest a $200 million fund, says he’ll be looking at ways to help European startups make as big a splash globally as possible. (StrictlyVC talked at some length with Guericke about his new role, so stay tuned for more in coming days.)

Lars Fjeldsoe-Nielsen, who spent more than three years at Dropbox and, before that, held numerous roles in mobile business development elsewhere, has been snapped up by Uber, says Re/code, which has much more here.

—–

Happenings

DEMO Enterprise gets underway in San Francisco tomorrow and the agenda looks strong.

The University of Waterloo’s Innovation Summit takes place April 14th and 15th and will feature YouNoodle cofounder Rebeca Hwang andPebble Technology founder Eric Migicovsky among others. You can check out the agenda here.

Digital Hollywood is coming up May 5th through May 8th at the Ritz Carlton Hotel in Marina del Rey, Ca. Learn more here.

—–

Job Listings

Canaan Partners is looking for an analyst in its New York office.

—–

Data

Pitchbook has come up with a first-quarter infographic that features a few surprises. First, four funds garnered more than 50 percent of the capital raised in the first three months of this year. (Guess we know where entrepreneurs needing later-stage capital will be heading.) The first quarter also saw the most capital invested in a single quarter in the history of venture capital(!), says Pitchbook. Not last, we’ve just seen the most IPOs in a single quarter since the fourth quarter of 2007.

In fact, according to a new report by Thomson Reuters and the NVCA, 36 venture-backed IPOs raised $3.3 billion during the first quarter of 2014, a 50 percent increase, by number of new listings, compared to the previous quarter. The first quarter also marked the fourth consecutive quarter to see 20 or more venture-backed IPOs.

—–

Essential Reads

One-third of U.S. consumers who have owned a wearable product stopped using it within six months, says the strategy consultancy Endeavor Partners. More, says the firm, while one in 10 American adults own some form of activity tracker, half of them no longer use it.

Amazon has quietly rolled out a new service to let customers return unwanted merchandise using large metal lockers it has installed for deliveries in garages, convenience, and grocery stores in major metropolitan areas.

Yesterday a federal judge dismissed a neuroscience company’s lawsuit claiming that venture capitalists, including Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, tried to abscond with its intellectual property and cheat it of payments for a new heart drug.

—–

Detours

Virtu Financial, partly owned by Silver Lake Partners, has decided to postpone its IPO by at least a week, a move that comes as high-frequency trading firms have been put in the spotlight by Michael Lewis’s new book, “Flash Boys.”

Why organizations pay so much for star performers.

The definitive list of things that teenagers on Reddit think are cool, including — wait, what? –cell phone lanyards.

A reporter’s cat mug is confiscated by the NCAA. This is his dramatic story.

The creepiest thing you’ll see today. (We hope.)

—–

Retail Therapy

On your next flight, reclaim your leg room.

Ten modern board games that don’t suck. (Our favorite: “Cards Against Humanity: A Party Game for Horrible People.”)

—–

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