Hi, good Tuesday morning, everyone! No column this a.m., but stay tuned for interviews this week with MuckerLab cofounder Erik Rannala and longtime VC Stewart Alsop, among other good stuff. (Psst, web visitors, this version of today’s email is easier to read.)
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Top News in the A.M.
Samsung warned last night that another disappointing earnings report is coming, as cheaper Android phones, along with those new, giant iPhones, eat into its profits.
Yahoo is making some some major-league job cuts in India, according to a new report in Next Big What.
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Blockchain, a three-year-old, U.K.-based bitcoin wallet company, has raised $30 million in its first institutional round of funding. The capital comes from Lightspeed Venture Partners, Wicklow Capital, Mosaic Ventures, Prudence Holdings, Future Perfect Ventures and individual investors, including Richard Branson.
BloomNation, a three-year-old, Santa Monica, Ca.-based online flower marketplace that invites florists to take pictures of their creations and price them, then manages those transactions for a 10 percent cut, has raised $5.55 million from investors. A Capital led the round, with participation from earlier investors Andreessen Horowitz, Spark Capital and Chicago Ventures. Venture Capital Dispatch has more here.
Cabify, a two-year-old, Madrid, Spain-based company whose app allows people to book and pay for chauffeur-driven vehicles, has raised $4 million in funding led by earlier investor Seaya Ventures, with Black Vine and other, unnamed investors from Latin America participating. Cabify had previously raised $16 million, including from Resolute Partners and Red Swan Ventures.
DocuSign, the 11.5-year-old, San Francisco-based electronic-signature software company, has raised $115 million in Series E funding from three Japanese firms — NTT Finance, Mitsui & Co., and Recruit Holdings – which brings its total funding to date to $230 million. Others of the company’s investors include the Australian telecommunications giant Telstra, Ignition Partners, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Accel Partners, Google Ventures, and Salesforce. Geekwire has more here.
EatStreet, a four-year-old, Madison, Wi.-based online restaurant ordering service, has added $4 million to its Series B round, which had previously closed with $6 million in April. New investors in the expanded financing are local venture firm 4490 Ventures and the State of Wisconsin Investment Board. The company has now raised $12 million altogether. Xconomy has more here.
Eversight, a year-old, Palo Alto, Ca.-based company whose cloud-based analytics and machine learning service helps manufacturers optimize in-store promotions, has raised $9.7 million in Series A funding from Emergence Capital Partners.
Infusionsoft, a 13-year-old, Chandler, Az.-based company that makes sales and marketing software for small businesses, has raised $55 million in Series D funding led by Bain Capital Ventures, with earlier investors Signal Peak Ventures, Goldman Sachs, Arthur Ventures and Allure Ventures participating. The company has now raised roughly $128 million altogether, shows Crunchbase.
JobVite, an 11-year-old, Burlingame, Ca.-based job recruiting platform, has raised $25 million in Series D funding led by Catalyst Investors, with participation from earlier investors CMEA, ATA Ventures and Trident Capital. The company has now raised $55.5 million to date shows Crunchbase.
Loanz, a 1.5-year-old, Irvine, Ca.-based private credit lending platform, has raised $2 million in seed funding from undisclosed “financial services and lending industry executives and entrepreneurs.” Loanz was incubated by Outset Ventures, a development studio for Internet companies in strategic vertical markets.
MiniLuxe, a seven-year-old, Boston-based tech-enabled nail and beauty salon franchise, has raised $23 million in Series C funding led by private equity investor Horowitz Group. Other investors in the round included Cue Ball (which had incubated the first salon), Murano Group, Silverado Interests, Beechwood Capital, Barrier Island Capital, Valley Oak Investments, and MIT Media Lab founder Nicholas Negroponte. TechCrunch has more here.
SynGen, a five-year-old, Sacramento, Ca.-based regenerative medicine company focused on stem cell harvesting system, has raised an undisclosed amount of new funding from earlier investor Bay City Capital. The company had previously raised at least $11.5 million from investors, including GE Capital, shows Crunchbase.
Printi, a 2.5-year-old, São Paulo, Brazil-based web-printing startup, has sold a meaningful minority stake in its business for $25 million to the printing company Vistaprint, which acquired all of Printi’s previous investors’ stakes for $25 million. According to Crunchbase, the company had raised just $1.2 million in Series A funding in August 2012, including from Greenoaks Capital, Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale, serial Brazilian entrepreneur Fabrice Grinda and Groupon Brazil co-founder Florian Otto. TechCrunch has more here.
Tuva Labs, two-year-old, New York-based online startup that’s teaching data science to to K-12 classrooms, has raised $430,000 in seed funding led by NewSchools Venture Fund, with participation from Ben Franklin Technology Partners and angel investors. The startup is also a participant in the Kaplan EdTech Accelerator. EdSurge has more here.
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New Funds
Amiti, a four-year-old, Chicago-based venture capital firm that invests alongside leading Israeli investors in late-stage Israeli startups, is looking to raise a $75 million second fund, according to an SEC filing that shows its first sale has yet to occur. Last week, another firm, Magma Venture Partners, a 15-year-old, Tel Aviv, Israel-based firm, closed on a new, $150 million fund to invest exclusively in Israeli entrepreneurs.
Data Collective, a three-year-old, San Francisco-based firm that focuses on big data companies, has raised roughly $140 million for its third fund, shows an SEC filing. Among some of the firm’s newest bets are Drone Deploy, a San Francisco-based company with a smart drone management platform, and Authy, a San Francisco-based company whose API makes it easy for developers to add two-factor authentication to any site or app. Both companies closed on seed rounds last month.
Goodwater Capital, the new venture capital firm of Chi-Hua Chien, who spent seven years as a general partner of Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, closed a $130 million fund over the summer, he tells VentureWire. Chien, with cofounder Eric Kim, a longtime managing director at Maverick Capital, have already made numerous investments from the fund, including Imoji, a new, San Francisco-based company whose app enables users to take any picture and turn it into a shareable emoji/sticker. The firm also joined the Series B round of online menswear company Frank & Oak last month.
Innovation Works, a 15-year-old, Pittsburgh, Pa.-based seed-stage investor backed by Pennsylvania state agencies, has unveiled a $24 million venture fund called Riverfront Ventures that will invest between $1 million and $1.5 million in early-stage information technology, life sciences, medical devices, advanced electronics, advanced materials, robotics and energy companies that are based in southwestern Pennsylvania and which have received an investment from Innovations Works’s seed fund.
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Exits
Bluebeam Software, a 12-year-old, Pasadena, Ca.-based maker of PDF software used for architecture, engineering, and construction, has been acquired by the German software company Nemetschek for $100 million. Bluebeam was a spun out of Alliance Spacesystems, and had received funding from the Pasadena Angels and Tech Coast Angels. Nemetschek also produces software for the architectural and construction industries. SoCal Tech has the story here.
Koality, a two-year-old, San Francisco-based company that helps developers test software by letting them quickly set up multiple instances of a build, has been acquired by another venture-backed company, Docker, for undisclosed terms. Koality had raised $1.8 million in seed funding from Founders Fund, Index Ventures, Webb Investment Network, and Felicis Ventures, among others. Docker, an open-source engine that automates the deployment of any application as a self-sufficient container that will run virtually anywhere, has raised $55 million from investors. TechCrunch has more here.
Mopay, a 14-year-old, Munich-based company that enables customers to pay for good with their phones, has been acquired by its five-year-old, Munich-based rival Boku in a stock deal for an undisclosed amount. Mopay had raised at least $20 million from investors T-Venture Mobile, DFJ Esprit and Holtzbrinck Ventures. Boku has meanwhile raised $75 million from VCs, including Andreessen Horowitz, Benchmark Capital, DAG Ventures, Index Ventures, Khosla Ventures, New Enterprise Associates and Telefónica. CNBC has a good overview of the deal and what’s happening in mobile payments here.
Kulu Valley, a 12-year-old, U.K.-based video platform company, has been acquired for about $15 million by Qumu, a publicly traded enterprise video content management company. Kulu had raised outside funding from Andromeda Capital and Realise Capital Partners.
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People
Investor Marc Andreessen talks about the financial industry with Bloomberg Markets magazine, telling the outlet: “We can reinvent the entire thing.”
Billionaire entrepreneur and former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg is set to become an Honorary Knight of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire. As notes the Independent, the U.K. sometimes bestows these awards on foreign nationals who make an important contribution to British interests. Both Bloomberg’s company and charity have made London their European home.
Zavain Dar has joined the venture firm Lux Capital in Palo Alto, Ca., as a senior associate. Dar joins Lux from Eric Schmidt’s Innovation Endeavors. Prior to Innovation Endeavors he was an early employee at Discovery Engine, acquired by Twitter. According to Lux, Dar — who holds degrees in symbolic systems theoretical computer science from Stanford University — is also an adjunct instructor at Stanford and recently taught the school’s first cryptocurrency class.
Joel Kaplan, currently Facebook’s VP of U.S. Public Policy in Washington, is becoming its VP of Global Policy, a role Facebook created to manage growing interest from foreign and domestic lawmakers over privacy, copyright and security issues, says the Washington Post.
Duncan Niederauer, the former New York Stock Exchange CEO, has joined Battery East as a managing director. Battery East, if you missed its public debut last month, is a San Francisco-based brokerage firm that’s hoping to convince start-ups to let it arrange secondary transactions in their stock. Dealbook has more here.
Travis VanderZanden, who recently left his role as COO of the ride-sharing service Lyft, has joined its arch enemy Uber as its VP International Growth, reports Recode.
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Jobs
Monsanto, the corporate giant that sells agricultural products to farmers, is looking for an investment principal to help identify startups for Monsanto to back. The job is in St. Louis, Mo., and involves regular travel to San Francisco.
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Essential Reads
Why a company that was worth $1.5 billion on Friday fell off a financial cliff yesterday.
Spiraling prices aren’t the real reason to worry about bitcoin, says Quartz.
A new dating app unabashedly calls itself “Tinder, minus the poor people.” It’s Luxy, and we’re predicting big things, because these types of social networks are always hugely successful.
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Detours
It’s Russian president Vladimir Putin’s 62nd birthday today, and a pro-Putin Facebook group has given him an, erm, interesting gift.
Drug cheats in sports could benefit “for decades,” scientists find.
How the ice bucket challenge went viral: a data visualization.
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Retail Therapy
Standing in a long line, or waiting on a train to pass, or watching your kids at the park? Time to make an espresso!
Also: Nice bags.