Happy Friday, everyone. Get some rest this weekend and we’ll see you next week!

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Top News in the A.M.

Apple has bought $14 billion of its own shares over the last two weeks, reports the WSJ, which published an interview with Apple CEO Tim Cook last night. Said Cook of the company’s business going forward: “There will be new categories. We’re not ready to talk about it, but we’re working on some really great stuff.” Pressed for details, Cook added that anyone “reasonable” would consider what Apple is working on as new categories.

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Kleiner Perkins’ Trae Vassallo Reboots

Trae Vassallo’s early investment in Nest Labs, maker of Internet-connected devices like thermostats and smoke alarms, has placed her in the ranks of today’s top venture capitalists. But Vassallo, along with a handful of other longtime Kleiner Perkins general partners, was recently cut from the firm’s investment committee in a sweeping reorganization first reported by Fortune.

Perhaps it’s no surprise that sources say Vassallo is planning her next move – though she refuses to comment. She also seems ready to shed her reputation for green tech deal-making and to embrace her passion for Internet-connected devices for both consumers and enterprises.

During a visit yesterday afternoon to Kleiner’s Sand Hill Road offices, I chatted with Vassallo about her career thus far, and her goals for the future.

Hers is actually a very familiar story in Silicon Valley, land of the super achievers. After earning three degrees from Stanford – a bachelor’s and master’s degree in mechanical engineering and an M.B.A. – Vassallo headed to IDEO, where she designed products for Palm and Dell. She then cofounded the mobile device company Good Technology, which later sold to Motorola.

By 2003, Vassallo had been invited to join Kleiner Perkins, just as the firm was beginning to bet heavily on green tech. Vassallo worked closely with a number of related management teams, including RecycleBank, a green rewards and loyalty network; Altarock Energy, a geothermal development company; and the electric luxury car company Fisker Automotive.

But it was Vassallo’s innate knowledge of mechanical engineering that became her biggest triumph. While Kleiner Perkins’ partner Randy Komisar ultimately sat on the board of Nest, Vassallo was first to recognize the opportunity the startup presented to Kleiner, having investing so much of her time focused on smart grids and energy efficiency. In fact, Vassallo says, in the months before Nest founder Tony Fadell sat down with Kleiner, she was specifically studying thermostats as a way for consumers to more easily measure and control their energy usage.

According to Fortune, Vassallo further negotiated the Series A round on behalf of Kleiner and continued to support the management team, including through introductions to utilities.

The deal returned Kleiner a reported 20 times its investment when Nest sold to Google last month for $3.2 billion in cash.

But Nest wasn’t Vassallo’s only connected-device deal. In 2011, she also led Kleiner into Enlighted, a lighting control tech company that can individually measure and manage lighting at each light fixture and reduce energy consumption by 50 to 75 percent. Designed for offices and commercial buildings, Vassallo likens it to a “Nest for the enterprise,” particularly given its ultimate goal of proving security and other features beyond lighting.

As a next step, Vassallo says she’s looking for more related opportunities. For example, she sees a day when every home has numerous tablets that cost next to nothing and form a kind of in-home communications system.

Vassallo is also interested in companies that apply social benchmarking to connected devices and put the numbers they generate into a more useful context. “I don’t necessarily want my friends to know how out of shape I am,” she jokes, “but I’d be interested in knowing how [my fitness level] compares to other working moms in the same age range.”

I ask Vassallo if she’s also interested in working more closely with other women VCs, a growing number of whom have been striking out on their own. She is friendly with longtime DFJ investor Jennifer Fonstad, for instance, and says she’s thrilled that Fonstad and Theresia Gouw, a former managing director at Accel Partners, have joined forces to create a new, self-funded venture firm.

“I think women should do business together,” she tells me, determined not to give away anything about her plans yet. “I think it’s important to have one another’s backs.”

For now, though, Vassallo is focused on Silicon Valley’s next generation. This weekend, she’s judging an “entrepreneurship” contest at the middle school of one of her three children. She also created a robotics program at Castilleja School, a school for girls in Palo Alto.

Sitting in her glass-lined office, Vassallo says, half-kiddingly, that she used to wonder why she nabbed a degree in mechanical instead of computer engineering. Today, that training is beginning to pay off in all kinds of ways.

New Fundings

Birdback, a 20-month-old, London based app platform for payment cards, has raised $2.4 million led by Passion Capital, with participation from Paul Nikkel, Luke Johnson, Playfair Capital and #1seed. The company links online to offline offers, such as cash-back and other loyalty offers. TechCrunch has more here.

Bloomthat, an 18-month-old, San Francisco-based flower-delivery startup, has raised $2 million in funding from SV Angel, A-Grade Investments,Joe Montana, Alexis Ohanian and Y Combinator.

CircleCI, a three-year-old, San Francisco-based company whose tools enable development teams to quickly deliver features to customers, has raised $6 million in funding led Draper Fisher Jurvetson. The company has raised $7.5 million altogether, including from investors Baseline Ventures and Harrison Metal.

Embrane, a four-year-old, Santa Clara, Ca.-based company that makes software for the delivery and management of network services in data centers, has raised $12 million in fresh funding led by Cisco Systems. Others of its investors include New Enterprise Associates, Lightspeed Venture Partners, and North Bridge Venture Partners. The company has raised roughly $40 million to date.

PayNearMe, a 4.5-year-old, Sunnyvale, Ca.-based cash payment network, has raised $20 million in Series E funding led by GSV Capital, withAugust Capital, Khosla Ventures, Maveron and True Ventures also participating. The company, led by serial CEO Danny Shader, has now raised more than $56 million.

Truecaller, a 4.5-year-old, Stockholm, Sweden-based mobile phone number verification directory, has raised $18.8 million in Series B funding led by Sequoia Capital, alongside existing investor Open Ocean, Truecaller Chairman Stefan Lennhammer, and another, unnamed investor. The company has raised roughly $20 million to date.

Vungle, a three-year-old, San Francisco-based mobile ad startup that focuses on 15-second, in-app videos, has raised $17 million in Series B funding led by Thomvest Ventures, with participation from existing investors Crosslink Capital, Google Ventures, AOL Ventures, SoftTech VC, and Webb Investment Network. The company has raised $25.5 million to date, shows Crunchbase.

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New Funds

Clarus Ventures, a nine-year-old, Cambridge, Ma.-based life sciences venture firm, is targeting $375 million for its third fund, shows an SEC filing. At that size, the pool would be meaningfully smaller than Clarus’s last two funds. (The firm closed its second, $660 million fund, in 2008 and its inaugural, $500 million, fund in 2005.) Interestingly, it has turned to Magog & Cie, a Dubai-based placement agent, for help, according to the filing.

Harbor Capital Group, a newly formed, Bloomington, In.-based company, will soon begin investing capital in young 3-D printing, big-data and robotics companies. CEO Jim Zitek says the firm isn’t assembling a dedicated fund but plans to form limited partnerships around each investment, giving individual investors an opportunity to back some startups but not others. You can read more here.

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Exits

Azuki Systems, a six-year-old, Acton, Ma.-based multiscreen video delivery platform, has been acquired by telecom giant Ericsson for an undisclosed amount. Azuki, formerly called Permeeta, had raised roughly $35 million over the years, reports Xconomy, including from Sigma Partners and Kepha Partners.

Bright, a three-year-old, San Francisco-based data-driven job search startup, has been acquired by LinkedIn for $120 million in mostly stock. Bright had raised roughly $20 million in funding from Toba Capital andPassport Capital. Re/code has more here.

LeadRocket, a Redwood City, Ca.-based social engagement and digital marketing platform provider, has been acquired by Callidus Software, a publicly traded sales and marketing cloud software company. Terms of the deal weren’t disclosed. LeadRocket had raised funding from Emergence Capital, Mohr Davidow Ventures, Accel Partners, Deep Fork Capital, the venture debt firm WTI, and Catapult Advisors.

MobiTargets, a 3.5-year-old, Madrid-based mobile ad network, has been acquired by adQuota, a 3.5-year-old, Copenhagen-based mobile advertising platform that is growing its European presence. Terms of the deal weren’t disclosed, but adQuota recently raised around $3.4 million from the Danish venture firm Northcap.

Myntra, a seven-year-old, Bangalore-based fashion apparel e-tailer, has raised roughly $50 million led by Premji Invest, along with new and existing investors. This funding brings the company’s total funding to around $75 million.

Ness Computing, a three-year-old, Los Altos, Ca.-based maker of a personalized restaurant recommendations app called Ness, has been acquired by the restaurant reservation platform OpenTable in a deal worth $17.3 million. Ness had raised $20 million from investors, including Khosla Ventures, Alsop Louie Partners, Bullpen Capital, TomorrowVentures, SingTel Innov8 and American Express.

SET Media, a 6.5-year-old, New York-based digital video technology company that connects brands with people through targeted video advertising, has been acquired by the publicly traded, personalized digital marketing company Conversant. Terms of the deal weren’t disclosed. SET had raised $10 million from Crosslink Capital and Highland Capital Partners.

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People

Venture capitalist Ben Horowitz writes candidly about a business hire who might easily (if inadvertently) have landed him in jail.

Kleiner Perkins, its partner emeritus Ray Lane, and several others connected to Fisker Automotive have been named in a new lawsuit that alleges they misled investors in the now-bankrupt hybrid car company. The suit alleges that the defendants concealed negative information about Fisker’s business from plaintiffs and other investors “because they needed huge sums of additional cash to fund Fisker Automotive to position the Company for a sale or an initial public offering…without plaintiffs’ and other investors’ money, Fisker Automotive was not a viable company.” The Journal has the story.

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Job Listings

Uber is looking for a head of business development to help further the brand’s reach across Europe, the Middle East and Africa. Requirements include 7 to 10 years of business development experience across the region. Apply here.

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Data

A growing number of backend-as-a-service (BaaS) vendors are enabling mobile and app developers to link their apps to a back-end cloud infrastructure and features including push notifications and social media integration. VCs are paying attention, too, notes CB Insights, which has published some helpful data around the trend.

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Essential Reads

Klout pivots again.

Silicon Valley has taken over the Secret app and the gossip being posted is priceless.

So much for slowing or stopping the patent monetization business. A patent infringement trial positioning Intellectual Ventures against Motorola Mobility ended in a mistrial when a jury couldn’t reach a verdict following two days of deliberations.

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Detours

As technology gets better, will society get worse?

Twelve ways to get what you want.

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Retail Therapy

From the fine folks at Ford, the F-150 RaptorTrax. If there’s a bigger, badder snowmobile out there, we shudder to imagine it.

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Hi, everyone, hope your Thursday is off to a great start.

—–

Top News in the A.M.

Apple has removed the world’s most popular bitcoin wallet from its App Store.

The New York Police Department is testing out Google Glass.

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Another Niche E-Commerce Company, Jack Erwin, Takes Off

VCs must be hearing a lot of pitches from companies that want to be the next Warby Parker, the chic discount online eyeglass vendor, whether it be high-tech wine gadgets, fitted shirts, or dress shoes for men.

If the market is getting saturated with these new brands, you wouldn’t know it. In fact, this morning, another new shoe company called Jack Erwin is announcing that it has raised $2 million in Series A funding led by Crosslink Capital, with participation by Shasta Ventures and Menlo Ventures. Yesterday, to learn more, I reached Lane Gerson, one of the founders of the six-person company, at the startup’s Brooklyn-based offices. Our chat has been edited for length.

You’ve worked as a CFO and a controller. Did you know anything about retail? And why shoes?

My friend and cofounder [Ariel Nelson] was shopping for shoes for a wedding and just wanted dress shoes, and they were all either too [fussy] or too expensive. We wondered if we could find someone to help us make a pair of shoes for $100 that we could then sell for $200, and we spent three months talking with everyone we knew, and each was a dead end. As it happens, Ariel went to a two-seat barber and wound up sitting next to a [product manager of footwear] at Ralph Lauren, who was dealing with buyers and suppliers. We all went for drinks a few weeks later. That was August 2012; he just came on full-time in January.

You have five core shoes in a few different colors. Where are they being made?

In Portugal, at a third-generation factory. We’d talked with factories in Brazil and Portugal and received a bunch of samples and this one had the best quality leather shoes. So we worked with a designer, they sent us samples, we corrected them, and we placed our first [purchase order] in May 2013.

You make it sound so easy. Where are the shoes shipped?

They’re warehoused in a third-party logistics center in Brooklyn, less than three miles from our office.

What’s your return policy?

Free shipping, free returns. We want people to try them on and then hopefully they’ll enjoy and keep them.

What percentage of your customers return the shoes?

About 25 percent, but the data is inconclusive right now. We launched the company publicly in October and we’ve had tremendous demand — so much so that we’ve sold through or initial order and are left with broken sizes. So people are buying sizes that aren’t the right size, and they want exchanges that we don’t have. We raised the [venture] money almost purely to buy inventory.

Is that supply-demand balance hard to manage? What’s been the biggest surprise so far?

It’s all been really positive actually. We’ve learned there’s an appetite for people to buy new product and I think people like a new story and are wiling to give us a try. And if you can give them a product that meets their expectations and you’re responsive to them, you meet great people. We’re discovering that just being nice goes a long way.

New Fundings

Allovue, a year-old, Baltimore, Md.-based company whose financial software helps district officials and administrators track and analyze the impact of school spending on educational outcomes, has raised $800,000from the Maryland Technology Center, Baltimore Angels and Shulman Ventures. It has raised $900,000 altogether.

Apportable, a two-year-old, San Francisco-based platform that allows iOS applications to run on Android devices automatically, has raised $5 million in funding from Google Ventures and individual investors, including Paul Buchheit, Jerry Yang, and Alexis Ohanian. Apportable has raised $7.4 million altogether, including from Salesforce.com and Betaworks.

AtVenu, a two-year-old, San Francisco-based company whose software was designed to handle live event merchandise sales, has raised $1.1 million in funding led by Real Ventures of Montreal.

Celery, a two-year-old, San Francisco-based company whose “pre-commerce” platform makes it easier to e-tailers to accept pre-orders, has raised $2 million in seed funding. Y Combinator, SV Angel, and Max Levchin, among others, participated in the round. (Cofounder and CEOChris Tsai tells me that pre-orders are just the starting point for the company and that ultimately, it plans to become a full storefront platform.)

Citelighter, a three-year-old, New York-based software platform that helps students save, organize and cite information while writing their papers, has raised $1.52 million in seed funding, including from New York Angels, Blu Venture Investors, John Cammack, managing partner of Cammack Associates, and Frank Bonsal, founder of venture-capital firms New Enterprise Associates and Red Abbey Venture Partners. The company has raised $2.45 million to date.

DataMentors, a 16-year-old, Wesley Chapel, Fla.-based business intelligence company, has received an undisclosed amount of funding fromBrook Venture Partners, Bay Capital and Pride’s Crossing Capital.

Docurated, a two-year-old, New York-based document management platform company, has raised $3.75 million Series A funding led byRogers Venture Partners. The company has raised $5.35 million to date, shows Crunchbase.

Domo, a 2.5-year-old, Lindon, Ut.-based business intelligence startup launched by Omniture co-founder Josh James, has raised $125 million in Series C financing led by TPG Growth. Dragoneer Investment Group,Fidelity Investments, Morgan Stanley, Salesforce.com, T. Rowe Priceand Viking Global Investors also participated alongside earlier investorsGGV Capital, Greylock Partners, Institutional Venture Partners, andMercato Partners. (If you have a couple of minutes, Fortune’s Jessi Hempel has a remarkable piece on how James landed the funding from a hospital bed.) Domo has raised more than $250 million to date.

Experiment.com, a two-year-old, San Francisco-based crowdfunding platform designed to fund science projects from chemistry to medicine, has raised an undisclosed amount of funding from Y Combinator, Index Ventures and Andreessen Horowitz. The Journal has much more hereabout the platform, which launched yesterday.

Fantex, the 1.5-year-old, San Francisco-based trading exchange for investors to buy and sell interests in professional athletes, has raised $20 million, shows a new SEC filing. Former football start John Elway is listed as a non-executive director, along with Bruce Dunlevie, a longtime general partner with Benchmark Capital. (Former Benchmark general partner David Beirne is Fantex’s co-founder and chairman.)

Magic Leap, a three-year-old, Hollywood, Fla.-based maker of human computing interfaces and software, has raised more than $50 million across its seed and Series A rounds, the company announced yesterday,without disclosing its investors.

Motilo, a two-year-old, London-based social fashion platform that invites fashionistas to bounce ideas of one another, has raised a second tranche of post-seed funding from private investors. The startup raised $3.3 million during 2013; it has since raised another $2.5 million from the same group of undisclosed, U.K.-based investors.

OneFold, an eight-month-old, Menlo Park, Ca.-based mobile and wearable-data-focused analytics and visualization platform, has raised $400,000 in seed funding from Studio 9+ and a pool of angel investors.

Sialix, a seven-year-old, Cambridge, Ma.-based biotechnology company developing products to treat and prevent cancers, has raised $1.2 million in a second tranche of seed funding. The investors included Boston Harbor Angels, Mass Medic Angels, Launchpad Angels, Maine Angels, Beacon Angels and Desert Angels. The company has raised $4.2 million altogether, shows Crunchbase.

Totango, a nearly 4-year-old, Mountain View. Ca.-based customer engagement platform, has raised $15.5 million in Series B financing led by new investors Canvas Venture Fund and InterWest Partners. Earlier investors Pitango Venture Capital and Gemini Israel Ventures also participated.

UXPin, a 2.5-year-old, Gdynia, Poland-based freemium SaaS design service, has raised $1.6 million in funding led by Freestyle Capital, which was joined by earlier investors Andreessen Horowitz, IDG Ventures, and a long line of individuals. The company had previously raised $700,000.

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New Funds

A new brand is emerging in Silicon Valley: Aspect Ventures, founded by veteran VCs Jennifer Fonstad, a managing director Draper Fisher Jurvetson, and Theresia Gouw, a longtime managing partner at Accel Partners. The two met 25 years ago at Bain & Co., their first job out of college, and decided last fall to team up. For now, they’re funding the venture themselves, with plans to invest between $500,000 and $3 million in between 12 to 24 mobile investments. Patricia Sellers has much more here.

Purdue Research Foundation and Cook Medical have created a $12 million evergreen investment fund to financially support life science startup companies tied to Purdue University. Called The Foundry Investment Fund, it will be used to match outside donations to fund companies based on Purdue technology or expertise in the fields of human and animal health and plant sciences.

Weathergage Capital, a 6.5-year-old, Palo Alto, Ca.-based venture firm fund of funds, has begun raising capital for its third fund and it’s targeting $200 million, shows an SEC filing. The outfit, formed by former Knightsbridge Advisors execs, raised its last, $200 million, fund four years ago; its first fund closed with $250 million in commitments in 2007.

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IPOs

Alibaba Group’s estimated valuation rose to an average of $153 billion after the Chinese e-commerce company — said to be headed for the biggest IPO since Facebook‘s — reported surging sales. Bloomberg hasmore here.

The Rubicon Project, the 6.5-year-old, L.A.-based automated advertising platform, has filed to raise up to $100 million in an IPO. Rubicon Project’s services are used by about 96 percent of Internet users in the U.S. and more than 550 million users globally, the company says in its filing. Rubicon has raised just north of $50 million from investors, includingClearstone Venture Partners, Mayfield Fund, Stanford University, andPeacock Equity.

Twitter after the IPO: Five numbers to know from yesterday’s earnings report.

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Exits

Betterfly, a three-year-old, New York-based company “talent” marketplace, has been acquired by TakeLessons, an online marketplace for qualified and vetted teachers. No financial terms were disclosed. Betterfly has raised $2.5 million from Lightbank.

Double Helix Games, a six-year-old, Irvine, Ca.-based gaming studio, has been acquired by Amazon for undisclosed financial terms. Techcrunch looks at what it means.

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People

SF Luxe has just published its third annual “Bay Area Billionaires” list for 2014, which it devises using data from Forbes, Bloomberg, the Hurun Global Rich List, along with stock quotes. Among the new names in this year’s line-up: Twitter and Medium co-founder Evan Williams (Twitter IPO); Benchmark general partner Peter Fenton (Twitter IPO); Robert Pera, CEO of wireless equipment maker Ubiquiti Networks (which went public in October and now has a $3.4 billion market cap), Nicholas Woodman, founder of the action camera company GoPro (which was valued at $2.25 billion as of December 2012, when FoxConn bought a 9 percent stake in the company for $200 million), and Facebook COOSheryl Sandberg.

Speaking of big money, venture capitalist Marc Andreessen keeps making it. On Friday, the Facebook director sold 1,274,869 shares of the stock at an average price of $61.23, for a total of roughly $78 million. The transaction was disclosed in a filing with the SEC.

Eric Darwin, who was most recently responsible for Salesforce.com’s corporate venture program, has just joined Draper Fisher Jurvetson as a growth-stage investor. Before joining Salesforce, Darwin spent several years as an analyst at several investment banks, including Perella Weinberg Partners, Barclays Capital, and BCC Capital Partners.

Reid Hoffman of LinkedIn and Greylock Partners had some words of wisdom for entrepreneurs at a conference earlier this week, telling them to seek out mentors — discreetly. “It’s a little bit like going up to somebody at a cocktail party and saying, ‘You know, I’m looking to settle down. If you did that, they would say, ‘OK, please step a little further backwards.’”

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Job Listings

TPG Capital is looking for a fund operations associate in Dallas.

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Data

Pitchbook looks at the 40 vintage 2006 U.S. venture funds in the $100 million to $250 million range, finding their median IRR to date is 3.42 percent. The top performing forms as of today: 5AM Ventures II,Azure Capital Partners II, and Sterling Venture Partners II.

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Essential Reads

The ironic thing about DFJ ditching cleantech: It had some of the biggest IPOs.

The tech industry is flexing its muscle in a California race.

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Detours

The inefficiency of long hours.

Pet rats photographed with miniature teddy bears. (We had to do it.)

Wowsa, Vanity Fair has published one juicy cover story about Wendi Deng Murdoch and former British prime minister Tony Blair. “The passionate note surfaced amid the flotsam of a shipwrecked marriage. It was written in broken English by a woman to herself, pouring out her love for a man called Tony. ‘Oh, shit, oh, shit,’ she wrote. ‘Whatever why I’m so so missing Tony. Because he is so so charming and his clothes are so good. He has such good body and he has really really good legs . . . ‘”

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Retail Therapy

Van Cleef & Arpels will soon offer a limited-edition, 369-part miniature planetarium watch that will show you how long it takes Mercury to orbit the sun but not, alas, what time it is. Cost: a quarter of a million dollars. (This one is for you, Tom Perkins.)

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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!

—–

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.

—–

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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It’s Friday, good people. Hope you have a wonderful weekend, and we’ll see you back here next week.

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Top News in the A.M.

Ouch. Consumer Intelligence Research Partners came out with its latest numbers on mobile market share in the United States yesterday and found that BlackBerry devices accounted for zero percent of all smartphone activations in the fourth quarter of last year.

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An Invite-Only Social Network Turns to Crowdfunding

You may remember Erik Wachtmeister from his days at ASmallWorld, the exclusive, invitation-only social network community that he founded with his wife in 2004. The son of an ambassador and a countess, the aristocratic Wachtmeister disappeared from view after selling a majority stake in the business to movie mogul Harvey Weinstein, who elbowed Wachtmeister aside, tanked the business, and later sold it to a Nestlé heir, who has recently run into troubles of his own.

Now Wachtmeister is back and taking another shot at the genre with his newest venture, Best of All Worlds, an 18-month-old, invitation-only social network that’s even harder to join. It features a new wrinkle, though: starting next week, accredited investors will be able to buy their way into the platform via a crowdfunding campaign. “It’s a way for us to widen our base of investors, stakeholders and global ambassadors of the brand,” says Wachtmeister. We spoke yesterday morning; our conversation has been lightly edited for length.

We talked about Best of All Worlds in July 2012, when it was set to launch. What’s been happening since?

It’s been in private beta. We launched it with 35,000 people, a relatively small group in global terms. And we’ve since been evaluating how people use it, what features they most like, whether the user interface is intuitive or not and making adjustments.

Why did you decide to form another invitation-only social network?

Not so much to keep it exclusive but to maintain an intimate space where people can network more openly. You can’t just walk up to someone at an airport, but if you’re in a private venue, the social rules are different; it’s more acceptable to walk up to someone.

How does the admittance process work?

It’s very democratic. Members decide who can be invited, but not everyone gets invitation rights, so there’s an algorithm that [decides how many invitations are allotted those with invitation privileges]. It’s to prime it and hopefully ensure that it grows in the right direction. We don’t want an overwhelming amount of students, for example. We want a good mix geographically, professionally, age-wise.

Some might interpret this as yet another way for the “1 percent” to avoid everyone else.

Not at all. It’s very simple. All we’re doing is creating what exists in real life online. People don’t necessarily want to pass out their business cards at Grand Central Station; that’s not normal.

We want to grow our community in an orderly fashion, where you’re starting with people who have a lot of affinity for each other and know the same people and have similar appreciations for what’s around them. Our goal is to have an eclectic mix of people from all over the world, from all kinds of backgrounds, but there should be a certain commonality of interest.

You’re turning to crowd-funding. Will these investors who may well be strangers to your other members be able to access the site?

Anyone who invests will of course be able to become a member. At a very minimum, investors should be able to able to find their way around the site.

Why do it?

We see it as complementing our fundraising strategy with giving our members and other accredited investors the opportunity to “take a bet” on a private company.

Which crowdfunding platform are you using and what’s the minimum investment?

London-based crowdcube.com is doing the deal. The minimum size is $1,000, but we’re limiting the number of investors to 200. Our goal is to raise around $500,000.

Are you also talking to VCs?

We’re very open to it, though VCs tend to want to see that hockey stick [growth] being realized already – they want huge traction – and we’re not quite there yet.

What makes you think you can compete with Facebook?

I think people are sick of Facebook. They use it like a directory, to look up people, and if they’re bored, they’ll look to see what people did yesterday. It’s for vanity and self-expression. We’re more a utility.

Once we have critical mass, for example, we’ll create verticals for groups of people who share the same passions. Facebook Groups are great if you’re organizing something like a bachelor party but not if you want to hook up with people with a strong passion or knowledge in a given area. Facebook has several million of these groups, with an average size of 20 members; our goal is to have a few dozen “worlds” with tens of thousands of people in each world. It’s a completely different concept.

New Fundings

BlueCava, a 3.5-year-old, New York-based company that sells online audience management and measurement services, has raised $13 million in funding from S3 Ventures, Performance Edge Partners and Zeitgeist Capital. The company has raised $36 million to date, according to Crunchbase.

Bow & Drape, a two-year-old, New York-based fashion technology startup, has raised $1.2 million in seed funding led by VegasTechFund. Other participants in the round included Great Oaks Venture Capital,Triple Point Capital, and StubHub co-founder Jeff Fluhr. The Journal takes a look at what the company is doing exactly here.

Cleverbug, a nearly three-year-old, Dublin, Ireland-based “social gifting” company that produces online photo cards and other gifts, has raised $6 million in financing led by Delta Partners. To date, the company has raised $8 million.

Enigma, a year-old, New York-based search and discovery platform for public data, has raised $4.5 million in Series A funding led by Comcast Ventures, with participation from American Express Ventures, Crosslink Capital and the New York Times Company.

Moontoast, a four-year-old, Boston-based ad platform that helps brands get the most out of Facebook, has raised a $4.5 million extension to its Series B funding, secured early last year. The new investment was made by the Martin Companies, an early-stage firm based in Nashville that also led a $5 million round in Moontoast last year. The company has has raised $15.5 million altogether, shows Crunchbase.

One Kings Lane, the 4.5-year-old, San Francisco-based online home decor retailer, has raised $112 million in new funding led by Mousse Partners, with Fidelity and one other (unnamed) large institutional firm participating alongside earlier investors. The investment gives the company a $912 million post-money valuation. One Kings Lane has raised $229 million altogether, including from Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers,Greylock Partners, Institutional Venture Partners and Tiger Global Management.

Practically Green, a 3.5-year-old, Boston-based company whose online tools help companies manage their sustainability programs, has raised $3 million in Series A funding. The round included CommonAngels, Pan Asia Solar, Clean Energy Venture Group and Launchpad Venture Group. The company has raised $4.75 million so far.

Qordoba, a two-year-old, Dubai-based company that provides localization services for companies like Google and LinkedIn, has raised $1.5 million in Series A funding from Silicon Oasis Investments and MENA Venture Investments.

Zopa, an 8.5-year-old, London-based peer-to-peer lending platform, has raised $25 million in funding from Arrowgrass Capital Partners, a European-focused investment firm headquartered in London. Zopa, whose earlier backers include Benchmark, Bessemer Venture Partners,Augmentum Capital and Wellington Partners, has now raised roughly $56 million altogether.

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New Funds

CrunchFund, 2.5-year-old, San Carlos, Ca.-based early-stage venture firm cofounded by Michael Arrington, is in the market for a second fund, according to an SEC filing that shows a target of $40 million. Fortune’s Dan Primack reports that CrunchFund already has held around a $25 million first close for the new fund, which includes a new commitment from founding investor AOL. CrunchFund has made more than 115 investments, including in Airbnb, Uber, and Yammer, acquired by Microsoft for $1.2 billion in 2012. Among its most recent investments is the video-sharing app Mindie.

Jerusalem Venture Partners is raising a new, $120 million cyber security fund, and Cisco plans to invest tens of millions of dollars in it, reports Haaretz.

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IPOs

JD.com, one of China’s biggest e-commerce companies, has filed with the SEC to raise $1.5 billion in a U.S. IPO. Formerly known as 360buy.com, the company is the second biggest e-commerce company in China and a rival to the e-commerce giant Alibaba Group. Dealbook has much more here.

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Exits

Incredible Labs, a three-year-old, San Francisco-based company that had developed a mobile personal assistant app called Donna, has beenacquired by Yahoo, which is shutting down Donna and bringing five of Incredible Labs’s seven employees onboard. Other terms of the transaction were not disclosed. Incredible Labs had raised $2.5 million from investors, including Khosla Ventures, Betaworks, Webb Investment Network, CrunchFund, and Ashton Kutcher, among other angel investors.

LoopFuse, a six-year-old, Atlanta-based social analytics platform, has been acquired by marketing automation platform Salesfusion for an undisclosed amount. Two weeks ago, Salesfusion, also based in Atlanta, had raised $8.25 million in Series B funding, including from Noro-Moseley Partners, Hallett Capital and BLH Venture Partners; it has raised roughly $10 million altogether. LoopFuse, meanwhile, had raised $1.4 million from True Ventures in 2009.

NaturalMotion, a 13-year-old games company with offices in Oxford, England and San Francisco, has been acquired by Zynga for $527 million in cash and stock. Among other things, NaturalMotion makes a popular app called “Clumsy Ninja” that was released late last year. Alongside news of the acquisition, Zynga also announced it was laying off 314 employees, representing 15 percent of its staff, as part of a cost reduction plan designed to save the money up to $35 million.

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People

Salesforce founder Marc Benioff tells the Journal how to address tensions in San Francisco: “I think these [Google, Facebook, and other tech company] buses — which if you hang out in the Mission, [they come] every five minutes — they’ve got to be massively regulated, we have toget them off our streets.”

The New York-based early-stage venture firm ff Venture Capital has promoted three employees: Ryan Armbrust, who joined the firm in 2012 from the technology transfer office of Columbia University, has been promoted from associate to director; Katie Frankel, who joined the firm in 2010, has been promoted from associate to director of community management; and Paul Bianco, who joined the firm from insurer AXA Equitable a year ago, has been promoted from analyst to associate.

Jason Kilar, former head of Hulu is back with a new stealth startup called The Fremont Project, and according to Re/code, its app will offer a mix of magazine and newspaper content and videos videos from which readers will pick and choose.

Bill Krause, the cofounder of 3Com, is Andreessen Horowitz‘s newest special advisor, the firm revealed in an interview with Krause yesterday. Krause is also affiliated with the powerful buyout firm The Carlyle Group, where his title is “operating executive” to Carlyle’s technology and business services group.

Josh Miller is taking on a part-time role as a venture partner atBetaworks in New York, the outfit announced yesterday. Miller founded Branch Media, acquired by Facebook this month for a reported $15 million. Betaworks was an investor and Miller and his team worked out of Betaworks’s offices for roughly nine months. Miller and his New York-based team are now forming a new “Conversations” group inside of Facebook to help users connect around their interests.

Could the long wait soon be over? According to Bloomberg’s sources,Microsoft‘s board is on the verge of annointing Satya Nadella, the company’s enterprise and cloud chief, as its newest CEO. More here.

Each new year, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg chooses a new goal for himself. One year the goal was to learn Mandarin; another year, it was to only eat meat that he’d killed himself. In 2014, his goal is to write a thank-you note every day.

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Job Listings

Speaking of promotions at ff Venture Capital in New York, the firm is looking for a new analyst. Apply here.

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Data

It’s the Super Bowl this weekend, which means it’s also time for the Super VC Bowl, brought to you by PitchBook. Witness its fun look at the 2013 venture activity of the competing teams’ home states. Go Washington! Wait, go Colorado! Oh, forget it. We can’t muster any real enthusiasm for this one. (Sorry.)

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Essential Reads

Nest‘s team is becoming Google‘s core hardware group, reports TechCrunch.

Amazon is planning to offer a checkout system to retail stores later this year. But Amazon’s bricks-and-mortar ambitions may go far beyond payments.

There are very few things the public sector can do to encourage entrepreneurship, argues a new Kauffman Foundation study.

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Detours

A new paper looks at alcohol consumption and voting patterns from 1952 to 2010, finding that as states become more liberal politically, beer and spirit consumption increases.

Forgotify: The tool for discovering Spotify’s four million unheard (like, zero-play) tracks.

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Retail Therapy (Super Bowl Edition)

Maple Bacon Coffee Porter. Serve it to fans of the opposing team and have the last laugh!

Best Buds App, to help you locate the good stuff in Denver. (This announcement constitutes neither an endorsement nor a recommendation.)

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