Good Tuesday morning, everyone!

Most of you know that the multi-talented Semil Shah covered for us in late December, drumming up a lot of stellar content, some of which we have yet to run. We’re publishing one of those interviews today, with the Winklevoss twins. Note: Because it’s a longer-than-usual interview and it’s worth reading in its entirety, we’re running more of it later this week.

(Psst, web visitors, this version of today’s email is easier on the eyes.)

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Top News in the A.M.

Kickstarter just ditched Amazon payments for Stripe.

Meet the Nokia 215, which Microsoft is calling its most affordable Internet-ready entry-level phone yet. (It says its battery lasts one month.)

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Investing the Winklevoss Way

By Semil Shah

Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, the 6-foot-five-inch, Olympic-rowing twins who remain best known for their legal battles with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, could have taken the money they were eventually awarded in the case (a reported $65 million shared with partner Divya Narendra) and hit the beach. They decided to become full-time investors instead. In fact, since 2013, they’ve been assembling startup stakes across numerous industries. The brothers, who live both in L.A. and New York, have grown especially bullish on Bitcoin, creating among the single largest portfolios of the digital currency. To better understand why they’re so convinced that Bitcoin is here to stay — despite a rough 2014 — we asked Tyler to explain their thinking.

You are both well-known for a variety of things now. Briefly catch us up on all of your activities. What are you both focused on for 2015?

Sure. Over the last two years, Cameron and I have been focused on building Winklevoss Capital. Prior to this, we were elite athletes for close to 15 years. After retiring in 2012, we decided we wanted to get back into the startup game and investing seemed like a natural entry point. For the past two-plus years we been spending a lot of time building a strong network of fellow investors and promising entrepreneurs. We’ve been fine-tuning our filters to what we like and don’t like, and developing our overall investment thesis. Most importantly, we’ve been investing a lot. Ourportfolio now comprises more than 40 companies and is growing by the day.

Our main focus for the coming year will be in Bitcoin and growing our overall angel portfolio. In the Bitcoin world, we will continue or joint role as both investors and entrepreneurs. We believe there will be some great opportunities in the infrastructure company layer, as well as some promising application layer startups. We will be working on the Bitcoin ETF and improving the WinkDex, the Bitcoin price index we launched in February, which will be used to price the Bitcoin ETF.

In the non-Bitcoin world, we will continue to place bets on strong entrepreneurs. We’ve found a lot of great teams attacking compelling problems in the logistics, human operations, smart home, consumer packaged goods and security spaces. We’ll keep our ears to the ground in those spheres but also be on the lookout for other secular trends that start to emerge.

You’re both active on AngelList. How do you plan to use your own fund and AngelList to your advantage? Are you thinking of angles beyond just crowd-based syndication?

AngelList has been instrumental to our overall investing. We’ve found great investments on the platform and the platform has made it really easy to diligence companies. Being able to message a founder directly or see a company’s existing investors and reach out to them makes the research process much more efficient. When the opportunity to invest directly in AngelList presented itself, the decision was a quick and easy “yes.”

We recently launched the Winklevoss Capital Syndicate on AngelList and have already begun syndicating our first deal. We think the crowdfunding venture model has a lot of merit and we have been devoting significant time and effort towards getting behind it. When possible, our plan is to syndicate the deals that are appropriate and give accredited investors access to these deals. Our current portfolio demonstrates the types of deals we do, and investors who back our syndicate ahead of time will get priority. It’s important to note that backing does not obligate an investors to invest in any of our deals.

I still think there is ample room to improve crowd-based syndication before focusing on other alternatives. Currently, closing takes days waiting on every wire and ACH transfer to hit. Incorporating Bitcoin into the AngelList platform for instance, would allow settlement to happen immediately. In addition, there is a lot of territory to be explored with regard to smart contracts in this context. Investors could invest contingent on certain fundraising targets being met, and the real-time balance of a syndicate would be completely transparent if it lived on the blockchain. Investors worried about momentum could instead invest immediately, knowing that if certain goals weren’t met, their money would be sent back. This particular example could help mitigate a chicken-and-egg funding dilemma and tip some startups into getting funded that otherwise wouldn’t.

But the possibilities don’t end there. Any conceivable investment term could be baked into a syndicate smart contract and be triggered when certain milestones were met. Pro-rata pre-emptive rights, super pro-rata pre-emptive rights, sliding scale discount rates, information rights, etc., could be hard-wired, all the way to the election of a board member by vote of the syndicate investors. It is going to be fascinating to see this play out.

You’re both big Bitcoin believers, but 2014 was a tougher year. As early-stage investors and with only a few larger firms investing (or conflicted out), how do you help your seeded companies thrive during a time where the area isn’t as hot as it was in 2013?

2014 had its own set of challenges for Bitcoin, but as the saying goes, what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. I think Bitcoin will finish the year more robust than ever. I say this taking into account a lot of metrics beyond just a surface measure of price. Price is just one indicator of strength, and there is evidence to show that the price highs at of the end of last year were more noise than signal (as a result of Mt. Gox trading bot manipulation), and should not be used as a benchmark. A more complete measure of strength should include the number of 10xers and tier-one venture capitalists who have moved into the space. It should also include growth in the number of Bitcoin startups, the amount of accelerators, incubators and hackathons that are Bitcoin-focused, and the sheer lines of Bitcoin-related code that have been written. All of these numbers have grown dramatically this year.

Bitcoin may have lost some of its novelty buzz, but today it lives in meaningful business and technology headlines more than ever. Let’s not forget that less than a year ago the majority of media stories were busy lampooning Bitcoin as a ponzi scheme and/or a safe haven for money laundering that was on the brink of being outlawed. Now, serious Bitcoin news and developments are reported by the minute in the most respected and well-read publications and blogs around the world. If some of the frenzy has ceded to a calmer, more earnest narrative, then I think that is a positive development.

The growth curve of venture capital Bitcoin investments over the last few years has been steep and up and to the right. Provided that there isn’t a major economic downturn, I believe the venture capital money flowing into the space will be plenty to fuel continued growth. Some have brought up a potential funding gap with respect to core development. I think that is a more relevant concern, but again, there are a lot of projects and non-profits tackling this.

This year, both federal and state lawmakers have time and again decided not to outlaw Bitcoin but rather embrace it as an extremely transformative and monumental technology. This sets the stage for some great possibilities for this year and beyond.

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New Fundings

Blue Box, a 12-year-old, Seattle-based managed cloud-hosting provider, has raised $14 million in Series B funding led by an undisclosed strategic investor, with participation from Founders Collective and Voyager Capital. The company has now raised roughly $23 million altogether, shows Crunchbase.

CytomX Therapeutics, a seven-year-old, Santa Barbara, Ca.-based company that develops antibodies that are inert in healthy tissue but activated around a tumor, has raised $20 million in Series C funding led by Pfizer Venture Investments, with participation from earlier backers Third Rock Ventures, Canaan Partners, and Roche Venture Fund. The company has now raised $63.5 million to date.

EnGeneIC, a 14-year-old, Sydney, Australia-based biotechnology company whose cancer treatments work through the delivery of therapeutic agents to cancer cells, has raised $10 million in Series B financing led by new investor GRT Capital Partners, with participation from Foley Ventures and various partners of the law firm Foley & Lardner.

Glassdoor, the 7.5-year-old, Mill Valley, Ca.-based jobs and career marketplace, has raised $70 million in new funding led by Google Capital and earlier investor Tiger Global Management, with participation from earlier backers Battery Ventures and Sutter Hill Ventures. To date, the company — which says it now features 7 million pieces of user-generated content about more than 340,000 companies — has raised roughly $160 million altogether.

Global Blood Therapeutics, a two-year-old, San Francisco-based company that develops small-molecule treatments for blood disorders, including sickle cell disease, has raised $48 million in Series B funding from Wellington Management Company, RA Capital, Deerfield Management, Sabby Capital, Perceptive Life Sciences, an affiliate of Cowen Group, and one undisclosed public investment fund.

GlySens, a young, San Diego, Ca.-based company that’s developing an implantable glucose meter for diabetics, has raised $12 million in Series C funding from undisclosed investors. The company has raised at least $14 million to date, shows Crunchbase.

iSIGHT Partners, a seven-year-old, Dallas-based company that sells cyber threat intelligence, has raised $30 million in Series C funding from Bessemer Venture Partners. The company has raised $46.3 million to date, shows Crunchbase.

Iskn, a year-old, Grenoble, France-based company that makes a system that digitizes pen-and-paper writing or drawing, has raised $2 million in funding from CEA Investissement, Kima Ventures and Partech Ventures.

Kuaidi Dache, a 2.5-year-old, Hangzhou, China-based taxi-hailing app backed by e-commerce giant Alibaba, has closed a Series D round of financing worth more than $700 million, according to China Travel News, which reports that Alibaba and Tiger Global Management participated in the funding, among others. The company’s arch rival in China, Didi Dache, raised more than $700 million in its latest funding round in December. StrictlyVC recently talked with Kuaidi Dache cofounder Joe Lee about the race to compete with Didi Dache (and Uber) in China.

Moderna Therapeutics, a 4.5-year-old, Cambridge, Ma.-based company whose drugs stimulate the body’s ability to produce proteins and could eventually treat cancer, rare diseases, heart conditions and other illnesses, has closed the largest biotechnology venture capital financing on record: $450 million from RA Capital Management, Viking Global Investors and Wellington Management, along with earlier backers AstraZeneca and Alexion Pharmaceuticals. Venture Capital Dispatch has more here.

Reonomy, an 18-month-old, New York-based commercial real estate data and analytics company, has raised $13 million in Series B funding led by Bain Capital Ventures, with participation from earlier backers SoftBank Capital, Resolute Ventures, High Peaks Venture Partners, KEC Ventures and FinTech Collective. Solon Mack Capital, the family office of William Mack, Richard Mack and Stephen Mack, also joined the round. The company has now raised $17.9 million to date.

Ruby Receptionists, a 12-year-old, Portland, Or.-based company that hires receptionists to field calls for small businesses, has raised $38.8 million from Updata Partners in exchange for a majority stake in its business. The money is the first outside capital the company has taken.

Yett, a five-month-old, Oakland, Ca.-based startup whose first product is a mobile money management application called Even that targets low-income workers with interest-free credit, has raised $1.5 million in seed funding led by Khosla Ventures, with participation from Homebrew, Red Swan Ventures, Slow Ventures, and a long list of individual investors, including David Tisch and Sam Lessin. TechCrunch has more here.

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New Funds

Lok Capital, a Mumbai, India-based impact investor that’s backed by the Rockefeller Foundation, aims to raise $45 million by June as part of the initial close of its third India-focused fund, reports the Economic Times. It’s targeting $100 million altogether and expects to raise capital commitments from development financial institutions such as International Finance Corporation, Proparco, and CDC Group.

Four years after opening for business, a subsidiary of Nestlé specializing in nutritional therapy, Nestlé Health Science, is announcing a partnership with the Boston-based venture firm Flagship Ventures to help incubate start-ups in the nutritional therapy field, reports Dealbook. More here.

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IPOs

Of the companies that had the 10 biggest U.S. IPO “pops” in 2014, only three ended the year above the price at which they closed their first-day of trading. The WSJ looks at the IPOs that fizzled.

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Exits

Facebook has acquired Wit.AI, a San Francisco-based startup that’s been building a speech-recognition platform for the so-called Internet of Things. The company launched early in 2014 raised a $3 million seed round in October from investors, including Andreessen Horowitz, Ignition Partners and New Enterprise Associates. GigaOm has more here.

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People

There’s been a bit of a blood bath at Amazon’s Lab126, the Silicon Valley-based R&D group behind the Fire Phone and some of Amazon’s other consumer products. The “changes were long overdue, a response to an organizational structure that some contend had grown ‘bloated’ if not ‘inexplicable,’” as one former high-level employee describes it to Fast Company.

Investor Marc Andreessen tweeted up a storm about Bitcoin yesterday, including what he sees as “dumb,” “smart,” “smarter,” and “innocent” critiques of the virtual currency, whose value fell meaningfully in 2014. The whole thread is here.

SpaceX cofounder Elon Musk took time out for a Reddit AMA yesterday, fielding a range of questions before the expected launch of SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft today. (That launch was scrubbed at the last minute this morning; they’ll try again on Friday.)

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Jobs

Piper Jaffray is looking to hire an investment banking associate to focus on technology, media, and telecommunications. The job is in San Francisco.

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Data

A lot of unprofitable companies are going public — the largest percentage since 2001, reports PandoDaily.

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Essential Reads

Verizon has approached AOL about a potential acquisition to expand its mobile-video offerings, reports Bloomberg, saying no formal proposal has been made and no agreement is imminent. According to Bloomberg, Verizon is mostly interested in AOL’s programmatic ad technology.

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Detours

Twentysomethings: Barely saving but surprisingly confident.

Talk to your kids.

Eleven movies to look for in 2015.

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Retail Therapy

ESPN on the web, for $20 a month.

Snow helmets for ‘70s fans.

Hello, dear readers, and happy 2015! Hope you had a terrific break. (Web visitors, you can find an easier-to-read version of this morning’s newsletter here.)

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Top News in the A.M.

Get ready. The FCC says it will vote on net neutrality next month.

Xiaomi, the four-year-old Chinese smartphone maker that just closed on $1.1 billion in new funding, last week revealed just how fast it’s growing, with sales of 61 million phones last year, up from 18.7 million devices in 2013 and 7.2 million in 2012.

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The Partovi Brothers Keep It In the Family

Nationally, the Partovi twins don’t have the same name recognition as another pair of high-powered twins who will soon be appearing in StrictlyVC. But in the Bay Area, the 41-year-olds’ involvement in a startup – as both operators and investors – is a powerful signal that a company is probably on to something big.

Ali Partovi was on the founding team of the Internet ad company LinkExchange, acquired by Microsoft in 1998 for $265 million; Hadi Partovi was on the founding team of the speech recognition company TellMe Networks, also acquired by Microsoft, for $800 million in 2007. The brothers have also been early investors in Zappos, Facebook, Airbnb and Dropbox, among others, and they’ve cofounded two organizations together: iLike, a social music service that sold to MySpace for a reported $20 million in 2009, and Code.org, a two-year-old nonprofit that’s making computer science available in more schools. (This reporters’ sons have participated in its one-hour introduction to computer science, along with more than 75 million other people.)

StrictlyVC recently talked with the twins to learn more about their relationship, what’s most interesting to them right now from an investing standpoint, and what they make of the broader market. Our chat has been edited for length.

Hadi, you live in Seattle, while Ali lives in the Bay Area. How long have you lived in different cities, and how often do you see one another?

HP: I’ve been up in Seattle since 2002, but we see each other every few months.

You’ve been investing together for many years. How full-time is that pursuit? How involved are you in Code.org?

HP: Code.org now has 40 employees; it’s pretty all-consuming. We’re still investing as angels, though as a side job, which is when we’ve been best at investing. Because we don’t have enough time, we reject almost everything. But being picky makes us more selective. Of the 30 to 40 investments we’ve made, only two or three have been failures, and we’ve had 13 or 14 exits.

How many companies did you back in 2014?

AP: We made only four new investments. Over the past five years, we’ve averaged only four new investments per year. If anything, I’d be happy with even fewer. Our annualized IRR as investors has been 44 percent, not including Dropbox, Airbnb, Indiegogo, and others [that haven’t exited yet].

How does a startup win you over?

HP: We like companies that are making a social impact – not a charity but companies that have a vision that the world should be different and better. Snapchat, for example, is a really high-value business, but it’s unclear that its mission is making the world a better place. We also like tech that’s disrupting the physical world.

But the quality of the people involved is what’s most important. We’re probably the only investors out there who will run a tech team through a tech interview as if they wanted to get a job at Google or Facebook. After all, why would an investor give tons of money to someone who couldn’t possibly get a job at [one of those two companies?]

Have you missed out on deals because of that hurdle?

HP: Some, though if we miss them, it’s not a big deal. We can afford to be choosy. Also, I think entrepreneurs recognize that our investment means a lot and that they can tell other people, including other VCs, who know about our interview process.

What size checks do you write and what do you expect for your money?

HP: Check sizes range from $100,000 to $250,000 typically, and the size of the stake completely depends on whether something is earlier or late. I think the biggest check we’ve written was $2 million for [the still-private, cloud-based electronic medical records company] Practice Fusion, which we think is incredibly promising.

Would you make an investment without your brother’s blessing?

HP: Yes, though we’ve made better investments when it’s unanimous. Ali has a passion for food-related investments, but almost all the rest have been joint investments.

You were both investors in the food tech company Hampton Creek, correct? Did you participate in its $90 million Series C round, announced last month? Ali, you even joined, then quickly left, the company as its chief strategy officer. Are you and Hadi still investors in the company or have you sold your stake to other investors?

HP: We did not participate in Hampton Creek’s newest round.

(To continue reading, click here.)

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New Fundings

3-V Biosciences, a 7.5-year-old, Menlo Park, Ca.-based biopharmaceutical company that’s developing therapeutics for infectious diseases, has raised $28.5 million in Series D funding co-led by earlier backers Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, New Enterprise Associates and Rock Springs Capital Management, with participation from new investors, including Ally Bridge Group. The company has now raised $106.6 million altogether, shows Crunchbase.

Apploi, a 1.5-year-old, New York-based company that makes In-store kiosks to help employers with “walk-in” applications, as well as pushes job listings out to users’ phones based on their location, has raised $7.4 million in Series A funding, including from Mistral Equity Partners’ managing partner Andrew Heyer. TechCrunch has more here.

Depict, a 1.5-year-old, San Francisco-based online platform that works with galleries and art institutions to allow users to explore digital work by new artists, has raised $2.4 million in new funding from Slow Ventures, Founder.org Capital and unnamed angel investors, reports VentureWire.

eShares, a two-year-old, Palo Alto, Ca.-based company that digitizes paper stock certificates along with stock options, warrants, and derivatives, has raised an undisclosed amount of Series A funding led by Union Square Ventures, with participation from Spark Capital and earlier backers, including K9 Ventures. USV announced the round yesterday on its blog. StrictlyVC talked with eShares CEO Henry Ward last year about what the company is trying to pull off.

LaLaMove, a year-old, Hong Kong-based delivery service that enables users to dial up the delivery of nearly anything through a fleet of vans, trucks and motorbikes, has raised $10 million in new funding led by China’s Crystal Stream Capital, with participation from Geek Founders,Mindworks Ventures, Sirius Venture Capital and Aria Group, along with individual investors. TechCrunch has more here.

Scribd, an eight-year-old, San Francisco-based company that offers unlimited access to half a million e-books for $8.99 a month, along with a document-sharing service, has raised $22 million in new funding led by Khosla Ventures. TechCrunch has more on the funding here. StrictlyVC spoke with Scribd CEO Trip Adler about the company’s all-you-can-eat library model last year. Scribd has now raised $47.8 million altogether.

Snapchat, the 3.5-year-old, Venice, Ca.-based messaging startup, has raised $485.6 million in new funding, shows a new SEC filing. The round reportedly includes Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Yahoo, among many others, and is the 10th largest deal among U.S. venture capital-backed companies, according to Dow Jones VentureSource. The company has now raised $648 million altogether, shows Crunchbase.

Symic Biomedical, a two-year-old, San Francisco-based company that’s studying treatments for osteoarthritis and cardiovascular ailments, has raised $15 million in Series A funding led by Lilly Ventures. The company has raised $16.4 million altogether.

TinyPulse, a two-year-old, Seattle-based company that makes employee engagement software, has raised $3.5 million in Series A funding led by Baseline Ventures, with participation from Harrison Metal and undisclosed strategic investors. StrictlyVC talked with TinyPulse last month about its pulse surveys and their increasingly widespread adoption at companies both big and small.

Vuzix, an 18-year-old, Rochester, N.Y.-based company that makes Internet-connected eyewear products, has sold 49,626 of its Series A preferred stock — convertible into 4,962,600 shares of Vuzix’s common stock — to Intel, which will own 30 percent of the company upon that conversion. Intel is spending $24.8 million for the shares. Vator has more here.

Wanda E-commerce, a six-month-old, Suzhou, China-based company designed to compete with Alibaba, has raised roughly $161 million in funding from investment funds Centec Networks and Xude Rendao. Wanda E-commerce was founded in August as a joint venture by mega-conglomerate Wanda and two of China’s biggest Internet firms, Tencent Holdings and Baidu. More here.

X.ai, a 10-month-old, New York-based company that’s developing a virtual email assistant that can schedule meetings on users’ behalf, has raised $9.2 million in Series A funding led by FirstMark Capital, with participation from Pritzker Group Venture Capital, CrunchFund, and earlier investors. X.ai had raised $2.1 million in seed funding last summer, including from Lerer Hippeau Ventures, IA Ventures, and SoftBank Capital.

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New Funds

Aperture Venture Partners, a New York-based healthcare focused venture firm, has raised $49.2 million for its third fund, shows a new SEC filing that lists a target of $100 million. The firm began raising the fund (officially) in August 2013.

Incubate Fund, a Tokyo, Japan-based venture capital firm, has raised a new 11 billion yen ($91 million) fund that will invest in early-stage startups located in North America, Japan, and the rest of Asia, reports TechCrunch. The firm’s LPs include Internet giant Tencent, Yahoo Japan, Sega Sammy, Tokyo Broadcasting System, Sumitomo Mitsui Banking, and Development Bank of Japan, among others.

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IPOs

Inovalon Holdings, a 17-year-old, Bowie, Md.-based analytics and data-based technology service company that caters to the healthcare sector, has filed to raise up to $500 million in an IPO. Its biggest outside shareholders include Meritas Group, which owns 38.8 percent of the company, and Lapis Ventures, which owns 16.1 percent.

Micromax Informatics, India’s second-largest smartphone maker, plans to raise as much as $500 million through an IPO this year, reports Reuters. The company is backed by TA Associates and Sequoia Capital. Micromax’s biggest rivals include Samsung Electronics, Motorola and China’s Xiaomi. In India, Samsung reportedly dominates, with roughly 25 percent market share (as of September), followed by Micromax at 20 percent.

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People

Renee DiResta, a principal at O’Reilly AlphaTech Ventures for the past three-plus years, has left to join an OATV-backed, months-old shipping logistics company called Haven in business development. In a post published late last week, DiResta says she will also continue to invest as an angel investor. More here. (H/T: Dan Primack.)

Super entrepreneur Elon Musk and his wife, actress Talulah Riley, are divorcing — for a second time. Musk filed for divorce in L.A. County Superior Court on New Year’s Eve, with Musk planning to provide Riley with $16 million in cash and other assets as part of a financial settlement, according to a joint statement. Musk has five sons from his first marriage to author Justine Musk. NBC has more here.

Operator-investor Semil Shah has created a Twitter list of “underrepresented minorities in startups, tech, and investing.” (It’s a good starting point if you’re looking for exposure to new perspectives.)

Megan Smith, the former Google executive turned CTO of the U.S., is doing what she can to bring the administration into the present, but the “real struggle” for her is “that while this role does have a direct line to the presidency, it does not have much of a budget or any authority over other agencies,” notes Clay Johnson, who ran President Obama’s online campaign in 2008 and worked in his administration as a presidential innovation fellow.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has announced on Facebook that he plans to read a book every other week this year, and he asked his 30 million Facebook followers to join him in a kind of online book club. The first book is “The End of Power” by Moisés Naím, a former Foreign Policy editor. Unsurprisingly, it’s already “temporarily out of stock” at Amazon.

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Essential Reads

The U.S. patent system is so broken that almost no patented discoveries ever get used.

Welcome to the new ransomware economy.

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Detours

A glimpse into the process of stop motion animation.

“In most major cities, there are now dedicated day spas for children, offering a range of massages, facials and other treatments for girls (and sometimes boys) too young to have had their first pimple.”

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Retail Therapy

The making of a Porsche 918 Spyder Hybrid. By hand.