Hi, happy Monday, everyone! Welcome back. (Web visitors, click here for a version of today’s newsletter that’s easier on the eyes.)

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Top News in the A.M.

Facebook has just clarified its community standards to let users know what types of posts aren’t allowed on the service.

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Maveron’s Dan Levitan: This Time Is Not “Different”

Dan Levitan, the former investment banker who founded Maveron with Starbucks founder Howard Schultz, is having a pretty good run as a venture capitalist. His 16-year-old firm has backed a long line of consumer-facing startups that have become household brands, including eBay, Groupon, Cranium, Shutterfly and Zulily, the daily deals website for moms whose late 2013 IPO transformed an early, $5 million check from Maveron into a windfall for the firm and its investors (though Zulily’s stock has more recently been sinking).

That long string of winners has convinced Maveron’s institutional backers to provide it with nearly $1 billion over the years, including a $140 million fifth fund that the firm closed last year. Still, Levitan — who has a big personality and tells the sorts of unguarded personal anecdotes that readers love and public relations pros abhor – readily admits that Maveron has lost its way a couple of times before getting back on track.

StrictlyVC talked with him last week in a fun chat, shortened here for length (and per the request of his watchful communications advisor).

You’re in Seattle, but you’ve had a team in San Francisco for a few years. Do you spend time down here, too?

I’m down at least every two weeks. Increasingly, we’ll be down there more. We’ve had some successes up here in Seattle, but as we’ve moved to a more-focused consumer-only strategy, we realize we have to be more successful in San Francisco.

A “more-focused” consumer strategy? Maveron has always been focused on consumer startups, hasn’t it?

We’ve always been consumer only, but we kind of justified [a] business-to-business-to-consumer [strategy] for the first 10 years, [meaning we’d back] products and services that sell into consumer businesses. We called it “powering consumer services,” and it was a mockery of a parody of a tragedy of a sham, so we decided to focus on consumer very narrowly and invest only in end-user consumer brands. It’s worked much better, including because we’re presented with more [of these types of startups]; we have a greater pool of companies facing similar problems, which helps our entrepreneurs; and our LPs are getting more consistent returns.

Many people think of Maveron as a Series A investor, but it also makes seed-stage bets. How do you approach both types of investments, and what size investments are you making at these very different stages?

Our seed bets are small — $100,000 to $250,000 – and we make one to two a month. Our [San Francisco-based partner] Rebecca Kaden leads the seed effort, but it’s a completely different process than our core investment effort. There are six of us on the investment team and if any two of us wants to do a seed deal, we will. It’s designed to get to know entrepreneurs and spaces we might not be familiar with, so sometimes after a day or two, we’ll say, “Fine, we’re in for $100,000.”

If we make a core investment, it’s a more focused effort. We typically write checks of $2 million to $8 million for between 15 and 25 percent of the company. [Before we invest], basically one partner has to decide that they like it and want to champion it and they get the colleague who is most appropriate to work with them on it. Then everyone on our team meets every entrepreneur we’re going to back in a Series A deal.

Does majority rule?

[Not necessarily.] Someone might like [a deal] and, after issues are pointed out, says, “I can handle it.” Ultimately, I think something that’s obvious doesn’t particularly relate to great VC returns. There have been a few times in the last 16 years when we’ve funded something that was a no-brainer and it worked well for us. But most of the time, it’s not a no-brainer. Our goal is to give people the latitude to make some non-consensus bets.

A few of Maveron’s portfolio companies have gone public in the last 18 months or so, including the sandwich chain Potbelly, Zulily, and the pet health insurance company Trupanion. What do you think of the broader trend of entrepreneurs pushing out their IPOs and staying private longer?

I think entrepreneurs are being thoughtful that as long as late-stage [investors] value their companies at or above public market prices, why not take advantage of it? I don’t think the dichotomy between late-stage and public valuations is sustainable, though. Over some period of time, that [gap], which is so stark today, will close, either because public companies become more expensive or late-stage companies [grow less so].

What are you seeing in terms of valuations?

In general, it’s a good time to be an entrepreneur. We’ve seeing valuations based much more on greed than fear, which we’ve seen before.

I’m humbled by how much we all benefit by the up cycles, but I promise that everyone who says this time is different is wrong.

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New Fundings

Asseta, a two-year-old, San Francisco-based marketplace for capital equipment and other spare parts, has raised $1 million in seed funding from Red Swan Ventures, Zpark Venture, FundersClub, Gil Penchina, Jeff Epstein, Winklevoss Capital, Sandy Kory and a new micro VC group called Mission and Market. The company has previously raised several rounds of seed funding, shows Crunchbase, including from Y Combinator, whose program it passed through in early 2013.

Audvisor, a new, Cupertino, Ca.-based smartphone app that provides users advice in the form of three-minute long audio clips from more than 100 contributors (including VC Heidi Roizen), has raised $1.4 million in seed funding from angel investors. TechCrunch has more here.

Blue Pillar, a nine-year-old, Frederick, Md.-based company that makes distributed energy asset management software, has raised $14 million in funding led by EnerTech Capital, with participation from Maryland Venture Fund and earlier backers Allos Ventures, Arsenal Venture Partners and Claremont Creek Ventures. The company has now raised roughly $25 million altogether, shows Crunchbase.

Cyanogen, a nearly five-year-old, Palo Alto, Ca.-based company that develops an Android-based interface for smartphones that lets users customize their devices and content, is close to an agreement on a new $110 million round of financing, reports Bloomberg. PremjiInvest, the investment vehicle of Wipro Chairman Azim Premji, will be among the investors in the new funding, say Bloomberg’s sources. According to Crunchbase, the company has raised $30 million thus far, including from Tencent Holdings, Andreessen Horowitz, Redpoint Ventures, andBenchmark.

Daktari Diagnostics, a seven-year-old, Cambridge, Ma.-based company that makes diagnostic products for clinicians and patients, has raised $15.5 million in Series D funding led by Eastern Capital and Merck Global Health Innovation Fund, with participation from earlier backers Norwich Ventures and Partners Innovation Fund. The company has now raised at least $52.1 million altogether, shows Crunchbase.

Dianping, a 12-year-old, Shanghai, China-based Yelp-like review website, has raised a whopping $850 million in Series E funding from Temasek Holdings and FountainVest Partners, according to China Money Network. The news follows the January close of $700 million in Series D funding for Dianping’s biggest rival, Meituan, backed by Alibaba. (By the way, if this funding sounds familiar, it might be because we mentioned last month that the company was talking with investors.)

Glispa, a seven-year-old, Berlin-based mobile advertising company, has raised $77 million in funding from Market Tech Holdings, a U.K.-based firm that focuses on property and e-commerce investments. The round is Glipsa’s first. TechCrunch has more here.

IdentityMind Global, a six-year-old, Palo Alto, Ca.-based online fraud prevention platform, has raised an undisclosed amount of funding led by the private equity firm Lakewood & Company, with participation from SBT Venture Capital, the China-based investment firm Cybernaut, and Benhamou Global Ventures.

NetBase, an 11-year-old, Mountain View, Ca.-based social media analytics company, has raised $24 million in Series E funding led by Spring Lake Equity Partners, with participation from earlier backers Thomvest Ventures, Altos Ventures, and WestSummit Capital. The company has now raised at least $75.6 million from investors, shows Crunchbase.

Reltio, a nearly four-year-old, Palo Alto, Ca.-based maker of data analysis software that it describes as simple enough to be used by businesspeople, has raised $10 million in Series A funding from Crosslink Capital and .406 Ventures.

Sakti3, an eight-year-old, Ann Arbor, Michigan-based firm thats developing solid state battery technology, has raised $15 million in funding from Dyson, the British company known for its expensive and powerful vacuums. The company has now raised $28.2 million altogether, including from Khosla Ventures, General Motors Ventures, Beringea, and Itochu Technology Ventures. TechCrunch has more here.

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New Funds

Obvious Ventures, the venture capital firm started by Twitter and Medium co-founder Ev Williams, has raised $77.7 million for its inaugural fund, Obvious Ventures I, according to an SEC filing that was first flagged by TechCrunch.

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Exits

Balanced, a five-year-old, San Francisco-based payments platform for peer-to-peer marketplace businesses, is closing shop after failing to gain enough traction to justify further investment in the company. Balanced, a Y-Combinator alum, had raised at least $3.4 million in venture funding, including from Andreessen Horowitz, SV Angel, CollabFund, Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky, actor Ashton Kutcher, and former Reddit CEOYishan Wong. TechCrunch has the story here.

MobPartner, an eight-year-old, Paris-based ad tech company, has been acquired for $58 million in cash and stock by Cheetah Mobile, a China-based software company. MobPartner reportedly raised just $3.5 million from the French venture funds Alven Capital and Newfund. TechCrunch has more here.

TheFind, a nine-year-old, Mountain View, Ca.-based company with a search engine that indexes products across thousands of e-commerce sites, has been acquired by Facebook for undisclosed terms. Says a post at TheFind’s site: Key members of our team are joining the company and will be working hard to integrate our technology to make the ads you see on Facebook every day better and more relevant to you. Unfortunately, this means we will be taking our search engine offline in the next few weeks.” According to Crunchbase, the company had raised $26 million over the years from Bain Capital Ventures, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Redpoint Ventures, and Cambrian Ventures.

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People

The District of Columbia has agreed to fund between 5,000 and 10,000 square feet of office space for venture capital firms on the campus of Howard University. The idea is to make it easier for startups to tap the investors for funding (as well as to attract more students to Howard, presumably). VCs interested in the space must invest in mid-to-late stage startups in Washington and be willing to make at least a three-year commitment to the space. DCInno has more here.

Oscar winning director Alex Gibney debuted a new documentary about Apple cofounder Steve Jobs at this week’s South by Southwest Festival and it does not portray him in a flattering light.

People keep asking venture capitalist Bill Gurley if he’s expecting bad things on the horizon. His answer — still — is yes. “I do think you’ll see some dead unicorns this year,” he told a crowd at the South by Southwest festival this past weekend. Fortune has more here.

Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers begins its case against former junior partner Ellen Pao this morning in a San Francisco courtroom. (“I think juries love a little bit of fireworks,” local employment attorney Kathleen Lucas told The Recorder on Friday. We suspect they will get them again this week.)

Business Insider takes a look at the “fabulous life” of Snapchat CEO Evan Spiegel, the youngest billionaire in the world.

Emily White, a former Instagram executive, has left her role as chief operating officer of Snapchat less than two years after joining the messaging startup. According to Recode, the move was precipitated by Evan Spiegel’s realization that he wants to be a more hands-on CEO. White is the third top executive to leave the company in the last two months.

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Jobs

New Science Ventures, a young, early-stage venture firm that invests in life sciences startups, is looking for an associate. The job is in New York.

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Essential Reads

Lesser and major luminaries in the tech world are demanding that tradesmen working on their homes sign nondisclosure agreements.

Why bankers are leaving finance for no-salary tech jobs.

The long story behind Gigaom’s abrupt demise.

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Detours

Eighteen reminders that Vladimir Putin doesn’t mess around.

Breathtaking timelapse videos of North America.

“I am not Khaleesi, Mother of Dragons, on ‘Game of Thrones.’ But I am your mother.”

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Retail Therapy

Golfboards!

It’s Friday the 13th! Do not let your guard down. (Unless you want to make a new friend, in which case, by all means.)

Have a terrific weekend, everyone. We’ll see you in a few days. (Pssst, web visitors, you can sign up for StrictlyVC here.)

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Top News in the A.M.

According to a new report, Spain has the fastest LTE speeds; the U.S., surprisingly, has among the slowest.

You can now shop from your wrist. (Well, soon.)

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At Ellen Pao Trial, Last-Ditch Efforts by Both Sides

We wouldn’t want to be a juror at the trial of Ellen Pao, the interim Reddit CEO who is suing her former employer, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, for gender discrimination and retaliation.

While both sides have enjoyed small victories at the trial, many of the “gotcha” moments raised by each have been neutralized when provided broader context.

Remember those HR policies that Pao testified that she’d raised with executive members of Kleiner over the years, the ones she said she’d begged them to improve? We later learned that Pao never asked a single person to see an equal employment opportunity policy until she was preparing to sue Kleiner in 2012.

It was a startling admission. But guess what? Yesterday, we learned that there was no EEO policy at Kleiner until 2012 or that, if there was, Kleiner’s then COO Eric Keller couldn’t find it, as he testified yesterday. Indeed, unable to locate one, Kleiner had one created the same year. (Recode has much more on the issue here.)

How about the 700,000 pages of documents Pao was said to have amassed to use in her case against Kleiner? It all sounded less nefarious once Pao was asked about them again yesterday, explaining that most was email coming from her work account, along with a Kleiner-issued hard drive and a box of documents that included “about 100 notebooks” for work that Pao said she’d filled up over the years.

Here’s another thing: You might have read that Pao was difficult to work with. In a 2009 email exchange between Pao and her assistant, for example, the assistant told Pao she was running late because her landlord, who spoke poor English, had been in a car accident outside her house and she was acting as his translator. “It’s great that you want to be helpful to your landlord,” Pao wrote. “It would be better for me if you could come to work on time.”

Yesterday, however, the incident sounded like much ado about nothing, with Pao testifying that the assistant’s tardiness was a fleeting problem and that they enjoyed a “good working relationship.” In fact, she said, when the assistant had to later choose which of her two managers to sit near — Pao, who was moving from one part of the office to another, or partner Wen Hsieh, who was not — she chose Pao.

Keller’s day in court was just as cofounding. He testified that Pao asked for what seems like a very big payout to leave the firm before filing her lawsuit against it. “She said eight figures,” he recalled. Keller also testified to Pao’s intransigence when it came to her full cooperation with the investigator that Kleiner hired to look into complaints from both Pao and partner Trae Vassallo.

We quickly learned, however, that the investigator, Stephen Hirschfeld, states on his own site that he works “on behalf of companies” — not employees. Asked if Keller read as much, he said he didn’t remember reading that detail when he researched Hirschfeld in late 2011. “I read the site. I looked at his qualifications. I didn’t memorize the website.”

Court resumes at 10 a.m. again today. We’ll see what happens. But if there’s any crystal clear takeaway at this point in the trial, it’s that workplaces can be minefields. And that isn’t exactly a revelation, even if the case has been fascinating to watch.

New Fundings

Allergen Research Corp., a four-year-old, San Mateo, Ca.-based company that’s developing treatments to keep kids with food allergies from developing serious consequences, has raised $80 million from investors. Foresite Capital led the round, with participation from Fidelity Management & Research Company, Aisling Capital, Adage Capital, RA Capital Management, Palo Alto Investors, and earlier backer Longitude Capital. The company has now raised $97 million to date, shows Crunchbase.

Bugcrowd, a three-year-old, San Francisco-based company whose software helps companies run crowdsourced, software-bug bounty programs to track the bugs down, has raised $6 million in Series A funding led by Costanoa Venture Capital, with participation from Rally Ventures, Paladin Capital Group and Blackbird Ventures. The company has raised $9 million to date.

Classkick, a 1.5-year-old, Chicago-based platform that enables teachers to give immediate feedback to students working on iPads, has raised $1.7 million in seed funding from Great Oaks Venture Capital, Kapor Capital, Lightbank, and Yammer cofounder Adam Pisoni.

Eko Devices, a two-year-old, Berkeley, Ca.-based smartphone-enabled stethoscope company, has raised $2 million in funding led by earlier backer Founder.org, with participation from Stanford StartX and angel investors. The company has now raised $2.8 million to date.

EVEN Financial, a seven-month-old, New York-based startup that connects online lending marketplaces with borrowers and verified potential lenders, has raised $2.8 million in seed funding led by Canaan Partners, with participation from Brooklyn Bridge Ventures, Conversion Capital, Social Leverage, 555 Capital, Lerer Hippeau Ventures, and individuals investors.

Favor, a nearly three-year-old, Austin, Tx.-based personal delivery service whose “runners” wear blue tuxedo T-shirts and fetch and deliver goods for $5 per trip (plus 5 percent of the cost of the items and a driver tip), has raised $13 million in Series A funding. The company has now raised $17.9 million altogether, including from investor Tim Draper and Silverton Partners.

Feetz, a nearly two-year-old, Chattanooga, Tn.-based startup that makes custom footwear with 3-D printers, has raised $1.25 million in seed funding led by Khosla Ventures, with participation from Chattanooga-based JumpFund and former Reebok CEO Uli Becker. Venture Capital Dispatch has much more here.

Kura Oncology, a new, San Diego-based biopharmaceutical company, has sprung onto the scene as a fully formed public company, after raising $60 million — including from EcoR1 Capital, Fidelity Management & Research, ARCH Venture Partners, Boxer Capital, and Partner Fund Management — then completing a reverse merger. Xconomy has more here.

Liaison Technologies, a 15-year-old, Alpharetta, Ga.-based company that makes cloud-enabled data-integration and data-management products, has raised an undisclosed amount of funding from Merck Global Health Innovation Fund. The company says the round brings its total funding to $90 million.

PhaseBio Pharmaceuticals, a 13-year-old, Malvern, Pa.-based biopharmaceutical company focused on endocrine and metabolic disorders and cardiovascular disease, has raised $40 million led by AstraZeneca, with participation from earlier backers New Enterprise Associates, Hatteras Venture Partners, Johnson & Johnson, and Fletcher Spaght Ventures. The company has raised at least $104 million in funding to date, shows Crunchbase.

Quikr.com, a seven-year-old, Bangalore, India-based classifieds portal that connect buyers and sellers on their mobile phones and other online devices, is close to raising $150 million from Tiger Global Management and other investors, including Steadview Capital of Hong Kong, a source tells the WSJ.

SignalFX, a two-year-old, San Mateo, Ca.-based software application monitoring company, has raised $20 million in Series B funding led by earlier investor CRV, with participation from earlier investor Andreessen Horowitz. The company has raised $28.5 million altogether from the two firms.

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IPOs

Aduro Biotech, a 15-year-old, Berkeley, Ca.-based company that’s developing an immunotherapy for pancreatic cancer, has publicly filed to raise up to $86 million in IPO. (The company had first filed confidentially in mid-December.) Aduro has raised roughly $140 million from investors over the years; some of its biggest shareholders include Morningside Ventures, which owns 37.8 percent of the company; Fidelity Investments, which owns 7.9 percent; and Johnson & Johnson, which owns 6.6 percent.

Alibaba‘s 180-day lock-up, following its blockbuster IPO last September, ends this coming Wednesday, March 18. Just a friendly reminder.

The IPO road show of GoDaddy, the 18-year-old, Scottsdale, Az.-based online service that helps people and businesses set up web sites, reportedly kicks off next week.

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Exits

2lemetry, a four-year-old, Denver-based startup whose enterprise-focused platform tracks and manages IP-enabled machines and other connected devices, has been acquired by Amazon for undisclosed terms, reports TechCrunch. 2lemetry had raised $4 million from Salesforce Ventures.

ARX, a 28-year-old, San Francisco-based digital signature company, has been acquired by longtime partner DocuSign for undisclosed terms. More here.

The Swedish streaming music company Aspiro now belongs to Jay Z, Billboard reports.

BGPmon, a provider of network and routing monitoring services, has been acquired by OpenDNS for undisclosed terms.

Lasso, a private photo-sharing and chat app cofounded by the founders of the photo and video-sharing service Photobucket, has been acquired by Photobucket for undisclosed terms. TechCrunch has the story here.

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People

Patrick Baeuerle has joined the Boston-based life sciences venture firm MPM Capital as a managing director. Baeuerle was most recently a VP and general manager at Amgen.

Apple CEO Tim Cook offered an ailing Steve Jobs his liver, according to a new biography about Jobs’s life.

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Jobs

TIAA-CREF, one of the largest U.S. asset managers, is looking to hire a senior investment analyst.

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Essential Reads

New York Times columnist Farhad Manjoo anoints Slack the office messaging app that may finally sink email.

Snapchat’s Discover platform is demanding very high prices for ads, and marketers are paying them. Recode has more here.

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Detours

Eight terrible things that can happen to you in outer space.

“Our business plan is that VCs will just give us money. Because this is San Francisco. And we have an idea.”

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Retail Therapy

If you’re in the market for a cigarette boat, this one looks pretty nice.

In 2012, Shan Sinha and Jeremy Roy were working at Google, admiring the fact that each conference room at its Mountain View headquarters is wired for video conferencing. The technology makes it dead simple for employees to communicate with colleagues who aren’t in the office, and the two – who’d sold their software company, DocVerse, to Google in 2010 – realized there might be a larger opportunity to provide similar, but more affordable, technology to a whole host of companies.

They got to work on their newest company, Highfive, and so far, so good. The company, whose video conferencing products include $799 high-definition cameras and mobile and desktop applications that make face-to-face connections a cinch, is beginning to pick up market share. According to Sinha, the company has landed more than 500 customers – including Zenefits, Slack, and Warby Parker — since it began shipping its devices in December.

It also just attracted $32 million in Series B funding from Lightspeed Venture Partners, along with earlier backers like Andreessen Horowitz and General Catalyst that had provided the company with $13.5 million in 2013.

Investors are encouraged by the company’s traction, but it’s apparently what coming that gets them most excited, including premium features that will cost $10 per user per month and a roadmap that includes much more than videoconferencing — though Sinha is reluctant to share more right now.

“Our identity will be tied to helping people communicate much better,” he tells StrictlyVC. “But our task right now is to [sell our current technology to many more customers]. There are 25 million conference rooms in the world today and only 1 million have video conferencing. Our bet is that all will have video in them.”

As it happens, Google thinks there’s an opportunity to take its video conferencing technology to the masses, too.

In fact, shortly after Sinha and Roy began work on Highfive, Google started selling $999 Chromeboxes to businesses, saying it wants to bring video-conferencing “to any room.”

That doesn’t seem to bother Sinha, who calls Chromebox, “Google’s approach to solving enterprise problems, which is kind of halfway there.”

When customers compare the two, he adds, “we tend to win.”

Happy Tuesday, everyone!

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Top News in the A.M.

Well, this stinks. Nine-year-old Gigaom, the online tech site and events business, has abruptly shut down after becoming unable to pay its creditor, Silicon Valley Bank. The company had raised at least $22.6 million from venture investors over the years, including True Ventures, Alloy Ventures, Reed Elsevier Ventures, and Shea Ventures. (It never publicly disclosed how much venture debt it raised.) Gigaom founder Om Malik wrote on his personal blog last night: “It is not how you want the story of a company you founded to end . . .There will be time for postmortems, but not today.”

There was a lot of big news about the Apple Watch to emerge from the company’s big event yesterday. The biggest may be how many iPhones it’s going to sell, says BuzzFeed.

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Ellen Pao Portrays Lawsuit as Very Last Resort

Yesterday, in Ellen Pao’s first appearance on the stand in her gender discrimination case Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, where she once worked as a junior partner, she testified that filing suit against the firm was the culmination of many discussions with various of the firm’s senior executives over a five-year period during which she flagged issues of harassment and gender discrimination and beseeched them to change the “loosey-goosey way we dealt with issues.”

Wearing a simple, caramel-colored dress and purple blazer, Pao spoke of attempts to encourage at least four senior Kleiner executives to institute HR policies around discrimination and harassment following her affair in 2006 with her then senior colleague Ajit Nazre, who she says was “relentless” in his pursuit of her and pressured her into what would become “rocky” six-month-long relationship.

After Pao ended the affair, said Pao, Nazre began cutting her out of email chains and excluding her from meetings. For help, she turned to then general partner Ray Lane, who was Nazre’s mentor; Lane twice suggested the two have a conciliatory lunch. (Pao says she conceded, but left mid- meal after Nazre professed his love for her.) She also reached out to general partner Randy Komisar, who told her he “didn’t want to know.”

Pao also later told general partner John Doerr about her brief relationship with Nazre. Doerr was prepared to fire Nazre over the incident, said Pao, who added that she and Lane successfully worked together to preserve Nazre’s job at the time. But subsequent conversations with Doerr, Lane, and general partner Ted Schlein about the need for Kleiner to institute better policies to deal with such situations and prevent future problems were repeatedly ignored, she testified.

Pao, a Harvard-educated attorney who spent two years as an associate at Cravath, Swaine & Moore earlier in her career, also testified that she told Juliet de Baubigny, the firm’s head of human resources, that she felt Kleiner needed a related HR policy — particularly as Pao suspected Nazre of sexually harassing three administrative assistants. In response, de Baubigny told Pao she thought Nazre was a “sex addict,” recalled Pao of that exchange, adding that she was “surprised” by de Baubigny’s characterization, saying, “I thought [de Baubigny] must have additional information about the administrative assistants.”

On the stand yesterday, Pao came across as likable, including smiling on occasion as she addressed questions by her attorney, Theresa Lawless. It was an image very much at odds with the picture of Pao that Kleiner’s attorneys have sought to create as someone with “sharp elbows.”

She also seemed highly competent. Indeed, at the direction of Lawless, Pao spoke at length about the many accolades bestowed on her by Doerr during their working relationship, as well about her investing instincts. She testified yesterday, for example, that she tried convincing Kleiner to invest much earlier on in Twitter, and that her case for the company went unheeded because, according to general partner Matt Murphy, who’d previously met with Twitter, its team wasn’t business-minded. (Kleiner eventually invested in Twitter in late 2010, at a $4 billion valuation.)

Pao also testified that she convinced the partnership to back RPX, a patent technology startup that Kleiner would not have funded without her due diligence. (It would eventually go public in 2011, an otherwise terrible time for tech stocks.) She added that Doerr gave the company’s board seat to Komisar because Pao was pregnant with her daughter and as such, “I wasn’t being considered for a board seat or board observer role.”

She also said that upon her return from maternity leave, she had “many” discussions with Komisar about RPX. Said Pao, “[H]e was not involved with the company, and the [RPX] team had started to complain about him. Every time I heard a complaint, I would raise it with Randy. I wanted to try to help solve the problem.”

Unsurprisingly, Pao spent much of the day describing a very male-dominated culture at Kleiner. Pao was asked, for example, about that now infamous all-male dinner at former Vice President Al Gore’s apartment at the St. Regis hotel in San Francisco, where Pao also had an apartment at the time.

“It was pretty humiliating,” said Pao of seeing entrepreneurs in the building who were on their way up to the dinner. One of them was Mike McCue, the CEO and cofounder of the news aggregation app Flipboard, on whose board Pao sat at the time. “I was coming down the elevator and ran into people in the lobby . . . When I went outside I saw Mike McCue [parking] . . . and he said ‘OK I’ll see you up there,’ and I said ‘No, no, I’m not going to be part of this dinner.’”

Pao also described wanting to leave the firm in 2007 owing to the company’s culture. Following conversations with the firm’s senior partners about it, and asked by Doerr to elaborate, Pao wrote him — in email shown to the courtroom — the she’d like to see “less fear in making unpopular statements. Less risk around offending others.” She also pointed to “politics,” suggesting she’d like to see “consensus building in a way that shares information and contributes to an open process.”

Not last, Pao told Doerr she thought the partnership needed to show greater respect to entrepreneurs, regardless of whether or not the firm was interested in funding their companies.

Said Pao, “I’d seen some meetings where we were late and would make entrepreneurs late. There was [another] meeting in particular where we weren’t interested in talking about [the] specific venture and we started talking about taking some people from [the company that was in the pitch meeting] and [hiring them into another startup]. And when you’re talking about breaking up a [company in front of its founders], that just seemed very disrespectful to me.”

Pao has yet to be cross-examined by Kleiner’s legal team. She returns to the courtroom today.

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New Fundings

21 Inc., a two-year-old, San Francisco-based stealthy bitcoin startup, has raised $116 million in funding led by Andreessen Horowitz and RRE Ventures, with participation from Yuan Capital, Qualcomm Ventures, Khosla Ventures, Data Collective and numerous individual investors, including PayPal cofounders Peter Thiel and Max Levchin. Venture Capital Dispatch has much more here.

Do, a 1.5-year-old, San Francisco-based startup that makes meeting software, has raised $2 million in seed funding, including from New Enterprise Associates, Slow Ventures, Queensbridge Venture Partners, and numerous individual investors, including Zynga founder Mark Pincus.

E8 Security, a 1.5-year-old, Redwood City, Ca.-based maker of cyber security analytics software, has raised $9.8 million in Series A funding led by March Capital Partners, with participation from Allegis Capital and The Hive.

Flashnotes, a 4.5-year-old, Boston-based online marketplace that invites students to exchange academic materials, has raised an undisclosed amount of funding from Barnes & Noble. The company had previously raised $11.4 million from investors, including Atlas Venture, SoftBank Capital, and Runa Capital. The WSJ has more here.

Growth Intelligence, a four-year-old, London-based startup that makes predictive marketing software, has raised $3.4 million in Series A funding from 83North, MMC Ventures, and individual investors.

Lamabang, a two-year-old, Beijing-based Chinese social network and ecommerce company for mothers and expectant mothers, has raised $100 million in Series C funding from Matrix Partners, Morningside Ventures, and Greenwoods Asset Management, reports Tech in Asia. The company has raised $130 million to date, shows Crunchbase.

Onshape, a three-year-old, Cambridge, Ma.-based computer-aided design startup that has been operating in stealth mode, has raised $64 million in funding over the years, including from New Enterprise Associates, North Bridge Growth Equity & Venture Partners, and Commonwealth Capital Ventures. Fortune has more here.

RayVio, a four-year-old, Hayward, Ca.-based company that uses solid state UV technology for a variety of applications, including to disinfect drinking water and prevent food spoilage by eliminating bacteria, has raised $9.3 million in Series B funding, including from Applied Ventures, Augment Ventures, New Ground Ventures and Tolero Ventures. Earlier backers DCM Ventures and Capricorn Investment Group also joined the round.

SimpliVity, a five-year-old, Westborough, Ma.-based converged infrastructure company, has raised $175 million in Series D funding led by Waypoint Capital, with participation from earlier backers Accel Partners, CRV, DFJ Growth, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, and Meritech Capital Partners. The company has now raised $276 million altogether. ZDNet has more here.

Yallo, a nearly three-year-old, Tel Aviv-based business-to-consumer communications company, has raised $4 million in Series A funding led by Carmel Ventures. The Globes has more here.

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New Funds

Mercato Partners, an eight-year-old, Salt Lake City, Ut.-based growth equity firm, is targeting $175 million for a third fund, shows an SEC filing. The firm closed its second fund in 2012 with $115 million in funding. Among its highest-profile bets is Domo, a 4.5-year-old, Utah-based SaaS business founded by Josh James, who’d previously cofounded Omniture.

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IPOs

AltheaDx, a five-year-old, San Diego-based molecular-diagnostics company, has withdrawn its registration to go public, four months after filing it.

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Exits

Twitter has acquired Periscope, a startup that’s building an app for streaming video from smartphones, reports Business Insider. A source tells the outlet the deal was closed weeks ago, before a similar app, Meerkat, began to capture the imagination of Twitter users. One investor tells BI the acquisition amount was above $50 million; another says it fell between $75 million and $100 million. StrictlyVC reported on Meerkat, and the threats it faces (including from Twitter and Periscope), yesterday.

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People

Max Motschwiller has left the digital practice of Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers to become the sixth general partner with the late-stage venture firm Meritech Capital Partners, reports Fortune. At 28, Motschwiller is also the youngest partner by nearly 20 years.

Jeff Schneble has joined Wing Venture Capital as a partner from Silver Lake Partners, where he was an operating executive for more than three-and-a-half years.

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Essential Reads

Researchers working with the CIA have conducted a multi-year, sustained effort to break the security of Apple’s iPhones and iPads, according to The Intercept.

A team of Google researchers has demonstrated an unexpected problem with electromagnetic leakage caused by many transistors packed onto a single memory chip: hackers can use it to corrupt portions of some laptops’ memory, and even to bypass the security protections of those computers.

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Detours

How not to raise a narcissist.

What a handshake smells like.

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Retail Therapy

Emergency nap kit. (We won’t tell anyone.)