Hello, dear readers, happy Wednesday!

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Top News in the A.M.

Apple just lost a patent lawsuit to the University of Wisconsin. More here.

Uber is expanding its same-day delivery service, with an eye toward crushing rivals Deliv and Postmates.

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Forget Amazon Gift Cards: Give the Gift of Stock

There are plenty of people who’d happily become shareholders in companies like Apple and Facebook if the process of buying stock were simpler. They are plenty of people who’d prefer to give the gift of stock but who hand out money or retailers’ gift cards for the same reason.

Stockpile, a five-year-old, 15-person, Palo Alto, Ca.-based brokerage services firm has a solution to that problem: Stock gift cards. They say they’ll be everywhere soon, too, thanks in part to $15 million in Series A funding the company has just stockpiled from Sequoia Capital, Mayfield, and actor-investor Ashton Kutcher.

We talked yesterday with Stockpile founder and CEO Avi Lele, along with its chief commercial officer (and former PayPal general manager), Dan Schatt. We asked how the company works, and why traditional brokerages haven’t created gift cards for stock much sooner.

Avi, you previously spent 16 years as a patent attorney. Why start Stockpile?

AL: I’d long thought that rather than buy gifts for my niece and nephew, things they toss to the side after a couple of days, it’d be neat to turn them onto something that would last into the future. So I tried to buy them shares, but it was such a pain that I gave up. You had to open a brokerage account, then get their social security numbers, then fund the account with a couple thousand dollars. And even then, a lot of shares were too expensive. I was like, wait, this is too hard.

You say you then spent four years quietly building a licensed brokerage platform to turn stock into a consumer product. Who are some of your partners?

DS: We’ve got great distribution partners already, including Blackhawk Network, which has 180,000 locations. It’s the company that powers the gift cards you see in racks everywhere from Safeway to Giant Eagle to Toy “R” Us. You’ll be able to buy [our cards] off the shelf at Kmart. They can light up all sorts of chain locations for us.

Much more here.

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New Fundings

Area 1 Security, a two-year-old, Redwood City, Ca.-based cybersecurity startup, has raised $15 million in funding led by Icon Ventures and previous backer Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers. Other participants in the round include earlier investors Allegis Capital, Cowboy Ventures, Data Collective, First Round Capital, RedSeal Networks CEO Ray Rothrock and Shape Security CEO Derek Smith. The company has now raised $25.5 million altogether. Fortune has more here.

Audentes Therapeutics, a two-year-old, San Francisco-based gene-therapy company, has raised $65 million in Series C fundingco-led by earlier backer Sofinnova Ventures and new investor Redmile Group. Other participants in the round include RA Capital Management, T. Rowe Price Associates, Rock Springs Capital, Cormorant Asset Management, Cowen Private Investments and Foresite Capital. More here.

BuildZoom, a three-year-old, San Francisco-based startup whose online marketplace puts users in touch with licensed contractors, has raised $10.6 million in Series A funding led by Joe Lonsdale of Formation 8, with participation from Y Combinator and Peter Thiel. The company says the investment from Y Combinator, whose program BuildZoom passed through in 2013, represents one of its largest to date. More here.

Concord, a months-old, San Francisco-based contracts management software company, has raised $2.7 million in funding from Cota Capital, WTI, Alven Capital and angel investors, including Zuora cofounder and CEO Tien Tzuo.More here.

Figure 1, a nearly three-year-old, Toronto-based crowdsourced medical image library for healthcare professionals (they can share patient photos to obtain feedback), has raised $5 million in new funding led by earlier investor Union Square Ventures, with participation from other earlier backers, including Rho Canada, Version One Ventures and Graph Ventures. Allen & Co. and individual investors also joined the round.

Kabbage, a six-year-old, Atlanta, Ga.-based online platform that loans money to businesses and individuals using a wide set of online data and algorithms to measure credit-worthiness, has raised $135 million in Series E funding and expanded its credit facility — the money it has on hand to fulfill loans — to $900 million. The round was led by Reverence Capital Partners, with participation from big banks, including Holland’s ING, Spain’s Santander (via InnoVentures), and Canada’s Scotiabank. TechCrunch has more here.

Lookup, a year-old, Bangalore, India-based messaging system used to connect users with merchants in their local area, has raised $2.5 million in Series A funding from Khosla Impact, Twitter co-founder Biz Stone, Catamaran Ventures and Global Founders Capital, the investment fund of the Samwer brothers. TechCrunch has more here.

Lyra Health, a 10-month-old, Burlingame, Ca.-based company aiming to help employers and health plans better manage populations of people with behavioral-health illnesses, has raised $35 million in Series A funding led by Greylock Partners, with participation from Breyer Capital, Providence Health & Services, Origin Capital Management, Castlight Health, and earlier backer Venrock. More here.

Nucleus, a 1.5-year-old, Philadelphia, Pa.-based company whose connected home device lets families have two-way audio and video conversations in the home or between homes or with any mobile device, has raised $3.37 million in seed funding led by Foxconn, which will be manufacturing the device. Other participants include FF Angels and StartUp PHL, a Philadelphia-based public-private venture fund led by Josh Kopelman of First Round Capital. TechCrunch has more here.

Playlab, a three-year-old, Hong Kong-based mobile games firm that’s focused on Southeast Asia, has raised $5 million in Series B funding from Monk’s Hill Ventures. TechCrunch has more here.

Service, a months-old, L.A.-based on-demand customer service startup (it caters to the disgruntled customers of on-demand companies), has raised $3.1 million in seed funding led by Founders Fund, with participation from Menlo Ventures, Maveron Ventures, Eight Ventures and a handful of individual investors. In June, the company had raised $540,000 from Arena Ventures and angel investors. TechCrunch has more here.

SteelBrick, a six-year-old, San Mateo, Ca.-based quote-to-cash cloud service aimed primarily at small- and mid-market companies, has raised $48 million in Series C funding led by Institutional Venture Partners, with participation from earlier backers Emergence Capital, Salesforce Ventures and Shasta Ventures. TechCrunch has more here.

Veridu, a three-year-old, London-based online verification service, has raised £800,000 ($1.2 million) in seed funding from various institutional and private investors, including the newish fund Force Over Mass Capital, Knightsbridge Executive Services, and Belgian Callataÿ & Wouters Ventures. TechCrunch has more here.

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New Funds

Highland Europe, a Geneva-based growth-stage venture firm, has raised a new €332 million ($379 million) fund that will target startups in the internet, mobile and software space, investing between €10 million and €30 million in them. TechCrunch has more here.

The San Francisco-based seed investment firm SignalFire, founded by former General Catalyst partner Chris Farmer, has closed its debut fund with $53 million. Venture Capital Dispatch has the lowdown here.

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Exits

Customer support giant Zendesk is acquiring French startup BIME Analytics for $45 million in cash. BIME Analytics is a business intelligence startup with a software-as-a-service approach. It had raised $3.4 million from Alven Capital and business angels. TechCrunch has the story here.

Google has acquired Divshot, an HTML5 web-hosting platform. The Santa Monica-based company had raised $1.18 million in funding from TenOneTen Ventures, 500 Startups and numerous others. TechCrunch has more here.

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People

Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers has a new general partner in Eric Feng, who was most recently CTO at Flipboard, a Kleiner-backed company. Feng is well-acquainted with the firm; he worked for Kleiner five years ago, helping invest  in green tech companies.

Twitter has named Omid Kordestani, Google’s former chief business officer, as its new executive chairman. More here.

Adam Lisagor of Sandwich Media has a new show and it looks interesting.

LivingSocial, the Washington-based local deals platform partly owned by Amazon, is laying off 200 people, which is 20 percent of its workforce. More here.

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Jobs

eBay is looking for a corporate development director. The job is in San Jose, Ca.

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Data

CB Insights and KPMG have released a third-quarter report that’s chock full of data. One of its most notable points: while deal volume dropped from the second quarter (we’d written about a slow-down here), venture-backed investments year to date are 11 percent higher than all venture-backed investments last year. Here’s a short wrap-up about the new report in TechCrunch. For the whole enchilada — it’s worth reading — you can check it out here.

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Essential Reads

Looks like Y Combinator will be leading deals after all. It’s heading up the $30 million Series B round of Checkr, which runs background checks and vets hires for on-demand startups.

Facebook is trying out a dedicated video feed.

Here’s what happens when you get into an Uber crash.

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Detours

Worst. Aunt. Ever.

“Duh? Who are we? No one.” [Abruptly race to car, run over Tesla employees.]

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Retail Therapy

Live like a Winklevoss in the twins’ L.A. home. Cost: Just $110,000 per month.

Another option: A Texas mansion for $1.27 million. We should probably note it has a cinema room painstakingly designed to recreate the Starship Enterprise.

Hi, everyone! Hope your Tuesday is off to a great start.

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Top News in the A.M.

Shares of Twitter fell yesterday on news that job cuts were coming. They’re rising today as the social-media company made the cuts official.

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Drone Maker CyPhy Works Raises $22 Million for Two-Prong Strategy

iRobot maker iRobot has long had two major lines of businesses: its famous disc-shaped vacuum cleaning robot called the Roomba; and another robot that, well, disposes of bombs.

Cofounder Helen Greiner says iRobot — now a publicly traded company currently valued at $940 million — “wouldn’t been able to have struggle through” without both.

No wonder Greiner is again focusing on disparate lines of business at her seven-year-old drone company, CyPhy Works in Danvers, Mass, a startup that has just raised $22 million in Series B funding.

On the one hand, CyPhy is about to start mass producing its Persistent Aerial Reconnaissance and Communications (PARC) drones, which can fly as high as 500 feet in the air and hang there for 100 hours at a time. How? They’re tethered to the ground with a highly specialized microfilament that both powers them and acts as a secure communications link. As an added bonus, the tether keeps the robots from flying away in sandstorms and other harsh conditions.

The PARC drones have mostly been used to date by the U.S. military, which employs them at combat posts to monitor compounds. The drones can also accept a variety of payloads. But now that the FAA has begun more freely authorizing the use of unmanned aerial vehicles for non-governmental purposes, Greiner is expecting enterprise customers of all kinds to start ordering them, from mining to port security to construction to even media companies.

More here.

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New Fundings

Bizongo, a year-old, Mumbai, India-based B2B marketplace for industrial goods like plastics, chemicals, and packaging materials, has raised an undisclosed amount of funding from Accel Partners. Iamwire has more here.

Cape Productions, a 1.5-year-old, Redwood City, Ca.-based drone photography and video service startup, has raised more than $10 million in funding, reports VentureWire, including a recent (and very quiet) $7.7 million Series A round led by New Enterprise Associates. Other investors in the company include Madrona Venture Group, XSeed Capital, S:Cubed Capital, and the Commercial Drone Fund. More here.

Cybereason, a three-year-old, Boston-based cybersecurity firm with an R&D center in Tel Aviv, has raised $50 million in funding led by SoftBank, with participation from earlier backers CRV and Spark Capital. The company had raised a separate, $25 million from defense contractor Lockheed Martin back in May. The WSJ has more here.

DataVisor, a nearly two-year-old, Mountain View, Ca.-based cybersecurity company that aims to protect consumer-facing sites and mobile apps from cyber criminals, has raised $14.5 million in Series A funding led by GSR and New Enterprise Associates. VentureBeat has more here.

Doctolib, a two-year-old, Paris, France-based platform that aims to make it easier for doctors to schedule appointments with patients and vice versa, has raised €18 million ($20.4 million) led by the London team of Accel Partners. The company has now raised roughly $26 million altogether. Business Insider has more here.

EverString, a three-year-old, San Mateo, Ca.-based marketing startup that sells software for personalizing business-to-business sales outreach, has raise $65 million in Series B funding led by LightSpeed Venture Partners, with participation from Sequoia Capital, IDG Ventures, and Lakestar. The company had previously raised $13.7 million in seed and Series A funding. Fortune has more here.

InvestCloud, a five-year-old, L.A.-based maker of of cloud-based front and middle-office software for investment managers, has raised $45 million in growth equity funding led by FTV Capital. More here.

K4Connect, a two-year-old, Raleigh, N.C.-based startup whose connected home technology aims to integrate consumers’ disparate devices, has raised $1.9 million in seed funding from Sierra Ventures and Better Ventures, along with North Carolina-based Lowe’s Companies and Florida’s Stonehenge Growth Equity Partners. Individual investors also joined the round. American Underground has more here.

Marfeel, a four-year-old, Barcelona, Spain-based ad tech platform focused around mobile publishers, has raised $3.5 million in funding led by Nauta Capital, Elaia Partners and BDMI. More here.

Mubble Networks, a two-year-old, Bangalore, India-based start-up that helps smartphone users track their spending on calls, SMSes and mobile data, has raised an undisclosed amount of Series A funding from Accel Partners. LiveMint has more here.

Optimizely, a five-year-old, San Francisco-based site optimization company whose A/B tests compare two versions of a webpage to determine which performs better, has raised $58 million in Series C funding led by Index Ventures, with participation from Andreessen Horowitz, Bain Capital Ventures and Citi Ventures. The company has now raised $146 million altogether. Reuters has more here.

SentinelOne, a two-year-old, Mountain View, Ca.-based security software maker that attacks security threats at the kernel of devices, has raised $25 million in new funding from the hedge fund Third Point, along with earlier backers Tiger Global Management, Data Collective, Granite Hill Capital Partners, and the Westly Group. TechCrunch has more here.

ShopWell Labs, a seven-year-old, San Carlos, Ca.-based personalized nutrition app, has raised $3.4 million in funding led by Finistere Ventures, with additional funding from Fairhaven Capital, Munich Venture Partners, S2G Ventures and ATA Ventures. The company has now raised $11.4 million altogether. More here.

Thistle, a two-year-old, Berkeley, Ca.-based healthy meal delivery startup that once focused on fresh juices, has raised $1 million from various, unnamed individual investors. TechCrunch has more here.

Vipkid, a two-year-old, Beijing, China-based online education startup that provides one-on-one video teaching sessions for Chinese children with teachers based in North America, has raised $20 million in Series B funding. Northern Light Venture Capital led the round, with participation from earlier backers Matrix Venture Partners, Innovation Works and Sequoia Capital. China Money Network has more here.

Voodoo, a five-month-old, Delhi, India-based startup that aims to help Indian consumers save money by enabling them to compare services in different apps without installing a bunch of them, has raised $1 million in seed funding from SAIF Partners. TechCrunch has more here.

Zugata, a 1.5-year-old, Palo Alto, Ca.-based software service that provides employees regular performance feedback on their iPhones, has raised $3.2 million in seed funding from General Catalyst Partners, Formation 8 and Redpoint Ventures, along with numerous angel investors. Fortune has more here.

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New Funds

Coatue Management has secured more than $543 million for its second private equity fund, according to SEC filings first flagged by Fortune.

IDC forecasts that Europe’s public cloud software market will grow almost 12 times faster than other IT segments to reach $37.8 billion by 2019, and Salesforce Ventures has noticed. TechCrunch has more here on its plans to plug a fresh $100 million into European startups.

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Exits

Qualcomm has sold its Vuforia augmented reality platform for $65 million to PTC, a Needham, Mass.-based Internet-of-Things company. Recode has the story here.

RetailNext, an eight-year-old, San Jose, Ca.-based developer of in-store data analytics for retailers, is acquiring the mobile content startup Pikato, according to VentureWire. No financial terms are being disclosed. RetailNext has raised $184.5 million in funding from a long list of investors, including Activant Capital Group, August Capital, and Star Vest Partners, shows CrunchBase. Two-year-old Pikato, based in Chicago, doesn’t appear to have raised institutional funding.

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People

Google Ventures has brought aboard former Symantec COO Stephen Gillett as an “executive in residence.” TechCrunch has more here.

YouTube star Michelle Phan and L’Oréal USA have ended their partnership after a little over two years, WWD reports. The pair created a massive line of beauty products that reportedly never met the expectations of L’Oréal. More here.

Who wore it better? The Evan Spiegel Vogue photo shoot edition.

EMC CEO Joe Tucci could make about $30 million for selling his company to Dell.

That was fast: Six months ago, Snapchat hired Marcus Wiley — former co-head of comedy development at Fox Broadcasting — to run original content programming for its Snap Channel. Now, it has “done a course correction on its original content strategy, opting to shut down its Snap Channel permanently, leading to the departure of a number of executives” including Wiley, reports Deadline. More here.

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Essential Reads

Facebook Messenger: Inside Mark Zuckerberg’s app for everything.

New media companies — including BuzzFeed, Vice Media and Huffington Post — are increasingly venturing into the older medium of television.

Tesla’s batteries aren’t just for cars anymore. They’ll be used in battery farms at buildings around California.

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Detours

How America’s biggest for-profit college fleeced the U.S. military and taxpayers.

Soft rock is alive and well and, evidently, now called “yacht rock.”

Stephen Colbert shares rejected TED talks.

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Retail Therapy

The 21.5-inch iMac gets a major update.

A pomade for every occasion.

Happy Monday, everyone! Welcome back.

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Top News in the A.M.

Company-wide layoffs are coming to Twitter this week, reports Recode.

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VC Jeff Clavier on Getting to the Promised Land

Last month, we talked with Jon Callaghan of True Ventures and marveled at the billion-dollar-plus return that his firm is poised to reap from leading the seed round of the wearable fitness company Fitbit.

But True isn’t the only venture firm for which Fitbit is a giant home run. During a recent sit-down with Jeff Clavier, founder of the venture firm SoftTech VC in San Francisco, he joked that as another investor in Fitbit’s seed round, he finds it hard not to take a daily interest in the share price of the company, which went public in June and is now valued at more than $7 billion. (Its lock-up period ends in December.)

More from that recent chat follows, edited for length.

You moved up to San Francisco from Palo Alto a couple of years ago. How’s it going? How many companies do you have up here now?

We have several dozen portfolio companies in San Francisco and three more in [nearby] Oakland. We started out in Palo Alto 11 years ago, then three years ago we started hanging out at [the San Francisco workspace collective] Founders Den and having weekly meetings there. By the time AOL kicked us out of its buiding in Palo Alto two years ago, there was no point in looking elsewhere because freaking Palantir [the private data analytics company] had killed the startup activity.

Meaning?

More here.

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New Fundings

Boostinsider, a year-old, San Francisco-based online platform company that lets brands pay influencers for shares on social media,  has raised $1.5 million in seed funding led by Fine Charm Ventures and Kyline Fortune, a new Silicon Valley fund led by ex-Twitter employees. TechCrunch has more here.

Cabify, a four-year-old, Madrid, Spain-based Uber competitor whose app enables users to request a high-end car with chauffeur or hail a taxi, has raised $12 million in Series B funding led Rakuten, with participation from previous investor Seaya Ventures. TechCrunch has more here.

Opsonix, a new, Cambridge, Ma. based company with technology to remove infectious microbes and toxins from circulating blood in a bid to treat sepsis and other infectious diseases, has launched with $8 million in Series A funding led by Baxter Ventures, with participation from Swiss billionaire Hansjörg Wyss. Xconomy has more here.

Rong360.com, a four-year-old, Beijing, China-based financial products search and recommendation engine, has raised an undisclosed amount of Series D funding, according to Chinese media reports. The company, founded by former PayPal China general manager Ye Daqing, has reportedly raised roughly $97 million previously, including from Lightspeed Venture Partners, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Sequoia Capital, Zero2IPO Venture and Pavilion Capital, which is a subsidiary of Singapore’s Temasek Holdings.

Symphony, a year-old, Palo Alto, Ca.-based secure messaging platform backed by major Wall Street firms, announced today that it has raised $100 million round from a list of investors that includes Google. Google’s part in the investment was first reported last week, but now we know it was also joined by Lakestar, Natixis, Societe Generale, UBS and earlier backer Merus Capital. The company actually went looking for $50 million, but the demand was so great, it ended up doubling its original request, Symphony CEO David Gurle tells TechCrunch.

Womai.com, a six-year-old, Beijing, China-based online grocery store that’s backed by the state-owned food conglomerate COFCO, has raised a fresh $200 million in Series C funding led by Taikang Life Insurance Company and Baidu, according to China Money Network. The company had reportedly raised more than $100 million in funding previously, including from SAIF Partners and IDG Capital.

Wynd, a two-year-old, Paris, France-based startup that offers its software-as-a-service to restaurants to help them digitize their ordering, payment, and rewards programs, has raised $7.8 million in Series A funding (€7 million) led by Alven Capital, with Orange Digital Ventures also participating. TechCrunch has more here.

Xpenditure, a four-year-old, Brussels-based startup that sells an expense management platform aimed at enterprises, SMEs and sole traders  has closed $5.7 million in Series A funding from a long line of individual investors. TechCrunch has more here.

Yunmake, a two-year-old, Hangzhou-based smart bike maker, has raised “tens of millions of RMB” (a seed amount in U.S. dollars) in Series A funding led by return investor Shunwei Capital, the investment firm led by Xiaomi chief executive officer Lei Jun. Other participants include Foxconn, Qualcomm, ZhenFund, Yinxinggu Capital and earlier backer Ricebank. TechNode has more here.

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New Funds

AngelList has a fresh, $400 million to invest in startups on its platform, care of one of China’s largest private equity firms. TechCrunch has much more here.

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Exits

In the largest tech deal in history by far, Dell and partners MSD Partners and Silver Lake agreed to buy EMC today for $67 billion, or $33.15 a share. Much more here.

Marvel, a U.K.-based startup that lets users turn sketches into mobile and web app “prototypes”, has acquired design and animation tool Plexi. Terms of the acquisition remain undisclosed but it sounds like an acqui-hire. TechCrunch has more here.

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People

Keith Krach, who has been the chairman and CEO of the electronic signature company Docusign since January 2010, is stepping down as CEO, though he says he’ll remain chairman for three more years after a new CEO is brought aboard. DocuSign was most recently valued at $3 billion. Recode has the skinny here.

LinkedIn will soon give its employees “unlimited” vacation, plus 17 paid holidays, joining a reported 2 percent of companies that offer the same kind of alternative-vacation model. Business Insider has more here.

Sundar Pichai, Google’s new CEO under the company’s Alphabet restructuring, has made his first major wave of executive shuffles as CEO, promoting three top lieutenants on the critical ads and Android units. Recode has more here.

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Data

Before March, getting drone exemptions for commercial purposes from the FAA was much harder. Then things changed. Silk breaks out what’s happened over time and by sector here.

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Essential Reads

Computer science has for the first time become the most popular major for female students at Stanford University.

How WeWork, which saw $4.2 million in operating profit last year, convinced investors that it’s worth $10 billion. (Great reporting here, if you didn’t read this over the weekend.)

The traditional car market is as hot as ever. In California, though, where electric cars outpace electric plugs, sparks are flying.

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Detours

Searching for Bel Air’s biggest water waster. (We’re guessing it’s not resident Elon Musk.)

Five things in the new Steve Jobs movie that are completely made up.

Teenage Nobel laureate Malala Yousafzai may be heading to Stanford to study politics.

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Retail Therapy

A snow helmet that’s more wearable computer than headgear.

Hello, beloved Friday!

No column today, but we’d suggest checking out a take on what’s happening in Silicon Valley by our former colleague, Dan Primack. We recently looked into new worries about the market, but he captures the broader sentiment well.

Have a great weekend, everyone. See you back here in a few days.:)

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Top News in the A.M.

After months of deliberation, the Obama administration has decided that it will not — for now — call for legislation requiring companies to decode messages for law enforcement.

Netflix is raising its prices again. Here’s why.

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New Fundings

CardFlight, a 2.5-year-old, New York-based company that enables app developers to more easily incorporate payment acceptance into mobile apps, has raised $4.2 million in funding from Entrepreneurs Roundtable Accelerator, ff Venture Capital, Great Oaks Venture Capital, MATH Venture Partners, Plug & Play Ventures and individual investors. More here.

Clue, a two-year-old, Berlin-based app that helps women track their fertility cycles, has raised $7 million in Series A funding from Union Square Ventures and Mosaic Ventures. The company has now raised $10 million altogether. TechCrunch has more here.

EverSport Media, a 2.5-year-old, San Francisco, Ca.-based digital media network that distributes live and recorded sports broadcast content, has raised $4.2 million in funding from the German TV station ProSieben, Emil Capital and Third Wave Capital, as numerous angel investors. More here.

Glamsquad, a two-year-old, New York-based on-demand beauty company whose app lets users book hair blowouts and get their makeup done in the homes, has raised $15 million in Series B funding led by New Enterprise Associates, with participation from Lerer Hippeau Ventures, AOL’s BBG Ventures, Montage Ventures and Softbank. Glamsquad has now raised $24 million altogether. WWD has more here.

HipVan, a two-year-old, Singapore-based furniture and home accessories online retailer, has raised $3.4 million in Series A funding led by the Singapore-based venture capital firm Golden Gate Ventures, among other investors. Today has more here.

Nykaa, a 3.5-year-old, Mumbai, India-based online cosmetic and wellness retailer, has raised roughly $9.5 million in Series B funding led by TVS Shriram Growth Fund and Techpro Ventures, with participation from other investors, including the family office of Marico Industries chairman, Harsh Mariwala. Inc 42 has the story here.

Procyrion, a 10-year-old, Houston, Tex.-based company aiming to treat chronic heart failure with an implantable device that pumps blood, has raised $10 million in Series B funding from Fannin Partners, Scientific Health Development and undisclosed strategic and individual investors. More here.

Segment, a three-year-old, San Francisco-based, Y Combinator-backed startup that allows businesses to use a single API for event tracking in order to send data to hundreds of different tools and databases like Google Analytics, MailChimp, and Mixpanel, has raised $27 million in Series B funding. Thrive Capital led the deal, with participation from earlier backers Accel Partners, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, and former Goldman Sachs president Jon Winkelried. TechCrunch has more here.

Schoolguru, a three-year-old, Mumbai, India-based e-learning company that helps universities launch, run and manage online programs through its platform, has raised a little more than $3 million in Series A funding from unnamed individuals in India and the US. MediaNama has more here.

TVA Medical, a seven-year-old, Austin, Tex.-based medical device company developing minimally invasive therapies for patients suffering from end-stage renal disease, has raised $15 million in Series C funding led by Baxter Ventures, with participation from Boston Scientific Corporation and earlier backers Sante Ventures, S3 Ventures, TriStar Technology Ventures, among others. MedCity News has more here.

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New Funds

Three power players have entered into the VC business together. Stefan Jung, founder and MD of Rocket Internet Southeast Asia and formerly of VC firm Monks Hill Ventures; Rudy Ramawy, Google’s first country manager in Indonesia; and John Riady, director of the Lippo Group, an Indonesian super-conglomerate with more than $15 billion in business assets, have rolled out a $150 million venture fund in Jakarta, Indonesia called Venturra Capital. It plans to focused on the region, where mobile internet adoption is rising rapidly across a population of more than 600 million people. TechCrunch has much more here.

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Exits

Remote computing company LogMeIn is acquiring the password management service LastPass for $125 million in cash and plans to integrate its technology into a single offering. It isn’t clear whether seven-year-old, Fairfax, Va.-based LastPass ever raised outside funding. The Next Web has the story here.

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People

Makerbot CEO Jonathan Jaglom said yesterday that the company, now owned by parent company Stratasys, is laying off about 20 percent of its 400 employees. The move follows a previous round of layoffs that slashed the original workforce by 20 percent and saw the closing of three retail stores. More here.

The property developer who’s accusing Mark Zuckerberg of breaking a promise to introduce him to Silicon Valley’s elite just lost the lawyer who got him to the brink of trial. Bloomberg has the story.

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Essential Reads

Amazon yesterday announced the launch of its AWS Mobile Hub, a new tool that makes it easier for mobile developer to build the back-end processes for their apps.

Apple’s App Store has removed some root certificate-based ad blockers over privacy concerns.

Highly perseverant Jawbone is now working on an ingestible health-tracking sensor for its newest act.

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Detours

The 21 most dangerous foods in the world.

Elvis Costello reflects on four decades of reinvention.

In case you were curious, Daniel Craig says he’d rather slit his wrists than play James Bond again.

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Retail Therapy

Apple Pay is coming to Starbucks. And KFC. And Chili’s.

Underwater jet packs!

Hi, it is Thursday and we are off to another field trip! (Help!)

Hope you have a great day, everyone.

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Top News in the A.M.

This morning, Amazon opened an arts-and-crafts bazaar online that squarely takes aim at a niche but growing market dominated by the Brooklyn-based Etsy.

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Flightcar Raises Fresh $20.7 Million Amid Major “Restructuring”

Imagine a young startup where two of three founders are pushed out the door. Imagine that this same startup parts ways with its COO, its SVP of Finance, its VP of Guest Experience, its VP of Engineering, its VP of Marketing and roughly half its other full-time employees, all within a period of months. Not last, imagine that the remaining cofounder, who is 20, has never before held a full-time job.

Sound like a great company into which to sink a small fortune? Investors in Flightcar, a 3.5-year-old, San Francisco-based startup, apparently think so. In fact, Priceline Group, Tencent Holdings, and earlier backers GGV Capital, General Catalyst Partners, Softbank Capital and First Round Capital came together last month to quietly provide the company with $20.7 million in Series B funding. It has now raised roughly $40 million to date.

Flightcar was formed to address a very real problem: the hassles involved in airport parking. The idea: while you’re away on a trip, someone else arriving into town can use your ride. You leave your car with a valet and skip the process of schlepping back and forth to a far-flung lot. You also avoid parking fees that can add up fast. Your car, meanwhile, gets insured against theft and damage, it’s thoroughly cleaned, and you’re given a little cash for every day your car was rented.

The idea isn’t foolproof for many reasons, including growing competition from Uber. But Flightcar had been ticking along just the same, striking deals with three airports – San Francisco, Boston, and L.A. — by September of last year and raising $13.5 million in the process.

Then, encouraged by investors to start scaling as rapidly as possible, the figurative wheels began to come off.

More here.

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New Fundings

Binary Fountain, an 11-year-old, McLean, Va.-based company that makes health care reputation management and patient experience analytics software, has raised $16 million in Series A funding led by HLM Venture Partners. Earlier backers Providence Health & Services and Pioneer Venture Partners also joined the round. More here.

CareSync, a four-year-old, Tampa, Fla.-based maker of software and services for chronic disease management, has raised $18 million in Series B funding from Merck Global Health Innovation Fund, Greycroft Partners and Harbert Venture Partners, with participation from earlier backers Tullis Health Investors, Clearwell Group, CDH Solutions and the company’s founder and CEO, Travis Bond.

Hixme, a year-old, Agoura Hills, Ca.-based online platform that helps employers transition to a new type of market-based private benefit exchange, has raised $10.14 million in Series A funding led by Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. More here.

Hubba, a three-year-old, Toronto, Ontario-based B2B product sharing and discovery platform, has raised $11 million in Series A funding led by Real Ventures, with Kensington Venture Fund, and various funds managed by Canso Investment Counsel. Earlier backers Brightspark Ventures and numerous angel investors also joined the round. More here.

Hulbee, a seven-year-old, Switzerland-based semantic search company that launched a consumer search engine in the U.S. this August, has raised $9 million in angel funding. The company isn’t disclosing those investors’ names. TechCrunch has more here.

Pypestream, a months-old, New York-based messaging app designed to connect organizations with their customers and employees, has raised $2 million in seed funding led by WGI Group and Jonah Goodhart, the co-founder of Moat. TechCrunch has more here.

Quartet Medicine, a two-year-old, Cambridge, Ma.-based developer of treatments for chronic pain and inflammation, has added $6.25 million to its Series A funding, bringing the total round to $23.25 million. Investors include Atlas Venture, Novartis Venture Funds, Partners Innovation Fund, Pfizer Venture Investments, Remeditex and two undisclosed Shanghai-based strategic investors. More here.

Reflektive, a year-old, San Francisco-based employee engagement and performance platform, has raised $3.5 million in seed funding from Andreessen Horowitz. We’ve written more about the deal here on TechCrunch.

Scalock, a months-old, Tel Aviv, Israel-based company that wants to secure the burgeoning container space, has raised $4 million in Series A funding from TLV Partners, a new fund launched earlier this year by veterans of the Israeli VC scene Rona Segev and Eitan Bek. TechCrunch has more here.

Skurt, a year-old, L.A.-based on-demand rental car delivery service, has raised $1.3 million in seed funding led by Upfront Ventures. TechCrunch has more here.

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New Funds

Formation8 Partners Hardware Fund I LP has been renamed Eclipse Ventures Fund I LP, according to a filing flagged by Venture Capital Dispatch. The outlet says the fund — which has closed with $125 million, according to its sources — still appears to be under the umbrella of the San Francisco venture firm Formation 8. You can check out that new SEC filing here.

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IPOs

Hit or miss? Data storage rivals see the IPO of flash storage company Pure Storage very differently, reports the Silicon Valley Business Journal.

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Exits

Dell is reportedly in talks with EMC over a possible merger.

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People

Harvard, Goldman Sachs, venture capitalist and now fugitive. The WSJ digs into the strange story of Ifty Ahmed.

Sources tell Reuters that an IP address belonging to Lyft CTO Chris Lambertwas used to access a security key that was later employed in a breach of Uber driver data.

Elon Musk has now hinted at a Tesla Model Y with falcon-wing doors. Ars Technica has more here.

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Essential Reads

With Seattle’s tech scene booming, it’s begun looking to the Bay Area as a cautionary tale.

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Detours

“Extreme poverty” should fall below 10 percent of the world’s population for the first time this year.

Every conversation between a parent and a child.

Smartphone battery myths, explained.

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Retail Therapy

Slim house.