It is Tuesday! Hope yours is off to a good start.:)

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Top News in the A.M.

Microsoft is holding a big hardware event right now. You can check out a live stream here.

Europe’s highest court just struck down an international agreement that could make it a lot harder for global technology giants like Amazon and Facebook to collect and mine online information from their millions of users in the 28-member European Union.

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A Survey on Diversity, of Lack of It, at Venture Firms

The Venture Capital industry is stuck in yesteryear – the same people, living the same lives and having the same experiences making largely the same decisions. This sameness may have been a strength but is now creating blind spots. For every idea we fund, how many great ideas don’t even get a sounding board because we can’t relate to the problem or the entrepreneur? How much better off would we be if we had a larger lens from which to take bets on a broader class of entrepreneurs and ideas? My suspicion is greatly.

So begins an op-ed by venture capitalist Chamath Palihapitiya about some research that his firm,Social + Capital, has just produced in concert with The Information on the state of diversity in venture capital.

You may think the results can’t possibly surprise you, given venture capital’s stubbornly persistent reputation as a bastion of largely white, privileged men who’ve attended top universities and gone on to land plum operating assignments or start their own venture-backed companies on their path to becoming VCs.

You’ll still be taken aback.

According to the organizations’ conclusions, fully 92 percent of senior investment team members at top venture firms are men, and 78 percent of them are white. More shockingly, fully 21 of the 71 most active U.S. venture firms – that’s 30 percent — employ only white “leaders,” as they’re called in the study.

Even compared with tech giants — many of which have been called out for terrible gender and diversity numbers — the venture firms look lousy in this rendering.

Take Microsoft, where just 17 percent of employees are women. That puts Microsoft behind Facebook, Amazon, and Apple, where 23 percent, 25 percent, and 28 percent of employees are women, respectively. Meanwhile, at venture firms, just 8 percent of senior VCs are women.

As for ethnicity, venture firms don’t score quite as terribly, as long as you’re willing to overlook that the 71 firms employ just four black people who happen to be men. (Given that 12 percent of the American population is African-American, you should not overlook this.)

Says Palihapitiya in his op-ed, “The bottom line is that the VC community is an increasingly predictable and lookalike bunch that just seems to follow each other around from one trivial idea to another.” To “fund the big ideas of our day,” he continues, “we need to improve the decision making — or change the decision makers within our industry.”

For a link to the diversity data collected from VCs; the rankings; and Palihapitiya’s full op-ed,click here.

To download an Excel file of all the data, click here.

If you want to complain to Palihapitiya about these findings, which, it should be noted, rank Social + Capital as the most diverse venture firm among those managing more than $1 billion in assets, you can find him here on Twitter.

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New Fundings

90min, a four-year-old, London-based contributor-driven football media platform (it relies largely on unpaid, volunteer writers), has raised $15 million in new funding from the German media group ProSiebenSat.1 Media, with participation from earlier backers Battery Ventures, Dawn Capital and Gemini Ventures. The company has now raised $39 million altogether. TechCrunch has more here.

Breakout Labs, the three-year-old, San Francisco-based program of Peter Thiel’s philanthropic organization, the Thiel Foundation, has announced funding for four new companies owing to their discoveries in biomedical, chemical engineering, and nanotechnology. You can see the list here.

Canva, a three-year-old, Sydney, Australia-based online design platform that makes creating quality professional graphics easier for non-technical users, has raised $15 million in Series A funding led by Felicis Ventures. The deal values the startup at $165 million. TechCrunch has more here.

Code42, the 14-year-old, Minneapolis-based developer of the Crashplan enterprise backup tool, has raised $85 million in new funding co-led by JMI Equity and New Enterprise Associates, with participation from earlier backers Accel Partners and Split Rock Partners. The company has now raised $137.5 million over two rounds. TechCrunch has more here.

EverCharge, a three-year-old, San Francisco-based smart electric vehicle charging company for multi-tenant properties, has raised $1.4 million in seed funding led by the hardware-focused venture fund Bolt. More here.

ezCater, an eight-year-old, Boston-based online marketplace for business catering, has raised $28 million in Series C funding led by Insight Venture Partners, with participation from earlier backers. The round brings ezCater’s total funding to $35 million. More here.

Flixel, a four-year-old, Toronto-based company that enables users to create cinemagraphs (a still photo with a portion of seamless and infinitely looping motion), has raised $2.2 million in seed funding led by Extreme Venture Partners, with Cranson Capital Securities and business angels also participating. TechCrunch has more here.

Frame.io, a 1.5-year-old, New York-based startup that improves the collaboration process around video production, has raised $2.2 million in seed funding led by Accel Partners. TechCrunch has more here.

Hi, everyone, hope you had a fun weekend.

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Top News in the A.M.

The U.S. and 11 other Pacific Rim nations agreed this morning to the largest regional trade accord in history, a model that could tie together 40 percent of the world’s economy, from Canada and Chile to Japan and Australia. More here.

Jack Dorsey, cofounder of Twitter and Square, was officially named Twitter’s permanent CEO this morning. As readers know, Dorsey is also CEO of Square, which will be going public in the not-too-distant future. Other changes announced this morning: Adam Bain, the company’s president of global revenue, was just promoted to COO and former Twitter CEO Dick Costolo is stepping down from the board. More here.

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Much Ado About Peeple

“Imagine every positive and ugly opinion about you— from your mother to that awkward co-worker you rejected at the company Christmas party— centrally located on one online profile. Sound scary? It is.”

That’s the way people are characterizingPeeple, a year-and-a-half-year-old, Calgary-based company whose app is currently being beta tested by 35,000 people yet has garnered an almost endless stream of publicity since being described last week in the Washington Post as “terrifying.”

Peeple lets people rate other people on a scale of one to five stars, as well as to write a review explaining the rating. But it’s not the first outfit to take a swing at encouraging people to present a picture of other people. In fact, that quote above? It was written by former TechCrunch writer Evelyn Rusli in a 2010 review of a similar app called Unvarnished that also used a five-star rating system and invited people to explain the rating.

You may not remember it, because Unvarnished didn’t work, and its path strongly suggests that Peeple may head in the same direction.

Let’s start with what went wrong at Unvarnished, which, like Peeple, was widely vilified in the press at its launch — so much so that it changed its name to Honestly six months after its public debut.

Honestly co-founder Pete Kazanjy — who later remodeled the San Francisco company into a recruiting startup called TalentBin and sold it to Monster  — says Honestly ran into a number of obstacles in its attempt to become an enduring reputation management site.

First, as you might imagine, there’s was a disconnect between the people who were being rated and the users who were doing the rating (anonymously, it should be mentioned).

More here.

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New Fundings

Draper James, a six-month-old, New York-based American South-inspired lifestyle brand co-founded by actress Reese Witherspoon, has raised $10 million in Series B funding led by Forerunner Ventures, with participation from Stone Canyon Industries and JH Partners. The company has now collected $17 million from investors altogether. Forbes has more here.

Neumob, a 1.5-year-old, Sunnyvale, Ca.-based service that helps mobile app developers get their in-app content to users faster, has raised $8.5 million in Series A funding led by Accel Partners, with participation from Shasta Ventures, Eniac Ventures and Lightbank Ventures, as well as private investors, including RealNetworks founder Rob Glaser. The round follows a $2.3 million seed round earlier this year. TechCrunch has more here.

Peaxy, a three-year-old, San Jose, Ca.-based software provider that enables data access and supports advanced analytics across the enterprise, has raised $15 million in Series B funding from a gaggle of individual investors, including microprocessor pioneer Federico Faggin. Peaxy has now raised $32 million altogether. SiliconAngle has more here.

ReplyBuy, a 4.5-year-old, Scottsdale, Az.-based company that enables sports fans to buy tickets to events via SMS messages, has raised $2 million in seed funding from Mrtnz Ventures, Enspire Capital, Kosinksi Ventures, SEAG Ventures and individual angels. Venture Capital Dispatch has more here.

RunTitle, a four-year-old, Austin, Tex.-based online marketplace for information about mineral ownership, has raised $8 million in Series A funding led by Founders Fund, with participation from Deep Fork Capital and return backer Austin Ventures. More here.

YouNow, a four-year-old, New York-based social network that connects audiences and broadcasters in real time, has raised $15 million in new funding co-led by earlier backers Venrock and investor Oren Zeev, with participation from Comcast Ventures. The company has now collected $30 million altogether from investors, including Union Square Ventures, which led its Series A round in 2013. We’ve written up much more about it here.

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New Funds

Fidelity Biosciences and the tech venture group of Devonshire Investors — both affiliates of Fidelity Investments — have merged to form F-Prime Capital. FierceBiotech has more here.

Octopus Ventures, the 16-year-old, London-based venture fund, is launching a new $140 million (£92 million) growth-stage fund to back the most promising companies in its portfolio as they mature. It’s called Octopus Opportunities, and the firm says investments will range from £250,000 to £25 million. TechCrunch has more here.

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Exits

The team behind Endaga, a 1.5-year-old, Berkeley, Ca.-based startup that focused on creating locally-owned, small-scale, independent cellular networks to run by and for rural communities, has been acqui-hired by Facebook. According to CrunchBase, Endaga had raised an undisclosed amount of seed funding from Great Oaks Venture Capital, Kapor Capital, and Techammer. More here.

IBM just announced plans to acquire Cleversafe, an 11-year-old Chicago-based data storage vendor. Terms of the deal aren’t being dislosed. Cleversafe had raised roughly $100 million from investors, shows CrunchBase. Its backers include Alsop Louie Partners, In-Q-Tel, and New Enterprise Asssociates, among others. TechCrunch has more here.

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People

Gemini, the bitcoin exchanged started by Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, has finally received approval to launch from the New York State Department of Financial Services. More specfically, reports TechCrunch, the company is now allowed to operate as a chartered limited liability trust company, which is different and subject to stricter regulatory approval than a BitLicense, which is a new business license issued by the NYSDFS for businesses that deal with Bitcoin. More here.

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Essential Reads

L.A.-based Science created a popular culture app called Wishbone four months ago, and it’s already struck a chord with more than 3 million teenage girls. Business Insider has the story here.

LinkedIn might have to pay you money for spamming your email contacts.

Twitter has abandoned plans to expand into Uber and Square’s 1455 Market Street headquarters, potentially due to a hiring slowdown, according to the San Francisco Business Times.

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Detours

Happy Friday, dear readers! Hope you’re in for a terrific weekend.

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Top News in the A.M.

In a anti-competitive move that may irk its customers, Amazon said yesterday that it will no longer allow the sales of some competing media players, including Apple TV and Chromecast.

Credit reporting agency Experian says a data breach at one of its business units may have compromised the personal records of about 15 million people, including customers of T-Mobile. The information accessed included names, addresses, Social Security numbers, dates of birth, driver’s license numbers, and passport IDs.

And, in more good news: Crowdfunding site Patreon revealed earlier this week that it had recently been hacked, compromising the email addresses, usernames, and shipping addresses of its users. Now, hackers have dumped the data online, revealing the personal information of about 2.3 million users in the process.

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Aspiration, a “Merrill Lynch with a Conscience,” Gains Traction

As consumers, we can probably agree that bank profits are, well, gross. In the second quarter of this year alone, U.S. lenders wrung a record $43 billion from their customers.

It’s the kind of stat that a small but growing two-year-old, L.A.-based investment company called Aspiration is increasingly using to gain new customers. In the words of cofounder and CEO Andrei Cherny, Aspiration aims to be a “Merrill Lynch with a conscience.”

So far, the company is walking the walk. After toiling quietly for a couple of years to receive the necessary approvals, Aspiration now has its own low-risk mutual fund (managed by Emerald Asset Management on the East Coast) that its clients can begin funding with just $500.

Users don’t have to pay any management fees, either – zero – though they can opt to pay up to 2 percent of their assets under management if they so choose.

Aspiration also offers completely free checking and free ATM transactions, though again, customers are invited to pay for the service – up to $6 per month — if they see fit.

It’s a pretty good deal. Not only do customers enjoy being freed from onerous transaction fees but Aspiration pays 1 percent interest on checking accounts, while most traditional banks are currently paying out between .20 percent and .80 percent interest.

As if that weren’t enough, Aspiration is also donating 10 percent of its revenue to Accion, the larges nonprofit microloan provider, so that more low-income Americans can start businesses.

How it will all work to create a profitable business for Aspiration — freshly backed by $15.5 million — is the big question.

More here.

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New Fundings

Dome9 Security, a five-year-old, Menlo Park, Ca.based cloud security SaaS company, has raised $8.3 million in Series B funding led by ORR Partners, with participation from JAL Ventures, Pinnacle, Lazarus Israel Opportunity Fund and Opus Capital Ventures. More here.

Euroscreen, a 21-year-old, Belgium-based drug development company focused on women’s health, has raised 16 million euros ($17.8 million) in Series B funding co-led by SFPI-FPIM and Fund+ , with participation from Capricorn Health-Tech Fund and earlier backers Vesalius Biocapital II Partners, SRIW SA, and BNP Paribas Fortis Private Equity. More here.

HonkMobile, a two-year-old, Toronto-based app that helps users find and pay for parking, has raised $3 million in seed funding led by Impression Ventures, with participation from angel investors. More here.

Parola, a new, Israel-based collaborative music app, has raised $2 million in seed funding from angel investors, including Michael Cohen, a partner at Capital International; Yanki Margalit, founder of Innodo; and Miki Tunis, senior vice president of The Orchard (a Sony Music Entertainment company). Tech.eu has more here.

Pioneer Square Labs, a new, Seattle-based startup studio, has raised $12.5 million from 13 venture capital firms and over 50 angel investors to create and launch startups. Venture capitalist and Rover.com founder Greg Gottesman; super angel Geoff Entress; aQuantive co-founder Mike Galgon; and Madrona Venture Labs co-founder Ben Gilbert founded the company. Foundry Group led its new financing round, with participation from Bezos Expeditions, Greycroft Partners, Madrona Venture Group, Maveron, Menlo Ventures, MHS Capital, True Ventures, Voyager Capital and Vulcan Capital, among others. TechCrunch has more here.

ZeeMee, a 1.5-year-old, Mountain View, Ca.-based platform that wants to help students bring their college applications to life, has raised $5.8 million in Series A funding led by BlueRun Ventures. TechCrunch has more here.

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New Funds

AARP and J.P. Morgan Asset Management have just teamed up to form a $40 million AARP Innovation Fund to back startups that “are improving the lives of people 50-plus.” Fortune has more here.

Trident Capital, the 22-year-old, Palo Alto, Ca.-based growth capital firm, is raising $200 million for a new fund, shows an SEC filing that states the first sale has yet to occur.

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People

A Santa Clara County judge sent a contract suit against Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg toward trial yesterday, ruling that emails from Zuckerberg, his assistant and his financial advisor raise the question of whether the billionaire reneged on promises he allegedly made in connection with a 2012 real estate purchase. “We are trying to ‘wow’ these schmucks so they will accept an offer for the home that is reasonable,” Zuckerberg’s financial advisor, Divesh Makan, wrote to the CEO’s assistant in late 2012. “The plan is to have [Zuckerberg] spend 15 [minutes] with them, make them feel special etc. Perhaps you can prepare [two] goodie bags as well.” In an email leading up to the first meeting with the property owner, Zuckerberg wrote, “Feel free to use meeting me as a negotiating carrot with them. That likely has real soft value to them and may make them more likely to want to give us a good deal.” The judge wrote the evidence “presents a triable issue of material fact as to whether Zuckerberg made the alleged promises without a then-present intent to perform.” The Recorder has the story here (subscribers only).

Russell Fleischer, previously a partner at Battery Ventures, has been promoted to general partner. Fleischer, who works out of the firm’s Boston office, focuses on later-stage and private-equity software deals; he joined Battery last year from HighJump Software, where he was CEO. Morad Elhafed, also based in Boston, has also been promoted at Battery, from principal to partner (the level below GP). Elhafed was previously an analyst with RBC Capital Markets.

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Essential Reads

Two of Dropbox’s largest mutual fund investors have marked down the value of their holdings in the company by more than 20 percent in recent months, possibly reflecting faltering confidence in the company, valued at $10 billion at its last fundraising early last year. The Information has the story here (subscribers only).

A Florida state agency that had earlier ruled that an ex-Uber driver was an employee has reversed its decision after Uber appealed the case.

The New York Times tested out those controversial ad blockers that Apple began supporting with its iPhone operating system a couple of weeks ago. The results? For sites that contained mobile ads with a lot of data, load times “accelerated enormously” with the ad blockers turned on. The iPhone’s battery life also improved, but less dramatically. More here.

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Detours

What a life. R.I.P., Joseph Coffey.

A new study tracks some interesting differences between web and mobile tweeting.

Fifteen things you might not know about “Young Frankenstein.”

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Retail Therapy

“The Martian.” It opens today. Hip, hip!

October already? (Hope you’re having a great Thursday, everyone.)

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Top News in the A.M.

Nest Labs just opened up its smart home technology to other companies.

A “terrifying” Yelp for people is coming. Maybe. If it gets funding. It’s called, ahem, Peeple. And as many of you will recall, we’ve kind of been down this path before (so don’t panic).

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Australia’s Biggest Tech VC Firm on What’s Happening Now

A couple of weeks ago, a three-year-old venture firm that’s focused on Australian entrepreneurs, Blackbird Ventures, announced an impressive $200 million for its second fund.

That’s nearly seven times the $30 million it raised for its debut fund. It also makes Blackbird the biggest tech-focused venture firm in Australia, even while its biggest bets, including the graphic design platform Canva, have yet to exit.

To better understand the firm, we talked with Blackbird cofounder Niki Scevak, who manages Blackbird with just one other GP and a venture partner. Scevak helped shine more light on the whole operation — and the broader landscape.

Much more here.

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New Fundings

Aceable, a three-year-old, Austin, Tex.-based education startup whose online courses include driver’s ed course work and standardized test prep, has raised $4.7 million in seed funding led by Silverton Partners, with participation from Floodgate Ventures, NextGen Angels and Capital Factory. Venture Capital Dispatch has more here.

BigPanda, a three-year-old, Mountain View, Ca.-based data science platform that correlates IT data and alerts into consolidated insights for its customers, has raised $16 million in Series B financing led by Battery Ventures, with participation from earlier backers Sequoia Capital and Mayfield. Geektime hasmore here.

Dolly, a two-year-old, Seattle-based company centered around on-demand moving services, has raised $8 million in Series A funding led by Maveron. The company has now raised roughly $10 million altogether. TechCrunch has more here.

General Assembly, a 4.5-year-old, New York-based company that offers classes, workshops, full-time immersive programs and online educational programming, has raised $70 million in Series D funding from Wellington Management and earlier backers, which include Institutional Venture Partners, Maveron, Jefferson Education Accelerator, Learn Capital Venture Partners, Rethink Education, Western Tech and Harmony Trust. The company has now raised $110 million altogether. The WSJ has more here.

Happn, a two-year-old, Paris, France-based location-based mobile dating app, has raised $14 million in Series B funding from Idinvest, with participation from Alven Capital, DN Capital, Raine Ventures and numerous angel investors, including Fabrice Grinda and Gil Penchina. TechCrunch has more here.

Lytmus, a two-year-old, San Francisco-based “flight simulator for technical talent”  — it’s an immersive environment where hiring managers can see candidates operating inside of a web-based virtual machine — has raised $7.2 million from New Enterprise Associates and Accel Partners. TechCrunch has more here.

NodePrime, a two-year-old, San Francisco-based company that aims to help service providers, SaaS players and online gaming companies reliably operate massive IT infrastructures, has raised $7 million in seed funding from Menlo Ventures, New Enterprise Associates, Formation 8, Ericsson, Initialized Capital, Crosslink Capital and TEEC Angel Fund. TechCrunch has more here.

Renovate America, a 5.5-year-old, San Diego-based company that partners with local governments to finance residential energy upgrades, has raised $90 million in new funding led by DFJ Growth with participation from Silver Lake Kraftwerk. The round eportedly values the company — which previously raised $85 million — at north of $500 million. Venture Capital Dispatch has the story here.

SoFi, a 4.5-year-old, San Francisco-based marketplace lender, has raised $1 billion in Series E funding led by the Japanese telecom giant SoftBank. Earlier investors also joined the round, including Third Point Ventures and affiliates of Third Point LLC; Wellington Management Company; Institutional Venture Partners; Renren; Baseline Ventures; and DCM Ventures. The company has now raised $1.42 billion altogether. TechCrunch has more here.

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People

Apple just added its an airplane executive to its board of directors, bringing on James Bell, former CFO and corporate president of The Boeing Company.

Autonomy founder Mike Lynch has just sued Hewlett-Packard in British court for $150 million, accusing the American tech company of making false and negligent statements about him and other former Autonomy executives following its takeover of the company. The New York Times has the story.

Last summer, the “unicorn” company Evernote parted ways with longtime CEO Phil Libin (who recently joined General Catalyst as a general partner). Now it’s parting with 47 employees, or 13 percent of its staff. More here.

Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey is expected be named the company’s new permanent CEO as early as today, Recode reported yesterday. Dorsey will apparently continue to run Square, the payments company he founded where he’s also CEO.

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Data

Ninety venture-backed M&A deals were reported in the third quarter, 20 of which had an aggregate deal value of $5.1 billion. That’s up 39 percent compared to the second quarter and marks the strongest quarter for M&A exits with disclosed value this year, according to new data out from Thomson Reuters and the National Venture Capital Association. Things on the IPO front weren’t nearly as brisk, with 13 venture-backed IPOs raising $1.7 billion during the third quarter — a 55 percent drop in the number of offerings from the second quarter.

In fact, Renaissance Capital just released its third quarter IPO review and it’s u-g-l-y. The IPO market slowed to 34 deals altogether, down 43 percent year-over-year. More, a significant number of IPOs were pulled or delayed and, for the first time since 2011, average IPO returns were negative (-4 percent). Much more here.

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Essential Reads

Scientists are working on space-based solar panels.

With a new name and financial backing from Chinese billionaire Lu Guanqiu, electric-car maker Fisker Automotive may just have a shot at life after death.

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Detours

San Francisco’s housing shortage, illustrated through alarming Craigslist ads.

How to cancel your Apple Music subscription.

Half of U.S. freelance workers say they wouldn’t take a job, no matter what.

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Retail Therapy

Want waterfront views? We’ll get you your waterfront views. Asking price: $1.995 million.