• StrictlyVC: November 16, 2015

    Hi, everyone, welcome back.:)

    ——

    Top News in the A.M.

    This weekend, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg committed to turning on Safety Check in more human disasters going forward, responding to criticism that the company turned on its safety feature for Paris on Friday night, but not for Beirut and other bombings.

    —–

    Brooklyn Bridge Ventures Nears a Close on Fund Two

    Brooklyn Bridge Ventures, a three-year-old, seed-stage venture firm led by its founder and sole general partner, Charlie O’Donnell, is about to close its second fund with $15 million, up from an $8.3 million debut fund closed last year.

    It’s a meaningful milestone for O’Donnell, who got his start in venture capital as an analyst at Union Square Ventures and later worked as a principal with First Round Capital before striking out on his own in late 2011.

    Last week, we sat down with him in San Francisco to talk about what the fundraising process has been like. We also chatted about his current portfolio, whether Silicon Valley VCs are paying as much attention to New York as they have in recent years, and why he’ll (probably) never be more than a one-man show.

    You’re just finishing up your first fund. How many companies did you wind up backing and what was your average check size?

    We funded 33 deals and the average check size was between $200,000 and $250,000.

    Given its size, were you able to make any follow-on investments?

    I don’t care about that stuff. I’m getting in so early [that] my average pre-money valuation is $4 million. If you sell a company for $250 million and you got in at $4 million and your fund is only $8 million, the multiple is so high and the base is so low that you return your fund on just two or three of those deals.

    At $8 million, you basically need to create a billion dollars in total enterprise value across 33 companies. It’s hard work, but you don’t have to suspend reality to imagine that a few portfolio companies might exit [in acquisitions totaling around] $250 million. You get four or five [additional] $50 million [exits], and a couple of singles and doubles where you get your money back, and it’s a 3x fund, even if the other 17 investments go to zero.

    More here.

    —–

    New Fundings

    Ample Hills Creamery, a four-year-old, Brooklyn-based chain of ice cream shops that has become renowned for its unusual and decadent creations, has raised $4 million in funding from Brooklyn Bridge Ventures, Lerer Hippeau Ventures, Red Sea Ventures, and individual investors, including Brooklyn Brewer cofounder Tom Potter, who led a CircleUp syndicate that joined the round. TechCrunch has more here.

    Avedro, an eight-year-old, Waltham, Ma-based ophthalmic drug and medical device company that leverages corneal cross-linking and refractive correction, has raised $32 million in funding co-led by InterWest Partners and OrbiMed Advisors. More here.

    BridgeU, a two-year-old, London-based higher-ed preparation and application platform, has raised a seed round of $2.5 million led by Octopus Investments, with participation from Fresco Capital, Seedcamp, and individual investors, including Deborah Quazzo. TechCrunch has more here.

    CashKaro, a two-year-old, Gurgaon, India-based startup that redirects traffic to e-commerce sites and tries converting visitors into buyers with coupons and price comparison information, has raised Rs 25 crore (around $5 million) in Series A funding from Kalaari Capital. The Economic Times has more here.

    Digg, the Internet curation site founded in San Francisco in 2004 and later acquired and relaunched by Betaworks in 2012, has raised $4 million in Series A funding. This latest funding comes from DG Incubation, the investment subsidiary of Digital Garage, which also invests in Betaworks. TechCrunch has more here.

    Jobber, a five-year-old, Edmonton, Alberta-based cloud software company that helps mobile service businesses organize their scheduling, invoicing, CRM, and team management, has raised $8 million in Canadian dollars ($6 million U.S.) in Series A funding led by OMERS Ventures, with participation from existing investors, Version One Ventures and Point Nine Capital. TechCrunch has more here.

    LoveCrafts, a nearly four-year-old, London-based crafting community, marketplace and e-commerce startup, has raised $20 million in Series B funding led by Highland Europe, with participation from existing investor Balderton Capital. TechCrunch has more here.

    Mavrck, a three-year-old, Boston-based startup that helps marketers recruit customers to create promotional content, has raised $5 million in Series A funding from Kepha Partners and GrandBanks Capital. The company has now raised $8.3 million altogether. TechCrunch has more here.

    Ovizio, a five-year-old, Belgium-based company whose microscopes act as a non-invasive tool for the 3D real-time imaging of living cells, has raised €8 million ($8.6 million) in venture funding co-led by New Science Ventures and an undisclosed U.S. investor. Qbic and Nausicaa Ventures also joined the round. FinSMEs has more here.

    PatientPing, a two-year-old, Boston-based network of healthcare facilities that enables patient information sharing, has raised $9.6 million in Series A funding co-led by Google Ventures and FPrime Capital, with participation from First Round Capital and SV Angel. BostInno has more here.

    Watchwith, a three-year-old, San Francisco-based startup offering an alternative to the standard pre-roll and mid-roll ads that delay or interrupt online videos, has raised $8 million in Series B funding from Rogers Venture Partners and Samsung, as well as new investor Arris. The company has now raised $13 million altogether. TechCrunch has more here.

    —–

    New Funds

    Peter Diamandis, chairman and CEO of the X Prize Foundation, is raising $200 million for a new venture capital fund called Bold Capital Partners, according to an SEC filing. Fortune has more here.

    —–

    IPOs

    LoanDepot, a fast-growing, private equity-backed mortgage lender founded after the U.S. housing bubble burst, aborted a plan to sell as much as $540 million of stock to the public, hours before it was scheduled to set a price late last week. Bloomberg has more here.

    —–

    Exits

    A little afield, but interesting: Marriott International is acquiring Starwood Hotels & Resorts, creating the world’s largest hotel company. The deal is valued at $12.2 billion, consisting of $11.9 billion worth of Marriott stock and $340 million in cash. Business Insider has more here.

    ThinkingPhones, a nine-year-old, Cambridge, Ma.-based unified communications-as-a-service company, has acquired Fuze, a six-year-old, San Francisco-based cloud-based videoconferencing company. Terms of the deal aren’t being disclosed. ThinkingPhones has raised roughly $88 million in funding from investors, including ATV, Technology Crossover Ventures and Bessemer Venture Partners. Fuze had raised $68.5 million from investors, including Index Ventures, Hermes Growth Partners, Insight Venture Partners and Khosla Ventures.

    —–

    People

    A recent report observed that Facebook director Marc Andreessen has sold half his Facebook shares in recent weeks, but Recode says it’s actually a whopping 73 percent of Andreessen’s shares that he has offloaded.

    Adam Goulburn has been promoted to partner at Lux Capital. Goulburn joined the firm in 2011 as a principal. Before coming to Lux, he was a Postdoctoral Fellow of Neuroscience at Weill Cornell Medical College, researching regenerative medicine in association with brain disorders, including schizophrenia and Alzheimer’s disease.

    Formation 8 cofounder Brian Koo talks with Business Insider about the break-up of his four-year-old firm. “A business partnership is sometimes like a marriage. In that sense, we had a lot of ‘marriage fights,’” Koo says.

    Linda Kozlowski, Evernote’s COO, has put in her notice and will be leaving the company by the end of this year. Kozlowski has been with Evernote for just over three years but took up the COO role just this past summer. TechCrunch has more here.

    Uber’s top lobbyist in Europe, Mark MacGann, is planning to leave the company just a year and a half on the job, telling the WSJ that he plans to work with European venture firms instead.

    Another day, another story about an engineer living in a van. The good news: the Tesla Motors employee managed to pay off $14,000 of his student loans by staying in his Dodge Sprinter instead of a pricey San Francisco apartment.

    —–

    Jobs

    CSC Venture Capital — the newly formed U.S. venture capital operation of CSC Group, one of the largest private equity investment managers in China — is looking to hire an associate. The job is in the Bay Area.

    Demand Media is looking for a corporate development manager. The job is in Santa Monica, Ca.

    —–

    Essential Reads

    The doomsday invention: Will artificial intelligence bring us utopia or destruction?

    Zenefits is launching its own payroll platform.

    The world’s biggest drone maker, China’s DJI,  is opening a giant, flagship retail store in Shenzhen.

    —–

    Detours

    The secret to sustaining high job performance.

    Pet portraits for rich people.

    John Oliver on the Paris attacks.

    —–

    Retail Therapy

    A car vending machine. (You knew it was coming.)

    Connie

  • Brooklyn Bridge Ventures Nears a Close on Fund Two

    1977656_74228156_3499416-jpgBrooklyn Bridge Ventures, a three-year-old, seed-stage venture firm led by its founder and sole general partner, Charlie O’Donnell, is about to close its second fund with $15 million, up from an $8.3 million debut fund closed last year.

    It’s a meaningful milestone for O’Donnell, who got his start in venture capital as an analyst at Union Square Ventures and later worked as a principal with First Round Capital before striking out on his own in late 2011.

    Last week, we sat down with him in San Francisco to talk about what the fundraising process has been like. We also chatted about his current portfolio, whether Silicon Valley VCs are paying as much attention to New York as they have in recent years, and why he’ll (probably) never be more than a one-man show.

    You’re just finishing up your first fund. How many companies did you wind up backing and what was your average check size?

    We funded 33 deals and the average check size was between $200,000 and $250,000.

    Given its size, were you able to make any follow-on investments?

    I don’t care about that stuff. I’m getting in so early [that] my average pre-money valuation is $4 million. If you sell a company for $250 million and you got in at $4 million and your fund is only $8 million, the multiple is so high and the base is so low that you return your fund on just two or three of those deals.

    At $8 million, you basically need to create a billion dollars in total enterprise value across 33 companies. It’s hard work, but you don’t have to suspend reality to imagine that a few portfolio companies might exit [in acquisitions totaling around] $250 million. You get four or five [additional] $50 million [exits], and a couple of singles and doubles where you get your money back, and it’s a 3x fund, even if the other 17 investments go to zero.

    More here.

    Connie

    ,
    ,

  • StrictlyVC: November 13, 2015

    It is Friday the 13th! Have fun and be careful out there. See you back here soon.:)

    —–

    Top News in the A.M.

    Wish, a low-flying, online bazaar for cheap, unbranded clothes, jewelry, and other products, most of them sent directly from China, may have just turned down a $10 billion (with a b) acquisition offer from Amazon. Business Insider has more here.

    —–

    Fiverr CEO On Raising $60 Million in New Capital: “It’s a Land Grab”

    This week, Fiverr, an online market for small services, announced $60 million in new financing led by Square Peg Capital. Earlier backers Bessemer Venture Partners, Accel Partners and Qumra Capital also chipped into the round, which brings the company’s total funding to a pretty significant $110 million.

    We talked with founder and CEO Micha Kaufman about what those investors are backing exactly, how and why five-year-old Fiverr just changed its pricing structure, and whether an IPO is in its sights yet. Our chat has been edited for length.

    First, how big is the company at this point? Give us some stats.

    We have more than 200 people in five offices, including here in Tel Aviv, New York, Chicago, Miami, and San Francisco. Fiverr generates close to 1 million transactions a month, and we’re truly an e-commerce company, as opposed to a labor marketplace. It’s a catalog business.

    Your Chicago office came together through an acqui-hire of a small design house called Cuban Council, from which Google also did some recruiting.

    Yes, part of the business was acquired by Google, and we took one of their founders and a few of their team and started our own studio of gifted designers.

    With $60 million in the bank, are more, bigger, acquisitions on the horizon? There are a whole lot of companies catering to freelancers at this point.

    Doing acquisitions is one way to accelerate our growth, and there are vertical businesses that might help us gain market share in particular categories or with our core business of e-commerce and recommendation systems and so forth, so that’s definitely on our radar.

    On a macro level, I do think we’ll see something similar to what’s gone on with e-commerce, where some startups break apart, then the market starts to consolidate through M&A and companies starting to wind down. But 97 percent of freelancing is still happening offline. A small minority happens online. So this is still not a very mature market where you need to aggressively compete against someone to gain market share. It’s more of a land grab right now, and the opportunity is immense.

    More here.

    —–

    New Fundings

    Alphaeon, a two-year-old, Irvine, Ca.-based company that sells products and services that it markets as promoting wellness, beauty and performance, has raised $70 million in Series B funding, according to Fortune. Sailing Capital led the round, and was joined by H&S Ventures, Longitude Capital and Chow Tai Fook Enterprises.

    Anchanto, a four-year-old, Singapore-based e-commerce fulfillment company, has raised an undisclosed amount of Series B funding from Transcosmos in Japan. The outlet e27 has more here.

    CCP Games, an 18-year-old, Iceland-based company that has long made massively multiplayer online games and is now developing virtual reality games, has raised $30 million in funding led by New Enterprise Associates, with participation from Novator Partners. More here.

    Gainsight, a six-year-old, Redwood City, Ca.-based company that makes customer success management software, has raised $50 million in Series D funding led by Insight Venture Partners, with participation from Battery Ventures, Bain Capital Ventures, Bessemer Venture Partners, Salesforce Ventures and Summit Partners. Forbes has more here.

    GetYourGuide, a six-year-old, Berlin-based startup whose desktop and mobile platform helps users find and book holiday activities, has raised $50 million in Series C funding led by KKR. Earlier backers Spark Capital, Highland Capital Partners and Sunstone Capital also joined the round, along with new investor Nokia Growth Partners. The company has now raised just less than $100 million altogether. TechCrunch has more here.

    HealthiestYou, a Scottsdale, Az.-based platform that helps employees stay atop their health benefit and savings, has raised $30 million in growth equity from Frontier Capital. MobiHealthNews has more here.

    Huuuge, a year-old, Palo Alto, Ca.-based mobile free-to-play social casino, has raised $4 million in Series A funding led by Korea Investment Partners. More here.

    RetroSense Therapeutics, a six-year-old, Ann Arbor, Mi.-based company that’s developing gene therapies designed to restore vision in patients with retinitis pigmentosa, has raised $6 million in Series B funding from RBV Capital, ExSight Capital, Santen Pharmaceutical and earlier investor BlueWater Angels.

    Rhumbix, a year-old, San Francisco-based platform for construction timekeeping and cost coding, has raised $6 million in Series A funding led byGreylock Partners, with participation from Brick & Mortar Ventures, UJ Ventures and Stanford University professor Ray Levitt. The San Francisco Chronicle has more here.

    Schoology, a six-year-old, New York-based learning management system that focuses on cloud collaboration, has raised $32 million in Series D funding led byJMI Equity, with participation from earlier backers FirstMark Capital, Intel Capital and Great Road Holdings. TechCrunch has more here.

    TigerText, a 5.5-year-old, Santa Monica, Ca.-based company that makes secure, mobile, real-time messaging software for healthcare providers to communicate with their employees, has raised $50 million in Series C funding.Norwest Venture Partners led the round, which also included Invus Group,Accolade Partners and return backers Shasta Ventures, OrbiMed, andReed Elsevier. Fortune has more here.

    Unitive, a year-old, Woodside, Calif.-based analytics startup that focuses on unconscious bias in hiring and other HR decisions, has raised $7.5 million in Series A funding led by Ignition Partners, with participation from Kapor Capital, Webb Investment Network, Floodgate and Correlation Ventures. More here.

    —–

    New Funds

    Rakuten is has launched a $100 million fund dedicated to supporting startups in the financial sector. Rakuten already runs Rakuten Ventures, a $100 million fund that invests across a range of verticals. The unit has done most of its deals in Asia but it’s global in scope. TechCrunch has more here.

    White Star Capital, an eight-year-old, transatlantic venture firm with offices in London, New York and Montreal, has closed its first institutional fund with $70 million in LP commitments from mainly sovereign and institutional funds, entrepreneurs and family offices. Among its backers: the Business Development Bank of Canada, Isomer Capital, and Swen Capital Partners. The firm was co-founded by Eric Martineau-Fortin, a former technology M&A banker, and Christian Hernandez Gallardo, a former Facebook executive. TechCrunch has more here.

    —–

    Exits

    Watchmaker Fossil Group said today it would acquire Misfit, which creates various wearable and sleep trackers, for $260 million. Sonny Vu, CEO of Misfit, will serve as Fossil’s CTO. Misfit had raised $64.4 million across three rounds of funding, including a $40 million round in October last year. Investors include GGV Capital, Xiaomi and Founders Fund. TechCrunch has more here.

    Hulu is reportedly seeking to sell a stake to Time Warner as part of a deal that would value the streaming-video service at more than $5 billion. The WSJ has more here.

    —–

    People

    Gene Amdahl, a trailblazer in the design of IBM’s mainframe computers, died earlier this week at a nursing home in Palo Alto, Ca., at age 92. More on his life and legacy here.

    It may be time to remove Marissa Mayer as CEO of Yahoo, says Robert Peck, an analyst at SunTrust. More here.

    —–

    Data

    The WSJ has published the names of some of the many people involved in Sequoia Capital‘s known, but low-flying, five-year-old scout program.

    —–

    Essential Reads

    The highly valued health-insurance broker Zenefits, valued by private investors at $4.5 billion last spring, is falling short of revenue targets and cutting costs,reports the WSJ.

    GoPro‘s stock closed yesterday below $24, compared $80 a year ago. Fortune looks at what’s going on here.

    —–

    Detours

    The making of the most-expensive mansion in history.

    A look inside New York’s storied Explorers Club.

    You can now take a sword-fighting class at “the only school in the United States a hundred percent devoted to medieval fighting arts.”

    —–

    Retail Therapy

    The Chapel. Just $235 a night.

    Connie

  • Fiverr CEO On Raising $60 Million In New Capital: “It’s a Land Grab”

    a0d31ca1b9294d55b02e7b58f56b8fbdThis week, Fiverr, an online market for small services, announced $60 million in new financing led by Square Peg Capital. Earlier backers Bessemer Venture Partners, Accel Partners and Qumra Capital also chipped into the round, which brings the company’s total funding to a pretty significant $110 million.

    We talked with founder and CEO Micha Kaufman about what those investors are backing exactly, how and why five-year-old Fiverr just changed its pricing structure, and whether an IPO is in its sights yet. Our chat has been edited for length.

    First, how big is the company at this point? Give us some stats.

    We have more than 200 people in five offices, including here in Tel Aviv, New York, Chicago, Miami, and San Francisco. Fiverr generates close to 1 million transactions a month, and we’re truly an e-commerce company, as opposed to a labor marketplace. It’s a catalog business.

    Your Chicago office came together through an acqui-hire of a small design house called Cuban Council, from which Google also did some recruiting.

    Yes, part of the business was acquired by Google, and we took one of their founders and a few of their team and started our own studio of gifted designers.

    With $60 million in the bank, are more, bigger, acquisitions on the horizon? There are a whole lot of companies catering to freelancers at this point.

    Doing acquisitions is one way to accelerate our growth, and there are vertical businesses that might help us gain market share in particular categories or with our core business of e-commerce and recommendation systems and so forth, so that’s definitely on our radar.

    On a macro level, I do think we’ll see something similar to what’s gone on with e-commerce, where some startups break apart, then the market starts to consolidate through M&A and companies starting to wind down. But 97 percent of freelancing is still happening offline. A small minority happens online. So this is still not a very mature market where you need to aggressively compete against someone to gain market share. It’s more of a land grab right now, and the opportunity is immense.

    More here.

    Connie

  • StrictlyVC: November 12, 2015

    Hey, hey, it’s Thursday, and not a minute too soon. Hope it’s off to a great start.:)

    —–

    Top News in the A.M.

    Credit Suisse just published its 2016 global outlook, and here are the two biggest threats to the global economy that it sees.

    —–

    AngelPad “Graduates” 13 New Companies

    AngelPad, a five-year-old incubator that twice a year chooses roughly a dozen startups to coach over a three-month period, held its ninth “demo day” yesterday in San Francisco. As has become routine, its founders presented to a densely packed audience of invite-only guests.

    We weren’t surprised, walking onto the crowded scene. At this point, Angelpad, founded by husband-and-wife team Thomas Korte and Carine Magescas, has earned a solid reputation for finding interesting new entrepreneurs. (MoPub and Crittercism are two of its better-known discoveries.)

    The outfit — which provides each company with a $55,000 convertible note and an addition $4,000 per founder in exchange for 7 percent of their startup — also seems to be attracting more sophisticated entrepreneurs. That, or else Korte and Magescas are getting better at identifying talent. As Magescas told us, while companies are “usually just getting off the ground here,” Angelpad’s current batch of 13 companies “has an enormous amount of traction already,” to the tune of $2.5 million in combined revenue. “That’s not intentional,” she says. “Some are just [taking off] earlier than we thought.”

    Continue reading for an overview of the presenting companies.

    —–

    New Fundings

    Appcast, a 1.5-year-old, Lebanon, N.H.-based pay-per-applicant job marketplace, has raised $5 million in funding led by Point Judith Capital, with participation from IrishAngels and Baird Capital.

    Eyefluence, a two-year-old, Milpitas, Ca.-based company that makes an eye tracking system for virtual reality and augmented reality headsets, has raised $14 million in Series B funding led by Motorola Solutions. Other participants in the round include Jazz Venture Partners, NHN Ventures, Dolby Family Ventures, and other unnamed strategic and private investors. The company has now raised $21.6 million altogether. TechCrunch has more here.

    Fiverr, a 5.5-year-old, Tel Aviv-headquartered marketplace for skilled freelancers, has raised $60 million in new funding led by Square Peg Capital, with participation from earlier backers Bessemer Venture Partners, Accel Partners and Qumra Capital. The company has now raised $110 million altogether; we’ll have more on the deal over at TechCrunch later today.

    Flexe, a two-year-old, Seattle-based online marketplace that connects business in need of warehouse space, has raised $4.4 million in seed funding from Second Avenue Partners, SV Angel, Microsoft executive Hank Vigil and former Microsoft executive Fritz Lanman. More here.

    NextVR, a six-year-old, Laguna Beach, Ca.-based live-action virtual reality broadcast technology company, has raised $30.5 million in Series A funding led by Formation 8, a firm that backed Oculus VR early on (and that recently alerted investors that it would not raise a planned third fund). Other investors in the deal include Time Warner Investments, Comcast Ventures, Mandalay Entertainment CEO Peter Gruber, RSE Ventures, the Madison Square Garden Company, and Dick Clark Productions.

    Panaseer, a 1.5-year-old, London-based cybersecurity software company,  has raised $2.25 million in seed funding from investors, including Albion Ventures, Notion Capital, Winton Technology Ventures, C5 Holdings, and Elixirr.

    Shelfbucks, a two-year-old, Austin, Tex.-based company that makes dynamic marketing platforms for retail stores and brands, has raised $6.5 million in Series A funding. The sources are undisclosed, but the round brings the company’s total funding to $11.5 million. Silicon Hills News has more here.

    Zhan.com, a four-year-old, Shanghai, China-based online education startup that provides training courses for students preparing for entrance exams at overseas universities, has raised $60 million in Series C funding from Sequoia Capital and other undisclosed investors, according to Chinese media reports. The company had raised $29 million in Series B funding back in April from GGV Capital and Shunwei Capital.

    Zola, a two-year-old, New York-based online wedding-gift registry founded by former Gilt Groupe employees, has raised $10 million in Series B funding led byCanvas Venture Fund, with participation from AOL’s BBG Ventures, Female Founders Fund, Forerunner Ventures, and earlier backer Thrive Capital. Venture Capital Dispatch has more here.

    —–

    New Funds

    Elevar Equity, a 7.5-year-old, Seattle-based venture firm, has closed its third fund with $74 million from investors that include JPMorgan Chase, Omidyar Network, the Rockefeller Foundation, and Treehouse Investments. The firm invests in early-stage companies that are focused on providing financial services, education, housing and healthcare to low-income communities primarily in India and Latin America.

    —–

    People

    23andme cofounder Anne Wojcicki on her ex-husband and fellow entrepreneur, Sergey Brin: We’re still “very good friends.” [Bloomberg video.]

    —–

    Jobs

    Novartis Venture Fund is looking to hire a principal. The job is in Cambridge, Ma.

    —–

    Essential Reads

    Uber struck a deal yesterday to use digital maps provided by the Dutch technology company TomTom in its smartphone applications. (As readers will recall, Uber, which is quietly tinkering with self-driving technologies in Pittsburgh, has been interested in alternatives to Google’s mapping technologies for some time.)

    How Revolve became the trendiest, most profitable e-commerce startup you’venever heard of.

    In-N-Out wants the food-delivery startup DoorDash to stop delivering its burgers because of concerns around quality, food handling and safety — and it has filed a lawsuit toward that end.

    —–

    Detours

    Why you’re always mishearing song lyrics.

    This Brooklyn startup supplies the apartment, furniture, and roommates.

    If politicians had man buns. (Last man bun link this week, promise!)

    —–

    Retail Therapy

    The Cezeta 506 electric scooter, for when you want to go old school.

    Connie

  • AngelPad Shows Off 13 New Companies

    IMG_1640AngelPad, a five-year-old incubator that twice a year chooses roughly a dozen startups to coach over a three-month period, held its ninth “demo day” yesterday in San Francisco. As has become routine, its founders presented to a densely packed audience of invite-only guests.

    We weren’t surprised, walking onto the crowded scene. At this point, Angelpad, founded by husband-and-wife team Thomas Korte and Carine Magescas, has earned a solid reputation for finding interesting new entrepreneurs. (MoPub and Crittercism are two of its better-known discoveries.)

    The outfit — which provides each company with a $55,000 convertible note and an addition $4,000 per founder in exchange for 7 percent of their startup — also seems to be attracting more sophisticated entrepreneurs. That, or else Korte and Magescas are getting better at identifying talent. As Magescas told us, while companies are “usually just getting off the ground here,” Angelpad’s current batch of 13 companies “has an enormous amount of traction already,” to the tune of $2.5 million in combined revenue. “That’s not intentional,” she says. “Some are just [taking off] earlier than we thought.”

    Continue reading for an overview of the presenting companies.

    Connie

    ,

  • StrictlyVC: November 11, 2015

    Hi, everyone! Happy Wednesday.

    —–

    Top News in the A.M.

    Yesterday, a federal court judge ruled that tracking web histories can violate laws like the Wiretap Act, the Stored Communications Act, and the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. Wired has more on what that decision means here.

    —–

    Diamonds Born in California

    A Santa Clara, Ca.-based company calledDiamond Foundry is this morning taking the wraps off what it’s been creating over the last three years: the ability to produce diamonds. In Santa Clara.

    As the company explains it, it discovered a plasma that allows atoms to attach themselves to a thin slice of diamond that’s been extracted the old-fashioned way, by being plucked from the earth. One by one, it says, atoms stack atop the diamond’s crystal structure, growing layer by later into a “pure, cultured jewelry-grade diamond.”

    We couldn’t catch CEO Martin Roscheisen on the phone yesterday to ask what, precisely, jewelry-grade diamonds mean. We’re guessing if they were colorless and had what gemologists refer to as “excellent clarity,” Diamond Foundry would say so in its marketing materials. (It does not.)

    Either way, the gems seem to be good enough for a list of prominent list of investors who’ve plugged some of their capital into the company. Diamond Foundry’s backers include entrepreneurs Mark and Alison Pincus; serial entrepreneur Ev Williams; early Facebook COO Owen Van Natta; and actor Leo DiCaprio, who famously played a mercenary gem smuggler in the 2006 film “Blood Diamond.”

    More here

    —–

    New Funds

    Amplyx Pharmaceuticals, a nine-year-old, San Diego-based preclinical stage company that’s developing a new anti-fungal compound for treating life-threatening fungal infections, has raised $40.5 million in Series B financing led by RiverVest Venture Partners, with participation from New Enterprise Associates, BioMed Ventures, and individual investors. Xconomy has more here.

    Bango, a 16-year-old, London-based mobile payments company that allows app stores, operators and publishers to collect payments over the mobile web, has raised £11 million ($17 million) in new funding at a post-money valuation of roughly $90 million. TechCrunch has more here.

    Careem, a two-year-old, Dubai-based app-based car service launched by former McKinsey & Co. consultants Magnus Olsson and Mudassir Sheikha, has raised $60 million in Series C funding led by the private equity firm Abraaj Group. Other participants in the round include Al Tayyar, STC Ventures, Beco Capital, Impulse (a subsidiary of Kuwait Investment Authority), Lumia Capital and Wamda Capital. DealStreetAsia has more here.

    CircleUp, a four-year-old, San Francisco-based crowdfunding platform that consumer retail businesses like food companies use to raise money from outside investors, has raised $30 million in Series C funding led by Collaborative Fund. Other investors include Capital One co-founder Nigel Morris and the former CEOs and presidents of Goldman Sachs, Thomson Reuters and the Stanford Endowment. Previous backers Union Square Ventures, Canaan Partners, Maveron and Rose Park Advisors also joined the round. TechCrunch has more here.

    EventBoard, a three-year-old, Salt Lake City, Ut.-based developer of cloud-based meeting tools and analytics, has raised $6.5 million in Series A funding led by Greycroft Partners, with participation from Origin Ventures and its seed round investor, Zetta Venture Partners. Vator has more here.

    MiRagen Therapeutics, an eight-year-old, Boulder, Co.-based biopharmaceutical company that’s developing microRNA-based therapeutics, has raised $41 million in Series C funding co-led by MRL Ventures, a venture fund of Merck, and JAFCO. Other participants include new investors Brace Pharma Capital and MP Healthcare Venture Management, along with earlier backers Atlas Venture, Boulder Ventures, Remeditex Ventures, Amgen Ventures and others. More here.

    PeerSpace, a two-year-old, San Francisco-based startup that helps companies and individuals find short-term space, has raised $5 million in Series A funding led by Foundation Capital, with participation from earlier backer Structure Capital. The company had earlier raised $1.5 million in seed funding and another $800,000 in debt financing. TechCrunch has more here.

    Perfecto Mobile, a nine-year-old, Woburn, Ma.-based company that helps businesses troubleshoot an app before it gets in the hands of users, has raised $35 million in new funding led by Technology Crossover Ventures, with participation from previous investors FTV Capital, Carmel Ventures, Globespan Capital Partners, and Vertex Ventures. Perfecto has now raised $92.8 million altogether. Xconomy has more here.

    Swrve, a five-year-old, San Francisco-based mobile engagement platform, has raised $30 million funding in funding led by Evolution Media Partners, TPG Growth, Participant Media, and the Ireland Strategic Investment Fund. Earlier backers Acero Capital and Atlantic Bridge also joined the round. Fortune has more here.

    Tenable Network Security, a 13-year-old, Columbia, Md.-based company that develops unified security monitoring software to secure enterprise networks, has raised a whopping $250 million in venture funding led by Insight Venture Partners, with participation from earlier backer Accel Partners. Reuters has more here.

    Udacity, the nearly four-year-old, Mountain View, Ca.-based online university co-founded by Stanford University Research Professor Sebastian Thrun, has raised $105 million at a valuation of $1 billion led by the German media conglomerate Bertlesmann. Scotland’s Baillie Gifford, Emerson Collective and Google Ventures also joined the round, as did earlier backers Andreessen Horowitz, Charles River Ventures and Drive Capital. The WSJ has more here.

    VideoAmp, a 1.5-year-old, Santa Monica, Ca.-based screen optimization platform for the TV and video ecosystem, has raised $15 million in Series A funding led by RTL Group. The company has now raised $17.2 million altogether. More here.

    Worldsensing, a 7.5-year-old, Barcelona, Spain-based company that develops machine-to-machine and Internet of Things technologies, has raised an undisclosed amount of  Series B funding from Cisco Investments, Mitsui & Co., Kibo Ventures, Fundación Jose Manuel Entrecanales and Endeavor Catalyst. Earlier backers, including Finaves (the investment platform of IESE Business School), also joined the round. More here.

    —–

    New Funds

    500 Startups, the five-year-old, San Francisco-based investing and conference juggernaut, is raising yet another new fund: This time, it’s targeting $15 million to invest in seed-stage Nordic startups. Fortune has more here.

    Collaborative Fund, the five-year-old, New York-based venture firm, has closed its third fund with $70 million. TechCrunch has more here.

    Open Ocean, a Helsinki-based venture firm that has backed such startups as Truecaller and EyeEm, has raised a new, €100 million ($107 million) fund and also recruited entrepreneur and investor Richard Muirhead as a general partner. TechCrunch has more here.

    —–

    Exits

    Google has acquired Fly Labs, a four-year-old, New York-based company that specializes in user-friendly photo and video editing software. Terms of the deal weren’t disclosed. The company had raised $750,000 in a convertible note last spring, shows CrunchBase. InformationWeek has more here.

    —–

    People

    Facebook board member Marc Andreessen has now sold almost half his personal holdings in the giant social network. The sales were reportedly part of a prearranged trading plan but seem to suggest that Facebook’s share price is also pretty rich at the moment. As Jan Dawson, chief analyst with Jackdaw Research, tells USA Today: “The fact is, Facebook stock is up over 40 percent in the past year and up even more significantly since the (IPO), so Andreessen has had a great return on his investment here already.”

    Longtime investor Pierre Lamond — who spent much of his career with Sequoia Capital, and later moved to Khosla Ventures before joining Formation 8 in an advisory role –has joined Eclipse Ventures as a full-time general partner,reports Fortune. Eclipse was formerly called the F8 Hardware Fund.

    Ambar Bhattacharyya, formerly a vice president in Bessemer Venture Partners’s Menlo Park, Ca. office, has joined Maverick Capital, a Dallas-based money management firm.

    HotelTonight CEO Sam Shank said yesterday that his five-year-old, San Francisco-based hotel booking startup has laid off 37 employees, or 20 percent of its total workforce. TechCrunch has more here.

    Megan Quinn, a former product manager at both Google and Square who later spent time as an investor with Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, has joined Spark Capital as a general partner, working with its growth stage fund team. TechCrunch has more here.

    Investor Chamath Palihapitiya is trying to disrupt a lot of businesses, and the newest is the carrier business. More here.

    Redpoint eventures, a joint effort between Redpoint Ventures and e.ventures, has added Romero Rodrigues, one of Brazil’s best-known Internet entrepreneurs, as a full-time general partner. Rodrigues co-founded the online price comparison site Buscapé, which the South African conglomerate Naspers acquired in 2009 for $342 million. Dealbook has more here.

    —–

    Essential Reads

    About one year after selling Motorola, executives inside Google are once again discussing whether to build an Android phone from scratch, reports The Information.

    Yesterday, New York attorney general Eric Schneiderman sent cease-and-desist notices to FanDuel and DraftKings — the two giants in the growing daily fantasy sports industry — telling the companies that they are no longer allowed to accept bets, or do anything else, in New York. New York Magazine has more here.

    And yet more bad news for Theranos: Safeway, which reportedly spent $350 million to build clinics in more than 800 of its supermarkets to offer blood tests by startup Theranos, is now negotiating with Theranos to officially dissolve that partnership partnership after Theranos missed deadlines for its blood-testing rollout and several Safeway executives questioned the accuracy of results Theranos gave to Safeway employees. The WSJ has the story here.

    —–

    Detours

    Twenty-one lifestyle changes to make if you want to save more money.

    For sale: man buns.

    —–

    Retail Therapy

    The ostensible “wagyu” of iced coffee (if you’re into that sort of thing).

    Connie

  • Diamonds Born in California

    A maxresdefault (1)Santa Clara, Ca.-based company called Diamond Foundry is this morning taking the wraps off what it’s been creating over the last three years: the ability to produce diamonds. In Santa Clara.

    As the company explains it, it discovered a plasma that allows atoms to attach themselves to a thin slice of diamond that’s been extracted the old-fashioned way, by being plucked from the earth. One by one, it says, atoms stack atop the diamond’s crystal structure, growing layer by later into a “pure, cultured jewelry-grade diamond.”

    We couldn’t catch CEO Martin Roscheisen on the phone yesterday to ask what, precisely, jewelry-grade diamonds mean. We’re guessing if they were colorless and had what gemologists refer to as “excellent clarity,” Diamond Foundry would say so in its marketing materials. (It does not.)

    Either way, the gems seem to be good enough for a list of prominent list of investors who’ve plugged some of their capital into the company. Diamond Foundry’s backers include entrepreneurs Mark and Alison Pincus; serial entrepreneur Ev Williams; early Facebook COO Owen Van Natta; and actor Leo DiCaprio, who famously played a mercenary gem smuggler in the 2006 film “Blood Diamond.”

    More here.

    Connie

    , , , , ,

  • StrictlyVC: November 10, 2010

    Happy Tuesday, everyone! Busy morning; please forgive whatever we might have overlooked!

    —–

    Top News in the A.M.

    Whoa. Fidelity, the only fund manager to have a Snapchat investment, wrote down value of its stake by 25 percent in the third quarter, according to Morningstar. TechCrunch has just followed up with a story here.

    —–

    Rich Miner on the Alphabet Factor and More

    Yesterday, at a conference in San Francisco, we sat down with Rich Miner, a serial entrepreneur who may be best-known for cofounding a company called Android, which was acquired by Google a decade ago and then relegated to the dustbin of history. (Kidding!)

    Four-and-a half years later, Miner joined Google Ventures and he continues to work from Cambridge, Ma., making investments on behalf of his new parent company, Alphabet.

    We talked with Miner about how that reorganization is impacting Google Ventures, the team’s lack of gender diversity, and why Miner is expecting the stylus to become a bigger part of our lives. More from our chat, edited for length, follows.

    To some Google Ventures, remains a bit of an enigma. For example, with offices in Cambridge, the Bay Area and London, do partners invest pretty exclusively in their own backyards?

    I live in Boston, so I like to see all the Boston deal flow. But I also sit on the board of several companies in the Bay Area and if it’s something domain specific to mobile and doesn’t happen to be in Boston, I’m certainly going to look at that deal.

    What’s happening with the London team? There was a lot of press about it being slow to make investments at first.

    Google Ventures is very much not a strategic venture fund. We’re focused on returns. To that point, there was a time where there were investment dollars in Europe but [European startups] trailed behind the U.S. in terms of returns, and we’ve clearly started to see a shift. You now have enough of a history of successful startups, enough capital, and great hotbeds of innovation, including around Berlin, and London and Stockholm, that we think all the right components are in place.

    They have separate capital, too, right? The U.S.-based team has $300 million to invest annually and Europe gets its own $125 million annually?

    Correct, the European team has the same sort of structure with annual funds and right now, the European fund is a separate fund.
    With Alphabet becoming a giant parent above Google, do those budgets change?

    More here.

    —–

    New Fundings

    NightstaRx, a 1.5-year-old, U.K.-based gene therapy company focused on condition that causes blindness, has raised $35 million in Series B funding led by New Enterprise Associates, with participation from included Syncona, an independent subsidiary of the Wellcome Trust. MedCity News has more here.

    POP, a 1.5-year-old, Irvine, Ca.-based mobile app that provides a crowd-solving platform for businesses, has raised $6 million in Series A funding led byNexus Venture Partners, with participation from Greylock Partners. More here.

    QD Vision, an 11-year-old, Lexington, Ma.-based provider of quantum dot technologies for QLED displays, has raised $22 million in new funding led byTsing Capital and BASF Venture Capital, along with earlier investors. More here.

    SkySpecs, a 3.5-year-old, Ann Arbor, Mi.-based company that makes technology for drone navigation, has raised $3 million in Series A funding, including from Amherst Fund, Huron River Ventures, Invest Michigan and Michigan Angel Fund. Crain’s Detroit Business has more here.

    Transfix, a two-year-old, 26-person, New York-based transportation startup that matches customers needing interstate freight shipping with truck drivers needing to make deliveries, has raised $12 million in Series A funding led by Canvas Ventures. Earlier investors Lerer Hippeau Ventures, Founder Collective and Bowery Capital also joined the round, which brings the company’s total funding to $14 million. (We think this one is interesting and wrote about it this morning.)

    Varsity Tutors, an 8.5-year-old, St. Louis, Mo.-based live learning platform for private instructors in the U.S., has raised $50 million in Series B funding from Technology Crossover Ventures, musician Adam Levine, and education executive Stuart Udell, among others. More here.

    Versa Networks, a three-year-old, Santa Clara, Ca.-based company that makes networking software, has raised $43 million from investors, including Sequoia Capital, Verizon Ventures and Mayfield. More here.

    ——

    New Funds

    Cleveland, Ohio is getting a new venture capital fund: a new, $20 million for-profit pool called the JumpStart NEXT fund. LPs include the Greater Cleveland Partnership. More here.

    IGNIA, a Mexico City, Mexico-based venture capital group, has raised $90 million for its second fund, a vehicle that was raised through Mexican publicly traded certificates known as CKDs and that includes Mexican pension funds as limited partners. More here.

    —–

    IPOs

    Another software company has filed to go public: Atlassian, which initially filed its IPO paperwork confidentially back in August, has revealed plans to raise around $250 million. TechCrunch has more here.

    —–

    Exits

    Deliv is acquiring another same-day delivery service, Zipments. TechCrunch has more here.

    Elastica has been acquired by Blue Coat Systems. VentureBeat has more here.

    —–

    Jobs

    Nokia is looking to hire a venture fund operating partner. The job is in Mountain View, Ca.

    —–

    Essential Reads

    Apple’s biggest tablet yet is coming tomorrow.

    Some leading on-demand start-ups, including Lyft and Instacart, have formed an alliance with labor groups to explore ways to better support contract workers without necessarily creating new laws.

    The “Steve Jobs” movie is getting dumped from theaters owing to poor sales.

    —–

    Detours

    Cruz’s Crew: You play the game, but it’s the Cruz campaign that scores.

    —–

    Retail Therapy

    Under-The-Jack-Pack.

    Connie

  • Rich Miner of Google Ventures on the Alphabet Factor and More

    rich-miner-1Yesterday, at a conference in San Francisco, we sat down with Rich Miner, a serial entrepreneur who may be best-known for cofounding a company called Android, which was acquired by Google a decade ago and then relegated to the dustbin of history. (Kidding!)

    Four-and-a half years later, Miner joined Google Ventures and he continues to work from Cambridge, Ma., making investments on behalf of his new parent company, Alphabet.

    We talked with Miner about how that reorganization is impacting Google Ventures, the team’s lack of gender diversity, and why Miner is expecting the stylus to become a bigger part of our lives. More from our chat, edited for length, follows.

    To some Google Ventures, remains a bit of an enigma. For example, with offices in Cambridge, the Bay Area and London, do partners invest pretty exclusively in their own backyards?

    I live in Boston, so I like to see all the Boston deal flow. But I also sit on the board of several companies in the Bay Area and if it’s something domain specific to mobile and doesn’t happen to be in Boston, I’m certainly going to look at that deal.

    What’s happening with the London team? There was a lot of press about it being slow to make investments at first.

    Google Ventures is very much not a strategic venture fund. We’re focused on returns. To that point, there was a time where there were investment dollars in Europe but [European startups] trailed behind the U.S. in terms of returns, and we’ve clearly started to see a shift. You now have enough of a history of successful startups, enough capital, and great hotbeds of innovation, including around Berlin, and London and Stockholm, that we think all the right components are in place.

    They have separate capital, too, right? The U.S.-based team has $300 million to invest annually and Europe gets its own $125 million annually?

    Correct, the European team has the same sort of structure with annual funds and right now, the European fund is a separate fund.
    With Alphabet becoming a giant parent above Google, do those budgets change?

    More here.

    Connie

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