Hi, everyone, it is Thursday! [Breakdancing.]

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Top News in the A.M.

A bill that would require a warrant to get your emails has finally made some progress on the Hill.

Yale is clearing the air about its venture returns.

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Bill Gurley on the Newest Superfund Trend

On Monday, the National Venture Capital Association and Thomson Reuters released some surprising data. Despite few opportunities to exit from their investments, 57 venture firms managed to raise $12 billion in the first quarter — more money than VCs have raised since the second quarter of 2006. More, just seven firms counted for nearly two-thirds of all that money, with four raising north of a billion dollars apiece.

“It’s not just the size of the funds but the velocity” at which VCs are returning to their investors, known as limited partners (or LPs), says an astonished Bill Gurley of the venture firm Benchmark. “The Kauffman fund said that billion dollar funds sucked, then everybody went out and raised billion-dollar funds.”

Gurley is referring to a 2012 Kauffman Foundation report that suggests venture capital isn’t a great place for institutions to invest, and that big venture funds are a losing proposition almost entirely.

According to the organization’s findings, which it based on its 20-plus years of investing in more than 100 venture funds, only 20 percent of its investments had generated returns that beat a public market equivalent as of 2012, and even then, the funds outpaced those public market indices by a measly three percent. Kauffman further found that only four of 30 venture funds that exceeded $400 million delivered better returns for investors than a small-cap common stock index.

What’s changed in four years’ time? As far as Gurley is concerned, not a thing. Gurley — whose firm raised one billion-dollar fund in the late ’90s and quickly reverted back to sub $500 million funds — says he doesn’t think big venture funds add up for anyone other than VCs, whose management fees typically equal two percent of a fund. “If you talk with an LP, you’ll hear that funds raised in times of scarcity perform the best, while those raised in peak [fundraising] moments don’t have the best returns. The only type of return that’s guaranteed is excessive fee income. You get that no matter what, which is a conflict, for sure.”

More here.

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New Fundings

ContainerShip, a 16-month-old, Pittsburgh, Pa.-based service that aims to make it easier for developers to use Docker containers to develop and deploy their applications, has raised a $2.41 million in seed funding led by Pittsburgh-based Draper Triangle Ventures and Birchmere Ventures. TechCrunch has more here.

KONUX, a 1.5-year-old, Munich, Germany-based industrial IoT company, has raised $7.5 million in Series A funding from New Enterprise Associates; the largest German industrial venture firm, MIG; and individual investors, including Andy Bechtolsheim, Warren Weiss, and Splunk’s founding CEO, Michael Baum.

Onfido, a four-year-old, London-based platform that conducts background checks for on-demand startups and other businesses like online marketplaces, has raised $25 million in Series B funding led by Idinvest Partners, with participation from earlier backers Wellington Partners and CrunchFund. The company has now raised roughly $30 million altogether. TechCrunch has more here.

OnShift, a nine-year-old, Cleveland-based company that makes cloud-based staff scheduling software primarily for long-term care and senior living facilities, has raised $18 million in Series D funding led by Health Velocity Capital, with participation from earlier backers Draper Triangle Ventures, Early Stage Partners, Fifth Third Capital, HLM Venture Partners, North Coast Venture Fund and West Capital Advisors. More here.

Quartet, a two-year-old, New York-based tech company that helps doctors analyze patients’ records to learn if someone’s physiological symptoms are likely to be associated with a mental health condition, has raised $40 million in Series B funding led by GV, with participation from earlier backers Oak HC/FT Partners, F-Prime Capital Partners, and Polaris Partners. Fortune wrote about the company recently here.

Yup, a two-year-old, San Francisco-based mobile app that provides on-demand tutoring for students and was previously known as MathCrunch, has raised $4 million in seed funding from existing and new investors, including Stanford University’s StartX Fund and SOMA Capital. The new funding brings Yup’s total funding to $7.5 million.

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Exits

Barcelona is seeing its biggest ever exit with the sale of 10-year-old, Spanish ecommerce player Privalia to France’s Ventee-Privee. The terms of the deal haven’t been disclosed, but a TechCrunch source says Ventee-Privee is paying €500 million ($563 million). According to CrunchBase, Privalia had raised roughly $190 million over the years, including from General Atlantic and Highland Capital Partners. More here.

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People

Facebook has hired former Google vice president of advanced technology and projects, Regina Dugan, to head up a new group dubbed Building 8. According to Facebook, Dugan’s department will combine R&D with product development, and focus on technologies that “fluidly blend physical and digital worlds.” TechCrunch has more here.

Oracle founder Larry Ellison‘s Hawaiian hotel has a suite that costs $21,000 a night; here‘s what it looks like (via Business Insider).

Nest CEO Tony Fadell went to Google’s all-hands meeting recently to defend Nest. Here’s what he said (via Recode).

Apple has hired Cynthia Hogan, formerly a top lobbyist for the NFL and aide to Vice President Joe Biden, as the new head of its Washington office as it continues to battle law enforcement officials over access to its customers’ data. Politico has more here.

Federal health regulators have proposed banning Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes from the blood-testing business for at least two years after concluding that the company failed to fix what regulators have called major problems at its laboratory in California. The WSJ has the story here.

Former Reuters journalist Matthew Keys was sentenced today to two years in prison on hacking charges. He faced a maximum sentence of 25 years. TechCrunch has more here.

President Obama is reportedly the only person in the world to receive advanced episodes of the newest “Game of Thrones” season. (“When the commander-in-chief says, ‘I want to see advanced episodes,’ what are you gonna do?,” says showrunner David Benioff.)

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Jobs

Bolt, a hardware-focused seed fund with offices and prototyping shops in Boston and San Francisco, is looking to hire a platform manager. The job is in San Francisco.

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Data

Snapchat’s messaging service is gaining more momentum with teenagers, according to an ongoing survey series fielded by research firm Piper Jaffray that says Snapchat has now caught up to Instagram’s photo-sharing app as the most important social network among this younger demographic. Fortune has more here.

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Essential Reads

Pharmacy startup PillPack is about to lose about a third of its customers, as a competitor is shutting it out of its pharmacy network. (The company has raised $65 million from investors.)

That Coolest cooler project on Kickstarter continues to be a disaster.

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Detours

Conan in Korea.

Kobe’s glorious good-bye (and the 30,699 shots he took leading up to it).

The adult skills that every 18-year-old should have.

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Retail Therapy

Election season scratching posts for cats.

Meanwhile, you might want to pick up some of these for yourself. (You could probably score a discount on the Marco Rubio merch.)

Happy Wednesday, everyone!

Many of you know we’re Cavs fans (still), but we’ll admit to being very excited about tonight. With a win against the Memphis Grizzlies later, the Warriors will own the NBA record for victories in a single season, breaking their tie with the 1995-96 Chicago Bulls. Hot dog. Go Warriors!!

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Top News in the A.M.

Here’s everything that was announced at Facebook‘s F8 conference yesterday.

Turns out the FBI cracked that San Bernardino terrorist’s phone with the help of professional hackers who discovered a previously unknown software flaw and brought to the bureau. The Washington Post has the story here.

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Chris Dixon on Competing with Internet Giants for AI and VR Talent

VC Chris Dixon of Andreessen Horowitz thinks it’s a lot harder to predict financial cycles than it is to see a new computing platform coming down the pike. As he noted in a recent post, new cycles tend to begin every 10 to 15 years; assuming the 2007 introduction of the iPhone kicked off the last wave, we’re fast heading toward the Next New Thing.

Or things, technically, according to Dixon, who we caught up with yesterday. Among the trends that Dixon is watching closely, he says, are virtual reality, augmented reality, IoT, wearables, drones and cars. (Missing from the list: bitcoin, which has long held Dixon’s fascination but that he refers to as a “long-term project.”)

Not that it’ll be easy to make money off these newer technologies. In fact, Dixon suggests it could be ridiculously challenging, given how quickly Facebook, Google, and Amazon are bringing aboard related talent. Here’s more from yesterday’s interview, edited for length:

People think of you as the person at Andreessen Horowitz who invests in weird stuff. 

We obviously invest in a wide range of things. My own area of interest has been in drones and VR and AI and maybe more speculative categories. Some startups, the question is more about ‘Will this startup win versus other solutions,’ where, in speculative categories, the question is whether it’s going to work at all.

You can kind of jokingly call it weird, but if you look at where Amazon, Facebook, and Google are investing — I think Google’s VR team is significantly bigger than Facebook’s; Microsoft has 1,500 people working on HoloLens; and from what I can tell from its hiring and acquisitions, Apple is [investing a lot of money] — probably the biggest area [of interest and investment] is AI. Large tech companies are investing very heavily in this stuff [whereas] there’s much less investment by VCs.

Because VCs don’t understand the tech or else the opportunity?

No, because it’s hard to figure out where the start-up opportunities are and because [some of this tech] requires so much money. With virtual reality, you have to build a complex platform then line up content partners. Or self-driving cars — I’d assume that Google has spent many billions of dollars on it already, including mapping. The venture world isn’t set up for that. It works around the model of seed rounds, A rounds, $20 million B rounds, not for massive projects. It’s kind of a puzzle if you’re in VC how to make those investments.

You’ve remarked  before how quickly teams are getting snapped up, which must compound the issue.

Wit.ai [a Y Combinator startup that built voice-activated interfaces] that Facebook bought and now powers its Messenger platform was only [in our portfolio] for a few months when Facebook bought it.  It sounds paradoxical, but our model depends on companies staying independent for a period of time, and because large companies have been so aggressive, it’s harder for us.

When it comes to machine learning, you’re competing with offers from Facebook and Google and Amazon and [their offers] are considerably higher in terms of cash compensation. They pay a lot for people with that expertise, and startups will never [be able to match it]. So you have to really convince people that what you’re building is important.

VCs can’t wait out this next computing cycle obviously. So how do they nurture lower-capital models?

More here.

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New Fundings

Affirm, the four-year-old, San Francisco-based online lending company founded by PayPal cofounder Max Levchin, has raised a $100 million in Series D funding led by Founders Fund. Earlier investors also participated, including Lightspeed Venture Partners, Spark Capital, Khosla Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz, and Jefferies. According to Crunchbase, the company has now raised $420 million altogether in a combination of debt and equity funding. TechCrunch has more here.

EdCast, a nearly three-year-old, Mountain View, Ca-based social learning platform, has raised $16 million led by GE Asset Management, with participation from SoftBank Capital, Cervin Ventures, Stanford-StartX Fund, and Penta Global. More here.

EnsoData, a year-old, Madison, Wi.-based healthcare data science company sells its machine-learning-enabled software­ as­ a­ service to create clinical insights from wearables, medical devices, and clinicians’s data, has raised $550,000 in seed funding led by HealthX Ventures, a new Madison-­based venture capital fund focused on digital health. More here.

Impraise, a two-year-old, Los Altos, Ca.-based startup whose software aims to replace the annual performance review with actionable, real-time feedback from colleagues, has raised $1.6 million in seed funding led by the Amsterdam-based venture capital firm HenQ. More here.

Lucid VR, a two-year-old Sunnyvale, Ca.-based maker of a portable VR camera, has raised $2.1 million in seed funding from Wistron, S2 Capital, Lab360, TEEC Angel Fund, 17 Miles Technology, and unnamed angel investors. More here.

NAUTO, a year-old, Palo Alto, Ca.-based driverless car technology company that enables older cars to enjoy “true autonomy,” has raised $12 million in funding led by Playground Global, with participation from Draper Nexus. TechCrunch has more here.

NodeSource, a 1.5-year-old, San Francisco-based startup whose tools and software target the needs of running server-side JavaScript at scale, has raised $10 million in Series A funding led by RRE Ventures, with participation from earlier backers Crosslink Capital and Resolute.vc. More here.

PicMix, a four-year-old, Indonesia-based photo-sharing app, has raised $3 million in Series A funding, including from Gobi Partners and an undisclosed strategic investor. TechCrunch has more here.

Poshmark, a five-year-old, Menlo Park, Ca.-based site for buying and selling women’s fashion, has raised $25 million in new funding led by GGV Capital, with participation from earlier investors Menlo Ventures, SoftTech VC andAngelList. The company has now raised more than $70 million altogether. TechCrunch has more here.

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New Funds

Forbion Capital Partners, a nine-year-old, Munich and Naarden, the Netherlands-based venture firm that invests in both U.S. and European life sciences companies, has raised $208 million for a third fund. One of its biggest hits in recent years was Dezima Pharma, a developer of a dyslipidemia treatment that was acquired by Amgen last year for $1.55 billion in cash and milestones. More here.

GREE, the Japanese internet company, has announced a new, $12 miillion fund aimed at backing virtual reality companies. TechCrunch has more here.

Grishin Robotics has raised $100 million for its second fund, reports Bloomberg. Many more details here.

Kansas City just launched a $10 million co-investment fund for its startup community. Technical.ly has more here.

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IPOs

Business analytics company Domo is working with Morgan Stanley and Credit Suisse to prepare for a potential IPO, according to Bloomberg.

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Exits

Logitech is acquiring 10-year-old, Salt Lake City-based Jaybird, which makes Bluetooth headphones and activity trackers, for a reported $50 million in cash and up to another $45 million in additional earn-outs. Jaybird appears to have been bootstrapped. More here.

OpenGov, which works with government organizations to collate, analyse and publicly present financial and other data, has made its first acquisition. It has purchased Ontodia, a developer of Open Data solutions based on CKAN, an open-source data portal used by governments and other public organizations globally. Terms of the deal aren’t being disclosed. OpenGov has raised just less than $50 million from investors, including Andreessen Horowitz. Ontodia had raised a modest amount of angel funding. TechCrunch has more here.

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People

Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff is seeing his (substantial) amount of pay curbed slightly. According to a new proxy statement, the business software giant made “significant” changes to his pay package for the upcoming year, including reducing Benioff’s total compensation by 16 percent from $33.4 million this year and tying more than half to performance-based, restricted stock grants. Fortune has more here.

Billionaire tech entrepreneur Sean Parker has announced plans to give away $250 million through his foundation to launch the Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy, a collaboration between some of the nation’s top cancer research institutes that aims to accelerate the development of breakthrough immune therapies. TechCrunch has more here.

Aleph Venture Capital, a three-year-old venture fund that’s largely focused on Israeli entrepreneurs and was founded by Eden Shochat and Michael Eisenberg, has brought aboard a third “equal” partner: 26-year-old Aaron Rosenson. He joins from an associate role at Insight Venture Partners where, according to Aleph, he was responsible for identifying Docker, HelloFresh, Moat, Gainsight, Illuminate Education and the Israeli company WalkMe, among other companies. More here.

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Data

Research firm SuperData Research predicts in a new report that global sales of virtual reality hardware and software will reach $2.86 billion this year, down 22 percent from its forecast in early March. A big factor: shipping delays by Oculus over a component shortage. More here.

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Essential Reads

Lazada, the Rocket Internet-backed e-commerce firm in Southeast Asia, is breathing a huge sigh of relief. According to TechCrunch, the four-year-old company, which is “far from financially healthy,” nearly ran out of money right before Alibaba swooped in this week with a majority investment. More here.

BlackRock, Vanguard and other big institutional investors own roughly 70 percent of the public stock market, according to some reports. People are starting to ask whether this allows companies — now having the same owners — to compete less and raise prices. Dealbook has more here.

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Detours

The amazing, transformable microflat.

Hi, everyone! Hope you have a terrific Tuesday.

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Top News in the A.M.

Chatbots, live video, and virtual reality technology are all on the docket for Facebook’s F8 developer conference, and you can watch the livestream here beginning at 9:30 a.m. PST, with CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s keynote starting at 10 a.m.

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GGV Capital Just Raised $1.2 Billion; Here’s How It Plans to Invest It

Back in February, we told you GGV Capital was raising a more than a billion dollars from its investors.

This morning, the 16-year-old, cross-border venture firm is making it official. The final tally, says GGV, is $1.2 billion, including a $675 million main fund; a $225 million “Plus” fund to back its most promising companies as they mature; a $250 million “Discovery” fund that will focus largely on seed-stage opportunities in China; and a side, $50 million “Entrepreneurs” fund that consists largely of company founders as LPs and that will invest pro rata across the funds.

The firm has a lot of moolah to invest, in other words. To find out out where GGV plans to shop, we talked yesterday with managing directors Glenn Solomon and Jeff Richards, who are based in Menlo Park, but who travel to the firm’s Beijing and Shanghai offices frequently.

Aside from the amount you’ve raised, it looks like what’s newest here is your first dedicated seed-stage fund, 80 percent of which you intend to invest in China. You’ve always made bets of all sizes in China; why break this part of your business into a separate fund?

GS: Over the last five years, more than 70 percent of our investments have been Series B or earlier and many of them have been in China. But we thought the opportunity in China to do [seed] deals is really strong for us given our work on the ground and the entrepreneurial community that we’ve built up in China.

Is it fair to say this is largely a marketing tactic so entrepreneurs will be clearer about your intentions in China? 

GS: I was having dinner in Beijing with a CEO who we’ve backed in the past and in whose newest company we invested at the Series B, and when I told him about our plans to raise Discovery, he said, “Had I known you guys were doing seed investing, I would have called you first.”

Don’t underestimate how important [messaging] is. Also, for our limited partners, having a separate vehicle helps them look at our seed investing activity and judge how we’re doing [versus when it’s lumped in with later-stage bets].

How is competition at the seed level in China?

More here.

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New Fundings

90 Seconds, a six-year-old, Singapore-based startup whose cloud-based platform lets users handle almost every part of the video production process in one place, has raised $7.5 million in Series A funding led by Sequoia India. Other investors in the round include pay television provider SKY TV New Zealand, Airtree Ventures, Beenext and Oleg Tscheltzoff, founder of stock image agency Fotolia.com. TechCrunch has more here.

Chedai.com,  a three-year-old, Shanghai, China-based car finance lending platform, has raised $34 million in funding led by China Growth Capital, with participation from earlier investor Matrix Partners China. Asian Venture Capital Journal has more here (subscribers only).

Datera, a nearly three-year-old, Mountain View, Ca.-based storage company for enterprise and service provider clouds that was designed with DevOps-style operations in mind, has raised $40 million in funding from Khosla Ventures, Samsung Ventures and individual investors Andy Bechtolsheim and Pradeep Sindhu. More here.

Fleet, a two-year-old, San Francisco-based marketplace that lets companies compare quotes from logistics providers, has raised $4 million in seed funding led by Hunt Technology Ventures, with participation from Placid Ventures, David S. Hunt, 1517 Fund, Latam Partners, GrowthX Fund, NFQ, and Telegraph Hill Capital. TechCrunch has more here.

Lazada, a four-year-old, Singapore-based e-commerce platform known as the Amazon of Southeast Asia, has raised $1 billion in funding from Alibaba in a deal that makes the China-based conglomerate Lazada’s controlling shareholder. The round includes $500 million in newly issued equity capital; it also includes stakes from Lazada’s earlier shareholders Rocket Internet, Tesco, and Kinnevik. Lazada is now valued at $1.5 billion, according to Rocket Internet, which founded the company. TechCrunch has more here.

Livongo Health, a 1.5-year-old, Mountain View, Ca.-based consumer digital health company focused on chronic conditions, has raised $44.5 million in Series C funding from Merck Global Health Innovation Fund; Cowen Private Investments; Sapphire Ventures; Zaffre Investments, which is he investment arm of Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts; Wanxiang America Corp; and earlier investors General Catalyst Partners, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, DFJ, and 7wire Ventures. More here.

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New Funds

Accel London, the 16-year-old, London-based venture fund that shares many limited partners (and deal flow) with Accel Partners in the U.S., has raised $500 million for its fifth fund, which will focus on Series A and B investments in Europe and Israel. Accel London’s last fund, a $475 million vehicle, closed three years ago. TechCrunch has more here.

Greycroft Partners, the L.A. and New York-based venture firm co-founded by legendary investor Alan Patricof, has seemingly raised a $20 million fund expressly to fund virtual reality gaming startups. The SEC filing is here. (H/T: Dan Primack.)

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IPOs

According to Bloomberg, IPO shares for stock exchange software operator Bats Global Markets are oversubscribed by more than five times, just three days before the sale is due to price. More here.

The gene-editing biotech startup Intellia has filed for a $120 million IPO. STAT has more here.

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People

Arthur Ventures, a 7.5-year-old, Fargo, N.D.-based venture firm cofounded by Doug Burgum (he’s the chairman of Atlasssian, among other things), has hired a new partner: Ryan Kruizenga, who has worked previously as a senior associate at Summit Partners and as a VP at Mainsail Partners. Kruizenga, previously based in San Francisco, will work out of the firm’s Minneapolis, Mn., office.

Lady Gaga‘s startup, Backplane, backed by several high-profile investors, has officially crashed after struggling to raise more money.

Versant Ventures, a 17-year-old San Francisco-based healthcare venture capital firm, has promoted Jerel Davis to managing director and Carlo Rizzuto to partner. The firm also hired Luca Santarelli as venture partner. Davis, who joined in 2011, was previously as an associate at McKinsey & Co. Rizzuto joined Versant in 2012 from Novartis. Santarelli, who will be based in Basel, Switzerland, was most recently the senior vice president and global head of neuroscience, ophthalmology and rare diseases at Roche.

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Data

For life expectancy, money matters.

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Essential Reads

When it comes to Indian startups, tenacity beats high tech.

The IMF says the global economy is in big trouble. Here’s why.

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Detours

Kobe Bryant and Michael B. Jordan plan out Bryant’s biopic in a very funny Apple ad.

The emotional toll of ugly architecture.

Design features that sell your home faster, for more money.

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Retail Therapy

You need this coffee mug. (We need this coffee mug.)

A new, ridiculous product for your dog.

Hi, everyone! Hope you had a wonderful weekend. Apologies for today’s very late send — busy morning!

Btw, if you’re in San Francisco next week, you might want to check out an event called Bridging the Gender Gap. We’ve had some early discussions with the organizers (we’re moderating a panel) and would guess it’ll be worth your time. More information here.

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Top News in the A.M.

Everyone wants a piece of the digital mapping company HERE. Reuters has the latest.

The owner of Britain’s Daily Mail is reportedly in early discussions over a bid for ailing Yahoo. U.S. News & World Report has more here.

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Ground Delivery Robots: Passing Fancy or Next Wave?

“Every failed on demand startup will reappear as a successful robotics driven business in five to 10 years.” So tweeted Jeremy Conrad, founding partner of the San Francisco-based hardware fund Lemnos Labs, one recent afternoon.

Conrad apparently means what he tweets, having investing in Marble, a new, San Francisco-based ground-delivery robot that will focus on ground-based last-mile delivery for business, then consumer, applications. (Conrad wouldn’t discuss the still-stealth startup’s funding picture, but another source tells us it’s currently meeting with investors.)

He’s hardly alone in thinking that ground robots will be bringing us everything from canned goods to Christmas lights sooner than we think. For example, last week, Andreessen Horowitz announced it had led a $2 million investment in Dispatch, a company whose self-driving ground delivery robots look like minibars on wheels.

And Dispatch’s machines look an awful lot like the robots of Starship, an Estonia-based outfit created by Skype cofounders Ahti Heinla and Janus Friis, who took the wraps off their still-in-beta machines late last year. The robots, which also look like little refrigerators, are designed to deliver goods like groceries – about two bag’s worth – in 30 minutes of less.

In each case, the idea is to save money on deliveries by cutting out costly humans. Starship is also promising to give customers more control over the delivery process. It says it will enable residents to schedule deliveries only when the timing works, as well as track in real time the whereabouts of the robots, whose tech includes GPS, gyroscopes, and nine cameras. (As an added bonus, its robots will produce zero emissions, says Starship.)

Whether these new ground-based robot couriers represent the beginnings of a broader trend or a series of one-off bets remains a question mark. We’d bet on the former, though.

More here.

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New Funds

Venture capitalist Tim Draper has raised a new, $190 million early-stage fund under the brand Draper Associates. The core investment team consists of Draper, his son Billy, and Andy Tang. Before joining his father, Billy Draper was a designer at the online rental marketplace Apartment List. Tang was a longtime managing director atDFJ Dragon Fund and more recently CEO of Draper’s co-working space, Hero City.

London-based venture firm Octopus Ventures has topped up its evergreen early -stage startup investment fund with another £100 million, bringing the total backing the fund to more than £400 million. TechCrunch has more here.