Hi, everyone! Hope you’re having a good Thursday.

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Top News in the A.M.

China has stanched, at least for now, the flow of money out of the country, new data suggests.

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Luma, a Sleek WiFi Router, Raises $12.5 Million from Accel and Amazon

Finally, companies have begun to recognize a long overlooked opportunity to develop a next-generation router that looks sleek and is far more user-friendly than the networking hardware of yesteryear.

Some contenders are the established companies themselves, including Asus, D-Link and Netgear, all of which have now have bells and whistles like parental controls, the ability to prioritize traffic based on network and device, and apps that help users repair their home network via smartphone or tablet.

Newer entrants, including Google’s new OnHub router and two-year-old Eero, feature both more elegant designs and far greater ease of use, though OnHub gets mixed performance reviews. Meanwhile, Eero strongly suggests that users buy more than one, which can quickly become expensive. (The company says that each router covers roughly 1,000 square feet. A three-pack of Eero units costs $499.)

Luma, a two-year-old, Atlanta-based entrant, may give them all a run for their money.

For one thing, like the Eero, Luma’s glossy WiFi routers look like something Apple might have come up with. Luma, which like Eero, works best when sprinkled around the home, also offers more coverage and is more affordable by design. Each unit covers roughly 1,500 square feet, and a three-pack costs $299, compared with an individual unit, which costs $149. (Originally, Luma planned to feature pricing similar to Eero: $199 per unit and $499 for a three-pack.)

Perhaps most important, especially to parents: Luma features the kind of network controls you might find at a large company.

More here.

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New Fundings

Airmap, a 15-month-old, Santa Monica, Ca.-based startup that provides airspace information and services for drones, has raised $15 million in Series A funding led by General Catalyst Partners, with participation from Lux Capital (which led the company’s $2.6 million seed round last July), Social Capital, TenOneTen Ventures, Bullpen Capital, and the Pritzker Group. Tnooz has more here.

CloudOne, a 5.5-year-old, Fishers, Ind.-based company whose enterprise apps convert its customers’ IBM software into customized, on-demand SaaS services, has raised $9 million in Series E funding led by Plymouth Ventures, with participation from Hercules Technology Growth Capital and return backersBootstrap Venture Fund, Chatham Ventures, Elevate Ventures and Ryan Diem. More here.

Clutter, a three-year-old, L.A.-based on-demand storage startup, has raised $20 million in Series B funding led by Sequoia Capital, which had also led the company’s $9 million Series A round back in October. TechCrunch has more here.

CrownPeak, a 15-year-old, L.A.-based SaaS company focused around web content management systems, has raised $50 million in new funding from K1. The investment follows a merger with London-based rival ActiveStandards. L.A. Biz has more here.

Electric Imp, a five-year-old, Los Altos, Ca.-based IoT platform that says it securely connects devices to advanced cloud computing resources, has raised $21 million in Series C funding led by London-based Rampart Capital. Other participants include company insiders and earlier investor Redpoint Ventures. The company has now raised $43 million altogether. More here.

Intercom, a five-year-old, San Francisco-based startup whose products cover everything from website chat to marketing to customer support, has raised $50 million in fresh funding led by Index Ventures, with participation from Iconiq Capital, Bessemer Venture Partners and Social Capital. Intercom has now raised a total of $116 million. TechCrunch has more here.

Karamba Security, a nearly year-old, Tel Aviv, Israel-based startup that makes cybersecurity software for the automotive industry, has raised $2.5 million in seed funding led by YL Ventures, with participation from GlenRock. TechCrunch has more here.

Kyulux, a year-old, Fukuoka, Japan-based advanced-materials startup focused on OLED display and lighting technology known as thermally activated delayed fluorescence, has raised $13.5 million in Series A funding led by Samsung Ventures, with participation from OLED panel manufacturers, including Samsung Display, LG Display, Japan Display and Joled. Unnamed Japanese venture funds and a Japan-government-affiliated venture fund also joined the round. More here.

LinkDoc Technology, a Beijing-based oncology-focused big data firm, has raised an undisclosed amount of Series B funding led by the Hong Kong-based private equity firm China Broadband Capital. Other participants in the round include Ally Bridge Group, Cenova Ventures, and New Enterprise Associates. DealStreetAsia has more here.

LiveSafe, a four-year-old Arlington, Va.-based mobile safety and security communications platform, has raised $5.25 million in Series B funding from an affiliate of Fred Smith, chairman and CEO of FedEx, who is also joining LiveSafe’s board. FinSMEs has more here.

Lumos Pharma, a five-year-old, Austin, Tex.-based biotechnology company focused on developing therapeutics for orphan diseases, has raised $34 million in Series B funding led by Deerfield Management Company, with participation from Clarus Ventures, Roche Venture Fund, and earlier investors New Enterprise Associates, Sante Ventures and the Belgian pharmaceutical company UCB. Austin Business Journal has more here.

Luxe, a nearly three-year-old, San Francisco-based on-demand valet parking and car services company, has officially raised $50 million in Series B funding led by Hertz Global Holdings, with participation from earlier backers Redpoint Ventures and Venrock. TechCrunch and The Information had reported late last month that Luxe was raising roughly $50 million in funding led by Hertz.

Mizzen + Main, a four-year-old, Dallas, Tex.-based company that makes moisture-wicking men’s apparel, has raised $3 million in Series B funding from a group of individual investors, including Thomas Morstead, a Super Bowl winning athlete with the New Orleans Saints; Ben Nash, the co-founder and CEO of PCS Wireless; and others. TechCrunch has more here.

RiskRecon, a year-old, Boston-based startup that helps companies make objective security assessments of third-party cloud vendors, has raised $3 million in seed funding led by General Catalyst Partners, with participation from several unnamed private investors. TechCrunch has more here.

Sweetch Health, a three-year-old, Jerusalemn-based health tech company whose platform helps identify individuals who are at risk of developing diabetes and coaching them on its prevention, has raised $3.5 million in Series A funding co-led by the health tech company Philips and OurCrowd, the equity crowdfunding platform. Earlier investors Pontifax and Lionbird also joined the round. More here.

Twiggle, a three-year-old, Tel Aviv, Israel-based company that collects data from the across the product web, organizes it, and make it actionable, has raised $12.5 million in Series A funding led by the Internet conglomerate Naspers, with participation from Yahoo Japan, State of Mind Ventures (a returning investor), and Sir Ronald Cohen. The company has raised $14.7 million to date. TechCrunch has more here.

Veriflow, a three-year-old, Oakland, Ca.-based network breach and outage prevention startup, has raised $2.9 million in private and public funding from New Enterprise Associates, the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Defense. ChicagoInno has more here.

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New Funds

David Prager, a founder of the early digital entertainment network Revision3, has cofounded a new, Oakland, Ca.-based micro venture fund called Monstro Ventures with just less than $5 million in capital commitments. Investors include Revision3 cofounder Kevin Rose, Nuzzel CEO Jonathan Abrams, and Lowercase Capital’s Chris Sacca, among others. TechCrunch has more here.

Elevation Partners, the private equity firm co-founded by U2 frontman Bono, is still winding down. But in the meantime, three members are starting a new group and they’ve raised $100 million for the effort, called NextEquity. Bloomberg has the story here.

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Exits

Amazon has quietly acquired Orbeus, a Sunnyvale, Ca.-based company that was founded in 2012 and produced scalable image and face recognition tools that software developers could add to their own products. No financial terms were disclosed. According to CrunchBase, Orbeus had raised roughly $1.5 million including from investors. According Bloomberg, the deal closed last fall.

Smartling, a seven-year-old, New York-based translation tech company, has acquired Jargon, a two-year-old, San Francisco-based company that makes tools for mobile developers who want to localize heir apps for different international markets. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Jargon had raised a nominal amount of seed funding, shows CrunchBase; Smartling has raised $63 million, inluding from Tenaya Capital and Iconiq Capital. TechCrunch hasmore here.

Twist Bioscience, a San Francisco-based startup focused on synthetic DNA, has acquired Genome Compiler, an Israel-based startup that makes software for genetic engineers and molecular and synthetic biologists. No financial terms were disclosed. More here.

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People

General Catalyst Partners has promoted four people on its team. The announcements come just weeks after the 16-year-old venture firm, which has offices in Cambridge, Ma.; New York;  and Palo Alto, Ca., closed on $845 million in new capital commitments from its investors. Deepak Jeevankumar, who joined the firm almost six years ago was made a partner in the firm’s newest funds. Spencer Lazar, who joined the firm three years ago, was made a partner. And Gabe Ling, who has been both a principal and a venture partner at General Catalyst in recent years, is now a partner. General Catalyst has also promoted longtime principal-turned-venture partner Niko Bonatsos to managing director. We talked with Bonatsos yesterday about the news, andwhere he’s shopping now.

Ryan Negri has joined IronYard Ventures, a four-year-old, Greenville, S.C.-based accelerator, as managing director. Negri will be focused on the outfit’s Las Vegas-based programs. More here.

Ah, Wednesday, we meet at last.

No column today (we ran out of time) but more soon.

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Top News in the A.M.

Pfizer and Allergan just called off their merger. Dealbook has more here.

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New Fundings

Anchore, a three-month-old, Santa Barbara, Ca.-based company at work on a solution for inspecting, tracking and securing software containers, has raised $2.5 million in seed funding from Menlo Ventures and e-ventures. Fortune has more here.

Bright Health, a new, Minneapolis, Mn.-based tech-enabled consumer health insurance company founded by former UnitedHealth CEO Bob Sheehy, has raised $80 million in Series A funding co-led by Bessemer Venture Partners and New Enterprise Associates, with Flare Capital Partners participating among others. Fortune has more here.

CrossChx, a four-year-old, Columbus, Oh.-based company whose primary product is a healthcare identity management system for patients, has raised $15 million in Series C funding from Khosla Ventures, Drive Capital, Silicon Valley Bank, NCT Ventures and Moonshots Capital. TechCrunch has more here.

Dispatch, an 11-month-old, San Francisco-based company that makes autonomous vehicles for home-delivery purposes, has raised $2 million in seed financing led by Andreessen Horowitz, with participation from Precursor Ventures and others. TechCrunch has more here.

Finanzcheck, a 3.5-year-old, Hamburg, Germany-based consumer loans marketplace, has raised €33 million ($37.6 million) in Series C funding led by HarbourVest, with participation by Acton Capital Partners and earlier backer Highland Europe. TechCrunch has much more here.

Haptik, a four-year-old, Mumbai, India and San Francisco-based personal assistant app that employs both people and artificial intellignece, has raised $11.2 million in Series B funding from the India-based media giant Times Internet. The company has now raised $35 million altogether. TechCrunch has more here.

Joyowo.com, a Hangzhou, China-based online human resources startup, has raised $15 million in Series B funding led by Sequoia Capital China, with participation from Tsing Ventures, Meridian Capital China and others. Techstory.in has more here.

Lola Travel, a 10-month-old, Boston-based travel app that matches customers with actual humans who dispense advice (it was co-founded by Paul English, who’d previously cofounded the travel-search company Kayak), has raised $19.7 million in Series A funding. Backers including Accel Partners and General Catalyst Partners. More here.

Meadow, a 1.5-year-old, San Francisco-based company that makes specialized cannabis sales software, just closed on $2.1 million in seed funding from investors David Lee, Justin Kan, Steve Huffman, Hiten Shah, Slow Ventures, SOMA Capital, and Poseidon Asset Management. More here.

Projector, a year-old, San Francisco-based still-in-private beta adaptive messaging and push notifications startup, has raised $4.5 million in seed funding led by Baseline Ventures. Other participants include Freestyle Capital, SV Angel, IDG Ventures, and True Ventures. Numerous angels also joined the round, including Owen Van Natta, Dick Costolo, and Damien Weiss. More here.

Vinomofo, a five-year-old, Australia-based site that sells wine, has raised AUD $25 million ($19 million) in funding from regional venture firm Blue Sky Capital. More here.

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New Funds

Private equity investor HarbourVest Partners has closed a new Canadian venture capital fund-of-funds with C$375 million ($285 million) in capital commitments. The money will be used to invest in venture funds that primarily back Canadian companies. Reuters has more here.

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People

Cargomatic, an L.A.-based based logistics startup that’s been described as the “Uber for truckers” and has raised more than $10 million in funding, has laid off half its workforce — around 60 employees — over the past couple of months, reports Business Insider.

Beyond the Rack, a seven-year-old, Montreal, Canada-based flash-sale fashion site, has filed for protection from creditors. The company had raised $90 million in venture capital and financing, including from Silicon Valley Bank, iNovia Capital, Panorama Capital and Highland Capital Partners. VentureWire hasmore here (subscription required).

“The advantage to being second-to-market is that you can look at the guy who was there before you and learn from their past mistakes,” Juno CEO Talmon Marco tells Vanity Fair in a new profile about Marco and budding ride-sharing business.

Nutanix CEO Dheeraj Pandey is sweetening the equity pot for employees as the company waits to go public. Though Pandey remains the company’s biggest individual shareholder, he voluntarily returned $17.5 million worth of restricted stock to the equity pool last month, as CNBC reports.

Executives at the online lender Prosper Marketplace sold shares last year after a hefty financing round, reports VentureWire, citing one source who says the amount taken off the table and the timing of the sale are unusual(subscription required).

Fenox Venture Capital is bringing on TiE Global Chairman and the founder of TiE Angels, Venktesh Shukla, as a general partner. TechCrunch has more here.

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People

Peter Thiel’s Breakout Labs is looking for a communications guru to build out its overall voice and brand. The job is in San Francisco.

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Essential Reads

It’s not just celebrities; Facebook is paying media companies to make live video, too.

SurveyMonkey is suddenly getting into App Annie’s bidness.

Verizon and AwesomenessTV are forming a mobile video service.

Mystery solved? Fidelity‘s head of global capital equity markets tells The Information that Fidelity’s valuation calculations are heavily based on public stock comparisons.

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Detours

People dressed like their surroundings.

Classic poems modified for climate change.

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Retail Therapy

Bike speedometer.

Limited edition socks, coming soon to Neiman Marcus.

Hi, everyone! How about that dazzling NCAA tournament ending last night!?

Looking forward to seeing some of you later at this hardware-focused seed and investing panel in SF.:)

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Top News in the A.M.

Twitter says it has won a deal to show Thursday night NFL games online, giving it a key piece of content to attract mainstream users and make its service a go-to place to react to and discuss live events. Bloomberg has more here. Meanwhile Recode has some of the numbers behind the deal. (They’re surprising.)

Three months after predicting Goldman Sachs would put the tumultuous end of 2015 behind it and stabilize profits, analysts are reversing course and cutting projections. Again. More here.

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Longtime Tesla Motors CIO jay Vijayan Has Formed a Stealth Startup

Jay Vijayan, who spent four years as the Chief Information Officer of Tesla Motors, and who served as its VP of IT and business applications for a year before that, left the company in January to form his own Bay Area startup.

Vijayan isn’t talking yet about that company. (StrictlyVC reached out to him last Monday and he hasn’t responded.)

But his departure comes at an interesting time, given the almost unprecedented excitement surrounding the Model 3 car that Tesla unveiled to the public last Thursday night.

As you may have already read, the company had booked more than 253,000 orders in the first 36 hours after CEO Elon Musk revealed several prototypes in a showy display reminiscent of Apple product releases.

That kind of demand is surely putting to the test a proprietary software system called Warp that Vijayan and his team of engineers at Tesla designed to support the company’s direct sales efforts in the U.S. (In 2014, the WSJ had taken a long look at the platform here.)

Vijayan also appears to be doing some angel investing, which may or may not be related to his new startup. Last Monday, numerous India-based outlets reported that FixNix, a Bangalore-based governance, risk management, and compliance platform, had raised $500,000 in seed funding led by Vijayan, along with other, unnamed, Silicon Valley-based angel investors.

More here.

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New Fundings

Africa Internet Group, a three-year-old, Lagos, Nigeria-based outfit that owns online retailer Jumia and earlier this month disclosed that it had raised $326 at a valuation of more than $1 billion, has raised yet more capital. Specifically, the mobile giant Orange has plugged around $85 million into the company. TechCrunch has more here.

Flywheel, a 3.5-year-old, Omaha, Ne.-based WordPress hosting and management service, has raised $4 million in Series A funding led by Kansas City’s Five Elms Capital. TechCrunch has more here.

Human Longevity, a  three-year-old, San Diego, Ca.-based genome outfit led by famed serial entrepreneur J. Craig Venter, has raised $220 million in Series B funding co-led by the cancer drug specialist Celgene and fellow California-based genome sequencing company Illumina. FierceBiotech has more here.

Jinn, a three-year-old, London-based logistics and delivery platform that promises same-hour deliveries, has raised $7.5 million in Series A funding led by Samaipata Ventures (a new firm started by the founders of La Nevera Roja, a take-out ordering service sold to Rocket Internet last year for $100 million). Other participants include Elderstreet, Bull Partners, and earlier angel investors. TechCrunch has more here.

Mintigo, a seven-year-old, San Mateo, Ca.-based predictive marketing analytics company, has raised $15 million in Series D funding led by earlier investor Sequoia Capital. More here.

Origami Energy, a three-year-old, Cambridge, England-based tech platform for the smart management of distributed energy assets, has raised £13.7 million ($19.4 million) in Series A funding from earlier investors Cambridge Innovation Capital and Octopus Ventures, along with two (unnamed) individuals and Fred.Olsen companies. Tech.eu has more here.

Persado, a three-year-old, New York-based company whose software can write what the company calls “cognitive content,” meaning it primes readers to engage, has raised $30 million in new funding led by Goldman Sachs. TechCrunch has more here.

Sawyer, a seven-month-old, Brooklyn, N.Y.-based class-pass platform for kids’ activities, has raised $1.5 million in seed funding from Notation Capital, Collaborative Fund, VC1, and other strategic angel investors. More here.

ShooWin, a five-month-old, New York-based platform that partners with leagues and sports teams to obtain tickets that can be reserved at low prices, has raised $1.25 million in seed funding led by BBG Ventures. TechCrunch has more here.

Virool, a four-year-old, San Francisco-based video ad startup, has raised $12 million in Series A funding from Menlo Ventures, Yahoo Japan, Flint Capital and 500 Startups. TechCrunch has more here.

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New Funds

New York-based Collaborative Fund has launched Collab+Consumer, a new venture fund focused on consumer products, in cooperation with the Collaborative-backed crowdfunding marketplace CircleUp Network. The firm isn’t disclosing the size of the fund. More here.

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Exits

AccorHotels, one of Europe’s largest hotel groups, has acquired Onefinestay, a seven-year-old London-based short-term vacation rental company, for 148 million euros, or $169 million. According to CrunchBase, Onefinestay had raised roughly $80 million from investors, including Index Ventures and Canaan Partners. The New York Times has more here.

Brocade Communications, a maker of networking gear, is buying Ruckus Wireless, a company with a fast-growing Wi-Fi product roster, for roughly $1.5 billion in cash and stock. Ruckus had gone public in 2012. Fortune has more here.

MetaMind, a 1.5-year-old, Palo Alto Ca.-based AI startup, has been acquired by Salesforce for undisclosed terms. More here.

Red Swan Ventures, a seed-stage venture firm born out of Bonobos founder Andy Dunn’s angel investing, has put new deal-making on hold. “Right now, we are kind of on pause,” Dunn tells Venture Capital Dispatch.

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People

Larry Begley, a founder of .406 Ventures, is leaving the firm to become the first CFO of its portfolio company CloudHealth Technologies.

Martina Lauchengco joined the Palo Alto, Ca.-based firm Costanoa Venture Capital last week as operating partner. Lauchengco has spent the last nine years working in management consulting with the outfit Silicon Valley Product Group.

Vanity Fair takes a look at what sunk Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer‘s media ambitions.

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Jobs

In case you missed this last week: longtime VC recruiter Jon Holman is doing a general partner/managing director search for a long-time player in the venture business who has raised a new fund. To apply, you have to be in the Bay Area already or have focused on Bay Area deals. Contact Holman here.

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Data

China’s economic slowdown hasn’t dulled investor enthusiasm for the country’s tech companies, shows some surprising new data. According to the Tech in Asia database, investors ploughed $14.5 billion into Chinese tech startups and firms of all sizes in the first three months of the year — more than double what they invested during the same period last year.

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Essential Reads

Rethinking ownership in an age of IoT devices.

Medium is becoming the publishing platform for the The Awl and a dozen other sites.

WeWork, the co-working real estate startup valued, controversially, at north of $5 billion, is launching WeLive, a residential rental building that offers flexible renting. The program will be tried first in New York and Arlington, Va. TechCrunch has more here.

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Detours

An incredible, fast-paced journey through Japan.

Slacklining.

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Retail Therapy

Sailing, 007 style.

Hi, everyone, hope you had a fun weekend.

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Top News in the A.M.

Holy data dump. The hidden wealth of some of the world’s most prominent leaders, politicians and celebrities was revealed yesterday by an unprecedented leak of millions of documents that highlight how some of them exploit secretive offshore tax regimes. The BBC has much more here.

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Peter Thiel’s Other Fund, Mithril Capital Management, Raises $600 Million

Peter Thiel is having a good month.

According to a new SEC filing, low-flying Mithril Capital Management, which Thiel co-founded with longtime colleague Ajay Royan in 2012, is out raising its second fund with a $600 million target. Sources say the fund is already oversubscribed, however, and that it may hit $1 billion before it holds a final close.

Emails and a call to the firm were not returned Friday afternoon.

The vehicle marks the second giant fund that involves Thiel in one week’s time. The Friday before last, Founders Fund, the early-stage venture firm he co-founded in 2005, closed its sixth fund with $1.3 billion.

There’s seemingly no end to LPs’ appetite for anything involving Thiel, though it’s also worth noting that aside from his involvement, the firms don’t feature much overlap.

StrictlyVC sat down with Royan in 2014 to discuss Mithril, which is named after a fictional metal from J. R. R. Tolkien’s fantasy writings. The way he explained its focus then was as a growth-stage fund, one focuses on established companies that are leveraging tech in some way but are not necessarily tech companies. (He compared it, in fact, to a young General Atlantic.)

Though Mithril has backed some tech companies, including the cloud service marketplace AppDirect; Classy, which provides online fund-raising services for nonprofits; and the data analysis giant Palantir (which is one of Founders Funds’ biggest bets to date), it has numerous bets that better underscore its mandate, including to fund companies too mature for many VCs yet that don’t fit the mold of a private equity investment, either.

More here.

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New Fundings

Comma.ai, a seven-month-old, San Francisco-based autonomous car kit startup, has raised $3.1 million led by Andreessen Horowitz. Recode has more here.

Entasis Therapeutics, a nearly year-old, Waltham, Ma.-based company focused on the discovery and development of anti-infective products, has raised $50 million in Series B funding led by Clarus, with participation from Frazier Healthcare Partners, Novo A/S, Eventide Funds, and founding investor AstraZeneca. (The company has spun out of AstraZeneca last summer.) More here.

Garena Interactive Holding, a seven-year-old, Singapore-based online and mobile entertainment and e-commerce company, has raised $170 million in fresh capital led by Malaysia’s state investment arm, Khazanah Nasional Bhd. The deal values the company at $3.75 billion, according to a WSJ source.

Hungama, a 16-year-old, Mumbai, India-based video and music streaming service, has raised $25 million in new funding led by the Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi, with participation from earlier investors Intel Capital, Bessemer Venture Partners and billionaire investor and trader Rakesh Jhunjhunwala. TechCrunch has more here.

Influenster, a six-year-old, New York-based product discovery and reviews platform, has raised $8 million in funding from Ebates, an online cashback shopping service that’s owned by Japan’s Rakuten. TechCrunch has more here.

Reserve, a nearly two-year-old, New York-based restaurant reservation booking and payment app, has raised an undisclosed amount of  funding from Diageo Technology Ventures, the venture arm of the consumer goods giant Diageo. More here.

Schoold, a year-old, San Francisco-based college planning startup whose app helps students with the college admissions process, including through side-by-side college comparisons and an admissions predictor, has raised $4.5 million in funding from FastForward; entrepreneur and investor Lorne Abony; and several other unnamed individual investors. More here.

Slack, the three-year-old, San Francisco-based cloud-based workplace collaboration software outfit, has raised $200 million in new funding at a $3.8 billion post-money valuation led by Thrive Capital, with participation from GGV Capital, Comcast Ventures, Sherpa Everest and return backers Accel Partners, Index Ventures, Spark Capital, and Social Capital. Business Insider has more here.

Strainz, a three-year-old, Las Vegas-based cannabis brand management company, has raised $8 million, including $6 million in Series A funding, from undisclosed investors. More here.

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New Funds

Entrepreneurship and Venture Capital (or EVC), a small, Cleveland, Oh.-based investment outfit, is launching an India-focused $50 million early-stage investment fund to fund enterprise software, internet and mobile-focused startups. The firm, led by serial entrepreneur and investor Anjli Jain, will primarily focus on startups operating in the education sector. The Economic Times has more here.

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IPOs

ATS Global Markets, a nearly 11-year-old, Lenexa, Ks.-based securities exchange operator, has set its IPO terms to 11.2 million shares being offered at between $17 and $19 per share. Mid-range, the company would be valued at $1.72 billion. Among its biggest shareholders is TA Associates, which owns a 17.1 percent stake. For what it’s worth, this is the company that IPO experts think could crack open the IPO market — assuming the offering is a success. Dealbook has more here.

SecureWorks, a 17-year-old, Atlanta, Ga.-based company that offers security as a service, could become the first tech IPO of 2016, reports the WSJ.

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Exits

After raising two funds, the team of medical investor Thomas McNerney & Partners has decided to wind down the firm, reports VentureWire.

Reserve, the nearly two-year-old, New York-based reservation startup, has acquired Dash, a payment technology company that had raised $7 million in funding from investors, including Caerus Ventures, Great Oaks Venture Capital and New York Angels. Terms of the deal weren’t disclosed, but Reserve used some new funds (see above, in New Fundings) to get the deal done. TechCrunch has more here.

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People

Priscilla Chan, pediatrician, educator, philanthropist, CEO, and wife of Facebook cofounder Mark Zuckerberg, talks with the Mercury News about why she and Zuckerberg recently launched the nonprofit institution The Primary School. It’s worth reading.

Sam Kass, President Obama’s former senior advisor for nutrition policy and former executive director of Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move campaign, has joined the Campbell Soup-backed venture capital fund Acre Venture Partners as a partner. Fortune has the story here.

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Jobs

Wedbush Securities is looking to hire an investment banking associate into its healthcare group. The job is in San Francisco.

—–

Essential Reads

DJI and Yuneec, the Apple and Samsung of drone world, are now entangled in a patent lawsuit. More here.

The FBI’s method for breaking into a locked iPhone 5c is unlikely to stay secret for long, say senior Apple engineers, adding that once exposed, Apple should be able to plug the encryption hole.

Tesla has an quality problem: sales of its new Model 3 electric sedan — which will average $42,000, says Tesla CEO Elon Musk — topped 253,000 in the first 36 hours after its unveiling. (Now to keep up with demand for the car, which is slated to enter production in late 2017.)

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Detours

MW M4 takes its promo spot to extremes.

Study says those who call out grammatical errors are, in fact, scientifically “jerks.”

This just makes us happy.

—–

Retail Therapy

A champagne gun (dreamed up, we’d guess, by someone who has spent too much time in St. Tropez).

Woot! It’s Friday and it’s April Fool’s Day. We are in luck, friends. Well, we’re in luck except for those of you who inadvertently used Google’s Mic drop button to send off important correspondence and have since been fired.

No column today. (No joke.)

—–

Top News in the A.M.

Fourteen pictures of Tesla’s Model 3, which is as sweet as you knew it would be. Pre-orders alone surged past the 150,000 mark, the company said last night at the car’s unveiling.

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New Fundings

1776, a three-year-old, Washington, D.C.-based accelerator program, has raised $7.2 million in fresh funding led by the financial services company Pepper Group. Other participants in the round include Revolution founder Steve Case, the private equity firm Kiddar Capital, and the angel network K Street Capital. More here.

Abl Schools, an eight-month-old, San Francisco-based startup that’s developing cloud-based scheduling and resource allocation software for schools, has raised $4.5 million in funding led by the education-focused fund Owl Ventures, with participation from First Round Capital and another education-focused investment firm, Reach Capital. Yammer cofounder and former CTO Adam Pisoni is the company’s founder. TechCrunch has more here.

Thursday!

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Top News in the A.M.

The FBI, newly expert at unlocking iPhones, has offered its assistance in unlocking an iPhone and iPod for a prosecutor in Arkansas, the Associated Press reports. More here.

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Is Tony Fadell in Nest’s Way?

Last week, we witnessed something fairly remarkable. A major Alphabet executive — Nest Labs CEO Tony Fadell — publicly shamed the cofounder and employees of Dropcam, the connected camera company that Nest had acquired in 2014 for $555 million.

In an article in The Information, Fadell said that he didn’t think Dropcam cofounder and CEO Greg Duffy had “earned” the right to report to him directly. Fadell also explained away an exodus of Dropcam staffers by suggesting they were subpar. “A lot of the employees were not as good as we hoped,” he told The Information. It was “a very small team and unfortunately it wasn’t a very experienced team.”

Fadell may have been reacting to comments by Duffy, who painted a highly unflattering portrait of Fadell in the same article. However, Fadell’s comments and his poor performance underscore what an ill fit Fadell is for Alphabet and why Alphabet needs new leadership at Nest.

It wasn’t supposed to be like this, of course. Nest was acquired by Google for $3.2 billion in January 2014, a feat that earned Fadell plenty of accolades. Worried about competition and in awe of Fadell, who’d created the iPod as an Apple SVP, Duffy concluded that selling was his smartest play when Nest came knocking that spring.

Despite what seemed like a handsome payday for everyone involved with Dropcam, the bet soon looked like a poor one.

As we’d reported here in November 2014, not only did Duffy’s beloved VP of marketing almost immediately leave Nest over an apparent culture clash, but numerous employees we interviewed, along with scathing write-ups by former employees on Glassdoor, pointed surprisingly to trouble.

“Everything revolves around the CEO,” wrote one Glassdoor reviewer at the time. “It’s a dangerous mix of cult of personality and Stockholm syndrome. Comments like ‘[Fadell is] the next Steve Jobs are not uncommon, while people proudly say things like ‘I’m used to Tony screaming at me.’”

It wasn’t just the different management styles of Fadell and Duffy, whose organization was one-eighth the size of Nest and who was well-liked by his employees. There was suddenly an inability to get anything meaningful done. One Nest employee described to me a “huge meeting culture, to the point where anyone at the director level or up spends their entire day in meetings, many of them duplicative meetings about the same subject, over and over to the point where a lot of people have complained.”

Things remain much the same 16 months later, suggests The Information, whose report says Nest’s culture of micromanagement has more recently led the firm to plaster its offices with the phrase “Step Up” to ostensibly encourage lower-level employees to take more initiative.

More here.

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New Fundings

Airware, a five-year-old, San Francisco-based company that used to sell drone operating systems but is now selling drone hardware, the software to control them, and cloud services for related data, has raised $30 million in Series C funding led by Next World Capital. Other participants include Andreessen Horowitz, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, and former CIsco CEO John Chambers, who’s joining the company’s board. TechCrunch has more here.

Garena, a seven-year-old, Singapore-based company that makes mobile gaming, e-commerce, and payment apps, has raised $170 million in Series D funding, at a reported $3.75 billion valuation. The funding was led by Khazanah Nasional Berhad, the Malaysian government’s strategic investment fund. Earlier investors in the company include General Atlantic, the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan, and Keytone Ventures. The company has now raised $500 million altogether. The WSJ has more here.

ICEBRG, a 1.5-year-old, Seattle-based stealth-mode enterprise network security startup, has raised $10 million in Series A funding led by Pelion Venture Partners, with participation from earlier backer Madrona Venture Group and other unnamed institutional and individual investors. More here(though not much more).

Juicero.com, a three-year-old, Bay Area-based food tech startup whose countertop device cold presses juice out of “packs” of already prepped fruit and veggies, has raised $70 million in Series B funding led by Artis Ventures. The company’s other Series A and B investors include Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, GV, Thrive Capital, Campbell Soup Company, Two Sigma Ventures, DBL Partners, First Beverage Group, Acre Venture Partners, and others. TechCrunch has the story here.

Mashable, an 11-year-old, New York-based digital media publisher, has raised $15 million in new funding led by Turner, with participation from Time Warner Investments, Updata Partners and several other, unnamed investors. Mashable’s valuation wasn’t disclosed. The WSJ has more here.

Scentbird, a two-year-old, New York-based startup that lets users try luxury perfumes for a month before they buy them, has raised $2.8 million in funding from Eclipse Ventures, Vaizra Investments, Ludlow Ventures, and SGH Capital. The company has now raised $3.8 million altogether. VentureBeat hasmore here.

Zavante Therapeutics,  a year-old, San Diego, Ca.-based biopharmaceutical company at work on an antibiotic to treat multidrug-resistant pathogens, has raised $45 million in Series A funding, consisting of $35 million from new investors and $10 million from the conversion of outstanding convertible notes. Frazier Healthcare Partners and Longitude Capital were co-leads on the deal; Aisling Capital participated. More here.

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Exits

IBM has acquired Bluewolf Group, a 16-year-old, San Francisco-based consulting company that focuses on helping businesses use Salesforce and other cloud software applications. Terms of the deal are disclosed, but Recode sources peg the purchase price at slightly more than $200 million. More here.

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People