Earlier this week, the Swartz Center for Entrepreneurship, a “hub for entrepreneurship” in the center of Carnegie Mellon University’s Pittsburgh campus, was officially launched in an event attended by upwards of 600 students, alums, and professors. They’ll have even more to celebrate when construction on the 300,000 square-foot business school where it’s being housed is completed in 2018.

At the center of all: Jim Swartz, who cofounded the storied venture firm Accel Partners in 1983 and who last year donated $31 million to CMU, where Swartz nabbed his master’s degree in 1966. The native Pennsylvanian says the gift is designed to help Pittsburgh cement its new role as a thriving tech center. (Google, Microsoft, and Uber are among a growing number of companies with local campuses.)

We talked with Swartz earlier today about the donation, as well as whether he remains active on the venture scene, and, if so, what he makes of the current state of things. Our chat has been edited for length.

TC: You founded Accel with Arthur Patterson in 1983. When did you step back from the firm, and do you still invest in startups?

JS: It’s been a continuous process and I’m still involved to a significant degree. Arthur and I ran the firm, then we brought in Jim Breyer, and the three of us ran it, then he ran it, then we created an operations committee that ran it, and now there’s a fourth generation. But we’re still involved, [mentoring the VCs there], helping wherever we can with new projects, or selling our ways into things. We’re not under the gun anymore, though, which is a good feeling.

TC: How active an angel investor are you?

JS: I’m not San Francisco bubble crazy, but I’m reasonably active, funding two or three companies a year, something like that. I still look for really good technology and great people.

TC: What do you make of the current environment?

JS: It won’t end well. I’ve been at this since 1970 and Arthur and I have seen five or six cycles at this point. This one is prolonged for sure. In truth, I thought [the last bubble] was over in 1997 and let it run and thank goodness because we made a ton of money. I think the difference here is Sarbanes-Oxley, which has made it incredibly different and unsavory to take companies public. The regulatory environment is too difficult. Before, if you had $50 million in revenue and could show a profit, you could go public; today that number is what, $200 million, $300 million?

New funds are filling the funding gap. Accel Growth is one of them, and lot of other firms have taken advantage of things, too. But it creates questions about whether [founders] ever want to go public and how investors will get out.

TC: Do you see an actual “crash”? It’s hard to see how that happens, with new capital continuing to come in.

More here.

Look, we will admit that we like the Cubs almost as much as the Indians, but we totally take back what we said yesterday. We can get used to winning! Team, let’s turn these stats around!

Happy Thursday, everyone.:)

—–

Top News in the A.M.

Yesterday, Tesla Motors posted a surprise profit of $21.9 million in the third quarter, defying Wall Street expectations.

Twitter also reported much-needed, solid third-quarter performance yesterday, and it confirmed that it would lay off roughly 9 percent of its staff.

Money, money, money: Snapchat will seek to raise as much as $4 billion in its planned IPO, which could value the company at between $25 billion and $35 billion.

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A Founder Seizes on Anti-Trump Sentiment to Market to Women

Earlier this year, Kristen Koh Goldstein merged two of her companies, three-year-old Scalus and six-year-old BackOps into a new company called HireAthena, a back-office-as a service startup that also sells fully automated workflow software.

From the start, the company has aggressively marketed itself to both customers and employees who are women, and it’s smartly playing up to them right now in a presidential election season where talk of sexism has often (yes) trumped talk of education, defense, and the war on drugs, among other national issues.

Explains Goldstein of HireAthena’s workflow software, on which the company appears to be focusing most of its time and attention: “Our software levels the amount of self-advocacy among a team of people who have to get something done together” by making it easier to follow exactly who committed to do what and when.

“Too often, you have skilled, hard-working women who are subject-matter experts having to deal with the Trumps of the world yelling over us,” says Goldstein, who worked earlier in her career as an analyst with both Goldman Sachs and Credit Suisse. “Our software enables the shy voice to work with the bold voice to get work done. Our engagement is high because women are saying, ‘I have to use this product; it keeps me from being blamed for stuff that isn’t my fault.’”

Whether or not that’s true is hard to know. Goldstein doesn’t disclose many metrics about her business other than to say that it is profitable and that investors have expressed interest in providing HireAthena with more capital. (Goldstein’s earlier companies had raised a collective $10 million from Sherpa Capital, GV, Data Collective, Naval Ravikant, and Max Levchin among others.)

Either way, faced with endless reports about Donald Trump’s history of dehumanizing women, and women outside of his sphere coming forward with their own stories of harassment, Goldstein is honing her recruiting and sales efforts around a specific pitch.

More here.

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New Fundings

Bonesupport, a 16-year-old, Lund, Sweden-based med-tech company that develops treatments for bone fractures, has raised $37 million in equity and debt funding led by Tellacq AB, with participation from HealthCap, Lundbeckfond Ventures, Industrifonden, AP3 and Carl Westin. The debt was provided by Kreos Capital. More here.

BrainCheck, a two-year-old, Houston, Tex.-based app that helps users understand if they or a loved one may have suffered a concussion simply by playing games on an iPad, has raised $3 million in seed funding from undisclosed sources. TechCrunch has more here.

Busfor, a four-year-old, Moscow-based platform for buying bus tickets across Russia (it plans to expand into Eastern Europe and Asia soon), has raised $20 million from two Russia-based firms: Baring Vostok and Elbrus Capital. Earlier backer InVenture Partners, also based in Russia, joined the round, too. The company has now raised $25 million altogether. TechCrunch has more here.

Cloudian, a three-year-old, San Mateo, Ca.-based hybrid cloud object storage platform, has raised $41 million in Series D funding led by Eight Roads Ventures and Epsilon Venture Partners. Other partipants in the round include Lenovo, City National Bank and DVP Investment, as well as earlier backers Intel Capital, INCJ and Goldman Sachs. The company has now raised $79 million altogether. The Register has more here.

DemystData, a six-year-old, New York, Hong Kong, and Singapore-based company that uses big data to create credit profiles, has raised $7 million in Series B funding led by MissionOG, with participation from Notion Capital and Singtel Innov8. More here.

eMindful, a 13-year-old, Vero Beach, Fla.-based provider of behavioral change programs to help reduce employee stress,  has raised $6.85 million in Series B funding led by LFE Capital, with participation from One Earth Capital, Bridge Builders Collaborative, New Ground Ventures and Fairground Capital. FinSMEs has more here.

ForeverCar, a five-year-old, Chicago-based online platform that allows consumers to purchase extended auto warranty contracts directly, has raised $10 million in funding ed by CUNA Mutual Group’s venture capital arm, with participation from KDWC Ventures and entrepreneur Jai Shekhawat. Crain’s Chicago Business has more here.

NanoPay, a three-year-old, Toronto-based payments company that integrates loyalty, electronic receipts and coupons for its merchant customers, has raised $10 million in Series A funding from Goldman Sachs, APAGM Services, Jarnac Capital Management, and Rohatton. Banking Technology has more here.

PointGrab, an eight-year-old, Hod Hasharon, Israel-based company whose machine learning technology is installed in optical IoT devices for home and building automation systems, has raised $7 million in funding from Philips Lighting, Mitsubishi UFJ Capital Co., and earlier backer ABB Technology Ventures. VentureBeat has more here.

Super League Gaming, a two-year-old, Santa Monica, Ca.-based interactive video game league, has raised $5 million in funding from Toba Capital and aXiomatic. Forbes has more here.

Wochit, a 4.5-year-old, New York City-based video creation platform company that helps publishers produce videos super fast, has raised $13 million in funding from ProSieben, Singapore Press Holdings’ SPH Media Fund, Carlo de Benedetti and earlier backers Redpoint Ventures, Marker LLC and Cedar Fund. Recode has more here.

Rokid, a two-year-old, China-based AI and robotics company that makes what it calls a family service robot (it connects to smart home devices to control lighting, window curtains, and other home electronics, but it also has face recognition technologies), has raised $65 million in Series B funding led by IDG Capital Partners, with participation from Walden International. China Money Network has more here.

—–

IPOs

Chinese logistics firm ZTO Express completed an IPO yesterday — the biggest of 2016 on the NYSE. It raised $1.4 billion in a deal that values it at more than $12 billion. Fortune has more here.

—–

Exits

Flexera Software, a Itasca, Ill.-based software asset management company, is spending an undisclosed amount to acquire Palamida, a nearly 12-year-old, San Francisco-based company that makes application security software to track undisclosed code and associated security vulnerabilities. Palamida had raised $18.5 million over the years from Walden Venture Capital, Mitsui Global Investment, and HWVP. More here.

Groupon is acquiring LivingSocial, its onetime rival, for an undisclosed but presumably not enormous sum. (It’s “not material,” says Groupon.)  More here.

It’s official: Qualcomm will acquire NXP Semiconductor in a chip-making marriage made in heaven. The deal values NXP at around $47 billion in cash. More here.

Samsung is spending an undisclosed amount to acquire Tachyon, a five-year-old, Reston Va.-based specialist in mobile device configuration and security for businesses. Samsung plans to integrate Tachyon into its enterprise offering to help businesses speed up the secure configuration of third-party apps on their Samsung devices. TechCrunch has more here.

Verizon is buying Vessel, a San Francisco-based subscription video service founded three years ago by Hulu’s former CEO, Jason Kilar, and its former CTO, Richard Tom. Actually, Verizon is buying the company’s tech, with plans to shut down the service. Vessel had raised more than $130 million from investors, including Benchmark, Greylock Partners, Bezos Expeditions and Institutional Venture Partners. More here.

—–

People

Billionaire Mohamed Alabbar, one of Dubai’s most prominent businessmen, plans a phone messaging service for the Middle East that aims to compete with services such as WhatsApp. It will be designed for an Arabic-speaking audience, he says.

Tesla recently noted that car owners won’t be able to use their future self-driving Teslas to drive for Uber or Lyft. On Tesla’s Q3 earning call yesterday, CEO Elon Musk addressed claims that he’s taking aim at Uber.

Amazon has signed up “Mad Men” creator Matthew Weiner to write an eight-episode dramatic series for it, and it’s paying him a whopping $70 million. Deadline has more here.

—–

Jobs

Google’s “smart city” spinoff Sidewalk Labs is looking for an entrepreneur-in-residence to focus on modular housing. The job can be in San Francisco or New York.

—–

Essential Reads

Well! Harvard Management Co. employees called its board inattentive and called out colleagues as “lazy, fat and stupid” in an internal review by McKinsey & Co. More here.

Samsung is in trouble. The Korean electronics giant’s operating profit plunged 30 percent year-on-year as the effects of the Galaxy Note 7 crisis begin to take a financial toll. More here.

Those Apple AirPods won’t be ready this month after all.

—–

Detours

Caltech is now the hardest university to get into in the U.S.

Scientists starting labs today say they have precious little time for actual research.

It’s true: more people are behaving poorly on flights.

—–

Retail Therapy

Microsoft is not messing around this time.

The Tribe won last night; the Cavs won, too. All this winning is starting to trigger an identity crisis for us!

We have to race out the door this morning for a field trip with four second-grade classrooms. If you see a flare go up near the San Francisco Public Library, it is us. We’ll get you back tomorrow if we miss anything.:)

—–

Top News in the A.M.

Apple reported its first annual revenue decline in 15 years and its shares are sliding as a result.

Microsoft is expected to launch a “Slack killer” next week.

—–

Lending Club Zooms Into Car Refinancings as Part of Turnaround Effort

Many Americans learned through Lending Club that they can refinance their credit card debt online; now, the lending marketplace is hoping they’ll start refinancing their automotive loans using its platform, too.

Indeed, though automotive lending is a massive market, car refinance is far smaller owing to a lack of awareness, suggests Lending Club CEO Scott Sanborn, with whom we spoke by phone earlier today. “People know they can refinance their home. But after their home, their car is their second-largest purchase, yet the car refinance market in the U.S. was about $40 billion last year.”

In comparison, the overall U.S. auto loan debt market had grown to $1.103 trillion by this past June, according to the research firm Experian Automotive.

For Lending Club, it’s a prime opportunity (no pun intended), though it carries plenty of risk, as well.

The publicly traded, San Francisco-based company has struggled throughout 2016, following the forced resignation of its founder and CEO Renaud Laplanche in May over alleged conflicts of interest and a mishandled sale of loans to Jefferies Group.

Laplanche’s departure shook investors’ faith that the platform was among the strongest in the world of online lending. It also prompted more investors to examine whether the platform had become overly reliant on Wall Street banks that were looking for yield but are notoriously fickle customers.

Scott Sanborn, who took over as CEO and who’d served as the company’s chief operating officer prior, has taken drastic steps to get the company back on course, but none has had a meaningful impact just yet.

For example, in addition to hiring a new CFO, a new COO, a new general counsel and a new chief capital officer, Bloomberg reports that a separate new initiative hasn’t gone as well as hoped: providing loans to small businesses via partnerships with Alibaba and Alphabet.

Asked about that earlier today, Sanborn says that what “gives us confidence when I think about auto is that it’s not just leveraging our technical skills and learnings but also takes advantage of our marketing acquisition skills,” which he suggests Lending Club has been less able to do with its small loans program, given that it’s depending on partners for their distribution.

Sanborn also argues that though Lending Club has plenty of competition, the large auto lenders aren’t among its worries.

More here.

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New Fundings

Brickwork, a three-year-old, New York City-based SaaS platform for retailers that creates a path between online browsing and in-store purchasing, has raised $5 million in Series A funding led by Safeguard Scientifics, with participation from Recruit Strategic Partners, Advancit Capital, Beanstalk Ventures, Cowboy Ventures and Forerunner Ventures. More here.

Culture Trip, a four-year-old, London-based content platform that serves us personalized content and recommendations based on where its users are based,  has raised $20 million in Series A funding led by PPF Group, the fund managed by entrepreneur Petr Kellner. TechCrunch has more here.

Daqri, a six-year-old, L.A.-based augmented reality company whose flagship product is a smart helmet for construction workers, is trying to raise up to $200 million in funding, says Bloomberg. The company had earlier raised $15 million from Tarsadia Investments, shows CrunchBase. More here.

Genomics Medicine Ireland, a year-old, Dublin, Ireland-based human genome startup, has raised $40 million in Series A funding from ARCH Venture Partners, Polaris Partners, the Ireland Strategic Investment Fund, and GV. Silicon Republic has more here.

Habit, a new, San Francisco-based personalized nutrition and wellness company that will launch next year, has raised $32 million in funding from Campbell’s Soup Company. (The company’s founder and CEO, Neil Grimmer, previously led Plum Organics, a baby food firm acquired by Campbell Soup in 2013.) The Courier-Post has more here.

Hyperloop One, a two-year-old, L.A.-based transporation company that eventually hopes to shuttle people and cargo in train-like pods at speeds of up to 700 miles per hour, is looking to raise $250 million in its next funding round early next year and is already seeking tens of millions in new financing, according to Forbes. The company raised a $50 million convertible note from DP World Group earlier this month; to date, it has raised $141.1 million. More here.

Imzy, a year-old, Salt Lake City, Ut.-based social platform aiming to create positive online communities, has raised $8 million in Series A funding led by Index Ventures. TechCrunch has more here.

Lendio, a 10.5-year-old, South Jordan, Utah-based loan company for small businesses, has raised $20 million in funding co-led by Comcast Ventures and Stereo Capital, with participation from Napier Park, Blumberg Capital, Tribeca Venture Partners, and North Hill Ventures. FinSMEs has more here.

Perkbox, a two-year-old, London-based startup whose engagement platform aims to help companies retain both employees and customers, has raised £2.5 million ($2.7 million) in backing from the publicly listed European venture firm Draper Esprit. TechCrunch has more here.

Selency, a two-year-old, Paris-based platform that features second-hand furniture and decor items, has raised €3 million ($3.3 million) in Series A funding led by Accel Partners, with participation from Kima Ventures. TechCrunch has more here.

TVision Insights, a nearly two-year-old, Boston-based machine-learning startup that tracks who is watching what on TV and how they are reacting to it (then provides that data broadcasters and advertisers), has raised $6.8 million from Accomplice, Golden Venture Partners, Jump Capital, and ITOCHU Technology Ventures. The company has now raised $9.8 million altogether. TechCrunch has more here.

Wavefront, a three-year-old, Palo Alto, Ca.-based cloud analytics company, has raised $52 million in Series B funding led by Tenaya Capital, with participation from Sequoia Capital and Sutter Hill Ventures. The WSJ is characterizing the deal as a down round. More here.

Winnie, a year-old, San Francisco-based online director of family friendly places, has raised $2.5 million in funding from Homebrew, BBG Ventures, Ludlow Ventures, Flight Ventures, Deep Fork Capital, Kleiner Perkins, and #Angels. TechCrunch has more here.

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New Funds

Javelin Venture Partners, a San Francisco-based, early-stage venture firm founded in 2008, has closed its fourth fund with $125 million, which is the same size as its third fund, closed exactly three years ago.The firm has also promoted principal-turned-partner Alex Gurevich to managing director. We have more here over at TechCrunch.

SJF Ventures, a Durham, N.C.-based venture capital firm, has raised roughly $74 million for a fourth fund that’s targeting $125 million, according to two different SEC filings.

Underscore.VC, a Boston-based early-stage firm cofounded by former North Bridge VC Michael Skok, has closed its first fund at $85 million. BostInno has much more about its new model here.

—–

People

At Mail.ru, the Russian Internet giant that owns the country’s most popular email service; Russia’s Facebook equivalent Vkontakte; messaging service ICQ and a number of other properties, cofounder Dmitry Grishin is stepping down as CEO. Boris Dobrodeev, the current CEO of Vkontakte, will replace him. More here.

The head of Google’s fiber business, Craig Barratt, is leaving (and layoffs are coming). Recode has more here.

—–

Essential Reads

Somewhat amazingly, Amazon is about to become the biggest clothing retailer in the U.S.

—–

Detours

The psychological case for dressing way up (or down) for work.

—–

Retail Therapy

Inside elevator door mural.

Hi, all, hope you’re having a good Tuesday.:)

—–

Top News in the A.M.

Twitter is planning hundreds more job cuts as soon as this week, says Bloomberg.

—–

IPO Pro Lise Buyer on What You Need to Go Public in the Next Six Months

Last week, I sat down with IPO pro Lise Buyer to talk about the Bay Area ecosystem for a Sirius XM radio show that’s broadcast from Wharton’s San Francisco campus.

Buyer was the host and I was the guest, but because the IPO market is top of mind for so many in the startup industry right now, I asked if I could turn the table for a few minutes on Buyer, who is best known for helping to architect Google’s 2004 IPO and for the IPO advisory firm she founded in 2007, Class V Group.  She shared whether she thinks the IPO market will pick up substantially next year, and what it takes right now to become a publicly traded company.

We’ve seen eight IPOs in the last six weeks.

After the first six months of the year, we’re on track to have a pretty average year in terms of IPOs; there’s momentum.

But we’re heading into the final months of the year — an election year.

I think IPOs are going to grind to a halt temporarily in November, even leading up to November, pretty much starting [this] week, because everyone is afraid of the election, and markets don’t like uncertainty, and whatever you think of the candidates, one of them is a little less predictable than the other. And should Donald Trump be elected president, I’d expect the markets to express some . . . I’ll be kind and say, wicked bad indigestion. And I don’t think anyone wants to take their company public in the middle of that.

Do you think the companies that have gone out in recent months are solid? Do you expect their share prices to hold?

Are these solid companies? Yes. Do I expect [their share prices] to say where they’re trading? We’ll see. A number of them did very small deals, and they did very small deals because no one was quite sure of how the market would be. So if you have a product to sell and you’re not sure of what kind of price you could get, [you start with little inventory].

Twilio did a $150 million IPO in June, and they recently announced a $450 million follow-on offering. When they announced that, their share price [fell]; then they announced that they’d had a terrific quarter, and the stock is recovering. It’s a supply-and-demand issue.

When did we start to see these smaller floats, and is it something you recommend to clients? Is it a good trend, a bad trend?

We’ve seen this periodically for years. It used to be that you sold 10 to 20 percent of your shares in an IPO but LinkedIn only sold 8 percent of its shares. Valuations are low, so companies are smart to take advantage of the [demand created from] limited supply. Also, why sell for a low price and take the incremental dilution? The best path is to prove the company can function effectively as a public company, and once investors are convinced that the risk isn’t that great and that the company understands the ramifications [of being publicly traded], do a higher-value secondary.

Which you can do before a 180-day lock-up, correct?

Investment banks have the ability to release the lock-up early. So you have to get your bank’s approval to do it, which basically means that you agree to use the same banks [that underwrote your IPO]. So we’ve seen them not infrequently after four months in those cases where the company has met expectations and its stock has performed well. If a company’s shares aren’t trading above its IPO price, you won’t see an early lock-up.

What are bankers telling startups right now? Do they need to be profitable?

More here.

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New Funds

AEVI, a five-year-old, Reykjavík, Iceland-based payment transactions startup and marketplace for B2B apps and services, has raised €10 million ($10.9 million) in new funding from Adveq. More here.

Baffle, a two-year-old, Santa Clara, Ca.-based end-to-end encryption platform, has raised $3 million in funding led by True Ventures. More here.

Clarifai, a three-year-old, New York-based startup that lets developers tag metadata to photos in such a way that the company algorithmically learns what kinds of objects are in photos, has raised $30 million in new funding led by Menlo Ventures, with participation from earlier backers Union Square Ventures, Lux Capital, Qualcomm Ventures, and Osage University Partners. TechCrunch has more here.

Dataiku, a three-year-old, Paris-based startup that helps data scientists and data analysts manage and extract insights from huge data sets, has raised $14 million in Series funding led by FirstMark Capital, with participation from previous investors. TechCrunch has more here.

Hixme, a two-year-old, Agoura Hills, Ca.-based startup that uses information about employees and their family members to present them with health insurance plan options and customized benefit options, has raised $14.1 million in Series B funding led by Propel Venture Partners. Other participants in the round include Transamerica Ventures, Rosemark Capital, and earlier backer Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers. The company has now raised $26.6 million altogether. More here.

InContext Solutions, a seven-year-old, Chicago-based developer of 3D virtual technology that helps retailers visualize what their store shelves will look like in a simulated store, has raised $15.2 million in  funding co-led by Intel Capital and return backer Beringea. VentureBeat has more here.

Industry, a two-year-old, San Diego, Ca.-based job site for the hospitality sector, has raised $2.3 million in seed funding from a “stealth VC fund on Sand Hill Road,” with participation from our previous individual investors. Vator has more here.

K4Connect, a three-year-old, Raleigh, N.C.-based startup whose software platform integrates disparate smart devices into a single system and is specifically tailored for seniors and individuals living with disabilities, has raised $8 million in Series A funding. Intel Capital led the round and was joined by Traverse Venture Partners and a unit of Reinsurance Group of America. More here.

KredX, a two-year-old, Bangalore, India-based company that connects small and mid-size companies with investors who are willing to buy their unpaid receivables, has raised roughly $6 million in Series A funding led by Sequoia Capital India, with participation from earlier backer Prime Venture Partners. The Economic Times has more here.

Lively, a year-old, New York-based direct-to-consumer lingerie startup, has raised $4 million in seed funding led by GGV Capital, with participation from Gelmart International, an intimate apparel manufacturer, and individual investors. TechCrunch has more here.

OpenDataSoft, a five-year-old, Paris-based SaaS platform that makes it easier for other companies and developers to take advantage of a customer’s data for reuse in other services, has raised $5.4 million in Series A funding from Aster Capital and Salesforce Ventures, with participation from Ader Finance and earlier backer Aurinvest. TechCrunch has more here.

Paxata, a 4.5-year-old, Redwood City, Ca.-based platform built to help analysts turn raw data into ready data for analytics, has raised $33.5 million in new funding led by Intel Capital, with participation from Microsoft Ventures, Cisco Systems, Deutsche Telekom Capital Partners, AirTree Partners and earlier investors Accel Partners, In-Q-Tel and Singapore’s EDBI. Silicon Valley Business Journal has more here.

Uplevel Security, a two-year-old, New York-based incident response and threat Intelligence platform founded by Roselle Safran, a former branch chief for cybersecurity operations at the White House, has raised $2.5 million in seed funding from First Round Capital and Aspect Ventures, along with a host of individual angel investors. TechCrunch has more here.

Verse, a year-old San Francisco-based payments company that’s aiming to become the Venmo of Europe (it also has an office in Barcelona), has raised $8.3 million in Series A funding led by Greycroft Partners. Other participants include Spark Capital and eVentures. TechCrunch has more here.

—-

IPOs

As its IPO quiet period came to a close, Nutanix was welcomed with several positive analyst reports initiating coverage with buy ratings or equivalents, though it hasn’t helped the stock, which is trending downward after big jumps the first two days after its Sept. 30 IPO. Investors Business Daily has more here.

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Exits

Google has acquired Eyefluence, a three-year-old, Milpitas, Ca.-based eye-tracking technology company, for undisclosed terms. CrunchBase shows Eyefluence had raised $21.6 million in funding from investors, including Motorola Solutions Venture Capital, Jazz Venture Partners, Intel Capital, NHN Investment and Dolby Family Ventures.  TechCrunch has more here.

—-

People

Marc Andreessen at Startup School (video).

Redpoint Ventures has brought aboard two associates: Medha Agarwal has joined the firm’s early-stage consumer team, after stints as a student investor with Rough Draft Ventures and as a summer associate at Javelin Venture Partners. Jamin Ball will be focusing on early growth opportunities. Ball was formerly an investment banking analyst at Morgan Stanley.

Krishna Yeshwant, the part-time physician who leads GV’s life sciences and health investment team, talks with MedCity News about the kind of consumer wearable company that would win its support.

—–

Essential Reads

This self-driving truck’s first mission: a beer run.

Google is getting into the whiteboard business.

After years of awarding Tesla high marks, Consumer Reports has now decided that it’s among the least reliable car companies in America.

—–

Detours

Chad McQueen talks about his famous dad.

Rules for living with roommates.

—–

Essential Reads

A $17 million townhouse in West Village.

Last week, I sat down with IPO pro Lise Buyer to talk about the Bay Area ecosystem for a Sirius XM radio show that’s broadcast from Wharton’s San Francisco campus.

Buyer was the host and I was the guest, but because the IPO market is top of mind for so many in the startup industry right now, I asked if I could turn the table for a few minutes on Buyer, who is best known for helping to architect Google’s 2004 IPO and for the IPO advisory firm she founded in 2007, Class V Group.  She shared whether she thinks the IPO market will pick up substantially next year, and what it takes right now to become a publicly traded company.

TC: We’ve seen eight IPOs in the last six weeks.

LB: After the first six months of the year, we’re on track to have a pretty average year in terms of IPOs; there’s momentum.

TC: But we’re heading into the final months of the year — an election year.

LB: I think IPOs are going to grind to a halt temporarily in November, even leading up to November, pretty much starting [this] week, because everyone is afraid of the election, and markets don’t like uncertainty, and whatever you think of the candidates, one of them is a little less predictable than the other. And should Donald Trump be elected president, I’d expect the markets to express some . . . I’ll be kind and say, wicked bad indigestion. And I don’t think anyone wants to take their company public in the middle of that.

TC: Do you think the companies that have gone out in recent months are solid? Do you expect their share prices to hold?

LB: Are these solid companies? Yes. Do I expect [their share prices] to say where they’re trading? We’ll see. A number of them did very small deals, and they did very small deals because no one was quite sure of how the market would be. So if you have a product to sell and you’re not sure of what kind of price you could get, [you start with little inventory].

Twilio did a $150 million IPO in June, and they recently announced a $450 million follow-on offering. When they announced that, their share price [fell]; then they announced that they’d had a terrific quarter, and the stock is recovering. It’s a supply-and-demand issue.

TC: When did we start to see these smaller floats, and is it something you recommend to clients? Is it a good trend, a bad trend?

LB: We’ve seen this periodically for years. It used to be that you sold 10 to 20 percent of your shares in an IPO but LinkedIn only sold 8 percent of its shares. Valuations are low, so companies are smart to take advantage of the [demand created from] limited supply. Also, why sell for a low price and take the incremental dilution? The best path is to prove the company can function effectively as a public company, and once investors are convinced that the risk isn’t that great and that the company understands the ramifications [of being publicly traded], do a higher-value secondary.

TC: Which you can do before a 180-day lock-up, correct?

LB: Investment banks have the ability to release the lock-up early. So you have to get your bank’s approval to do it, which basically means that you agree to use the same banks [that underwrote your IPO]. So we’ve seen them not infrequently after four months in those cases where the company has met expectations and its stock has performed well. If a company’s shares aren’t trading above its IPO price, you won’t see an early lock-up.

TC: What are bankers telling startups right now? Do they need to be profitable?

More here.

Hi, everyone, welcome back and happy Monday!

(Busy morning; no column today.)

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Top News in the A.M.

After days of speculation, the deal became official Friday: Pending regulatory approval, AT&T is acquiring Time Warner for $85 billion in a mix of cash and shares, paving the way for another behemoth in the converged media horizon. AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson would head the new company, and Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes would stay for an interim period following the close of the deal to help with the transition. Already, though, there’s plenty of opposition to the deal. More here and here and here.

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New Fundings

Blackthorn Therapeutics, a three-year-old, South San Francisco-based clinical stage biopharmaceutical company that’s developing targeted treatments for neurobehavioral disorders, has raised $40 million in Series A funding from Arch Venture Partners, Johnson & Johnson Innovation and a cast of other venture investors. Forbes has more here.

Coins.ph, a two-year-old, Philippines-based online payment startup that delivers financial services over mobile to people in Southeast Asia who aren’t served by traditional banks, has raised $5 million in Series A funding led by Accion Frontier Inclusion Fund. A long list of investors also participated in the round, including Wavemaker Labs, Global Brain, BeeNext, Rebright Partners, Kickstart Ventures, Ideaspace Foundation, Innovation Endeavors, Pantera Capital, and Digital Currency Group. Tech in Asia has more here.

Eaze, a 2.5-year-old, San Francisco-based startup that offers medical marijuana delivery on demand, has raised $13 million in Series B funding from Fresh VC, DCM and Tusk Ventures. TechCrunch has more here.

Honeycomb, a two-year-old, London-based TV and video ad management platform, has raised £3 million ($3.7 million) in Series A funding led by Beringea, with participation from numerous individuals from the worlds of television and advertising. TechCrunch has more here.

New Dada, a China-based online grocery and delivery company that’s owned in part by JD.com, has raised $50 million in fresh funding from Walmart. Reuters has more here.

Nozomi Networks, a three-year-old, Menlo Park, Ca.-based maker of cybersecurity and operational visibility for industrial control systems, has raised $7.5 million in Series A funding co-led by GGV Capital and Lux Capital, with participation from existing investor Planven Investments SA. More here.

TurboAppeal, a two-year-old, Chicago-based startup whose software helps property owners appeal their taxes, has raised $4 million in Series A funding led by Guaranteed Rate, a Chicago-based mortgage company. The Chicago Tribune has more here.

Verdigris, a five-year-old, Mountain View, Ca.-based maker of cloud analytics software for enterprise facilities managers and large commercial buildings — it aims to allow them to increase facility uptime and save on energy costs — has raised $6.7 million led by Jabil, with participation from Verizon Ventures, Stanford StartX Fund, and existing angel investors. VentureBeat has more here.

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New Funds

Blume Ventures, a six-year-old, Mumbai, India-based seed-stage venture fund, has closed its second fund with $60 million; the firm’s debut fund had closed with roughly $20 million in 2011. More here.

Initialized, the seed-stage venture firm led by former Y Combinator partner Garry Tan, has officially closed on $102 million for its new fund. (We’d mentioned this one to you in June, when the firm first filed with the SEC.) More here.

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IPOs

The IPO quiet period for Coupa Software expires one week from today. Seeking Alpha has more on what that means here.

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Exits

The New York Times is buying The Wirecutter, a bootstrapped, five-year-old online consumer guide. The Times will pay more than $30 million, including retention bonuses and other payouts, according to Recode’s sources. More here.

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People

Gawker founder Nick Denton is selling his Soho loft, one of his only assets, as part of a privacy judgment against him. In August, Denton tried renting out the flat, now on the market for $4.25 million; a bankruptcy judge wouldn’t allow it.

“Mr. Robot” creator Sam Esmail talks with reporter Kara Swisher about hackers, VR, and much more in a new podcast.

Politico looks at Facebook cofounder Dustin Moskovitz’s unexpected and abrupt rise to the top rung of Democratic party mega donors.

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Data

You might think otherwise, but government data shows a decades-long slowdown in entrepreneurship. More on what it means here.

Smartwatch sales are tanking, according to a new industry report by IDC. More here.

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Essential Reads

Sweden just became one of the first countries to ban camera drones.

Here are all the companies China is buying up around the globe.

The tech bubble didn’t burst this year, but VC Bill Gurley thinks we’re in a “slow correction. You might see a unicorn go down once a quarter,” instead of a crash taking them all down at once, he tells Bloomberg.

Netflix has proposed a new offering of $800 million in senior notes, with the stated aim of using the cash to acquire content, make investments, acquire targets and engage in strategic transactions. More here.

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Detours

Living in China’s expanding deserts.

Leonard Cohen makes it darker. (Great profile. We also could have listened all day to this 10-year-old “Fresh Air” interview with Cohen, replayed on Friday.)

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Retail Therapy

Frightful drinks recipes your Halloween party. Mmmmwhahaha.

Friday! Hope you have a wonderful weekend, and we’ll see you back here soon, as long as the Internet doesn’t completely implode between now and then. (Today’s blackout is now being investigated as a criminal act.)

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Top News in the A.M.

AT&T is in the advanced stages of negotiations to acquire Time Warner, which would give the carrier a huge content creation arm. The WSJ has the story here.

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Board of Hampton Creek Said to Be Investigating Buyback Allegations

The board of Hampton Creek has hired one of the Big Four accounting firms to investigate claims in a Bloomberg story that the San Francisco-based vegan food company executed on a campaign to buy back mass quantities of its eggless mayo product, Just Mayo.

A source familiar with the situation says the board was unaware of the alleged scheme until contacted by Bloomberg’s reporters this fall, and that if CEO Josh Tetrick and other managers were “buying back mayo solely for the purpose of juicing the numbers,” the board will be “livid.”

This source says the board has no evidence of wrongdoing currently but that an auditing firm is currently “looking at every f_cking receipt that the company has created.”

A spokesman for the board refused comment.

Tetrick also declined to comment for this story, though a source close to Tetrick insists that there is no board-initiated investigation ongoing or taking place imminently.

In August, Bloomberg reported that the SEC and the Justice Department had launched probes of Hampton Creek for possible securities violations and criminal fraud, following its report that Hampton Creek had hired contractors to purchase Just Mayo from grocer’s shelves.

Reporter Olivia Zaleski said in the piece that Bloomberg was “shown 250 receipts, expense reports, cash advances and e-mails” from these contractors that collectively showed buybacks at Safeway, Kroger, Costco, Walmart, Target, and Whole Foods.

Tetrick told Bloomberg that the buybacks were centered around quality control, but these same contractors said they were free to consume, distribute to friends, or discard the product rather than look for quality issues.

What happens next is anyone’s guess, but a follow-on story in Bloomberg didn’t reflect well on Hampton Creek’s board, which was reportedly warned by the successful entrepreneur and investor Ali Partovi that the company might have a truthiness issue, to steal from comic Stephen Colbert.

More here.

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New Fundings

Buzzfeed, a 10-year-old, New York-based digital content company, is reportedly raising a fresh $200 million from Comcast’s TV and movie arm NBCUniversal, at a valuation of roughly $1.7 billion. Recode has more here.

EverQuote, a six-year-old, Cambridge, Ma.-based online marketplace for consumers to shop for auto insurance quotes (and soon home and life insurance, too), has raised $23 million in funding led by Maryland-based Savano Capital Partners, with participation from Stratim Capital, Oceanic Partners and T Capital Partners. Insurance Journal has more here.

IbanFirst, a three-year-old, Brussels, Belgium-based specialist in international payments with real-time exchange rate access, has raised €10 million ($10.9 million) in funding led by longtime investor Xavier Niel. More here.

Joymode, a year-old, L.A.-based startup that rents gear to people so they can organize things like beach parties and backyard barbecues, has raised $3 million in venture funding led by Homebrew, with participation from Lowercase Capital, Founders Collective, Collaborative Fund, TenOneTen, Slow Ventures, Sherpa Ventures, and individual investors Scott Belsky and Emil Michael. Joymode’s CEO and co-Founder is Joe Fernandez, who previously founded Klout (acquired by Lithium Technologies). TechCrunch has more on the company here.

Ladder, a 1.5-year-old, Menlo Park, Ca.-based insurtech startup, has raised $14 million in Series A funding led by Canaan Partners, with participation from Lightspeed Venture Partners, NYCA and 8VC. More here.

Mio Global, a 16-year-old, Vancouver, British Columbia-based wearables company whose tech tracks heart rates, has raised $15 million in funding led by Hydra Ventures, with participation from private investors. More here.

Undo, a nearly 12-year-old, Cambridge, U.K.-based startup that makes debugging tools for Linux and Android developers, has raised $3.3 million in Series A funding led by Cambridge Innovation Capital, with participation from Rockspring, Martlet, Sir Peter Michael, the Cambridge Angels group, and Jaan Tallinn. More here.

Yijiupi.com, a two-year-old, Beijing-based wholesale alcohol business-to-business e-commerce start-up, has raised $100 million in Series C funding led by the Shanghai-based alternative investment firm Greenwoods Asset. Other participants in the deal include Source Code Capital, Lighthouse Capital, Meituan-Dianping, HG Capital, and Meituan-Dianping, which is China’s largest peer review and group buying company. China Money Network has more here.

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Exits

Event ticketing startup YPlan has been acquired by travel publication Time Out in a deal worth $1.96 million, a figure that will rise to $2.94 million after a year if certain terms are met. It’s not a great outcome for investors; YPlan had raised $37.5 million, including from actor Ashton Kutcher. VentureBeat has more here.

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People

The ride-share company Lyft just underwent an executive reshuffling. Raj Kapoor, from Mayfield Fund, has joined Lyft in the new position of chief strategy officer. Melissa Waters, formerly Pandora’s vice president of brand and product marketing, is taking over as head of marketing. More here.

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Essential Reads

Google is the latest tech company to drop the longstanding wall between anonymous online ad tracking and user’s names. More here.

Slack is still growing fast, but not as fast as before. More here.

Walmart is hitting reset on its online business in China. More here.

Ride-hailing app Uber is partnering with MasterCard and Mexico’s first online bank, Bankaool, to launch its own debit cards, a move aimed at getting more people to use Uber in Mexico. More here.

—–

Detours

Tom Cruise acts out his career.

Apparently, drinking hand sanitizer will not kill you right away.

—–

Retail Therapy

You’re going to want a good lock for this one.

 

The board of Hampton Creek has hired one of the Big Four accounting firms to investigate claims in a Bloomberg story that the San Francisco-based vegan food company executed on a campaign to buy back mass quantities of its eggless mayo product, Just Mayo.

A source familiar with the situation says the board was unaware of the alleged scheme until contacted by Bloomberg’s reporters this fall, and that if CEO Josh Tetrick and other managers were “buying back mayo solely for the purpose of juicing the numbers,” the board will be “livid.”

This source says the board has no evidence of wrongdoing currently but that an auditing firm is currently “looking at every f_cking receipt that the company has created.”

A spokesman for the board refused comment.

Tetrick also declined to comment for this story, though a source close to Tetrick insists that there is no board-initiated investigation ongoing or taking place imminently.

In August, Bloomberg reported that the SEC and the Justice Department had launched probes of Hampton Creek for possible securities violations and criminal fraud, following its report that Hampton Creek had hired contractors to purchase Just Mayo from grocer’s shelves.

Reporter Olivia Zaleski said in the piece that Bloomberg was “shown 250 receipts, expense reports, cash advances and e-mails” from these contractors that collectively showed buybacks at Safeway, Kroger, Costco, Walmart, Target, and Whole Foods.

Tetrick told Bloomberg that the buybacks were centered around quality control, but these same contractors said they were free to consume, distribute to friends, or discard the product rather than look for quality issues.

What happens next is anyone’s guess, but a follow-on story in Bloomberg didn’t reflect well on Hampton Creek’s board, which was reportedly warned by the successful entrepreneur and investor Ali Partovi that the company might have a truthiness issue, to steal from comic Stephen Colbert.

More here.

Hi! Happy Thursday, everyone. We’re running out the door so have a streamlined version of SVC for you today, but more tomorrow!

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Top News in the A.M.

Verizon just reported declining revenue and plunging subscriber growth, and said it is assessing whether it will need to renegotiate its acquisition of Yahoo after a major data breach. The WSJ has more here.

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Jess Lee Become’s Sequoia’s 11th Investing Partner

Sequoia Capital has brought aboard Jess Lee as its eleventh investing partner in the U.S., becoming the firm’s first senior female U.S. investor in its 44-year-old history.

Lee was a former Google product manager turned CEO of the fashion site Polyvore, which was acquired for $230 million in cash by Yahoo last year. She had stayed on with Yahoo, which is now being sold, maybe, to Verizon.

Lee seemed to demonstrate a strong eye for startups long ago. Indeed, in 2008, as an avid user of Polyvore, which was then just months old,  Lee wrote to its founder, Pasha Sadri, with whom she shared mutual friends. After offering him her unsolicited feedback via email about how to improve the site speed and other aspects of its product design, the two met for coffee and she was quickly brought into the company. By 2012, she was its chief executive.

The new appointment is a huge win for Lee, a Stanford grad who grew up in Hong Kong and joked to Fortune last year that she would have gone to art school but “Asian parents don’t really like that,” so she took a more traditional path; it has led her straight to the top of the venture industry.

The appointment is highly meaningful for Sequoia, too, of course. Though Sequoia China and Sequoia India feature five female investing partners, they are separate, affiliated funds. Meanwhile, the storied Sand Hill Road firm has been pressed for years on the lack of any female investors in its ranks. Pressure on the firm seemed to intensify late last year after longtime Sequoia investor Michael Moritz gave a widely watched interview given to journalist Emily Chang where they discussed whether Sequoia felt a responsibility to hire women.

Adjusting his collar uncomfortably at the time, Moritz said he’d like to think that the firm is “blind to somebody’s sex, to their religion, to their background.” He’d added that there is, in his view, a pipeline problem to explain the dearth of women at Sequoia. Asked if Sequoia might not be looking hard enough, Moritz had added that Sequoia “looks very hard . . . We just hired a young woman from Stanford who is every bit as good as her peers and if there are more like her, we’ll hire them. What we’re not prepared to do is to lower our standards.”

The comment drew scorn from across the internet, though a Bloomberg story this morning reports that longtime Sequoia partner Roelof Botha invited Lee to join Sequoia in the summer of 2015 when Yahoo acquired Polyvore.

More here.

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New Fundings

Atipica, a 20-month-old, San Mateo, Ca.-based recruiting software startup, has raised $2 million in seed funding led by True Ventures, with participation from Kapor Capital, Precursor Ventures, and numerous angel investors, including former Reddit CEO Ellen Pao. USA Today has more here.

Bumpers.fm., a months-old, New York-based company whose iOS app that lets anyone make a podcast straight from their phone, using the phone’s built-in microphone, has raised $1 million in seed funding led by Spark Capital, with participation from Founders Collective and angel investors, including Evan Williams. TechCrunch has more here.

Finrise, a year-old, Burlingame, Ca.-based online lending startup that plans to reach customers in doctor’s offices (to aid with out-of-pocket expenses), has raised $5.4 million in debt and seed equity funding, including from Mayfield, NFX Guild, WTI, and numerous angel investors, including Funding Circle cofounder Sam Hodges and LendingHome CEO Matt Humphrey. We wrote up more here.

Hangar Technology, a months-old, Austin, Tex.-based startup, has raised $6.5 million in seed funding for technology that lets corporations get all the business intelligence they want out of drones, without having to pilot them or crunch the billions of data points that they generate. The deal was led by Lux Capital, with participation from Fontinalis Partners. TechCrunch has more here.

Propeller Health, a six-year-old, Madison, Wi.-based mobile platform that offers sensors, mobile apps, analytics, and services to support respiratory health management, has raised $21.5 million in Series C funding, including from 3M Ventures, S.R. One, and Hikma Ventures. Earlier backers Safeguard Scientifics and Social Capital joined the round. More here.

Ritual, a year-old, L.A.-based West Hollywood, Ca.-based vitamin company, has raised $3.5 million in seed funding led by Forerunner Ventures, with participation from Norwest Venture Partners, New Enterprise Associates, and earlier backers Upfront Ventures and Rivet Ventures. The company has now raised $5 million altogether TechCrunch has more here.