Hi, good Monday morning!

Quick reminder that Semil Shah is at bat for the next couple of weeks while Connie is offline, taking a woodworking course. (Today’s project, we’re told, is stilts.) To reach Semil, you can find him here.

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Top News in the A.M.

Arm Holdings, a Cambridge, U.K. -based company known for its chip designs for mobile handsets, as well as for processors to power hardware in Internet of Things networks, is being acquired by Softbank Group for £24.3 billion ($32 billion) in cash. That’s a 40 percent premium over the company’s closing price on Friday and the biggest-ever deal involving a European tech company. It’s the IoT piece that interests Softbank the most, Softbank said. TechCrunch has more here.

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Quick Chat with USV’s Andy Weissman

Roughly five years ago, Andy Weissman was recruited from the startup studio that he’d cofounded — Betaworks — to join the influential, New York-based venture firm Union Square Ventures as a partner. Just last month, Weissman was officially named one of its key men, too.

We caught up with him last week to ask whether and how that changes USV going forward.

Your firm, USV, recently pulled off a “changing of the guard” in terms of leadership, with you and Albert Wenger now leading. Has any part of the transition changed your point of view or style in investing and, if so, how so?

Because USV is thesis driven, the transition has resulted in only a few changes at the firm, and those are management wise, not investing-wise. [We have the] same five investing partners, the same emphasis on creating a peer network out of the people and companies in the portfolio, and, to answer your question directly, the same point of view and investing styles [as before].

When I think of contrarian concepts in VC, Bitcoin and blockchain come to mind. After the first few years of fervor die down, how does the USV team and network maintain conviction and a long-term view, particularly given the 24-hour nature of VC today?

The way we really maintain conviction is by creating and constantly working on a framework for investing. That framework has a few components. One is a focus on stage. Another is [maintaining the same-size] funds and one office location. A third is our style of making decisions, which is conversational/consensus driven. And the last is by publishing and constantly refining our thesis.

USV is known to invest regardless of location, especially in Europe. Besides Berlin and Sweden, what other emerging pockets of entrepreneurship do you see bubbling up in Europe? Will USV ever invest in Asia?

The last couple of years, we’ve invested in companies founded in Helsinki, Tallin/Estonia and Paris. We’d probably have a harder time investing in Asia given the relatively small nature of USV.

What’s more important over the next 10 years, technology or networks and why?

Come on dude, this is USV, you know the answer. All joking aside, we continue to focus on the applications layer of the internet — the layer that sits on top of the relatively open and robust infrastructure of the internet, the infrastructure that allows for permissionless connectivity. And we continue to believe there are numerous additional opportunities to create new kinds of networks.

In the context of early-stage investing, what’s something that you believe that isn’t necessarily a widely embraced point of view?

That in the context of growing your business, who you choose as an investor is a lot less important that otherwise might be popularly held.

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New Fundings

Azalea Health, an eight-year-old, Atlanta, Ga.-based company that makes revenue cycle software for healthcare practices, has raised $10.5 million in Series B funding led by Kayne Partners, with participation from earlier backer Intersouth Partners. More here.

Civil Maps, a two-year-old,  Albany, Ca.-based startup that makes 3D mapping technology for fully autonomous vehicles, has raised $6.6 million in seed funding led by Motus Ventures, with participation from Ford Motor Co.,Wicklow Capital, StartX Stanford and AME Cloud Ventures.

Lifesum, an eight-year-old, Stockholm, Sweden-based digital health startup, has raised $10 million in fresh funding led by Nokia Growth Partners, with participation from Draper Esprit, Bauer Media Group and SparkLabs Global Ventures. TechCrunch has more here.

Magnetic Insight, a two-year-old, Alameda, Calif.-based diagnostic imaging startup, has raised $3 million in seed funding led by Sand Hill Angels, with participation from Stanford StartX Fund. More here.

Modo Labs, a six-year-old, Cambridge, Ma.-based mobile engagement platform that helps its customers create campus apps, has raised $10 million in Series B funding from Education Growth Partners, Storm Ventures, and New Magellan Ventures. More here.

ZestFinance, a six-year-old, L.A.-based startup that blends machine learning with big data analysis to pinpoint more accurate credit scores, has received an undisclosed amount of funding from the Chinese search juggernaut Baidu. Fortune has more here.

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New Funds

Thrive Capital, a New York-based, stage-agnostic venture fund that focuses primarily on media and internet investments, has closed its fifth fund with $700 million. The seven-year-old outfit is now managing a little less than $1.5 billion altogether. TechCrunch has more here.

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Exits

Immediately, a three-year-old, San Francisco-based startup that built mobile sales tools, will be shutting down at the end of the month, while part of the team will move on to cloud-monitoring company New Relic. According to CrunchBase, Immediately had raised $2.6 million from investors, including Streamlined Ventures. TechCrunch has more here.

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People

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos got to live out every Trekkie’s fantasy; he plays an alien in the new Star Trek movie, says the Hollywood Reporter.

Hillary Clinton has amassed a spate of Silicon Valley stars to help with her campaign. Wired takes a look here.

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Essential Reads

Tesla Motors is making changes that aim to help its Autopilot technology “see” more effectively in rain, snow, and bright sunlight. Fortune has more here.

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Detours

Donald Trump’s ghostwriter tells all.

Over the weekend, “Late Show” host Stephen Colbert made an unexpected evening appearance at the Republican National Convention.

Is full-time work bad for our brains?

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Retail Therapy

Meteor illuminated benches for your summer soiree.

Hi, everyone. We’re so heavy-hearted about the news out of Nice today. What a terrible shame.

In case you missed the news earlier this week, we did want to let you know that, starting on Monday, our friend Semil Shah will be steering the ship around here for a couple of weeks; specifically, he’ll be bringing you your daily column (and has some fun stuff lined up). If you want to chat with him about anything, you can track him down here. Thank you, Semil.:)

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Top News in the A.M.

It’s crunch time for Yahoo. Final bids for its services, which include Yahoo’s search, email, advertising and media operations, are due Monday, reports the New York Times.

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Tesla’s Former VP of Production Just Became a VC

Greg Reichow, who in May left his post as Tesla’s vice president of production (and reportedly as one of its highest-paid executives), has joined Eclipse Ventures as an investor.

If the Eclipse brand isn’t entirely familiar, it may be soon, given its growing star power. Venture geeks might recall that Eclipse was originally part of Formation 8, a firm that has since disbanded but that, before doing so, raised a $125 million fund that was designed to invest exclusively in early-stage hardware companies. (Its original name was F8 Hardware Fund. Among its limited partners is Flex, the publicly traded contract design and manufacturing company formerly known as Flextronics.)

Former F8 partner Lior Susan now manages Eclipse, with a team that includes not only Reichow but longtime Sequoia Capital partner Pierre Lamond, who’d been an F8 advisor and joined Eclipse as a full-time partner last year.

It’s been active, too. The firm has already invested in 27 companies, including making an early bet on the computational photography startup Light, which last week announced $30 million in fresh funding led by GV.

According to a new SEC filing, Eclipse is also raising a new, $125 million fund.

More here.

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New Fundings

Alphabet Energy, a maker of flare combusters for oil and gas companies, has raised $23.5 million in fresh funding from Osceola Capital Management, Claremont Creek Ventures, TPG and GM Ventures. Fortune has more here.

Amplero, a months-old, Seattle-based company whose software attempts to predict the lifetime customer value of its customers’ customers, has raised $8 million in Series A funding led by Wildcat Venture Partners. Other participants in the round include Globys/Trilogy Equity Partners, Salesforce Ventures and Seven Peaks Ventures. VentureBeat has more here.

CyberGRX, a months-old, Denver, Co.-based cyber risk management platform, has raised $9 million in Series A funding led by Allegis Capital, with participation from The Blackstone Group, TenEleven Ventures, Rally Ventures, GV and MassMutual Ventures. Xconomy has more here.

Discors, a nearly two-year-old, Bay Area-based mobile app that presents news stories alongside columns and analysis, photos, and a timeline, all in one stream, has raised $1.2 million from angel investors, founders, and Matter Ventures. TechCrunch has more here.

Endotronix, a nine-year-old Woodridge, Il.-based company that makes miniaturized, wireless, implantable pressure sensors for use in interventional cardiovascular procedures, has raised $32 million in Series C funding, including from BioVentures Investors, SV Life Sciences, Lumira Capital, Aperture Venture Partners and OSF Ventures. MedCity News has more here.

Findo, a two-year-old, Menlo Park, Ca.-based smart search assistant, is raising a $4 million seed round led by  Flint Capital. VentureBeat has more here.

GameOn, a 2.5-year-old, San Francisco-based mobile engagement platform for sports fans, has raised $2 million in new seed funding from Quest Venture Partners, XG Ventures, Next News Ventures, the DeBartolo family, former NFL quarterback Joe Montana and rapper-investor Snoop Dogg. More here.

ISI Technology, a 10-year-old, Charleston, S.C.-based company that makes a fully electronic water heater for residential and commercial applications, has raised $5 million in Series A funding led by Wave Equity Partners. TechCrunch has more here.

PureLifi, a four-year-old, Edinburgh, Scotland-based company that’s developing what it calls LiFi technology, an alternative to Wi-Fi that uses modulating LED light as a way of sending data from one LiFi-equipped device to another, has raised just over £7 million ($9.3 million) in Series B funding. Singapore’s state-owned investment firm Temasek led the round. TechCrunch has more here.

Scope AR, a five-year-old, San Francisco-based company that’s developing augmented reality smart instructions and live support video calling software,  has raised $2 million in seed funding, including from Susa Ventures, Presence Capital Fund and New Stack Ventures. More here.

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Exits

Atlassian said yesterday that it has acquired StatusPage, a Y Combinator-incubated service that allows online businesses to keep their users updated about the status of their online services. Terms of the deal weren’t disclosed.According to CrunchBase, StatusPage had raised just $100,000. TechCrunch has more here.

FlightCar, a 4.5-year-old, San Francisco-based company that invited users to list and rent each others’ cars from airports around the country, announced yesterday that, effective immediately, it is closing operations at all 12 of its airport stations around the U.S.. It has also sold its technology platform to Mercedes-Benz Research & Development North America, where it will become part of Mercedes’ innovation lab for mobility services. Flightcar had raised more than $40 million from investors. Forbes has more here on the company’s closure. We’d first written about Flightcar’s woes last October.

Pinterest has acquired the team behind Highlight, a location-based social app that never quite broke through. Its parent company was five-year-old, San Francisco-based Math Camp. Terms of the deal aren’t being disclosed. The Verge has more here.

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People

An L.A. judge has dismissed former Hyperloop One CTO and co-founder Brogan BamBrogan’s restraining order against the company’s former head of legal, Afshin Pishevar. More here.

The Tesla Model X that crashed in Pennsylvania on July 1 had Autopilot disabled at the time, Elon Musk announced yesterday Twitter. More here.

Yesterday, a group of more than 140 tech entrepreneurs and executives published a scathing online letter opposing Donald Trump’s campaign for the presidency, saying he’d be truly terrible for innovation. As product manager Michael Gartenberg of Apple later tweeted, though, “Thing is, people likely to vote for Trump don’t read or care about stuff like this.”

In related news, just to be clear, “Peter Thiel is attending and speaking at the RNC in his personal capacity,” said Facebook of its famed board member in a statement yesterday. Recode has more here.

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Data

According to new data out of the NVCA and Thomson Reuters, VCs invested $15.3 billion in 961 deals in the second quarter. That’s a 20 percent increase in dollars over the first quarter, though total deal count was down 5 percent. More interesting (to us): this is the tenth consecutive quarter that more than $10 billion in venture capital invested was invested in a single quarter. More here.

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Essential Reads

T-Mobile is offering free “Pokémon Go” data for a year, but not everyone is happy about it.

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Detours

Ten completely over-the-top hotel butler services.

That spicy green paste is not wasabi, yo.

Mick Jagger is going to be a dad for the eighth time at age 72.

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Retail Therapy

Nickelblock, the first app for your phone that will play Nickelback songs when you try to contact your ex or look at their photos on the Internet. (Haha. H/T: Lora K.)

Hi, all, happy Thursday.:)

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Top News in the A.M.

Line, the mobile messaging app from Japan, went public today in a dual Japan-U.S. IPO that’s expected to be the largest of a tech company this year. Here’s what you need to know about the company. Meanwhile, here’s how it’s doing so far on the NYSE.

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DCM Just Raised a $500 Million Fund 

DCM Ventures, an early stage venture firm, with offices in Menlo Park, Ca.; China; and Japan, has just closed its eighth early-stage fund, DCM VIII, with $500 million.

The fund came together on the heels of two other funds that DCM has raised in the last 18 months, including a $170 million “Turbo Fund” that DCM is using to invest in growth-stage companies (that it mostly but not exclusively has previously funded), and a $100 million “A Fund,” which is a healthy-size seed-stage fund that DCM is using to fund mobile and emerging platforms.

Altogether, DCM is now managing more than $3 billion. That’s a lot of money, even for a firm that’s been around since 1996. But here’s what DCM can boast that most venture firms in recent years cannot: It has also returned a lot of money to its investors —  $1.5 billion over the last three years, in fact.

Last week, we chatted with firm co-founder and general partner David Chao about how DCM pulled off this hat trick. Our chat has been edited for length.

What’s the mandate of this new, $500 million fund?

It hasn’t really changed. Trying to get 15 to 25 percent of Series A rounds in the U.S. and Asia has been our bread and butter for the last 20 years.

And your A Fund, which closed last year — why is it necessary to run that separately?

With the advent of angel rounds and seed rounds and convertible notes, we felt we could be more bold and experimental with the A Fund. For example, a lot of game companies aren’t the greatest profile for a typical venture fund. It’s a hit-or-miss business — almost like Hollywood movies. We also focus on new platforms. So when we did some of our first VR deals and drone deals, we did it out of our first A Fund [which closed in 2011], and we’ve done more VR and AI deals out of our second A Fund already. So it’s a higher risk fund.

It’s also high reward, seemingly. That first fund invested in Kakao Talk, a cross-platform mobile messaging application that took off.

Its first round was [valued at] $100 million [premoney], so it wasn’t a typical main fund bet. [Ed: Kakao went public in 2014, and its valuation continued to soar. Though competition from LINE has dampened its growth, Kakao is still valued at $6.4 billion currently.]

More here.

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New Fundings

GSV, a merchant bank in Chicago, is hoping to raised upwards of $250 million for a venture fund, shows a new SEC filing. The bank’s venture arm was formed 10 years ago and co-invests in mid- to late-stage deals across a spectrum of sectors, from biotech to energy to information technology. According to its site, it has stakes in Instacart, Palantir, and Pinterest, among others.

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New Funds

Amazon Web Services has acquired Cloud9, a six-year-old, San Francisco-based startup that has built an integrated development environment (IDE) for web and mobile developers to collaborate together. Terms of the deal weren’t disclosed. According to CrunchBase, Cloud9 had raised $5.5 million from investors, including Accel Partners and Balderton Capital. TechCrunch has more here.

Toy giant Hasbro is acquiring Boulder Media, a 16-year-old, Dublin, Ireland-based animation studio, for an undisclosed amount. Marketwatch has more here.

China’s Tencent is acquiring a controlling stake in the music streaming company China Music Corp. for roughly $2.7 billion, creating a dominant competitor in China’s online music market. The WSJ has the story here.

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Exits

Amazon Web Services has acquired Cloud9, a six-year-old, San Francisco-based startup that has built an integrated development environment (IDE) for web and mobile developers to collaborate together. Terms of the deal weren’t disclosed. According to CrunchBase, Cloud9 had raised $5.5 million from investors, including Accel Partners and Balderton Capital. TechCrunch hasmore here.

Toy giant Hasbro is acquiring Boulder Media, a 16-year-old, Dublin, Ireland-based animation studio, for an undisclosed amount. Marketwatch has more here.

China’s Tencent is acquiring a controlling stake in the music streaming company China Music Corp. for roughly $2.7 billion, creating a dominant competitor in China’s online music market. The WSJ has the story here.

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People

VC Jim Breyer just joined the board of Blackstone.

Apple dealmaker Eddy Cue reveals what he learned about Hollywood from Steve Jobs, why TV distribution is broken, and to whom he turns for advice.

Billionaire investor Peter Thiel will be speaking at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland next week. Recode has more here. Meanwhile, TechCrunch takes a look at where Thiel and Donald Trump agree and disagree.

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Essential Reads

Twitter is doubling down on live-streaming with a new partnership with Pac-12 university sports to broadcast its content.

Consumer Reports just called on Tesla to disable hands-free operation until its system can be made safer.

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Detours

Don’t drive and Pokemon.

Kids explain the internet.

How giving a memorable job interview is like dating.

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Retail Therapy

Nest is finally making an outdoor camera and it ships for $199 this fall.

Hi, happy Wednesday, everyone!

We’re back in San Francisco tomorrow, but we wanted to note that beginning this Monday, the popular and talented Semil Shah — investor, writer, father, horologist — will be taking over SVC’s daily column for a couple of weeks as we dial back for a bit of family time. He has some great interviews with numerous VCs and founders lined up, so stay tuned.:)

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Top News in the A.M.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average and S&P 500 both closed at all-time highs yesterday. Marketwatch has more here.

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Magic Leap Says Product Coming Out “Hopefully Soonish”

Anyone hoping that Magic Leap would share exact plans today about when it will debut its “mixed reality” technology was probably a little disappointed. At a Fortune conference in Aspen this afternoon, Magic Leap founder and CEO Rony Abovitz and company CMO Brian Wallace called the company’s products “very real” and “not a research project anymore.” They also seemed to hint that they’ll release their tech this fall. But they stopping short from explicitly saying so.

Said Abovitz of the now 600-person company, which operates out of a former Motorola factory in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., “We have production lines that look like aircraft carriers with class 100cleanrooms [which feature controlled levels of contamination]. That’s running right now. We’re debugging our high-volume production line. It’s [being] made in the U.S., this summer. So we’re in that go mode, and hopefully soonish, the public will see [our products].

Magic Leap has raised $1.4 billion from investors at this point, including Alibaba, Andreessen Horowitz, and Google. In fact, Google CEO Sundar Pichai sits on the company’s board. (It also counts director Peter Jackson as an advisory board member.)

Asked what’s so expensive, Abovitz — whose last company sold for $1.65 billion a few years ago — noted that Magic Leap is “building a full-stack computing company,” from its chip designs to sensors to software to much of its content. “We took on the whole problem, including the manufacturing [because] we wanted to deliver something that never existed before and there was no way to do it unless we created everything from scratch.”

The company’s technology, as both described by Abovitz and Wallace, certainly sounds nothing short of revolutionary, even while it has competitors in Microsoft’s HoloLens headset and Meta, another maker of an augmented reality headset.

More here.

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New Fundings

Appthority, a five-year-old, San Francisco-based app risk management service, has raised $17 million in Series B funding led by Trident Capital Cybersecurity, with participation from U.S. Venture Partners, Venrock, Blue Coat Systems and Knollwood Investment Advisory. More here.

Bay Dynamics, a 15-year-old, San Francisco-based maker of cyber-risk analytics software, has raised $23 million in Series B funding led by Carrick Capital Partners, with participation from Comcast Ventures. The company has now raised $31 million altogether. eWeek has more here.

FiveAI, a year-old U.K.-based startup that’s building AI-driven software to help accelerate the development of autonomous vehicles, has raised $2.7 million in funding led by Amadeus Capital Partners, with participation from Spring Partners and Notion Capital. TechCrunch has more here.

Shyft Technologies, a year-old, Seattle-based company whose mobile app connects shift workers based on their employer and location so they trade and cover shifts, has raised $1.5 million in seed funding from Madrona Venture Group and numerous angel investors. Bloomberg has more here.

SirionLabs, a four-year-old, Gurgaon, India and Troy, Mi.-based company that uses tech to help companies manage their contracts and relationships with suppliers, has raised $12.25 million in Series B funding led by Sequoia India, with participation from QualGro ASEAN Fund and Canopy Ventures. The company has now raised $16 million altogether. More here.

True Fit, a six-year-old, Woburn, Ma.-based company that partners with big retailers like Nordstrom, Macy’s and Kate Spade to help online customers order the right size and style for their measurements, has raised $25 million in funding led by Intel Capital, with participation from earlier backers Jump Capital and Signal Peak Ventures. TechCrunch has more here.

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New Funds

Fontinalis Partners, a seven-year-old, Detroit and Boston-based venture capital firm, has closed its second fund with $100 million. The firm was cofounded by Bill Ford, the executive chairman of Ford Motor Co., and it has been designed from the start to expressly fund next-generation mobility companies. Some of its newest bets include Elementum, a four-year-old, Mountain View, Ca.-based cloud supply chain platform; nuTonomy, a three-year-old, Cambridge, Ma.-based company that makes software for self-driving cars; and TransLoc, a two-year-old, Durham, N.C.-based transportation app company whose products include a live regional transit map and a bus tracking mobile app. Fontinalis has now raised $165 million in committed capital altogether. More here.

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IPOs

Line, the Japanese mobile messaging app company, is seeing bids of 15 percent above its IPO price ahead of its market debut. Bloomberg has more here.

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Exits

Google has made another small acquisition to help it continue building out its latest efforts in social apps. The search and Android giant has hired the team behind Kifi, a startup that was building extensions to collect and search links shared in social apps. Terms of the deal aren’t being disclosed. TechCrunch has more here.

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People

Skully co-founders Marcus and Mitch Weller have reportedly been kicked out of the company by investors. Skully has raised $14.95 million from two investments and an Indiegogo campaign over the last two years. More here.

Hyperloop One, the futuristic transportation company backed by $92 million in funding, looks like it could be mired in lawsuits for the foreseeable future. The The startup was cofounded by the venture capitalist Shervin Pishevar and Brogan Bambrogan, an early employee at SpaceX. But a couple weeks ago, Bambrogan abruptly left the company. Yesterday, the world learned that Bambrogan has filed a restraining order against the company’s former head of legal, Afshin Pishevar (who happens to be Shervin’s brother), alleging Pishevar left a noose at his desk, among other terribleness. Bambrogan and other employees are also suing the company, saying it has been “strangled by mismanagement.” You can scan the entire lawsuit here.

Vishal Lugani, who spent the last 3.5 years as a senior associate at Greycroft Partners in L.A.,  is moving to San Francisco to joins Aspect Ventures as an investor.

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Essential Reads

Tesla‘s biggest Wall Street fan — Adam Jonas of Morgan Stanley — think he’s worked out Elon Musk’s master plan. Bloomberg has more here.

Vine, Twitter’s three-year-old short-form video service, is no longer growing, and most of its top executives have left, reports Recode.

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Detours

Detroit-made bicycles are taking over bike-share programs.

Forty-four-and-a-half years later, the FBI is finally giving up on the famed DB Cooper case.

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Retail Therapy

Good news, bad news: a portable, collapsible fire hammock.

Hi, happy Tuesday, everyone! We’re in ridiculously beautiful Aspen for a couple of days to catch Pokemon attend a Fortune conference. Having fun here; we’re also a little exhausted.:)

Btw, if you’re here, too, and want to meet up, let us know. We won’t be quite as crazed today as yesterday.

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Top News in the A.M.

Now a third Tesla crash is being blamed on Autopilot. Elektrek has more here.

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Who, Us? VCs Blame Banks for Messaging to Startups

Despite all the capital that venture firms have managed to raise in the first and second quarters of this year, venture capitalists at an investor panel at Fortune’s Brainstorm conference this morning said that early-stage valuations are softening, reality is “setting in” for unicorn companies that are too richly valued to be acquired and too immature to go public, and that there’s much more focus on revenue than in recent years.

The VCs also blamed bankers on their messaging to founders, which, until recently, was to focus on growth at all costs.

When it comes to very early-stage valuations, Floodgate cofounder Ann Miura-Ko said she thinks her firm is seeing more “willingness by entrepreneurs to take much lower valuations than what their initial expectations were” for two reasons. One is increasing conservativeness on the part of venture capitalists. The other, she said, is “fear for the next round of financing. They’ve already heard from other entrepreneurs that the next round of financing is going to be really difficult.”

In terms of falling valuations for later-stage companies, general partner Roger Lee of Battery Ventures said they’re all but inevitable, given that there’s been one “truly notable” tech IPO in the U.S. so far in 2017.  As he noted, a new category of investors had emerged — including hedge funds and mutual funds — to fund these companies’ later stage funding rounds based on the assumption that there would be a brisk IPO market. Absent one, these companies now need to “focus on the fundamentals” to prove that they’re worth the valuations they were assigned.

Of course the big question, and one posed by Brainstorm co-chair Dan Primack, is why companies weren’t focusing on the fundamentals from the start. “Is it the [founders’] fault or yours,” he asked the VCs, including Spark Capital general partner Megan Quinn, who readily acknowledged that there was “certainly a point in time in the Valley when investors were funding growth above all else.” Because “public markets were rewarding it?” Primack asked. “Yes,” said Quinn, “exactly.”

It’s an observation that Jeff Fagnan, a founder of Accomplice (formerly the tech group at Atlas Venture) agreed with wholeheartedly. VCs’ focus on growth was “definitely driven by the public market,” he told those gathered. “I remember being in a couple of IPO bakeoffs, and these bankers would always focus on [growth] . . . And they said, ‘You don’t really need to worry about profit. Just grow. This is the story that everybody wants to buy.’”

More here.

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New Fundings

3scan, a five-year-old, San Francisco-based computational pathology platform company, has raised $14 million in Series B funding co-led by Lux Capital and Data Collective, with participation from Dolby Family Ventures, OS Fund, Comet Labs and Breakout Ventures. TechCrunch has more here.

Codecademy, a five-year-old, New York-based online coding school with 16 million registered users, has raised $30 million in new funding led by Naspers Ventures, with participation from Union Square Ventures, Flybridge Capital Partners, Index Ventures and Sir Richard Branson. The company has now raised $42.5 million altogether. TechCrunch has more here.

CornerJob, a year-old, Barcelona, Spain-based mobile jobs marketplace, has raised $25 million in Series B funding led by Northzone, with participation from e.ventures. TechCrunch has more here.

Freshly, a four-year-old, New York-based company that delivers healthy meals for $11 per meal, has raised $21 million in Series B funding led by Insight Venture Partners, with participation from previous investors Highland Capital Partners and White Star Capital. TechCrunch has more here.

Paktor, a three-year-old, Singapore-based dating app that rivals Tinder in Southeast Asia, has raised $10 million in fresh capital led by YJ Capital, the corporate venture firm belonging to Yahoo Capital. Other participants include Global Grand Leisure, Golden Equator Capital, Sebrina Holdings and earlier backers Vertex Ventures, MNC Media Group, Majuven and Convergence Ventures. The company has now raised $22 million altogether. TechCrunch has more here.

RedKix, a nearly two-year-old, San Mateo, Ca.-based startup that is combining email with chat, has raised $17 in seed(!) funding, including from Salesforce Ventures, Wicklow Capital, SG VC, and individual investors, including Oren Zeev. TechCrunch has more here.

Universal Avenue, a two-year-old, Stockholm, Sweden-headquartered startup that lets companies access a local sales force on demand, has raised $10 million in Series A funding led by Eight Roads, the proprietary investment arm of Fidelity International. Earlier investors Northzone and MOOR also joined the round. TechCrunch has more here.

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New Funds

Veteran Silicon Valley investor Jim Breyer and Chinese firm IDG Capital Partners have raised one of the largest venture-capital funds in China despite concerns that the market for later-stage startups is overheated. The WSJ has more here.

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IPOs

WeWork CEO Adam Neumann, who was interviewed on stage with his wife and co-founder Rebekah Paltrow Neumann yesterday, hinted an IPO may be in the offing. The company has been valued by its investors at $17 billion. Fortune has more here.

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People

Five-year-old mobile events and conferences company DoubleDutch announced yesterday that it will be laying off 55 of its employees as a part of a company-wide restructuring. The company has raised more than $78 million in funding to power its mobile tools which allow event organizers to create dedicated app experiences and easily share information with attendees. TechCrunch has more here.

Yesterday afternoon, before he took the stage at the Fortune’s Brainstorm conference, we sat down with GV CEO Bill Maris in a billowing white tent on the campus of the Aspen Institute, where the conference is being held. We talked about how Brexit impacts GV’s European strategy. (You may recall it has an office in London.) We also asked Maris about some of GV’s newest bets, its biggest bet of all time (Uber), and the decision of one of GV’s highest-profile investors, Rich Miner, to leave the group. More here.

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Essential Reads

Google couldn’t score LinkedIn’s business. But it’s getting LinkedIn’s real estate. Recode has more here.

With new tech, the United Nations is seeking to end hunger Silicon Valley-style.

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Detours

The richest generation in U.S. history just keeps getting richer.

How to negotiate with a liar.

Britain is getting a new leader, but Larry, the Downing Street cat, is staying put.

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Retail Therapy

Smell like a fig candle everywhere you go, if you dare.

Love dem short work weeks! Hoping you have a wonderful weekend, everyone.

Quick mention: We leave insanely early on Monday for Fortune’s Brainstorm conference in Aspen, so we won’t have a chance to send out the newsletter; we’ll be back with a good story or two for you on Tuesday.:)

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Top News in the A.M.

It actually happened. Elizabeth Holmes, chief executive of Theranos, has been banned by U.S. regulators from owning or operating a medical laboratory for at least two years.

The Dallas police force used a bomb-defusing robot equipped with an explosive device to kill a shooting suspect last night, police chief David Brown revealed today at a press conference. Bomb-defusing robots have been used by police forces in the past, but this may be the first time one has been use to kill a person. More here.

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Where Today’s Tech Can, And Can’t, Replace Humans

This morning, McKinsey & Co. is releasing a new look at the impact automation is likely to have across various sectors of the economy and, ultimately, the workplace. Its findings are based on analysis of 2,000-plus work activities across more than 800 occupations and includes data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The good news, says the report, is that automation will “eliminate very few occupations entirely in the next decade.” It adds that automation will eventually affect “portions of almost all jobs to a greater or lesser degree.”

Whether you see this as a good or bad thing could depend on how much of your job involves physical activity or operating machinery.

For example, if even current technologies were broadly adopted, says McKinsey, fully 78 percent of “predictable physical activities” across manufacturing, retailing, and food service and accommodations could be automated. The study notes that working on an assembly line is a “highly predictable” physical activity, whereas forestry or raising outdoor animals is much less so. Either way, as tech grows more advanced, expect that percentage to rise.

What else could be far more automated if current tech was adopted more widely? Plenty of so-called white collar occupations, particularly those that involve collecting and processing data. And it’s not just entry level workers who will be impacted, notes McKinsey. For example, it notes that “stock traders and investment bankers live off their wits, yet about 50 percent of the overall time [in their field] is devoted to collecting and processing data . . .”

Ditto insurance sales agents. McKinsey’s estimate for how much of these jobs could be automated: about 43 percent of workers’ time.

More here.

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New Fundings

Airwallex, a seven-month-old, Melbourne, Australia-based startup that specializes in cross-border transactions, has raised $3 million in seed funding led by Chinese investment firm Gobi Partners. TechCrunch has more here.

SmartNews, a four-year-old, Tokyo, Japan-based news aggregation app, has raised $38 million in Series D funding led by the Development Bank of Japan, with SMBC Venture Capital and Japan Co-Invest L.P. participating. The company has now raised $90 million altogether. TechCrunch has more here.

Uber, the seven-year-old, San Francisco-based ride-share giant, has raised $1.15 billion from a new high-yield loan, according to the WSJ. The company has now raised more than $15 billion in debt and equity. More here.

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Exits

The videoconferencing company Polycom has abandoned plans to sell itself to the Canadian telecommunications company Mitel and is instead selling for $2 billion to the private equity firm Siris Capital. That’s a 14 percent premium over Mitel’s offer. Bloomberg has more here.

Google is getting deeper into the tech side of the video and broadcasting business. The company yesterday announced that it has acquired Anvato, a platform for encoding, editing, publishing and distribution video across platforms. More here.

The six-year-old, New York-based media valuation platform Integral Ad Science is unveiling some new steps to combat ad fraudsters, including the acquisition of a bot detection company called Swarm. TechCrunch has more here.

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People

LinkedIn is selling to Microsoft because it couldn’t keep pace with the world’s biggest tech companies, cofounder and executive chairman Reid Hoffman told CNBC yesterday. More here.

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Essential Reads

Facebook is shying from substantive policy questions in the aftermath of a gruesome but important Facebook Live video. Buzzfeed has more here.

The IRS is suing Facebook over asset transfers to Ireland. Fortune has more here.

Aaaand, Facebook Messenger is adding end-to-end encryption in a bid to become your primary messaging app. TechCrunch has more here.

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Detours

1001 blistering future summers.

How silence benefits the brain.

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Retail Therapy

Supreme x Nike Air Force 1 Low Premium 08 NRG.