Greetings from New York! We love it here. Why have we never lived here?

Short newsletter today. We’re running off to a meeting. Have a great weekend, everyone — see you Monday.:)

Top News in the A.M.

Spotify is expected to go public as a direct listing on the NYSE, possibly in the fourth quarter of this year, says CNBC.

Sponsored By . . .

StrictlyVC is being brought to you this week courtesy of Grand Central Tech. Its message to readers (and founders of budding startups, particularly):

Apply today for the Grand Central Tech Accelerator Program! Join the ranks of some of NYC’s premier startups in the single most comprehensive, entrepreneur-friendly program of its kind. GCT attracts top-tier startups, acquaints them with one another and with industry experts to the mutual benefit of all involved; offers relevant, programming tailored to each company’s specific needs; and then more or less gets out of the way. We do not take equity, we do not charge rent, and we aren’t needlessly disruptive. We only take 20 companies so we can concentrate on adding value as/where it’s needed. Applications are due THIS FRIDAY May 12th; we look forward to seeing yours.

New Fundings

CBien, a four-year-old, French insurtech startup whose digital asset management platform helps users secure and manage personal belongings such heir laptops and smartphones, has raised €8 million ($8.7 million) in second-round funding from earlier backers MAIF, MACIF and 5M Ventures. More here.

Claranet, a 21-year-old, London-based managed hosting group, has raised £80 million ($87.3 million) in funding led by Paris-based Tikehau Capital. More here.

Guardant Health, a four-year-old, Redwood City, Ca.-based biotech company that sells blood tests to track and potentially detect cancer, has raised a whopping $360 million from investors, bringing its total funding to $550 million. SoftBank led the round, with participation from Sequoia Capital, Khosla Ventures, Lightspeed Venture Partners, OrbiMed, 8VC, “certain funds and accounts” managed by T. Rowe Price, and Temasek, among others. VentureBeat has more here.

Improbable, a five-year-old, London-based startup that has developed a platform for third parties to build vast virtual and simulated worlds, has landed a stratospheric $502 million in funding led by SoftBank, with previous investors Andreessen Horowitz and Horizons Ventures also participating. The company tells TechCrunch the capital is not coming from the $100 million Vision Fund that Softbank is working on closing. More here.

Jinn, a four-year-old, London-based on-demand delivery platform, has raised $10 million in new funding led by the family investment office STE Capital, with participation from Samaipata Ventures and a number of other previous investors. The company has now raised $20 million altogether. TechCrunch has more here.

Pocket Gems, am eight-year-old, San Francisco-based maker of hit mobile games “Episode” and “War Dragons,” has raised $90 million in new funding from earlier investor Tencent Holdings. China’s Tencent previously bought a roughly 20 percent stake in Pocket Gems when it funded the company’s entire $60 million Series B in 2015. The new investment values Pocket Gems at about $500 million, and it brings Tencent’s stake to about 38 percent. The WSJ has more here.

Spring, a three-year-old, New York-based e-commerce startup that sells clothes from 2,000 clothing brands through its mobile app and website, has raised $65 million in new funding led by Fidelity Investments in a round that brings the company’s total funding to $100 million in total. Earlier investors also joined the round, including  Groupe Arnault, Thrive Capital, and Box Group. Recode has more here.

Truepic, a year-old, San Diego, Ca.-based online image and video authenticity platform, has raised $1.75 million in seed funding from numerous individual investors, including former Thomson Financial CEO Jeffrey Partner, and Flip Filipowksi, the cofounder and CEO of Platinum Technology. More here.

Wealthsimple, a three-year-old, Toronto-based robo-advisory firm, has raised  $37 million ($50 million Canadian) in funding from Power Financial, a large financial institution in Canada. Techcrunch has more here.

IPOs

Appian, an 18-year-old, Reston, Va.-based provider of a software development platform, has set its IPO terms, revealing plans to offer 6.25 million at between $11 and $13 per share. In the middle of that range, it would enjoy a market cap o $878 million. The company’s biggest outside shareholders include Novak Biddle Venture Partners (which has a 21.5 percent pre-IPO stake) and New Enterprise Associates (which owns 11.7 percent). More here.

Exits

Subscription-platform Zuora has agreed to buy Leeyo, an eight-year-old, Santa Clara, Ca., company that makes revenue recognition and management software. Terms of the deal aren’t being disclosed. TechCrunch has more here.

People

Hillary Clinton will be speaking at Recode’s upcoming Code conference.

Oculus VR founder Palmer Luckey seems to suggest he left Facebook in part because it didn’t allow him time to cosplay, the practice of dressing up as a character from a movie, book, or video game.

Data

After stunning the world with a record $246 billion of announced outbound takeovers in 2016, Chinese dealmakers are now struggling to cope with tighter capital controls and increasingly wary counterparties, says Bloomberg. Cross-border purchases plunged 67 percent during the first four months of this year, the biggest drop for a comparable period since the depths of the global financial crisis in 2009, according to data compiled by the outlet.

Essential Reads

At Microsoft’s developer conference in Washington this week, gone was the Microsoft whose former CEO, Steve Ballmer, once predicted the iPhone had “no chance; no chance at all.” Instead, Microsoft is embracing a world where the iPhone and Android dominate personal computing. Fast Company has more here.

A judge has denied Uber‘s request to force Waymo‘s case against it into arbitration.The decision hints that the judge’s pending decision on a preliminary injunction that would effectively halt Uber’s self-driving development plans, might not be favorable to Uber. Potentially even worse for Uber, the judge in the civil case has referred the theft claims to the U.S. Attorney for a possible criminal investigation. TechCrunch has more here and here.

Detours

Stephen Colbert on Donald Trump: “The president the United States has come after me and my show . . . I won!”

The Giro d’Italia through the (last 100) years.

These are the cars that people keep the longest.

Retail Therapy

The suddenly ubiquitous fidget spinner (and its real origin story).

Hi, all! Quick mention: we’re racing off the airport this morning, as we gear up for TechCrunch Disrupt NY, taking place this coming Monday through Wednesday.

Note that the newsletter might be a little skimpier than usual for the next week as these shows are very fun and also insanely hectic.

For what it’s worth, TC has an amazing line-up, and it’s live-streaming all interviews (on Facebook, too). Among its many speakers: baseball legend Derek Jeter, singer Pharrell Williams, SoFi’s Michael Cagney, and Tyler Haney of the fast-growing lifestyle brand Outdoor Voices. We’ll also be on stage for a few interviews that we’ll either link to or write about next week, assuming we don’t trip on stage or some other horribleness befalls us. (Heh, ahem.)

More soon — happy Thursday, everyone.:)

Top News in the A.M.

Snap missed analysts’ forecasts by a wide margin in the first three months of this year, it revealed yesterday. Shareholders weren’t happy. CEO Evan Spiegel sounded unconcerned, however.

It’s beginning to look like Uber is facing a very steep uphill battle in the Europe.

Sponsored By . . .

StrictlyVC is being brought to you this week courtesy of Grand Central Tech. Its message to readers (and founders of budding startups, particularly):

Apply today for the Grand Central Tech Accelerator Program! Join the ranks of some of NYC’s premier startups in the single most comprehensive, entrepreneur-friendly program of its kind. GCT attracts top-tier startups, acquaints them with one another and with industry experts to the mutual benefit of all involved; offers relevant, programming tailored to each company’s specific needs; and then more or less gets out of the way. We do not take equity, we do not charge rent, and we aren’t needlessly disruptive. We only take 20 companies so we can concentrate on adding value as/where it’s needed. Applications are due THIS FRIDAY May 12th; we look forward to seeing yours.

Lightspeed’s Co-founders on Their 17-Year-Long ‘Overnight’ Success Story

Lightspeed Venture Partners is having quite a year, between the sale of AppDynamics to Cisco for $3.7 billion on the eve of its IPO (Lightspeed wrote its first check); to the March sale of publicly traded Nimble Storage to Hewlett Packard Enterprise for just north of $1 billion in cash; to the IPO of the enterprise software company MuleSoft in March (the company is now valued at $2.8 billion); to the March IPO of the consumer tech company Snap, which is is valued at more than $20 billion, despite a terrible earnings call earlier today that drove its shares into a nosedive. (Lightspeed famously wrote the company its first check and remains its second largest outside shareholder.)

Other exits look to be coming up fast, too. According to Bloomberg, for example, men’s retailer Bonobos is in talks with Walmart. Meanwhile, the personal styling service Stitch Fix is reportedly weighing an IPO.

Success is nothing new for Lightspeed, though its recent string of hits has certainly helped cement its status as one of Silicon Valley’s most elite firms. To learn a little more about the firm’s earliest days, how exactly it helps startups, and whether it thinks the pace of innovation right now can keep up with the amount of capital flooding the market, investor Semil Shah of the seed-stage firm Haystack sat down with Lightspeed co-founders Ravi Mhatre and Barry Eggers at a StrictlyVC event late last week. You can check out a bit of video from that sit-down below. Here are other outtakes from the conversation that you might find interesting. Their chat has been edited for length and clarity.

SS: When you started Lightspeed, what was the mood like in the Valley?

BE: The year was 1856. [Audience laughs.] It was the early 2000s. We were sort of in the middle of the venture desert, for those of you who were there. We’d gotten out of the bubble, and we were all waiting to see what was next, and it was a long wait. And that’s where we sort of looked around and realized most of the people we’d known who were doing Series A deals had either closed shop or gone through a generational transition or just weren’t around any more and there was a big vacuum for Series A deals. That’s when we said, hey, we need to go and stake out that real estate, so that’s what we did.

SS: You were raising a first-time fund, though you had some venture experience. Presumably that helped?

RM: Barry and I and Peter [Nieh] and Chris [Schaepe] — we’d all known each other to some degree before. We’d all gone to school [at Stanford] around the same time. When we went to fundraise, I remember it was a little scary. We didn’t have a salary. We’d all done a little venture but not a lot. And there wasn’t as much venture capital firm formation as there is now, so we spent a lot of time meeting with LPs and they spent a lot of time looking at the four of us. [They wanted to know that we were] likely to stick together because it takes a long time to build a platform and a brand.

People spent a lot of time trying to figure that out about the four of us. Retrospectively, I’d say, almost 20 years later, [we were a good bet]. All four of us, we’re still working with each other. When we get mad, we might go and wrestle each other. But by and large, we’re working together and [are very much a team].

More here.

New Fundings

Clover Health, a three-year-old, San Francisco-based insurance startup that uses data science for preventative health care, has raised $130 million in new funding from GV and other investors, according to Bloomberg The new round reportedly values the company at $1.2 billion. More here.

Ontruck, a year-old, Madrid-based startup that has built an “on-demand logistics platform” to connect businesses directly with road freight carriers, has raised $10 million in Series A funding. The round was co-led by Atomico and Idinvest, with participation from earlier investors Point Nine Capital, La Famiglia, and Samaipata Ventures. TechCrunch has more here.

Sun Basket, a three-year-old, San Francisco-based meal kit startup with a focus on healthful recipes and organic ingredients, has raised $9 million in Series C-2 funding led by Unilever Ventures, with Baseline Ventures and Founders Circle Capital participating. The investment brings the startup’s total funding to $52 million. TechCrunch has more here.

Twiggle, a three-year-old, Tel Aviv-headquartered startup focused on simplifying product searches online, has raised $15 million led by MizMaa Ventures and Korea Investment Partners. The round brings the company’s funding to $33 million. TechCrunch has more here.

Vivid Vision, a three-year-old, San Francisco-based medical technology company applying virtual reality to the field of vision care, has raised $2.2 million dollars in seed funding led by SoftTech VC, with particiipation from The Venture Reality Fund, CRCM Ventures, SOS Ventures, Anorak Ventures, and Liquid 2 Ventures, a seed-stage venture capital firm co-founded by former NFL quarterback Joe Montana. More here.

New Funds

SignalFire, a four-year-old, San Francisco-based investment firm that touts data-focused investing as its competitive edge, has closed on $330 million in commitments across two funds, one of which focuses on seed and early-stage deals, and another that does growth investing. The firm had closed its debut fund with $53 million. The WSJ has more here.

Exits

Verizon is acquiring Straight Path Communications, a publicly traded wireless spectrum holder, for about $3.1 billion, after beating rival AT&T in an intense bidding. Why all the fuss? Because Straight Path holds licenses to use high-frequency radio waves that some engineers think could form the backbone of next-generation networks, explains the WSJ.

Cisco is paying $125 million to acquire MindMeld, a six-year-old, San Francisco-based startup that helps businesses to build conversational interfaces with cloud-based services, the companies announced this morning. MindMeld had raised $15.4 million in financing from GV, Greylock Partners, Bessemer Venture Partners and Intel Capital, among others. TechCrunch has more here.

Craftsy, a seven-year-old, Denver-based online destination for crafting enthusiasts, has sold to Comcast NBCUniversal for undisclosed terms. According to Crunchbase, the company had raised $106 million from investors, including Stripes Group and Adams Street Partners. The Hollywood Reporter has more here.

Google has acquired a 6.5-year-old VR game studio called Owlchemy for undisclosed terms. The company had raised $5 million in seed funding from Capital Factory, Qualcomm Ventures, Colopl VR Fund, HTC and The Venture Reality Fund. TechCrunch has more here.

People

Josh Mandel-Brehm is joining the venture firm Polaris Partners as an entrepreneur-in-residence, Mandel-Brehm previously held various business development and strategy positions at the publicly traded biotech company Biogen.

Data

Good news for VCs: So-called tourist investors — hedge funds, mutual funds, private equity investors — put just $12 billion to work in startups in the first quarter of this year, a decline of 42 percent from the year prior, according to PitchBook Data. More here.

Essential Reads

Uber, already dealing with a litany of crises, could also be facing an exodus of key talent, according to Recode, whose sources say some of the company’s engineers are looking to get out, owing in part to a lawsuit brought by rival Alphabet. More here.

Watch out Nest Labs. Andy Rubin is backing a new, smart camera startup that’s poised to give the Nest Cam a run for its money.

Amazon has apparently been blocking the price-crawling bots of competitors like Wal-Mart, making it difficult, if not impossible, to match the company’s ever-changing prices.

Detours

The Economist interviews Donald Trump, and the transcript is really something else.

According to the American Academy of Facial Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery, 42 percent of patients seek cosmetic procedures “to look better in selfies.” (!!)

Eek. Borrower fraud in U.S. auto loans is approaching levels seen in mortgages during last decade’s housing bubble, and it could potentially could ripple through the economy.

Retail Therapy

In Toronto, one of the city’s most expensive properties is up for sale. Here’s what $36 million gets you.

Hi, happy Wednesday, readers! What completely surreal times we’re living in suddenly, crickey.

Sponsored By . . .

StrictlyVC is being brought to you this week courtesy of Grand Central Tech. Its message to readers (and founders of budding startups, particularly):

Apply today for the Grand Central Tech Accelerator Program! Join the ranks of some of NYC’s premier startups in the single most comprehensive, entrepreneur-friendly program of its kind. GCT attracts top-tier startups, acquaints them with one another and with industry experts to the mutual benefit of all involved; offers relevant, programming tailored to each company’s specific needs; and then more or less gets out of the way. We do not take equity, we do not charge rent, and we aren’t needlessly disruptive. We only take 20 companies so we can concentrate on adding value as/where it’s needed. Applications are due THIS FRIDAY May 12th; we look forward to seeing yours.

The Three Things One Silicon Valley VC Wants to Hear on Snap’s First Earnings Call Tomorrow

Goodwater Capital, a two-year-old, San Mateo, Calif.-based early-stage venture firm, has been trying to stake out new territory for itself by publishing a steady stream of research and tools that help inform both competing firms and startup founders. One of those pieces of research was a detailed snapshot of the tech company Snap, which Goodwater published in early February, shortly before the company went public. (We wrote about it here.)

Three months later, armed with fresh survey data of 3,000 Americans across the country who Goodwater recently polled using a third-party service, firm co-founder Eric Kim — who isn’t a shareholder — says he’ll be listening for three things on Snap’s very first earnings call tomorrow:

1) Snapchat’s competitive response to Facebook’s steady stream of attacks on its core platform.

“Snapchat’s stories platform has maintained market share over the last six months, but during that same period, Facebook has converted a whole lot of non users into users of its own [stories] platform,” notes Kim. “While Snapchat had and still has 12 percent market share of the story user base, Facebook has now grabbed 14 percent market share,” with Instagram Stories now claiming 200 million daily active users versus Snapchat’s 158 million users.

It matters how Snap plans to respond, of course, because Facebook’s success and Snapchat’s future are more directly correlated than Snap might like. Which raises the second issue that Kim will be focused on, and that is:

2) Snap’s daily active user outlook. 

“The expectation for this quarter is that Snap will add anywhere from seven to nine million users from the previous quarter,” says Kim. What Goodwater sees in its survey data might concern shareholders, however.

“Fifty-nine percent of respondents under age 30 said they use Snapchat, and 81 percent said they use Facebook, so the [two platforms] aren’t mutually exclusive,” he notes. That’s the good news. Here comes the problem:

More here.

New Fundings

Ceres Imaging, a three-year-old, Oakland, Ca.-based startup that uses cameras, sensors, and software to pinpoint crop stress in the field for farmers, has raised $5 million in Series A funding led by Romulus Capital. TechCrunch has more here.

Cockroach Labs, a two-year-old, New York-based open-source database service that’s optimized to reduce downtime, has raised $27 million in Series B funding led by Redpoint Ventures, with participation from Benchmark (which led the company’s Series A in 2015), GV, Index Ventures, and FirstMark Capital. TechCrunch has more here.

Dropoff, a three-year-old, Austin, Tex.-based on-demand, same-day delivery service for businesses, has raised $8.5 million in Series B funding led by Fulcrum Equity Partners in Atlanta. Other participants in the round include earlier backers Greycroft Partners and Correlation Ventures. The Austin American Statesman has more here.

eRelevance, a nearly four-year-old, Austin, Tex.-based maker of customer marketing automation software, has raised $5.1 million in funding led by Rally Ventures, with participation from Chicago Ventures, Miramar Venture Partners, Martin Investment Holdings, and Capital Factory. Silicon Hills has more here.

G-Banker, a four-year-old, Beijing-based online-to-offline gold-trading platform, has raised $29 million in Series C funding. BOC International led the round and was joined by Guangkong Zhongying Capital, SBCVC, and Radiant Venture Capital. Asian Venture Capital Journal has more here. (Subscription required.)

Gainsight, a 5.5-year-old, Redwood City, Ca.-based maker of so-called customer success software, has raised $52 million in Series E funding led by earlier backer Lightspeed Venture Partners, with participation from Cisco, along with all of the company’s previous backers. Gainsight has now raised more than $150 million altogether. Forbes has more here.

Hesai, a four-year-old, Shanghai-based developer of LiDAR sensors, has raised $16 million in Series A funding led by Pagoda Investment, with participation from Grains Valley Venture Capital, Jiangmen Venture Capital and LightHouse Capital Management. China Money Network has more here.

Kreditech, a five-year-old, Hamburg, Germany-based company that creates credit ratings and provides finance to people without credit histories, has raised $120 million from PayU, a payments company that’s owned by Naspers and known by some as the “PayPal of emerging markets.” TechCrunch has much more here.

Latch, a three-year-old, New York-based smart lock maker, has added $10 million in addition funding to a previous closed Series A round. The new capital comes from RRE Ventures, with earlier backers participating. The company has now raised $26 million altogether. TechCrunch has more here.

Hi, all happy Tuesday! Is it too early to get excited about another showdown between the Cavs and the Warriors? Because it looks like it’s a’ comin’. [Biceps flex.]

Top News in the A.M.

Benchmark, the storied early-stage venture firm, has added a new general partner, Sarah Tavel, it announced this morning, saying that Tavel’s “career-long desire and commitment to be one of the world’s great venture capitalists” makes her an “ideal addition” to the Benchmark team. Tavel is the first female general partner in the firm’s 22-year history. Much more here.

Sponsored By . . .

StrictlyVC is being brought to you this week courtesy of Grand Central Tech. Its message to readers (and founders of budding startups, particularly):

Apply today for the Grand Central Tech Accelerator Program! Join the ranks of some of NYC’s premier startups in the single most comprehensive, entrepreneur-friendly program of its kind. GCT attracts top-tier startups, acquaints them with one another and with industry experts to the mutual benefit of all involved; offers relevant, programming tailored to each company’s specific needs; and then more or less gets out of the way. We do not take equity, we do not charge rent, and we aren’t needlessly disruptive. We only take 20 companies so we can concentrate on adding value as/where it’s needed. Applications are due THIS FRIDAY May 12th; we look forward to seeing yours.

This Venture-Backed Company Just Filed for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy — to Resolve a Patent Dispute

In the world of venture-funded companies, not much surprises industry observers. Yet a new strategy employed by one privately held company might have founders and venture investors wondering if it’s a maneuver worth replicating.

What happened: The U.S. subsidiary of a venture-backed Berlin-based search optimization company called Searchmetrics just filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in Delaware.

Why it’s interesting: Sources close to Searchmetrics say the company was forced to file to escape a longstanding battle with venture-backed competitor BrightEdge, based in Menlo Park. Specifically, Searchmetrics alleges that BrightEdge stole its intellectual property, then filed for patents around it. (Searchmetrics says it had patents on its technology in Europe but failed to secure similar patents in the U.S., which created an opening for BrightEdge to exploit.)

Here’s how Searchmetrics’s chief restructuring officer, Wayne Weitz, describes the companies’ rivalry in a letter he submitted to the court today: “One of the [Searchmetrics’s] primary competitors in the U.S. market is BrightEdge Technologies [which] sought to acquire or merge with Searchmetrics in or about October of 2013. During acquisition discussions, BrightEdge became privy to Searchmetrics’ confidential, proprietary, competitive information and business practices, including its business model and growth plans. Ultimately, Searchmetrics and BrightEdge could not agree on terms and the acquisition discussions fell apart.

“Unbeknownst to Searchmetrics, whilst in the midst of the acquisition discussions, BrightEdge developed a campaign to eliminate [Searchmetrics’s] presence in the U.S. market. BrightEdge started by engaging in a smear campaign designed to lure the Debtor’s customers and prospective customers to BrightEdge by making false and disparaging statements about Searchmetrics’s products, and then initiated vexatious, baseless, and prolonged litigation against [Searchmetrics] on two fronts. This Chapter 11 Case was initiated to bring [this litigation] to an expeditious and cost-effective end to permit the Debtor to reorganize, failing which, [Searchmetrics] will be liquidated.”

More here.

New Fundings

Cabify, a 5.5-year-old, Madrid, Spain-based company that’s among the biggest ride-sharing companies in Latin America, Spain and Portugal, has raised $100 million in new funding, according to a Form D SEC filing for Maxi Mobility, as the company is officially called. The money is reportedly part of a total of $500 million that the company hopes to raise in a Series D round.TechCrunch has more here.

Cover, a year-old, L.A.-based technology company that designs and manufactures custom backyard studios, has raised $1.6 million in seed funding from General Catalyst and Khosla Ventures, with participation from Fifty Years, Hyperspeed Ventures, and angel investors (We didn’t realize backyard studios were a thing. Did you know this?) More here.

Donut Media, a two-year-old, L.A.-based digital media company that aims to create viral automotive video content for car enthusiasts, has raised $800,000 in seed funding from Techstars Ventures, 3311 Ventures, Fontinalis Partners and professional driver Ryan Tuerck. More here.

Empower, a year-old, San Francisco-based startup whose app aims to help millennials better manage their finances, has raised an undisclosed amount of seed funding led by Sequoia Capital. More here.

Finxact, a year-old, Jacksonville, Fla.-based company behind a completely open banking API, has raised $12 million in seed funding, including from Live Oak Ventures. More here.

Freska, a two-year-old, Helsinki, Finland-based on-demand home cleaning service, has raised €2 million in new funding led by Sweden’s Spintop Ventures, with participation from Norway’s Momentum Partners.  TechCrunch has more here.

Grammarly, an eight-year-old, San Francisco-based startup that underlines awkward words and phrases in users’ writing and makes suggestions, similar to a feature in Microsoft, has raised a stunning $110 million in funding. General Catalyst led the round, with participation from Breyer Capital, IVP, SignalFire and Spark Capital. Bloomberg has more here.

Podium, a 3.5-year-old, Utah-based enterprise software company specializing in customer review management, has raised $32 million in Series A funding, led by Accel Partners, with participation from GV, Summit Partners, and Y Combinator.(Podium was in YC’s winter 2016 batch). TechCrunch has more here.

Redlock, a two-year-old, Menlo Park, Ca.-based company that works with cloud infrastructure vendors to warn users or fix user errors that could expose their data, has raised $12 million in funding across two previously undisclosed Series A and seed rounds that included participation from Sierra Ventures, Storm Ventures, and Dell Technologies Capital, among others. More here.

Signal Sciences, a three-year-old, Venice Beach, Ca.-based startup that wants to help companies secure their web apps in a modern DevOps context, has raised $15 million in funding led by CRV, with participation from Harrison Medal, Index Ventures and OATV. TechCrunch has more here.

StarLeaf, a nine-year-old, U.K.-based startup that sells cloud-based video and conferencing services to businesses, has raised $40 million in a round that represents its first institutional capital. The financing was co-led by Highland Europe and Grafton Capital. TechCrunch has more here.

Tubi TV, a three-year-old, San Francisco-based free streaming TV and movie network, has raised $20 million in funding led by Jump Capital, with participation from Danhua Capital, Cota Capital, and earlier backer Foundation Capital, which had led the company’s Series A round. More here.

Updox, a nine-year-old, Dublin, Oh.-based company that sells communication and document management software to medical practices, physicians, and providers in North America, has raised $12.7M in Series B funding led by TT Capital Partners. Other investors include Tamarind Hill and earlier backer, Rev1 Ventures. More here.

New Funds

Dell said yesterday that it has combined the venture capital operations from its two predecessor companies, computer maker Dell and data storage firm EMC, and that the new unit intends to invest $100 million a year in startups. Reuters has more here.

Peak Ventures, a 2.5-year-old, Utah-based seed-stage venture firm, has closed on $50 million in capital commitments for its second fund, more than double the $23 million it had raised for its debut effort. Investments include local startups Owlet and Homie, as well as the New York-based Nigerian education startup Andela. TechCrunch has more here.

Exits

Coach is buying rival Kate Spade & Co. for $2.4 billion, reports the WSJ. Coach is looking to tap younger consumers amid slowing growth in the handbag market, as women snap up smaller, less expensive purses, as well as seek out aggressively discounted bag in stores and online. More here.

Maple, a prepared food delivery startup that had raised more than $25 million from investors, is ending its operations in New York, the only city it served. TechCrunch has more here.

Media Prima, a Malaysia-listed firm with its hand in print, radio and TV media, announced a deal to acquire new media startup Rev Asia for approximately $24.2 million. Rev Asia was found 17 years ago in Kuala Lumpur and went public on a the Kuala Lumpur Stock Exchange in 2011. TechCrunch has more here.

The publicly traded streaming music service Pandora is set to sell a big chunk of its business to private equity’s KKR, but it would rather find a buyer, sounds like. TechCrunch has more here.

People

Francisco Riordan, once a lead developer at the San Francisco venture firm Rothenberg Ventures, says he’s the one who exposed the firm’s alleged self-dealing to the SEC. He talks with Bloomberg about a story that TechCrunch first broke last summer. (Our colleague over at TC, Sarah Buhr, wrote more recently on founder Mike Rothenberg’s attempt to keep his firm up and running here.)

Essential Reads

Amazon just unveiled the Echo Show, a WiFi-enabled home device with a seven-inch screen that plays media and responds to voice commands. TechCrunch has more here.

The intense deal making in Silicon Valley in recent years has attracted hordes of investment banks. Now Rothchild and Company is setting up shop in San Francisco, too, says Dealbook.

And this is interesting: According to Bloomberg, China’s contract manufacturers are cutting out the middle man — venture capitalists — and instead seeking out entrepreneurs themselves and building the founders’ designs in hopes of finding the next must-have device.

Detours

Fancy prisons for billionaires (are reshaping New York’s skyline).

Tiffany Trump is heading to Washington.

You will *never* see a better ad for a used car.

Retail Therapy

For the teenage monster in your life.

Hi, welcome back, everyone! Hope you had a lovely weekend.

Huge thanks again to everyone who came to our event last week; you make these really enjoyable for us.:) We finally have pictures posted. You can check them out here.

You can read about our interview with Confide CEO Jon Brod, who kicked off the evening, below. And if you missed it, here’s our interview with The RealReal’s Julie Wainwright, who shared some interesting industry trends, as well as announced that her company is trying to open its first brick-and-mortar store in New York.

Top News in the A.M.

Amazon will completely dominate the voice-controlled speaker market in 2017, according to a new forecast from eMarketer that predicts Amazon will own 70.6 percent of all voice-enabled speaker users in the U.S. this year. In stark contrast, Google Home’s market share will reach just 23.8 percent, suggests eMarketer. TechCrunch has the story here.

Sponsored By . . .

StrictlyVC is being brought to you this week courtesy of Grand Central Tech, which asks that readers: Apply today for the Grand Central Tech Accelerator Program! Join the ranks of some of NYC’s premier startups in the single most comprehensive, entrepreneur-friendly program of its kind. GCT attracts top-tier startups, acquaints them with one another and with industry experts to the mutual benefit of all involved; offers relevant, programming tailored to each company’s specific needs; and then more or less gets out of the way. We do not take equity, we do not charge rent, and we aren’t needlessly disruptive. We only take 20 companies so we can concentrate on adding value as/where it’s needed. Applications are due THIS FRIDAY May 12th; we look forward to seeing yours.

Confide CEO Jon Brod on the White House, Bad Press, and What’s Next for His Secure Messaging App

At a recent StrictlyVC event in San Francisco, I sat down with Confide co-founder and president Jon Brod to talk with him about his decidedly topsy-turvy 2017. Though his three-year-old messaging app was the belle of the ball at the start of the year — Wired, The Washington Post and Axios were among others to note it was a hit with frustrated White House staffers — its positive momentum was abruptly thwarted by security researchers who published a report saying the app wasn’t living up to its claims.

It was subsequently reported that Confide had quickly addressed those vulnerabilities. Yet roughly one month later, a separate lawsuit followed, claiming that another of its features isn’t foolproof.

Brod and I discussed that ongoing case. He also talked about the app’s future, which will likely include video (assuming Confide can shake off that suit first). More from our chat below, edited for length.

You worked for the NBA, for Ask Jeeves, for IAC, then you spent four years at AOL, including as the co-founder of AOL Ventures. How did you wind up running a secure messaging app company?

I’d spent four years at AOL in various executive positions. I was going to leave and, serendipitously, Howard Lerman, who’s also the founder and CEO of [the newly public company] Yext, emailed me about wanting to hire someone who used to work with me at AOL. It took many missed phone calls and traded emails before we connected six days later [because we didn’t want to discuss anything sensitive online], and that was sort of the “aha” moment for Confide. So we gathered up some engineers, prototyped Confide, and started the company.

How much funding have you raised?

We initially raised just less than $2 million, including from SV Angel, [investor] David Tisch, GV, [Yelp CEO] Jeremy Stoppelman, WTI and First Round Capital, among others. A year ago, we closed a $1.5 million seed extension round, so [it’s] $3.4 million all in.

How many people use Confide?

You know I’m not going to tell you that. [Laughs.] We don’t give out user numbers, but also, as a confidential messenger service, we actually can’t track a ton of stuff. Almost everything we track is in aggregate and anonymous.

I love Confide, but I turn to it for very specific use cases. On average, how often do people open the app?

There’s this cohort for whom [Confide] is what they use as their everyday [messaging service] and the [daily and monthly active users] on that is fantastic. Then there are people, I guess like you, that, when there are confidential sensitive things, you use Confide, and you use other messenger platforms and email [for other communications]. I use iMessenger all the time, but when it comes to sensitive material, I mean, you’re insane if you’re still using regular text and email.

Speaking of leaks, you had some amazing press earlier this year, with a number of accounts about all the unhappy White House staffers who use Confide. Were you aware that it had taken off in Washington or did you see it in the news?

Here’s how that went down: I got a Confide message in December from a former high school classmate, and he said, “Did you know a lot of Trump’s transition team is using Confide?” And I said, “No, how do you know?” And he said, “They’re contacting me on Confide.”

Not long after, Axios reached out to me and said, “We’re on Confide and we’re noticing a stream of GOP political operatives coming on to the system and we’d love to talk with you about it.” So I do that interview, [Axios co-founder] Mike Allen runs it in his daily newsletter, and everyone starts calling us.

More here.

New Fundings

Cornershop, a two-year-old, San Francisco-based grocery-delivery app tailored for the Latin American market, has raised $21 million in funding led by Accel Partners. TechCrunch has more here.

Flex Logix, a 2.5-year-old, Mountain View, Ca.-based supplier of embedded FPGA IP and software, has raised $5 million in Series B funding led by earlier backers Lux Capital and Eclipse Ventures, with participation from the Tate Family Trust. More here.

Fortem Technologies, a year-old, Provo, Utah-based startup whose technology is designed to hunt and take down unwanted drones, has $5.5 million in fresh seed funding co-led by Signia Venture Partners and Data Collective. TechCrunch has more here.

Garena, an eight-year-old, Singapore-based online games and shopping company, has rebranded as Sea Ltd. after raising $550 million in fresh funds to compete with e-commerce giant Alibaba and others. Some of the region’s wealthiest families participated in the new round, including GDP Venture, led by Martin Hartono, the son of Indonesia’s richest man, and JG Summit Holdings, founded by Philippine billionaire John Gokongwei. Bloomberg has the story here.

Hadean, a 2.5-year-old, London-based startup that claims to enable a single developer to write and run code at any scale using their existing tool chain and without the need for any ops or tuning, has raised $2.6 million in seed funding. White Cloud Capital led the round, with participation from Entrepreneur First. TechCrunch has more here.

Kobalt, a 17-year-old, New York-based company whose technology and platform collects music royalties by tracking when even a sample of a song is played across multiple platforms, has raised $75 million in Series D funding at a post-money valuation of $775 million. Hearst Entertainment led the round, with participation from earlier investors Balderton Capital and MSD, the investment firm for Michael Dell and his family. Kobalt has now raised 275 million altogether. TechCrunch has more here.

MariaDB Corporation, the eight-year-old, Menlo Park, Ca.-based company behind MariaDB, a fast-growing relational database, has raised $27 million from the European Investment Bank, in a round that’s effectively a long-term loan, combined with some equity. TechCrunch explains here.

Plume, which makes a “router-killer” that intelligently balances home bandwidth between devices and offers plug-in pods that extend Wi-Fi throughout the home, has raised a new round of funding led Comcast. The company isn’t disclosing the exact amount of funding, but last month, Axios spied an SEC funding that disclosed Plume had already raised $27.5 million in new financing and was targeting up to $37.5 million. TechCrunch has more here.

Smule, a nine-year-old, San Francisco-based social media music company, has raised $54 million in new funding led by Tencent Holdings, with participation from earlier backers Adams Street Partners and Bessemer Ventures. The round gives  Smule a valuation of $604 million, according to a Reuters source. More here.

New Funds

Blue Run Ventures, a nearly 19-year-old, Menlo Park, Ca.-based venture firm that began life as the corporate venture unit of Nokia (but has been an independent firm with mostly other outside LPs for the last 12 years), is raising up to $200 million for its sixth fund, shows an SEC filing. The firm closed its previous fund with $200 million in 2015. More here.

Exits

Mail.ru has acquired Russian food delivery startup ZakaZaka in an all-cash deal that values the company at $20 million. The Russia internet giant had previously invested in the startup, owning 9.91%. Tech.eu has more here.

People

David Buttress, who joined the takeout marketplace Just Eat in 2006 and served as its CEO until February, is joining 83North as a general partner, reports TechCrunch. He’ll be based in London. More here.

Harry Stebbings, the young host of the “20 MInute VC” podcast, has concluded his stint as an EIR with Atomico, reports Business Insider. More here.

Uber has hired leading AI researcher and University of Toronto associate professor Raquel Urtasun to head up its self-driving efforts in Canada. Recode has more here.

Data

According to China’s National Bureau of Statistics, Chinese consumers spent $750 billion online in 2016 — more than the U.S and the U.K. combined. Boston Consulting Group has now published a paper on how differently China’s digital marketplaces, platforms, and online behaviors have evolved compared with Western markets. More here.

Essential Reads

Harvard Management Company is looking to sell more than $2.5 billion of private equity, venture capital and real estate investments, Axios is reporting this morning. Apparently, its new leadership wants to start from scratch.

According to Bloomberg, WeWork has been “beset by a growing number of allegations over unfair pay, miscategorization of workers and other forms of employee mistreatment. Some of these have resulted in legal disputes, and now the company is under scrutiny by state and federal authorities.” (We’re sitting down with CEO Adam Neumann in New York one week from today at TechCrunch Disrupt; we’ll ask about this and much more.)

Is the gig economy working? The New Yorker takes a look.

Detours

We’re suckers for a great love story.

This glass-enclosed bedroom is pretty neat, too.

Good news for misunderstood roommates everywhere: People who spend an hour at a time daydreaming, who swear, who meditate, who compost food scraps, and/or who lounge around the house buck naked tend to be associated with higher intellect, suggests this new paper.

Retail Therapy

Kassa Liquid Chalk Markers. You’ll want these at some point.

Thank you, thank you to everyone who came out to our event in San Francisco last night. We had so much fun!

These things are always a little nerve-racking to put together but well worth the effort, and last night was no exception, owing to our wonderful speakers, our sponsors, and our hosts. We’ll have much more on the discussions — with Confide’s Jon Brod, Impossible Foods’s Patrick Brown, and Lightspeed’s Ravi Mhatre and Barry Eggers — very soon, along with pictures and video. (You can catch our interview with The RealReal’s Julie Wainwright below.)

We also want to thank one last time our partners in the event: Square 1 Bank, Rosebud Communications, Bullish, and Haystack. Your support made it much easier for us to do our job last night.

One final note to the generous team at NextWorld Capital: Thank you so much for hosting all of us, and for the second time, no less. We can’t tell you how much we appreciated it.

It’s a long ways off, but if you want to mark it on your calendars, we’ll be hosting our next party on September 27, a Thursday night, in San Francisco. More details to come this summer.:)

(P.S. Sorry for the very short newsletter. Crazed morning. Running out the door. More Monday.)

Top News in the A.M.

The Justice Department has reportedly opened a criminal probe into Uber’s use of Greyball software to evade regulators. Reuters has more here.

Sponsored By . . .

StrictlyVC has been sponsored this week by the Bay Area firm Greenbrier. Scandal; injury; breach; litigation; presidential tweet. Crises can damage your corporate brand, personal reputation, employee morale and have lasting financial impacts. That’s why you need Greenbrier. We provide crisis planning, strategic advice and tactical execution to clients facing complex image, marketing, branding, media, legal and political challenges. With more than 30 years experience predicting, mitigating, managing and building resilience against reputational risks, Greenbrier can help.

The RealReal is Opening a Real Store in New York (and Other News from CEO Julie Wainwright)

At an event in San Francisco last night I sat down with The RealReal founder and CEO Julie Wainwright, who is renowned in startup circles for a variety of things, including her role in winding down the e-commerce company Pets.com during the dot.com era; being one of the bigger personalities in the industry; and launching what’s become one of the fastest-growing consignment startups among a handful that received funding roughly six years ago.

Some no longer exist. The RealReal has meanwhile garnered $123 million in venture funding and says it’s on track to see $500 million in gross merchandise value this year — nearly half of it through the company’s mobile app.

She attributed that success so far to zeroing in on the luxury market, taking possession of consigners’ products and focusing on trust above all else, by ensuring that every item that The RealReal sells to a customer has been inspected and authenticated before it gets shipped out the door. She also said the company is weighing a strategy of opening a series of brick-and-mortar stores, starting first with one New York location that’s currently in the works.

Excerpts from our sit-down, edited for length and clarity, follow:

You’ve raised a lot of money, including a $40 million Series E round last year, but you’re also very much in growth mode. For the VCs in the audience: might you raise another round anytime soon?

No. We’re good for a while.

You started with apparel, but you sold $100 million in watches and fine jewelry last year. Is that now your best-selling category?

The reason we went into jewelry was we were trying to cater to our consigner base, who was saying, “Can you sell this for me? Can you sell that?” And we said, “You can bring in your jewelry and watches; we have a gemology and a watch expert on site.” And it just exploded our business.

You’re talking about valuation offices, which you’ve been launching across the U.S. over the last 18 months. You and I talked about these recently, but they seem to be underreported.

It’s true. We did a little test in Midtown [in New York] around 18 months ago. We now have six offices across the U.S. and soon to be seven. We wanted people to comparison shop because we know you make two-and-a-half to three times more money if you sell your fine jewelry to us. We also wanted to remove any friction. [Jewelry consignment] is sort of weird space. If you’ve ever tried to sell jewelry to anyone else, it’s a pawn shop environment; it’s a little gross. So we wanted to bring the whole process up front, have a discussion with people, and have it be transparent and respectful.

Back to your best-selling items . . .

For men, it’s Rolex. For women, there are three across all age groups: Chanel, Hermes and Louis Vuitton.

Meaning clothing or jewelry or both?

Apparel is our number-one product in unit and dollars.

Are men buying or selling on The RealReal? What’s the gender breakdown?

We actually don’t get enough men’s consignment, so it sells through faster. Twenty percent of our shoppers are men who are shopping for themselves. They’re buying watches, primarily, and leather goods, but also apparel. Their average order size is smaller, but you men [in the audience] don’t like to return things, despite that we have a return policy. So that’s good; it all evens out. [Laughs.]

What percentage of shoppers are also consigning items?

More here.

New Fundings

Devicare, a four-year-old, Barcelona, Spain-based maker of remote patient monitoring software, has raised €3 million ($3.3 million) in seed funding from EMESA Corporación Empresarial and numerous family offices. More here.

Outset Medical, a 14-year-old, San Jose, Ca.-based medical device company that makes dialysis machines, has raised $76.5 million in Series C funding led by T. Rowe Price Associates, with participation from Fidelity Management & Research Company, Partner Fund Management LP, Warburg Pincus, Perceptive Advisors and The Vertical Group. FierceBiotech has more here.

Essential Reads

It looks like Amazon’s Video app is finally coming to Apple TV this summer.

Detours

The world’s cheapest cities for a date . . .according to Deutsche Bank(?).

Retail Therapy

The BumpBoxx boom box. (Scientifically proven to win back lost love.)

Thursday! We’re so excited to see everyone who’s coming tonight!

We have some last-minute prep to do, so we’re sending out a short edition this morning; we’ll have more for you tomorrow.:)

Top News in the A.M.

Treak out the popcorn. Angered by Apple‘s decision to stop paying it billions of dollars in licensing fees for smartphone chips, Qualcomm is planning to ask a U.S. trade agency to ban the imports of iPhones, says Bloomberg. More here.

Imagination Technologies, a U.K.-based chip designer that Apple plans to ditch in 2019, is gearing up for a fight with the tech giant, too, says Ars Technica.

Sponsored By . . .

StrictlyVC is sponsored this week by the Bay Area firm Greenbrier. Scandal; injury; breach; litigation; presidential tweet. Crises can damage your corporate brand, personal reputation, employee morale and have lasting financial impacts. That’s why you need Greenbrier. We provide crisis planning, strategic advice and tactical execution to clients facing complex image, marketing, branding, media, legal and political challenges. With more than 30 years experience predicting, mitigating, managing and building resilience against reputational risks, Greenbrier can help.

Despite Setbacks, Soylent Laps Up $50M in New Funding

Soylent, a four-year-old, L.A.-based company that’s centered around what it calls a meal replacement drink, has taken its licks in recent years. But a group of investors is betting Soylent’s best days are ahead of the company; they just provided it with $50 million in fresh funding in a round that brings Soylent’s total funding to $74.5 million.

GV’s Andy Wheeler — who focuses in part on GV’s food and agriculture-related investments — led the round and joins Soylent’s board of directors as part of the deal. Other participants in the new funding include Tao Capital Partners and earlier backers Lerer Hippeau Ventures and Andreessen Horowitz.

Silicon Valley is notorious for funding companies that are the subject of ridicule. Even still, this new funding may take some industry watchers by surprise.

From the outset, Soylent has been an easy target for people who enjoy food. When Soylent CEO Rob Rhinehart appeared on comedian Stephen Colbert’s show a few years ago, Colbert asked, “What was the inspiration for this? Did you see someone in a coma with a feeding tube, and you thought, ‘I’ll have what he’s having‘?”

Customers lost their humor last year when they became violently ill after consuming Soylent’s powder mix and protein bars. The company, which determined the cause was algae-based ingredients, quickly reformulated the powder. It has yet to re-introduce its bars.

Just last week, Soylent received yet more unwanted attention after issuing a voluntary recall. The reason, said the company; it discovered that a small amount of milk product may have slipped into some batches of one of its powders that’s advertised as free of lactose and milk products.

Over the phone with us yesterday, Rhinehart said the company has learned from its mistakes and that it’s “gone a long way in improving our ingredient and supplier diligence.”

More here.

(Other) New Fundings

Crew, a 2.5-year-old, San Francisco-based communications platform for mobile workers, has raised $25 million across two previously unannounced rounds led by Greylock Partners. Forbes has more here.

Fastdata.io, a year-old, Santa Monica, Ca.-based data processing company that has yet to launch publicly, has raised $1.5 million in seed funding, including from Nvidia. More here.

Hi, happy Wednesday!

Top News in the A.M.

Apple reported its first quarter results yesterday and they were, meh. Revenue rose just 5 percent to $52.9 billion, and iPhones sales have been slipping. Bloomberg has more here.

Cloud communications company Twilio has also had better Tuesdays. Yesterday, it lost more than a quarter of its valuation in the first 20 minutes of after-hours trading after reporting a lower-than-expected outlook and “changes in the relationship” with its largest customer, Uber. SiliconAngle has more here.

Facebook says it’s now hiring 3,000 more people to monitor Facebook Live and keep murders, suicides and other horrifying content off the platform.

Sponsored By. . .

StrictlyVC is sponsored this week by the Bay Area firm Greenbrier. Scandal; injury; breach; litigation; presidential tweet. Crises can damage your corporate brand, personal reputation, employee morale and have lasting financial impacts. That’s why you need Greenbrier. We provide crisis planning, strategic advice and tactical execution to clients facing complex image, marketing, branding, media, legal and political challenges. With more than 30 years experience predicting, mitigating, managing and building resilience against reputational risks, Greenbrier can help.

How Softbank Became Tech’s Phantom Buyer

SoftBank is making quite a name for itself, but in ways it might not expect. Hardly a week has passed in 2017 when a headline hasn’t reported that SoftBank — the multinational conglomerate currently raising a stunning $100 billion fund — is in financial talks to invest in yet another tech company.

This week, SoftBank is reportedly in discussions to pour $1.4 billion into the India-based digital payments company Paytm. Last week, it was reported to be close to an investment in Improbable Worlds, a London-based virtual reality startup backed by Andreessen Horowitz. Last month, the reports centered on talks that SoftBank is having with coworking giant WeWork about a new round of funding that could reach into the billions of dollars. (So far, $300 million has come through.)

Even news of the ostensible closing of SoftBank’s new Vision Fund — which is unprecedented in its size — was leaked in February. The reality, say sources familiar with the fund, is that it could be another six to nine months before every i is dotted and t is crossed, given how many investors, countries and regulators are involved.

Certainly, some of these deals will happen as widely anticipated. SoftBank’s negotiations with Didi Chuxing, China’s ride-hailing giant, were leaked to the media nearly one month ago; the deal was made official this week.

Last October, it was reported that SoftBank was in talks with the satellite internet startup OneWeb about a strategic tie-up. SoftBank invested $1 billion in the company two months later. (In February, it invested another $1.7 billion into a merger that will see OneWeb combine with competitor Intelsat.)

Still, the internet is littered with stories of companies that were reportedly on the verge of sealing a deal with SoftBank and that did not. Last month, it scrapped a planned $100 million investment it was to make in renowned entrepeneur Andy Rubin’s newest startup. In 2014, it was reported to be eyeing an investment in the mobile giant Vodaphone Group; nothing came of it. Last year, at least a dozen outlets reported that SoftBank was in talks to buy a 20 percent stake in the beleaguered Indian handset maker Micromax Informatics for up to $1 billion. That deal never closed, and one source familiar with SoftBank’s thinking says it was “all bullshit. There was zero chance they  would even consider investing in Micromax.”

Talk Talk

For venture industry watchers, such leaks are highly unusual, to say the least. The typical modus operandi in VC land is to “keep quiet if you have an inside track on an investment, because you don’t want to create competition,” notes Tom Peters, the founding partner and managing director of the advisory services firm Inverness Advisors.

“Obviously, there are [venture] players that pay attention to each other and compete for deals and have relationships with the same founders, and they’d rather keep what they’re doing quiet until a deal is done.”

More here.

New Fundings

Abundant Robotics, a year-old, Hayward, Ca.-based company whose apple-picking robots could eventually be adapted to harvest other fruits, has raised $10 million in Series A funding led by GV, with participation from BayWa AG, Tellus Partners, and earlier backers Yamaha Motor Company, KPCB Edge and Comet Labs. TechCrunch has more here.

Agolo, a 4.5-year-old, New York-based company that aims to help companies fight information overload through its AI-powered summarization software, has raised $3.5 million in seed funding co-led by Microsoft Ventures and CRV, with participation from Point72 Ventures and Franklin Templeton. VentureBeat has more here.

AltSchool, the four-year-old, San Francisco-based experimental school operator that has also begun licensing its educational tools, just raised roughly $40 million in a new round of funding that could reach $80 million, shows an SEC filing. The company had previously raised just over $133 million from investors, including Andreessen Horowitz, First Round Capital and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Axios has more here.

Bonsai, a two-year-old, Berkeley, Ca.-based AI enterprise development startup, has raised raised $7.6 million in funding co-led by Microsoft Ventures and New Enterprise Associates, with participation from Samsung, Siemens, and ABB Technology Ventures. VentureBeat has more here.

Cerevance, a 1.5-year-old, Cambridge, Ma.-based neuroscience drug discovery company, has raised $5 million in funding from The Dementia Discovery Fund. More here.

Decibel Insight, a three-year-old, U.K.-based startup whose analytics aim to help large companies understand how customers interact with their sites and apps, has raised $9 million in Series A funding led by Eight Road Ventures, with participation from John Simon, via his Ventureforgood investment entity. TechCrunch has more here.

Fornova, a nine-year-old, Israel-based company that makes market intelligence software for the travel and retail markets, has raised $17 million in Series B funding. Deutsche Telekom Capital Partners led the round and was joined by Waypoint Capital and return backer JAL Ventures. TNooz has more here.

Lantern Pharma, a four-year-old, Dallas, Tex.-based biotechnology company at work on cancer therapeutics, has raised $3.7 million in Series A funding co-led by Bios Partners and GPG Ventures. More here.

Next Insurance, a year-old, Palo Alto, Ca.-based digital insurance company that partners with existing insurance providers and caters to small to medium businesses, has raised $29 million in Series A funding led by Munich Re/HSB Ventures, with participation from Markel and Nationwide. VentureBeat has more here.

PreparedHealth, a two-year-old, Chicago-based health engagement platform that aims to help patients recover more quickly outside of the hospital, has raised $4 million in funding led by Chicago Ventures, with participation from Pritzker Group Venture Capital, Beverly Capital, and Meridian Street Capital. Crain’s Chicago Business has more here.

Spindrift, a seven-year-old, Waltham, Ma.-based maker of fruit-flavored sparking waters, has raised $10 million in growth equity funding led by VMG Partners, with participation from Prolog Ventures and Karp Reilly. More here.

WuXi NextCODE, a four-year-old, Shanghai, China and Cambridge, Ma.-based contract genomics company, has raised $75 million in Series B funding. Yunfeng Capital and Temasek co-led the round, and were joined by Amgen Ventures and 3W Partners. Bloomberg has more here.

Yieldify, a five-year-old, London-based company that builds tools to increase conversions on sites and through email campaigns, has raised $6 million in new funding led by Binomial Ventures, with participation from Tom Singh, founder of the fashion chain New Look; and John Giuliani, CEO of the digital marketing company Conversant, who also joined the board. Earlier backers did not participate in the new round; Yieldify has now raised $20 million altogether. TechCrunch has more here.

New Funds

VC David Mount and his clean tech investing team at Kleiner Perkins are spinning out from the firm, shows an SEC filing. The new firm, called G2VP is looking to close its debut fund with $275 million and has already held a first close, says Term Sheet. Contact info is here if you’re looking to get in touch with them.

Longtime investors Maia Heymann and Nilanjana Bhowmik have created their own Boston-based venture firm, Converge, to focus on business-to-business opportunities. Heyman was most recently a general partner at Converge Venture Partners, a separate firm in Cambridge, Ma.; Bhowmik was a general partner at Longworth Venture Partners in Waltham. The Boston Globe has more here.

IPOs

ShotSpotter, a 22-year-old, Newark, Ca.-based public safety technology company that’s best known for its gunshot location systems (and that more recently renamed itself SST Inc.), has filed to go public, revealing initial plans to raise $34.5 million. Its biggest outside shareholder is Lauder Partners, which owns 37.4 percent of the company. According to Crunchbase, the company has raised roughly $68 million altogether over the years. More here.

Exits

Publicly traded Quotient Technology has agreed to acquire Crisp Mobile, a 16-year-old, New York-based mobile marketing and advertising company, for $53 million. According to Crunchbase, Crisp had raised $16 million in funding, including from Meritage Funds, Intel Capital and EDB Investments. The New York Business Journal has more here.

After shutting down its public cloud last year, Verizon is now selling its private cloud business to IBM. ZDNet has more here.

Whirlpool Corporation, the home appliance company, is acquiring Yummly, a Redwood City, Ca.-based food discovery platform for undisclosed terms. Yummly had raised $22.8 million from investors, including First Round Capital, Harrison Metal, Intel Capital, Physic Ventures, and Unilever Ventures. In a press release, Whirlpool explained away the seemingly strange move as a way to strengthen its ability to “bring purposeful, consumer-relevant innovations to market in the emerging IoT space.” More here.

Publicly traded, L.A.-based Spark Networks and privately held, Berlin-based Affinitas GmbH, are a match made in heaven, it seems. The two companies, both of which operate online dating platforms, are merging to create a new company that will be based in Berlin and known as Spark Networks SE. More here.

People

Jay Clayton received Senate approval yesterday to become the next SEC chair. We wrote in January why Clayton will likely be welcomed with open arms by Silicon Valley.

There’s been a shakeup in Etsy’s leadership, with CEO Chad Dickerson and CTO John Allspaw departing. TechCrunch has more here.

Happy Tuesday, everyone!

Top News in the A.M.

Microsoft just introduced a new, pricey laptop that has people excited.

A Word from Our Sponsor

StrictlyVC is sponsored this week by the Bay Area firm Greenbrier. Scandal; injury; breach; litigation; presidential tweet. Crises can damage your corporate brand, personal reputation, employee morale and have lasting financial impacts. That’s why you need Greenbrier. We provide crisis planning, strategic advice and tactical execution to clients facing complex image, marketing, branding, media, legal and political challenges. With more than 30 years experience predicting, mitigating, managing and building resilience against reputational risks, Greenbrier can help.

This Real Estate Focused VC Firm Just Raised $212M from Real Estate Giants

It isn’t easy to find white space in the world of venture capital, where every venture firm must have a specific vision to sell to the universities, pension funds and family offices that tend to fund them. But Brendan Wallace and business partner Brad Greiwe have a fresh pitch, as well as nontraditional investors. Their L.A.-based venture firm, Fifth Wall Ventures, invests in startups that are benefiting from changes in the real estate market, and they turned to the country’s largest real estate companies to fund it.

Just some of the heavy-hitting limited partners to contribute to the firm’s $212 million debut fund include CBRE, the brokerage and real estate services giant; Equity Residential, the largest owner of apartments in the U.S.; Hines, a major developer of office buildings in the U.S.; Lowe’s, the home improvement franchise; Host Hotels & Resorts, a real estate investment trust (REIT) spun off from Marriott in 1993; Lennar, one of the nation’s largest homebuilders; Macerich, which is the third largest mall operator in the U.S.; and the warehouse operator Prologis.

“Often, new solutions in real estate aren’t hard to build from a tech perspective,” explain Wallace. “You can put vendor management tools in the cloud.  You can demonstrate a positive ROI. What’s harder is go-to-market and distribution risk,” he continues. “If you can’t sell to one of the big [real estate] incumbents, it’s hard to succeed. A handful of these companies really dictate outcomes.”

Fifth Wall is betting its backers’ vested interest in its portfolio companies will naturally help them vault past competitors. Meanwhile, these industry giants are betting on the pair because of their own, somewhat unique backgrounds.

Wallace, who says he grew up in a real estate family, worked first an analyst at Goldman Sachs, then in real estate private equity at Blackstone Group after graduating from Princeton. After attending business school at Stanford, he says he invariably “caught the entrepreneurship bug.” First, along with some Stanford classmates, he cofounded  a recruitment data and analytics company called Identified that sold in 2014 to Workday for undisclosed terms. Again with classmates, he says he later cofounded (but never worked for) Cabify in Madrid, Spain, which is among the larger ride-share services in Latin America.

Greiwe also says he grew up in a real estate family.

More here.

New Fundings

Axonics Modulation Technologies, a four-year-old, Irvine, Ca.-based developer of a rechargeable medical system for the treatment of urinary and fecal dysfunction, has raised $14.5 million in a first close of its Series C round. Backers include Edmond de Rothschild Investment Partners, Advent Life Sciences, Cormorant Asset Management, Legend Capital, NeoMed Management, and a group of private individuals. More here.

Bitfusion, a 2.5-year-old, Austin, Tex.- and Sunnyvale, Ca.-based maker of AI infrastructure management software, has raised $5 million in Series A funding led by Vanedge Capital, with participation from Sierra Ventures and earlier backers Data Collective, Resonant VC, and Geekdom. TechCrunch has more here.

Dinova, an eight-year-old, John Creeks, Ga.-based online marketplace that connects expense account diners to restaurants nationwide, has raised $40 million in growth funding from the Charlotte, N.C.-based private equity firm Frontier Capital. More here.

ExoCoBio, a three-month-old South Korean developer of cosmeceuticals and biopharmaceuticals for skin and tissue regeneration, has raised $11 million in Series A funding from SBI Investment, Atinum Investment, ID Ventures, and Dt&Investment. More here.

Iconixx, a six-year-old, Austin, Tex.-based maker of sales compensation software, has raised $4.2 million in funding led by earlier backers Ballast Point Ventures, Harbert Growth Partners, S3 Ventures, and the Iconixx management team. More here.

Morty, a 1.5-year-old, New York-based mortgage marketplace that’s trying to provide borrowers with more options and transparency, has raised $3 million in funding led by Thrive Capital, with participation from SV Angel, Techstars, FJ Labs, Corigin Ventures, MetaProp and numerous angel investors. TechCrunch has more here.

One, an 11-year-old, Folson, Ca.-based company that develops cloud-based software for the insurance industry, has raised $15.5 million in financing co-led by American Family Ventures and Centana Growth Partners, with participation from earlier investors AXA Strategic Ventures and MassMutual Ventures. The company has now raised $52 million altogether. More here.

Orbital Insight, a four-year-old, Mountain View, Ca.-based geospatial analytics startup that we wrote about at some length last year, has raised $50 million in Series C funding led by Sequoia Capital. Envision Ventures, Balyasny Asset Management, Geodesic Capital, ITOCHU Corporation and Intellectus Partners also joined the round, along with earlier backers GV, Lux Capital and CME Ventures. The company has now raised $78.7 million altogether. More here.

Wavedash Games, a 1.5-year-old, Oakland, Ca.-based game development company, has raised $6 million in funding led by March Capital, with participation from Lowercase Capital, Advancit Capital, CourtsideVC, Machine Shop Ventures, Luma Labs, and Cherrytree VC. TechCrunch has more here.

New Funds

Moderne Ventures, a 1.5-year-old, Chicago-based early stage firm that writes checks of between $200,000 and $3 million to real estate, finance, insurance, and home services companies, has closed its debut fund with $33 million in commitments. The firm was founded by Constance Freedman, who was previously the head of strategic investments at the National Association of Realtors, where she launched and managed its investment arm, Second Century Ventures, and founded its accelerator program. More here.

Salesforce has committed to invest another $100 million via a fourth investment fund meant to help startups develop apps that work with its business software services. John Somorjai, executive vice president of corporate development and Salesforce Ventures, talked with the WSJ about the new pool here.

Exits

Airbnb has quietly acquired for undisclosed terms Deco Software, a two-year-old, San Francisco-based company that helps developers build mobile apps in less time. The company didn’t disclose outside funding if it raised any. TechCrunch has more here.

Cisco announced yesterday that it’s paying $610 million Viptela, a four-year-old company whose networking technology lets companies connect their branch offices to corporate data centers. Viptela was founded by former Cisco engineers and had raised raised nearly $110 million from investors. Fortune has more here.

Hi, everyone! Hope you had a great weekend. We’re still recovering from an almost comically sports-packed weekend. (We’d guess we’re not the only ones now tallying the weeks, prisoner-style, until the end of our kids’ baseball and soccer seasons.):)

Top News in the A.M.

President Trump intends to huddle with top technology executives in early June to discuss ways to modernize the federal government. The gathering is part of a new effort, called the American Technology Council, commissioned by Trump in an executive order signed this morning. Recode has more here.

A Word from Our Sponsor

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Peixe Urbano’s Cofounder Has a New Startup Backed by Benchmark

Between Thumbtack, Yelp, Angie’s List and Amazon, it wouldn’t appear that the world needs a new platform that matches customers with service professionals. That’s not the way Julio Vasconcellos sees it, clearly. Vasconcellos has spent the last year-plus working on a services platform called Prefer that relies exclusively on trusted referrals, replacing the wisdom of crowds with the wisdom of one’s friends when it comes to hiring a babysitter or accountant or housekeeper. In fact, if Prefer has its way, it will eventually become users’ go-to source for every service professional with whom people tend to have a close, ongoing relationship.

It’s an intimidatingly tall order, but Vasconcellos would seem to have the right experience. After graduating from Stanford with a business degree, the native Brazilian headed home to help grow Facebook’s reach in Brazil as a country manager. Eight months later, he was at work on his own startup, Peixe Urbano, Brazil’s first online daily deals company. In 2014, the company sold to China’s Baidu for undisclosed terms. Vasconcellos — who remains on its board — then joined early Peixe investor Benchmark as an entrepreneur-in-residence, where he was soon creating Prefer with venture partner Scott Belsky. (Belsky is Prefer’s executive chairman.)

We talked with Vasconcellos this morning about where the service is available, how it works and why he thinks it can pierce an already noisy landscape. Our chat has been edited for length.

You’ve been working on this for how long?

JV: We’ve been working on it for more than a year now, and we’ve been running a beta program in New York since the end of last year. The service is still only available in New York and that will remain the case for the foreseeable future. We want the network to grow organically and to grow the right way, and I think once we feel like we’ve gotten to the right size, we’ll think about [next steps].

Benchmark led your Series A, which you never announced. How much did you raise and when did that round close? And were there any other investors involved in the deal?

It closed almost a year ago, and there were other friends and seed funds that Scott and I knew from over the years [that participated].

Are you raising a Series B now? How many employees do you have?

JV: We’re not looking for any funding. We have 13 employees in New York and San Francisco. Our product lead was our first product manager at Peixe. Several people from our five-person engineering team are former mobile leads from Tumblr. Our founding designer was the first designer at Twitter. We have a lot of great people who’ve worked on marketplace and network products.

How does Prefer work?

From the perspective of the client, you join the platform, usually because you’re looking for someone where trust matters a lot. Once you join, you connect to friends of yours on the app — through your address book but also because we recommend friends you might know through your existing network. You in turn can recommend professionals you know.

Is this mandatory? Do you ask people to recommend a certain number of professionals as they’re joining Prefer?

More here.

New Fundings

Airwallex, a 1.5-year-old, Melbourne, Australia-based international payments company, has raised $13 million in Series A funding led by Tencent Holdings, with participation from Sequoia China and MasterCard. TechCrunch has more here.

Calysta, a six-year-old, Menlo Park, Ca.-based company that’s developing what it considers to be a sustainable, alternative feed ingredient for fish, livestock and pets, has raised $40 million in Series D funding led by Mitsui & Co., with participation from Temasek and earlier backers Cargill, the Municipal Employee Retirement System of Michigan, Walden Riverwood Ventures, Aqua-Spark and Pangaea Ventures. More here.

Cars45, a year-old, Lagos, Nigeria-based car buying service, has raised $5 million in Series A funding from Frontier Cars Group, a holding company whose backers include Balderton Capital, EchoVC, TPG Growth, and New Enterprise Associates. More here.

Catalia Health, a three-year-old, San Francisco-based patient care management company whose small in-home robots aim to support patients with chronic illness, has closed a seed extension round of $2.5 million. The financing was led by earlier backer Khosla Ventures, with participation from NewGen Capital, Macnica Ventures, Q Venture Partners Limited, InnoLinks Ventures, Abstract by Flight.VC, DeNA and Lucky Capital. The company had previously raised $1.25 million in seed funding in 2015. More here.

Convene, an eight-year-old, New York City-based workplace-as-a-service company that competes with WeWork, has raised $68 million in Series C funding led by earlier investor Brookfield Property Partners, with participation from Conversion Venture Capital  ArrowMark Partners, the Durst Organization, and Elysium Capital Management. Convene had previously raised $45 million in funding. Fortune has more here.

Head InfoTech, a 12-year-old, Hyderabad, India-based online gaming company, has raised $73.7 million in funding, including from Clairvest Group, says Fortune. More here.

Live.me, a Beijing, China-based live video streaming platform and subsidiary of publicly traded Cheetah Mobile, has raised $60 million in funding from investors that include Matrix Partners China, Evolution Media China, Gobi Partners, IDG Capital, and Welight Capital. Variety has more here.

Rubrik, a three-year-old, Palo Alto, Ca.-based cloud data management company, has raised $180 million in Series D funding led by Institutional Venture Partners, with participation from Lightspeed Venture Partners and Greylock Partners. (We’d let you know this deal was in the works a week or so ago, which is why it might sound familiar.) Rubrik has now raised $292 million altogether and is valued at $1.3 billion. More here.

Truck Alliance, a nine-year-old, Liaoning, China-based Uber-type service for trucks that’s known as Huochebang, is near an agreement to raise about $156 million led by Baidu Capital, says Bloomberg. More here.

Exits

Jive, a 16-year-old Palo Alto, Ca.-based community collaboration software company that went public in 2011, is being acquired by Wave Systems for $462 million. TechCrunch has more here.

Bridj, a three-year-old, Cambridge, Ma.-based on-demand bus service that catered to Boston-area customers, is winding down after funding talks with a major car company fell apart, says its CEO. Bridj had raised roughly $4 million in venture funding from investors including Accomplice, Atlas Ventures, FreshTracks Capital, and NextView Ventures.

People

Dubai-based business-tycoon Mohamed Alabbar is weighing buying into venture capital firms in the Middle East to help kick start his $1 billion technology fund.

Amazon’s Jeff Bezos is just a few billion dollars away from becoming the world’s richest person.