Wednesday! We’re halfway through the week (yaassss). We also have some great news about our upcoming event May 4th in San Francisco; Julie Wainwright, the CEO of the luxury consignment business The RealReal has joined the program, and we couldn’t be happier about it. As those familiar with the company already appreciate, the RealReal is trying to do much more than sell customers’ luxury items; it’s striving to change the fundamental way that people shop. We’ll talk with Wainwright about movement on that front, trends in counterfeiting, and much more.

We’ll also be sitting down with CEO and renowned geneticist Pat Brown of the highly ambitious and Bill Gates-backed company Impossible Foods (who is bringing along Impossible’s burgers for attendees, possibly as well as a top chef to oversee their preparation); and Confide CEO Jon Brod, whose messaging app — long a favorite tool for paranoid VCs — more recently swept through the White House. (It has also run into its own controversy along the way — which we’ll discuss with Brod, too.)

More announcements to come, but we’re genuinely excited about each of these very different conversations. If you’d like to catch them, nab a seat while you can.

Today’s StrictlyVC is brought to you by the startup studio Expa. Startups can apply now to be considered for Expa Labs, where selected companies receive a $250,000 or $500,000 equity investment, six-months of office space, and guidance from the Expa team. The application deadline is March 31.

Top News in the A.M.

Google Maps has today launched a new feature to allow you to share your location with others. Useful or creepy? You decide.

The Senate could take the first step tonight to kill the FCC’s privacy rules.

Athens Gets a New Venture Fund

Raising money for a venture fund is almost never easy, but it’s a whole lot harder in certain places that are struggling economically like Greece.

Thankfully for the country, a new seed-stage firm has formed called Marathon VC that’s currently investing $8.6 million and expects to close its debut fund with roughly $25 million in commitments later this year.

Its mission, broadly: to back Greek tech entrepreneurs, regardless of where they are based.

It’s one of the only funds in Athens — though its founders are hardly new to the startup scene.

One cofounder, George Tziralis, previously cofounded OpenFund, a seed-stage firm in Athens that’s currently investing a €15 million fund. (We talked with another partner, Georgios Kasselakis, last year.)

While Tziralis describes himself as someone who tried — and failed — twice at being a software entrepreneur, he also launched Open Coffee, a popular meeting series for founders who get together monthly to talk shop.

Marathon was also cofounded by Panos Papadopoulos, who first met Tziralis a decade ago when starting his first company — which he describes as an Airbnb for exchange students in Athens — and who went on to cofound Bugsense. The mobile analytics company, which would eventually wind up in the Bay Area, was acquired in 2013, two years after its founding, by the publicly traded tech company Splunk.

The price wasn’t disclosed at the time, but Papadopoulos says Splunk paid roughly $9 million in cash – a good outcome for investors who had invested just $100,000 into the company.

More here.

New Fundings

Boom Technology, a 2.5-year-old, Centennial, Co.-based company at work on a supersonic airliner for passenger travel, has raised $33 million in Series A funding, including from 8VC, Caffeinated Capital, Palm Drive Ventures, RRE Ventures and YC’s Continuity Fund. Interestingly, YC President Sam Altman has joined the board, as has investor Greg McAdoo, formerly of Sequoia Capital. TechCrunch has more here.

BioClin Therapeutics, a 6.5-year-old, San Ramon, Ca.-based clinical stage drug development company, has raised $30 million in Series B funding led by Sofinnova Ventures and Ysios Capital, with participation from existing investors HealthCap, Life Sciences Partners, and Tekla Capital Management. FinSMEs has more here.

Casetext, a four-year-old, Palo Alto, Ca.-based resource that sells AI-based legal research technology to lawyers, has raised $12 million in Series B funding led by Canvas Ventures, with participation from Union Square Ventures, 8VC and Red Sea Ventures. More here.

DeepScale, a two-year-old, Mountain View, Ca.-based startup that’s developing perceptual systems for semi-autonomous and autonomous vehicles, has raised $3 million in seed funding from Bessemer Venture Partners, Greylock Partners, Auto Tech Ventures, Andy Bechtolsheim and Jerry Yang. TechCrunch has more here.

Elvie, a 3.5-year-old, London-based startup behind a (yes) connected kegel exerciser, has raised $6 million in Series A funding led by Octopus Ventures, with participation from the female-focused investment firm AllBright. TechCrunch has more here.

HotelTonight, the 6.5-year-old, San Francisco-based last-minute hotel booking app, has raised $37 million in Series E funding led by earlier investor Accel Partners. Other participants in the round include RSC Capital, Founder’s Circle and Aspect Ventures, as well as earlier backers Battery Ventures, US Venture Partners, GGV Capital, Coatue Management and First Round Capital. TechCrunch has more here.

Lynkos, a nearly six-year-old, Nyack, New York-based business networking platform, has raised $2.5 million in in seed funding from Inforcorp’s IC Ventures, Logitech Investments, and numerous individual investors. More here.

Mythic, a five-year-old, Austin, Tex.-based company that’s developing a local AI platform that turns devices into secure intelligent assistants, has raised $9 million in Series A funding. The round was led by DFJ, with participation from Lux Capital, Data Collective, and AME Cloud Ventures. TechCrunch has much more here.

Pear Deck, a 2.5-year-old, Iowa City, Ia.-based company behind a SaaS-based,  real-time classroom engagement platform, has raised $4 million in funding from Growth Street Partners and earlier backers Village Capital, Hyde Park Venture Partners, and AOL co-founder Steve Case. More here.

Pocketwatch, a year-old, Culver City, Ca.-based media company that offers online video viewing for kids, has raised $6 million in Series A funding led by Machinima co-founder Allen DeBevoise’s Third Wave Digital, a firm that invests in digital media brands. The round also includes numerous big names in the entertainment industry, including CBS CEO and chairman Les Moonves. TechCrunch has more here.

IPOs

Stitch Fix,  the online personal-styling service backed by Benchmark, is considering an IPO, with executives holding early discussions about a potential deal and the board reportedly planning to decide next month whether it’s time to pull the trigger. Bloomberg has more here.

People

Jake Fingert is starting a new chapter: venture capital. The former White House senior policy adviser for infrastructure has joined real estate-focused venture capital firm Camber Creek  as a partner. Fortune has the story here.

Rent the Runway cofounder Jennifer Fleiss is stepping down from her executive role at the fashion tech company as it gets closer to an initial public offering. Forbes has more here.

Chinese internet giant Baidu is losing Andrew Ng, the head of its data and artificial intelligence research division. TechCrunch has more here.

Essential Reads

Airbnb is doubling down on China.

Instagram is becoming more like Yelp.

Ten-year-old Tencent yesterday announced total revenue of $21.9 billion for its fiscal 2016. That’s up 48 percent from last year.

All 51 startups that debuted on day two at Y Combinator‘s Demo Day.

Detours

Inside the troubled Kushner tower: empty offices and mounting debt.

“Don’t try this at home, unless you think you can really pull it off.”

Retail Therapy

A post-modern property in Woodside, Ca., designed by IDEO cofounder David Kelley. (This one requires a very “special” buyer.)

Hi, everyone, happy Tuesday!

Today’s StrictlyVC is brought to you by the startup studio Expa. Startups can apply now to be considered for Expa Labs, where selected companies receive a $250,000 or $500,000 equity investment, six-months of office space, and guidance from the Expa team. The application deadline is March 31.

Top News in the A.M.

SoftBank Group has reportedly scrapped a planned $100 million investment in a high-end smartphone startup created by Android cofounder Andy Rubin, partly owing to the Japanese investor’s increasingly close relationship with Apple. (Rubin sold Android to Google in 2005, and it’s been a thorn in Apple’s side since. Apple meanwhile recently committed to invest $1 billion in a massive new fund created by Softbank called its Vision Fund. So conflicts.) The WSJ has the story here.

This ‘Terminator’ Says He’s Seeing Two to Four Wind-Downs a Week

For the last 25 years, Marty Pichinson and the firm he co-founded, Sherwood Partners, have specialized in selling off the assets of startups when they fail, as well as helping them extend their runway so that if they have to close down, they can do it the right way — in slow motion, versus at high speed. He’s been given every kind of death-related moniker as a result, from the Terminator to the Undertaker.

Pichinson — a native Illinoisan who is as renowned for his brash style as his salesmanship — doesn’t mind any of them as long as they help keep Sherwood at the top of its game.

We chatted with Pichinson on Friday to ask what he’s seeing in the current market.

The stock market has been on an upswing. Startups keep getting funded. What’s happening in the world of wind-downs?

We’re seeing two to four companies wind-down a week, which we’ve never seen before. I think more [investors] are taking the Sequoia Capital approach, meaning if something isn’t working, they’re moving on.<

Haven’t they always?

It’s happening faster right now. Microsoft and Intel and Facebook and Google and Apple — they own all the territory and they aren’t going away, so it’s more difficult to be the same type of company as another, but with a slightly different twist. For these companies, it’s great if someone else wants to develop a new feature or tool; they’re just going to fix that in the next version [of their own offerings].

Almost every time we’ve talked over the years, you’ve said that work is busy. Certainly, it slows down sometimes.

Sherwood has mostly been on an upward run since we started [in 1992], but we did slow down in 2014, and we couldn’t figure it out. Well, VCs were running their companies further to the edge to [improve their internal rates of returns before they hit the fundraising trail]. Turns out we had our best quarter ever in 2015 [as soon as they stopped funding those companies].

What happens if the IPO market opens up, which seems to be happening?

Doesn’t matter. More IPOs mean more companies in their respective spaces grab their crowns, and the other companies are left in the dust. It isn’t any different than when Facebook won.

In the meantime, the money keeps flooding in. Venture has become a true asset class. Everyone wants to get into this new world, including PE players, who were consolidating restaurants and dentists’ offices and malls. Well, there are no more malls. What’s new is tech, but not all these companies they’re funding are going to make it.

More here.

New Fundings

Beekeeper, a 4.5-year-old, Zurich, Switzerland-based startup behind a mobile-first communications platform for employers and their primarily deskless employees, has raised $8 million in Series A funding led by Keen Venture Partners, with participation from Fyrfly Venture Partners, Polytech Ecosystem Ventures, and b-to-v Partners. More here.

Databerries, a 2.5-year-old, Paris-based mobile advertising startup, has raised  $16 million in funding led by Index Ventures, with participation from ISAI, Mosaic Ventures, former Criteo COO Pascal Gauthier and former Criteo president Greg Coleman (now president at BuzzFeed). More here.

Fam, a months-old, Boston-based group video chat app, has raised $1.8 million in funding from Flybridge Capital Partners, Boston Seed Capital, NEA, Bessemer Venture Partners, Norwest Venture Partners, Social Capital and Highland Capital Partners. TechCrunch has more here.

Flipkart, the 10-year-old, Bangalore, India-based e-commerce giant, has raised $1 billion in new funding at a $10 billion valuation, down from the $15.5 billion valuation that it was reportedly assigned in 2015. Investors include Microsoft, eBay, and Tencent Holdings. The company expects to raise another $1 billion before it closes its current round. Bloomberg has more here.

Geek+, a 1.5-year-old, Beijing, China-based company that’s building robots for warehouses (similar to Amazon’s Kiva robots), has raised $14 million in Series A funding led by Vertex Venture Holdings, with participation from Banyan Capital and Volcanic Stone Investment. China Money Network has more here.

Jellyvision, a 15-year-old, Chicago-based company whose employee communications platform helps staffers understand their benefits, has raised $20 million in funding from Updata Partners, with participation from earlier backer Jackson Square Ventures. More here.

PlateIQ, a 2.5-year-old, San Francisco-based startup has raised $4 million in new funding to help restaurants automate accounts payable and nail all their other accounting work. Eileses Capital led the round, with participation from Initialized Capital, Restaurant Group, the Y Combinator Continuity Fund and the Tamares Group. TechCrunch has more here.

Purple Squirrel, a two-year-old, San Francisco-based online marketplace for networking and recruiting, has raised $2.7 million in seed funding led by CrossCut Ventures, with participation from Greycroft Partners, Arena Ventures, and 500 Startups. More here.

RavenPack, an 18-year-old, New York-based big data analytics provider for financial services, has raised $5 million in funding from Draper Esprit. More here.

Rocket Lab, an 11-year-old, L.A.-based developer of rockets designed to send small payloads into space, has raised $75 million in Series D funding at a valuation of reportedly more than $1 billion. Data Collective led the round, with participation from Promus Ventures and previous backers Khosla Ventures, Bessemer Venture Partners and K1W1. The company has now raised $148 million to date. Forbes has more here.

TextRecruit, a three-year-old, San Jose, Ca.-based messaging provider for employers, has raised $3 million in Series A funding led by SignalFire, with participation from numerous individual investors. More here.

WeWork, the seven-year-old, New York-based company focused around co-working and co-living spaces, has reportedly raised $300 million from Softbank Group as the first installment of a multi-billion dollar investment. Reuters has more here.

IPOs

German food delivery startup Delivery Hero — estimated to be valued at around $3 billion — indicated back in 2015 that an IPO could be imminent, but a flotation doesn’t appear forthcoming, reports CNBC. More here.

Exits

Dutch telecom Altice, which has some 50 million fixed and mobile subscribers in mostly the U.S. and France, is acquiring ad tech firm Teads for €285 million ($308 million) “on a cash and debt free basis.” Teads had raised roughly $55 million, including from Lightspeed Venture Partners, according to Crunchbase. TechCrunch has more here.

Conversocial, an eight-year-old, U.K.-based social customer care platform, has acquired HipMob, a five-year-old, Palo Alto, Ca.-based YC alum that had  developed an integrated live chat platform for websites and mobile apps. Terms of the deal aren’t being disclosed. TechCrunch has more here.

Hootsuite, a platform that helps enterprises and brands manage their presence on social media, has acquired a Snapchat analytics solution from Naritiv, a startup based out of L.A. that was an early mover in the business of creating Stories and other content for Snap. The rest of Naritiv, which has raised $4 million from investors, isn’t part of the deal. TechCrunch has more here.

People

Thinx founder and former CEO Miki Agrawal is the focus of a new sexual harassment complaint by a former employee who says Agrawal made inappropriate comments and touched employees without their consent, among other offenses.

Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg is preparing to release her newest book, “Option B,” cowritten with best-selling author Adam Grant, next month. She wrote a post about it this morning.

Uber‘s COO search reportedly includes a look at former Walt Disney COO Thomas Staggs; John Martin, who is CEO of Time Warner’s Turner Broadcasting unit; and AOL CEO Tim Armstrong.

The 195 billionaire newcomers of 2017, according to Forbes.

Jobs

The strategy and innovation unit for Anheuser-Busch is looking for a manager to join its team. The job is in New York.

Essential Reads

Apple has reportedly embarked on an ambitious bid to bring augmented reality to the masses.

Walmart is creating an innovation center in Silicon Valley called Store No. 8 to develop new retail technologies.

The 52 companies that launched yesterday at Y Combinator’s Demo Day. (One of them is Rippling, the newest startup from Zenefits cofounder Parker Conrad. Here’s why he decided to join the accelerator program a third time.)

Detours

Secrets from the highest-grossing restaurant in New York.

Why you should never order Pinot Grigio on an airplane.

The FBI just recovered Tom Brady’s missing Super Bowl jerseys.

Retail Therapy

Win-win. Apple today announced a new, red iPhone with double the storage capacity of the iPhone SE, and it says an undisclosed percentage of proceeds will go to support HIV/AIDS programs.

Happy Monday, everyone!

Some quick notes: A reminder that our next SVC event is coming up Thursday evening, May 4 in San Francisco. You can grab your seat here. (We always run out of room closer to these events.)

Thanks very much to Rosebud Communications for partnering with us. We also want to thank our friends at the expansion-stage firm Nextworld Capital for generously welcoming us back into their beautiful offices and gallery, and our friend and frequent guest editor, investor Semil Shah, who is helping us out once again. If you’re interested in partnering with us on this event, we’d love to talk to you, too.

Before we jump into the newsletter: Today’s StrictlyVC is brought to you by the startup studio Expa. Startups can apply now to be considered for Expa Labs, where selected companies receive a $250,000 or $500,000 equity investment, six-months of office space, and guidance from the Expa team. The application deadline is March 31 (so get moving).

No column today. We’re too busy watching these hearings.

Top News in the A.M.

Jeff Jones, the president of Uber and formerly CMO of Target, is quitting the car-hailing company after less than a year. According to Recode, the move owes to recent and explosive charges of sexual harassment at the company. Jones reportedly determined that the company’s situation is more, er, complicated than he’d realized.

New Fundings

Aetion, a 4.5-year-old, New York-based data analytics company focused on the healthcare industry, has raised $11.2 million in Series A funding led by Flare Capital Partners, with participation from Lakestar. More here.

Akeneo, a 3.5-year-old, Nantes, France-based CRM for product data (it helps customers manage information about their products in stores, online, and in catalogs), has raised a $13 million in Series B funding. The round was led by Partech Ventures, with participation from earlier backer Alven Capital. TechCrunch has more here.

BEFORE Brands, a year-old, Menlo Park, Ca.-based company aiming to bring new nutritional products to families that end food allergies (it hasn’t launched publicly yet), has raised $35 million in Series B funding from earlier backer Gurnet Point Capital. The funding comes fast on the heels of the company’s $13.1 million Series A round, raised last fall, including from real estate billionaire John Arrillaga and 23andMe cofounder Anne Wojcicki. (Cofounder and CEO Ashley Dombkowski was a former chief business officer at 23andMe.) More here.

CloudCheckr, a six-year-old Rochester, N.Y.-based cloud management platform company, has raised $50 million in Series A funding from Level Equity. More here.

FarmLead, a 3.5-year-old, Ottawa, Canada-based startup that connects grain producers and buyers online to help farmers get fair prices for what they grow, has raised $6.5 million in Series A funding led by Monsanto Growth Ventures. Other participants include Avrio Ventures, the MaRS Innovation Accelerator Fund and Serra Ventures. TechCrunch has more here.

Gro Solutions, a 1.5-year-old, Johns Creek, Ga.-based startup that helps banks and credit unions optimize their mobile offerings, has raised $4.25 million in funding led by TTV Capital, with participation BIP Capital, C&B Capital, and BLH Venture Partners. More here.

Hypereal, a 1.5-year-old, Shanghai-based visual reality headset developer, has raised $10 million in Series B funding led by Qiming Venture Partners. China Money Network has more here.

MedLumics, an eight-year-old, Madrid, Spain-based cardiac device company specializing in optically guided minimally invasive instruments, has raised €34.4 million ($37 million) in Series B funding led by Edmond de Rothschild Investment Partners, with participation from Seroba Life Sciences, Innogest Capital and earlier backers Ysios Capital Partners and Caixa Capital Risc. More here.

Mychebao, a 4.5-year-old, Nanjing, China-based online auction platform for used cars, has raised $100 million in Series C funding led by PAG Asia Capital. Asian Venture Capital Journal has more here (subscription required).

Nested, a year-old, London-based real estate startup that promises to help users sell their homes for at least 95 percent of their market value and within 90 days, has raised £8 million in funding led by previous investor Passion Capital, with participation from Rocket Internet’s venture arm GFC, which is also a previous investor in the company. The company has now raised £11 million to date. TechCrunch has more here.

Pulmocide, a 3.5-year-old, London-based drug discovery company developing compounds designed for inhaled delivery to treat respiratory syncytial virus  and pulmonary aspergillosis, has raised $30.4 million in Series B funding led by SR One. Other participants include Longwood Fund and earlier investors SV Life Sciences, F-Prime Capital, Johnson & Johnson Innovation and Touchstone Innovations. More here.

Reduxio Systems, a 4.5-year-old, San Francisco and Tel Aviv-based computer storage company developing hybrid flash and disk storage technologies, has raised $22.5 million in Series C funding led by C5 Capital. Previous backers Jerusalem Venture Partners, Carmel Ventures, Intel Capital and Seagate Technology also joined the round. More here.

ShadeCraft, a nearly four-year-old, Pasadena, Ca.- based robotics startup whose first products, designed for outdoors, will be available next year, has raised $2 million in seed funding, according to Fortune. More here.

Tech In Asia, an eight-year-old, Singapore-based regional media startup, is close to raising as much as $6 million in new funding, according to TechCrunch. The outfit had most recently raised $4 million in Series C funding in June 2015. More here.

New Funds

Square Peg Capital, a four-year-old, Melbourne, Australia-based early stage outfit that has invested hundreds of millions of dollars into startups but was until recently structured as a collective, has closed a debut fund with $180 million, reports Australia’s Financial Review. Square Peg was founded by Paul Bassat, who cofounded the now 13-year-old, publicly traded jobs recruitment platform Seek. More here.

IPOs

Netmarble, one of the world’s top mobile and PC gaming firms, has filed to raise as much as $2.35 billion (2.66 trillion won) through an IPO in its native Korea. The 16-year-old company is both a game developer and a publisher. You might recall that in December, it paid a reported $800 million for some of the assets of its far U.S. rival Kabam, whose CEO, Kevin Chou, talked with us last month. TechCrunch has more on the IPO filing here.

TPG Capital has reportedly scrapped its plans for an IPO. The New York Post has more here.

Exits

Vodafone India has confirmed that it has reached an agreement to acquire rival Idea Cellular. The deal, which is being characterized as a merger, will create India’s largest operator, with some 377 million customers. More here.

People

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos tweeted out a picture of himself in a giant robot suit this past weekend, with the jokey hashtag #MARS2017.

Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky was once lost at a one-day sale at Macy’s, his mother confided to the department chain’s CEO last week at a luncheon.

This past Saturday, Apple CEO Tim Cook defended globalization in a rare public speech in China. (As readers will know, since the U.S. presidential election, Apple has faced political pressure to bring back more of its manufacturing to the U.S.)

Amazon said on Friday that Bing Gordon, a partner with Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, has stepped down from the board after a 13-year run as one of its directors. Amazon isn’t saying yet who Gordon’s replacement will be.

Madrona Venture Group has hired Maria Karaivanova as a principal. Karaivanova was previously the head of business development at San Francisco-based Cloudflare.

Early investor and longtime executive chairman of ClassPass, Fritz Lanman, will be taking over as CEO of the company, as cofounder and former CEO Payal Kadakia assumes his former role as the company’s executive chair.

Snap CEO Evan Spiegel has lost $2 billion since his company’s post-IPO peak. Don’t feel too bad, though; the company just received its first buy rating from a lesser-known Wall Street trading firm. The move has sent its shares upward.

Justin Wexler has joined WndrCo as an investor in San Francisco. Wexler joins the firm — launched recently by former DreamWorks Animation CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg — from the New York office of Technology Crossover Ventures, where he was an investment analyst.

Jobs

GE Ventures is recruiting for two positions within its healthcare investment group. It’s looking to hire a director level person in Boston and an associate in Menlo Park, Ca.

Essential Reads

At Peter Thiel’s Palantir, allegations of theft and deception have surfaced. Bloomberg has more here.

A top secret division within Facebook called Building 8 is working on at least four unannounced consumer hardware products, including one product that involves cameras and augmented reality. Business Insider has more here.

Detours

So maybe building a $32 million basket wasn’t such a good idea after all.

Porsche pockets $17,250 in profit on every car.

Twenty-five things you didn’t know about Us Weekly.

Retail Therapy

Shrimp neck pillow. (We can’t not buy this one.)

Happy St. Patrick’s Day, dear readers! Wear a touch of green, enjoy a foamy pint, and do not say to anyone Irish, “Top of the mornin’ to ya,” unless you want to be mocked mercilessly afterward.

Top News in the A.M.

Mulesoft, the first enterprise technology IPO of 2017, is already looking like a big winner, popping around 50 percent above its $17 debut price to about $25.50 a share in its first few hours of trading. Business Insider has more here.

Permira’s Brian Ruder on Private Equity’s Attraction to Tech

For the last couple of years, private equity firms have been buying up public software companies that had fallen out of favor with investors. In fact, many of the top software deals in the U.S. last year were take-private transactions. Just three of them included the visual analytics company Qlik Technologies, which sold to Thomas Bravo; the marketing software company Marketo, acquired by Vista Equity Partners, and the event management company Cvent, also acquired by Vista.

Public tech companies have largely seen their valuations rebound, however. For that reason, a separate opportunity that Brian Ruder, co-head of technology at the global PE firm Permira, expects to see more centers on maturing tech companies that haven’t yet gone public. We talked with Ruder recently to learn more about Permira, and why venture-backed outfits are more interesting than ever to him.

Obviously, it’s not brand new, this trend of PE shops gravitating toward software companies, even if it did seem to become more of a “thing” beginning last year.

Permira has been at it for 30 years. We grew out of being a venture capital firm that backed disruptive, late-stage companies. But we evolved [over the last decade] beyond just buying classically undervalued and under-managed companies and into buying great growth businesses that just need larger and larger pools of capitals. What we’re looking for are companies that have good growth opportunities and to back them aggressively.

I think what’s more new is using operating expertise and a [PE size] capital base to back companies that have been in the VC ecosystem and are looking for an alternative to going public, where you can solve historical shareholder alignment problems without tapping the public market to do that.

More here.

Sponsored By . . .

StrictlyVC is brought to you today by the startup studio Expa. Startups can apply now to be considered for Expa Labs, where selected companies receive a $250,000 or $500,000 equity investment, six months of office space, and guidance from the Expa team. The application deadline is coming up March 31.

New Fundings

Cell Medica, a 12-year-old, London-based cellular immunotherapy company, has raised £60 million ($74.1 million) in Series C funding from Touchstone Innovations, Invesco Perpetual, and Woodford Investment Management. More here.

CNEX Labs, a 3.5-year-old, San Jose, Ca.-based developer of solid-state storage controllers, has raised an undisclosed amount of Series C funding led by Microsoft Ventures. The company said it has raised a total of $60 million to date. More here.

Cohero Health, a 3.5-year-old, New York-based digital health company focused on respiratory illnesses, has added an undisclosed amount of funding to its Series A round from Samsung NEXT and Omron Healthcare. More here.

Homage, an eight-month-old Singapore-based startup that connects caregivers with elderly people seeking assistance, has raised $1.2 million in seed funding. The money comes from 500 Startups, Golden Gate Ventures, and SeedPlus, a fund affiliated with Jungle Ventures. TechCrunch has more here.

Moximed, a three-year-old, Hayward, Ca.-based knee implant company, has raised $50 million in Series C funding. Investors include Advent Life Sciences, Future Fund, New Enterprise Associates, Morgenthaler Ventures, Gilde Healthcare, GBS Venture Partners, and Vertex Healthcare. More here.

MultiX, a 6.5-year-old, Grenoble, France-based startup that makes x-ray imaging software for airports, has raised €3.5 million ($3.8 million) from Omnes Capital and H3C. Tech.eu has more here.

RenalGuard, a young, Milford, Ma.-based medical device company whose technology measures a patient’s urine output and automatically infuses needed hydration fluid to prevent acute kidney injury, has raised $14.5 million in Series A funding led by Exigent Capital, with participation from Genesis Capital Advisors and other investors. More here.

Solarisbank, a year-old, Berlin-based fintech startup that’s using its banking license to create a platform that enables other fintech startups to legally offer their services, has raised $28 million. The round was led by Arvato Financial Solutions, a subsidiary of Bertelsmann Group, and Japanese investor SBI Group. Seed round investors FinLeap and Hegus and yabeo Capital also participated. VentureBeat has more here.

Visier, a six-year-old, Vancouver and San Jose, Ca.-based workforce analytics company, has raised $45 million in Series D funding led by Sorenson Capital, with participation from earlier backers Foundation Capital, Summit Partners and Adams Street Partners. More here.

New Funds

Bivotal bioVenture Partners, a new, San Francisco -based venture firm specializing in biotech, has raised $300 million in capital commitments for its first fund. The firm’s founding managing director is Tracy Saxton, a veteran of both Roche Venture Fund and SV Life Sciences Advisers. The team she builds will be investing money on behalf of Vincent Cheung and the Hong Kong-based Nan Fung Group, a conglomerate looking to expand beyond real estate projects into biotech. Endpoints News has much more here.

IPOs

Netshoes, a Brazil-based online retailer with annual sales of more than $500 million, has filed to raise up to $100 million in a U.S.-based offering. According to Crunchbase, the company has raised roughly $215 million from investors, including Iconiq Capital, Riverwood Capital, and Tiger Global Management. More here.

Exits

True&Co., an e-commerce company featuring lingerie, has been acquired by Phillips Van Heusen, parent company of Calvin Klein, Tommy Hilfiger and Izod, among other brands. Terms aren’t being disclosed, but sources tell TechCrunch that investors mostly got their money back. True&Co had reportedly raised $13 million from Crosslink Capital, Cowboy Ventures, First Round Capital, SoftBank, SoftTech VC and VTF (formerly the Vegas Tech Fund). More here.

People

Adit Singh, who has spent the last 3.5 years as a partner at Foundation Capital, has left the firm to co-found NeoTribe Ventures, a new, Palo Alto, Ca.-based investment fund. More here.

Honest Company, the five-year-old, consumer products company cofounded by actress Jessica Alba, has appointed Nick Vlahos as CEO. Vlahos was previously COO at Clorox, where he spent the last 22 years. He’s replacing serial founder Brian Lee, whose other past companies include LegalZoom and ShoeDazzle. Fortune has more here.

The people from “Government Sachs.”

Jobs

Sony Pictures is looking for a VP of corporate development. The job is in Culver City, Ca.

Essential Reads

Progress report: Uber’s autonomous cars drove 20,354 miles and had to be taken over at every mile.

Netflix is giving its star rating system the thumbs down.

YouTube is doubling down on competitive gaming, signing a multi-year deal yesterday with e-sports platform FACEIT to stream its competitive gaming league.

Detours

An exercise in high-stakes grammar pedantry could cost a dairy company an estimated $10 million.

How Utah reduced chronic homelessly by 91 percent.

Why basketball games are so squeaky.

Sorry for the delayed response!

Retail Therapy

Is it just us, or is this the world’s most ominous-looking fishing boat?

Thursday!

So, as some of you know, we’ve started mapping out our next StrictlyVC event, coming up Thursday evening, May 4th, in San Francisco. Toward that end, we’re very excited to announce that Impossible Foods CEO and renowned geneticist Patrick Brown is joining the program talk about what he sees as the one of the world’s biggest crises — our ongoing appetite for meat. We’ll be talking, too, about what comes after the company’s Impossible Foods burger, which Bill Gates has backed and top chefs are snapping up. (Added bonus: he’s bringing Impossible’s delicious burgers for attendees, and possibly a world-class chef to prepare them.)

We’ll also be sitting down with Confide CEO Jon Brod, whose messaging app took over the White House — and the media cycle — this winter, only to receive harsh criticism last week by a team of security researchers. The New York-based company has since fixed its flaws; can it win back users’ trust? Lots to discuss!

More announcements are coming. In the meantime, grab a seat while you can as space is limited at the beautiful offices and gallery of our generous hosts, NextWorld Capital.

If you’re interested in partnering with SVC as a sponsor, we’d love to talk with you.

Top News in the A.M.

Millions of records have been leaked from a corporate database that’s owned by Dun & Bradstreet and contains roughly 33 million unique email addresses and other contact information from employees of thousands of companies. ZDNet has more here.

Serial Founder and Former Slack PM Simon Vallee is Starting a Company

Simon Vallee is exactly the kind of person who venture capitalists like to keep on their radar.

He’s Canadian, for one thing. (Everyone knows how nice Canadians are.) He has also co-founded — and sold —  a number of small companies over the last decade. First, there was SiteMasher, a site-creation platform that was purchased a couple of years later, in 2009, to Saleforce for what Vallee describes as a “little bundle.” Vallee then used that money to help bootstrap an online booking company, OpenCal, that became a “nice, little profitable business” and soon after attracted the attention of Groupon, which bought it in 2011. (The price wasn’t disclosed, but Vallee describes it simply as “an offer too good to refuse.”)

It was inside Groupon that Vallee began thinking up his next company, a document collaboration startup called Spaces that provided users with blank space for all their content, from images to tasks to code snippets. In fact, he and former Googler Hans Larsen were raising a seed round for the company when they were introduced to Stewart Butterfield of Slack and, well, you can guess what happened next.

Essential Reads

Tesla is looking to raise more than $1 billion in stock and debt to make all those Model 3 cars.

Did Uber steal the driverless future from Google?

Detours

Illuminated disks atop Adobe’s downtown San Jose headquarters have transmitted a secret message since 2012. This week, a high school math teacher figured it out.

Everything to know so far about the second season of the excellent series, “The Crown.”

Retail Therapy

$139,000 stackable homes that can be built in under three weeks (founded by a Harvard researcher who lived in a dumpster for a year).

Wednesday! Hope yours is going well.:)

StrictlyVC is sponsored again today by the Financial Solutions Lab at the Center for Financial Services Innovation, which is now accepting applications for its next class. Selected companies receive $250,000 in capital, plus access to top fintech resources. If you’re a fintech innovator with a solution that can help more Americans achieve financial health — or know someone who is — apply today. Applications due tomorrow.

Top News in the A.M.

The U.S. Department of Justice just indicted a Canadian and three Russians, including two intelligence agency employees, in connection with that 2014 Yahoo breach. Business Insider has more here.

Jason Goldberg’s Pepo Raises $400K in Advance of Series A

Serial entrepreneur Jason Goldberg has famously had his ups and downs, most notably with the e-commerce company Fab.com. He hasn’t stopped moving forward, however.

In October, he launched a new messaging app called Pepo that enables anyone to create and join live messaging communities. In December, Pepo announced $2.35 million in seed funding led by the Chinese conglomerate Tencent. And today, Pepo is announcing $400,000 in additional seed funding from its backers, along with two new features that Goldberg expects will continue to fuel what he describes as steady growth so far.

He shared the latest in a call with us yesterday from Pune, India. Our chat has been edited for length.

You’re phoning from India. Is that where Pepo is based?

We have three people in Berlin, where I live, and 20 people in Pune. It’s the same team that helped me build Fab and [a later iteration of the company] Hem. Officially, though, Pepo is based in Palo Alto.

For those who’ve missed it, what’s the big idea behind Pepo?

What we think is a very interesting and compelling is a two-sided marketplace concept. It’s people, plus expertise, and the overall plan for that will emerge over the next couple of years. We decided to go out early and iterate with our users, rather than trying to guess in getting in right. We feel like because we’ve taken that approach, our users have given us a lot of leeway.

So it’s early days, but right now users are right now creating messaging “channels” around any number of topics that interest them, then you match people to the channels they find interesting, and these feature influencers or experts sort of lead the conversation. Is that correct?  What’s in it for the influencers or experts if so?

We’ve told them they can create their own channel, have a live conversation with their followers and new followers, and build an audience.

For a lot of folks who have a following on Twitter or Instagram, what Pepo gives them is a higher level of engagement. Think of it this way: What if you could have a Slack channel with everyone who follows you on Twitter or Instagram? Twitter is good for a thought here and there, and Instagram is a great place to post your best two or three pictures of the day or post a story that will disappear. With Pepo, we’re connecting one to many.

What’s the business model?

We have several concepts that are in the works already, so we’ll be adding monetization elements sooner rather than later. But basically, if our channel hosts do well, we’ll do well, so we’re really focused on how does someone — say a top influencer when it comes to solo female travel — make money through the platform.

The general Silicon Valley philosophy is to get several million users, then monetize, but we’re more akin to Airbnb’s philosophy that monetization can help drive the platform. Many people would be interested in bringing their expertise to the platform if they felt confident that they could monetize that expertise.

More here.

(Other) New Fundings

908 Devices, a nearly five-year-old, Boston, Ma.-based developer of analytical devices for chemical and biomolecule analysis, has raised $20 million in new funding from Tao Capital Partners, Cormorant Asset Management, Saudi Aramco Energy Ventures, ARCH Venture Partners, Razor’s Edge Ventures, Schlumberger, and Casdin Capital. More here.

CareDox, a six-year-old, New York City-based company that enables schools to electronically manage student health data and communicate that information to parents and pediatricians, has raised $6.4 million in Series A funding. The round was led by Digitalis Ventures, with participation from First Round Capital, Giza Venture Capital, TEXO Ventures, and Prolog Ventures. More here.

Crealytics, a nine-year-old, Bavaria- and New York-based search and shopping optimization tech platform, has raised $9.3 million in Series C funding led by the investment group Optima. More here.

Fazua, a six-year-old, Munich, Germany-based development and distribution startup behind an e-bike drive system, has raised €3 million ($3.2 million) in Series B funding from High-Tech Gründerfonds, Bayern Kapital and numerous other investors. More here.

Flow, a nearly two-year-old, Hoboken, N.J.-based platform that helps brands sell products to customers internationally by offering multi-currency pricing and international payment options, has raised $13 million in Series A funding from Bain Capital Ventures. More here.

Goodlord, a nearly three-year-old, London-based startup whose platform handles the transactions and paperwork normally associated with renting a home, has raised £7.2 million ($8.8 million) in Series A funding. Rocket Internet’s GFC led the round, with participation from previous backer LocalGlobe and new investor Ribbit Capital. TechCrunch has more here.

Hello, everyone, hope you’re having a terrific Tuesday.:)

StrictlyVC is sponsored today by the Financial Solutions Lab at the Center for Financial Services Innovation, which is now accepting applications for its next class. Selected companies receive $250,000 in capital, plus access to top fintech resources. If you’re a fintech innovator with a solution that can help more Americans achieve financial health — or know someone who is — apply today. Applications due March 16. (That’s two days from now, so hurry.)

Top News in the A.M.

You can now send and request money in Gmail on Android.

Bill Maris’s Next Gig After GV is a $100 Million Fund

It was happening, then it wasn’t — but now it seems Bill Maris’s venture fund might actually be more than vaporware. Maris, founder of Google Ventures, now called GV, is raising money again for a new health-care, biotech, and tech-focused venture capital fund, according to sources familiar with the matter. What was initially thought to be a $230 million fund has evolved into a smaller $100 million fund with the same focus.

The fund, which already has a website, is being named Section 32, an ode to the science fiction of Star Trek. TechCrunch reached out to Maris but he declined to comment on his plans for the fund. Maris also declined to discuss several personal investments that he has made since leaving GV last August.

Bloomberg News reported on Maris’s plans earlier today.

More here.

New Fundings

Baker Technologies, a three-year-old, Denver-based startup aiming to become the “Salesforce for pot,” has raised $3.5 million in new funding from Michael Lazerow, Base Ventures, XG Ventures, Poseidon Asset Management, Phyto Partners, the founders of Outside Lands, and several other angel investors. The company had previously raised $1.6 million in seed funding. TechCrunch has more here.

Bringg, a 3.5-year-old, Chicago-based startup taking advantage of the shift toward faster, more transparent on-demand delivery, has $10 million in Series B funding led by Aleph VC, with participation from Coca-Cola and prior investor Pereg Ventures. TechCrunch has more here.

CellAegis Devices, a four-year-old, Toronto-based developer of a remote ischemic conditioning device, has raised $9.5 million in Series C funding from CTI Life Sciences, with participation from MaRS Catalyst Fund and Broadview Ventures. Mass Device has more here.

Dyadic Security, a four-year-old, New York-based company that says it provides protection for cryptographic keys and credentials, even in the presence of a network and server breach, has raised $12 million in Series B funding from Goldman Sachs Principal Strategic Investments, Citi Ventures and Innovation Endeavors. Tech.eu has more here.

Evrything, a six-year-old, New York-based IoT smart products platform, has raised $24.8 million in Series B funding led by Sway Ventures, with participation from Generation Ventures, Bloc Ventures and earlier investors Cisco, Samsung, BHLP, Atomico, Dawn Capital and Advance Vixeid Partners. TechCrunch has more here.

Hound Labs, a three-year-old, Oakland, Ca.-based company behind a new marijuana breathalyzer, has raised $2.4 million, shows an SEC filing that lists the round’s target as $2.8 million. More here.

Innovium, a two-year-old, San Jose, Ca.-based company aiming to enabling autonomous and programmable large-scale data center networks, has raised $38.3 million in Series C funding led by Redline Capital. Earlier backers also joined the round, including Greylock Partners, Walden Riverwood Ventures, Capricorn Investment Group, Qualcomm Ventures and S-Cubed Capital. More here.

ObEN, a three-year-old, Pasadena, Ca.-based company whose artificial intelligence technology aims to build users’ personalized and realistic virtual identities, has raised an undisclosed amount of funding from SoftBank Ventures Korea. TechCrunch wrote about the company back in November.

Peloton Interactive, a five-year-old, New York-based company that sells exercise bikes with tablets that stream live spin classes, is looking to raise at least $120 million at a valuation of $1.2 billion, reports Bloomberg. Peloton has raised $120 million to date, including $75 million in late 2015 from the private equity firm L Catterton. Other investors include True Ventures, Javelin Venture Partners, and Tiger Global. More here.

ProducePay, a three-year-old, L.A.-based company that provides financing to farmers of perishable goods, has raised $77 million in debt and equity. CoVenture led the equity round and arranged the $70 million debt facility for the startup; other equity investors include previous backers Menlo Ventures, Arena Ventures, CoVenture, Red Bear Angels and Social Leverage. TechCrunch has more here.

Roblox, a 12-year-old, San Mateo, Ca.-based massive social gaming platform for kids, has raised a whopping $92 million in funding Index Ventures and Meritech Capital Partners. TechCrunch has more here.

Sift, a six-year-old, San Francisco-based machine-learning startup that helps e-commerce companies detect and fight fraud, has raised $1.5 from Liquid 2 ventures, Plug and Play Ventures, Lodestar Ventures, Band of Angels, and investor Sophia Collier. TechCrunch has more here.

Silverfin, a 3.5-year-old, Ghent, Belgium-based business accounting platform, has raised $4.5 million in Series A funding led by Index Ventures. TechCrunch has more here.

Streetbees, a 1.5-year-old, London-based based market research startup, has raised $5.1 million in seed funding led by BGF Ventures. Earlier backers Octopus Ventures and LocalGlobe also participated in the round. Tech City News has more here.

Unifi Software, a three-year-old, San Mateo, Ca.-based company that sells data integration software and services, has raised $17.5 million in Series B funding led by Scale Venture Partners. Earlier backers Canaan Partners and Pelion Partners also invested in the round, which brings its total funding to $32 million. More here.

VentureApp, a 1.5-year-old, Boston-based business chat app, has raised $4 million in funding led by Accomplice, with investment from Fullstack Ventures, Boston Seed Capital and numerous angel investors. More here.

Exits

Publicly traded Citrix Systems is reportedly working with advisers to seek potential suitors, but the Fort Lauderdale, Fla.-based cloud-services company hasn’t seen loads of interest given its large market valuation; as Bloomberg notes, its size would likely require several buyout firms to team up to fund a bid. More here.

IPOs

MuleSoft, an 11-year-old, San Francisco-based SaaS integration company valued at $1.5 billion by venture capitalists, has raised its IPO price range from $12 to $14 to $14 to $16. It still plans to offer 13 million shares and price later this week. The company had raised roughly $260 million from private investors, including MeritechCapital Partners, Salesforce Ventures, New Enterprise Associates, and HWVP.

Okta, an eight-year-old San Francisco-based provider of identity access management solutions, has filed for a $100 million IPO. It has raised around $230 million in venture funding, including from Greylock Partners, Andreessen Horowitz, and Sequoia Capital. More here.

Hi, all, welcome back! Hope you had a nice weekend.

Today’s StrictlyVC is brought to you by the startup studio Expa. Startups can apply now to be considered for Expa Labs, where selected companies receive a $250,000 or $500,000 equity investment, six-months of office space, and guidance from the Expa team. The application deadline is March 31.

(No column today.)

Top News in the A.M.

Chip-making giant Intel is purchasing the Israel-based sensor company Mobileye in a $15.3 billion deal. Reuters has more here.

New Fundings

Autobooks, a two-year-old, Detroit, Mi.-based startup that makes payment and accounting software for small business owners, has raised $5.5 million in Series A funding led by Draper Triangle. The company has now raised $7.5 million altogether. More here.

Borqs, a 10-year-old, Bengaluru, India-based company that works with device manufacturers to design chips as well as devices, has raised an undisclosed amount of funding from Qualcomm Ventures and Accel Partners India that values the company at roughly $300 million. The Times of India has more here.

Canopy, a three-year-old, Lehi, Utah-based management platform for tax professionals, has raised $20 million in Series B funding led by Pelion Venture Partners, with participation from earlier backers New Enterprise Associates, EPIC Ventures, and Deep Fork Capital. The company has now raised $30 million altogether. VentureBeat has more here.

Foodsby, a five-year-old, Minneapolis, Mn.-based food-delivery startup for offices, has raised $5.9 million in Series A funding from Greycroft Partners, Rally Ventures, and Corazon Capital. The StarTribune has more here.

GuestToGuest, a six-year-old, Paris-based platform that facilitates home exchanges for travellers, has  raised €33 million from Maif and other, earlier investors. The money is being used in part to acquire HomeExchange, a 25-year-old, Hermosa Beach, Ca.-based rival. Tech.eu has more here.

The Hustle, a 2.5-year-old San Francisco-based media company centered around a daily email of the same name, has raised roughly $1 million from numerous angel investors, including Tim Ferriss, Scott Belsky, Bleacher Report cofounder David Nemetz and others. The company had previously raised $300,000 through the crowdfunding platform on SeedInvest. More here.

iD Fresh, a 10-year-old, Bengaluru, India-based food delivery startup whose kits include ready-to-cook products like dosa butter and chapatis, has raised $25 million in Series B funding from Wipro billionaire Azim Premji; he’s reportedly receiving 25 percent of the company in exchange for his investment. More here.

InterCloud, a six-year-old, Paris, France-based maker of enterprise cloud delivery software, has raised €10 million ($10.7 million) in funding from CapHorn Invest, Ventech, Hi Inov and BPI France. More here.

PokitDok, a 5.5-year-old, San Mateo, Ca.-based platform that integrates healthcare transactions, has raised an undisclosed amount in funding from GIS Strategic Ventures, the venture arm of Guardian Life Insurance. More here.

Skuid, a four-year-old, Chattanooga, Tn.-based “codeless” user interface that says it can enable anyone to develop applications for business intelligence, has raised $25 million in from Iconiq (the money manager for the family wealth of entrepreneurs like Mark Zuckerberg) and previous investor K1 Investment Management. TechCrunch has more here.

StatX, a 1.5-year-old, Santa Clara, Ca.-based mobile app that tells users via notifications when there’s a real-time change to their business, has raised $2.5 million in seed funding co-led by Signia Venture Partners and Inventus Capital Partners, with participation from XSeed Capital. VentureBeat has more here.

New Funds

Exfinity Venture Partners, a 2.5-year-old, Bengaluru, India-based venture firm that’s mostly focused on enterprise technologies, is looking to raise up to $200 million to invest in U.S.-based startups with development teams in India. The Business Standard has more here.

Exits

The scion of an exiled and secretive Turkish business dynasty has bought the British smartphone maker Vertu, which targets the wealthy buyers with handsets costing up to £40,000. The Daily Telegraph has more here.

IPOs

Carvana, a four-year-old, Phoenix, Az.-based company that allows customers to pick up cars they buy on the internet from vending machine-like towers, has tapped investment banks for an IPO, says Reuters. The company has raised $300 million from investors, according to Crunchbase.

People

President Trump said Friday that he intended to nominate Scott Gottlieb, a venture partner at New Enterprise Associates, to lead the Food and Drug Administration. The New York Times has more here.

Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer, following the closing of the Verizon acquisition of the internet company’s operating businesses, will get a golden parachute package worth around $23 million if she’s fired or leaves for good cause within a year, Yahoo disclosed in a regulatory filing today. Variety has more here.

Tom Moore, a satellite veteran brought in to lead Google’s Project Loon unit, has stepped down after about six months. The transition comes after the company scaled back an ambitious attempt to build a global communications service by circling the earth with high-altitude balloons. Bloomberg has the story here.

Jobs

The German conglomerate Siemens is looking to add a principal to its venture capital team. The job is in Palo Alto, Ca.

Data

CB Insights analyzed funding trends into the agtech space from 2012 to 2016 and reports that investors poured more than $200 million into related companies across 68 deals over that period. Perhaps unsurprisingly, California-based startups saw most of that capital. More here.

Essential Reads

Chinese officials are warning that they will crack down on “blind and irrational” acquisitions amid rising worries about money leaving the country.

Lots of things are holding up the development of self-driving cars; one of them is a crippling shortage of a special laser sensor called lidar, wait times for which have now reached six months.

The death of suburbia.

Detours

How to wear a cardigan without looking like your grandfather.

Clean your keyboard without breaking it.

100 years of Hollywood dating.

Retail Therapy

A yacht from Bugatti.

Some of the most breathtaking cars spotted at the Geneva car show.

Friday!

We realize SVC is arriving comically late today. (We almost hate to send it and draw attention to this fact.) It’s been one of those days.:)

Hope you a great weekend, everyone. See you back here Monday.

Top News in the P.M.

Alphabet”s Waymo unit is seeking a preliminary injunction against Uber over self-driving car technology. TechCrunch has more here.

The SEC has denied a bid to list a bitcoin-tied exchange-traded fund, citing the risk of fraud and a lack of regulation among the world’s bitcoin markets. As CoinDesk reports, the decision caps a years-long quest by bitcoin investors Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, who first sought to list the ETF in mid-2013. The value of bitcoin has fallen 18 percent on the news, says Bloomberg.

The Case for Tenured Voting

It’s hard to get too worked up about unequal voting rights, which are seen by public market investors as giving founders too much control, while viewed by founders as necessary to protect their companies from short-term shareholders. The reality is that only a minority of companies can command these terms, most famously Google, Facebook, Zynga, Groupon and now Snap. The majority of other startups have far less leverage.

Still, the controversial structure seems to be growing more common. According to Dealogic, 27 of 174 U.S. IPOs in 2015 featured a dual-class structure. In 2014, 36 IPOs used the structure out of a total of 292 U.S. IPOs.

Why it matters: Research published last year by Institutional Shareholder Services suggests that companies with unequal voting rights underperform non-controlled companies over a one-year, five-year and 10-year period. Now Snap has taken the structure to an unprecedented extreme, even writing in its IPO paperwork that, “to our knowledge, no other company has completed an initial public offering of non-voting stock on a U.S. stock exchange.”

It’s too soon to know how Snap will fare. While its shares soared 44 percent on the day of its IPO last Thursday, they’ve since fallen about 16 percent, helped along by a growing chorus of skeptical analysts. The trend has some worried, though, including SEC Commissioner Kara Stein, who publicly raised questions yesterday about the rights of investors, and who suggested the SEC “focus on how some innovations may prove detrimental to investors.”

One alternative the SEC might discuss is tenured voting, a structure that was lightly used decades ago, halted by regulators in the 1980s, and of growing interest again to a small number of Silicon Valley denizens who argue it’s a lot better than what tech companies have come up with.

It works much like you’d guess based on the word “tenure.” The longer an investor hangs on to his or her shares, the more voting control he or she amasses. The idea is to protect founders from activist investors, while also giving public market shareholders some say.

It’s immediately easy to see the appeal. Carl Bass long served as Autodesk’s CEO and had to wrestle with activist investors last year. Somewhat unsurprisingly, he told us recently that he’d “like to see tenured voting, where there’s a premium based on how long you own the shares.” It makes sense to Bass that “one person who has owned a million shares for one year has less voting power than another person who has owned a million shares for two years.”

Managing partner Scott Kupor of Andreessen Horowitz is also a fan of the idea, saying that as “part of broader capital markets reform to better align the long-term interests of shareholders and management teams, tenure-based voting would be far more amenable as a solution than the more blunt-force application of dual stock.”

The challenge, says Steven Davidoff Solomon, a professor at the UC Berkeley School of Law, is that “it takes time and you need a first mover.”

More here.

New Fundings

Datebox, a 1.5-year-old, Oklahoma City, Ok.-based e-commerce company that organizes dating ideas and products for couples, has raised $2.6 million in seed funding from Oklahoma Seed Capital Fund, SeedStep Angels and other angel investors. More here.

Thursday?! (Where did this week go?)

Top News in the A.M.

Airbnb, the fast-growing accommodations marketplace, has officially closed off its Series F round with $1 billion. The company is now worth $31 billion. Much more here.

Google is turning Hangouts into a Slack competitor.

Facebook now has its own “stories” feature, too.

A New, Affordable Naming Startup for Startups

A few years ago, I launched a daily email newsletter, and I was ecstatic to be striking out on my own for the first time. Alas, just a few weeks after filing to secure a trademark, an officious-sounding note appeared in my inbox, and soon after, I found myself shelling out $10,000 in lawyer’s fees over a short-lived trademark dispute. It wasn’t nearly as painful as it might have been, but it was a rude realization that figuring out the right brand can be both time-consuming and have implications that founders might not foresee.

Of course, my experience is hardly rare. Most founders are typically left to either conduct trademark searches on their own via the USPTO site, or else pay top dollar for law firms or branding agencies to do it for them. Often they do both.

Thankfully, affordably eliminating risky name choices is exactly the opportunity that a two-year-old Bay Area company, Naming Matters, is chasing, and the company’s founder is very familiar with the market. S.B. Master previously co-founded Master-McNeil, a 29-year-old corporate naming and branding firm in Berkeley, Ca., whose past clients include Apple, General Motors, Disney and PayPal.

Now Master sees an opportunity to cater not just to deep-pocketed corporate customers but also startups on shoestring budgets. Indeed, 18 months ago, she decided to take everything she has learned over the years about linguistic analysis, trademark searching and domain name acquisition and pour it into a self-service software product that also incorporates search and data visualization. I talked with her earlier today to learn more.

You’ve already run a naming company for decades. Why start this new thing?

SM: Naming is hard, and we tend to work with companies that can afford us to do deep preliminary availability screening. I grew frustrated with how slow and antiquated that searching step is [for companies that can’t afford such a service]. I mean, if you have 100 names, how do you figure out which are most likely to get you into trouble, and which are your stronger candidates that you should focus on? There are legacy providers, but their model is to charge users for every name they look up. If you’re looking for a name in every country and every class, it adds up. You have to be very skilled to [keep your costs down].

More here.

New Fundings

Astro, a two-year-old, Palo Alto, Ca.-based AI company focused on improving workplace communication, including via more intelligent email software, has raised $8.3 million in Series A funding from Redpoint Ventures, Harrison Metal, Aspect Ventures and Upside Partnership. More here.

Chairish, the 3.5-year-old, San Francisco, Ca.-based parent company of Chairish and Decaso (Chairish is an online marketplace for vintage furniture and decor; Decase is an online platform for antiques and art dealers), has raised $8 million in funding. The round was led by Altos Ventures, with participation from return investors OATV and Azure Capital Partners. More here.

Chowbotics, a 2.5-year-old, San Jose, Ca.-based maker of robots for the food service industry, has raised $5 million in Series A funding from Techstars Ventures, Foundry Group, Galvanize Ventures and the Geekdom Fund. More on the company, formerly known as Casabots, here.

Cradlepoint, an 11-year-old Boise, Id.-based cloud-based network management company, has raised $89 million in Series C funding from TCV. The round marks the largest recorded venture investment for an Idaho-based company, according to Crunchbase. TechCrunch has more here.

Currencycloud, a five-year-old, London-based company that builds tools for payment companies to use by way of an API, has raised £20 million ($24.3 million) in Series D funding led by GV. Earlier backers also joined the round, including Notion Capital, Sapphire Ventures, Rakuten FinTech Fund, and Anthemis. TechCrunch has more here.

Fluxx, a five-year-old, San Francisco-based software company catering to grantmaking professionals, has raised $16 million in Series B funding. Canvas Ventures led the round, with participation from Kresge Foundation and Felicis Ventures. More here.

Kidizen, a six-year-old, Minneapolis, Mn.-based marketplace for secondhand children’s apparel, has raised $3.2 million in Series A funding led by Chicago-based Origin Ventures. Other participants in the round include Royal Street Ventures, Corigin Ventures, Mergelane, and earlier investors Sofia Fund and Gopher Angels. TechCrunch has more here.

Kinsa, a five-year-old, San Francisco-based maker of smart thermometers, raised $17 million in funding from GSR Ventures, Kleiner Perkins Caufield Byers, FirstMark Capital and others. More here.

OncoResponse, a two-year-old, Houston, Tex.–based immuno-oncology antibody discovery company, has closed its Series A round with $22.5 million in funding from HT Family Office, Arch Venture Partners, Canaan Partners, MD Anderson, Marsh Rice University, Alexandria Real Estate Equities, Baxalta, GreatPoint Ventures and the Helsinn Investment Fund. The company has now raised $28.6 million altogether. More here.

Prevedere, a five-year-old, Columbus, Oh.-based company whose predictive analytics software aims to help enterprises improve their sales numbers, has raised $10 million in Series B funding. The round was led by Norwest Venture Partners, with participation from Microsoft Ventures and earlier backers PointGuard Ventures and Rev1 Ventures. More here.

RealConnex, a four-year-old, Miami and New York-based platform connecting real estate professionals to capital, investments, and services, has raised $3.5 million in strategic funding led by Silver Portal Capital, a San Diego-based real estate investment and merchant banking firm. The company has now raised $10.2 million altogether. TechCrunch has more here.

RiskSense, a year-old Albuquerque, N.M.-based company that makes cyber risk management software, has closed its Series A round with $14 million, including some new funding from Jump Capital. Earlier investors in the round include Paladin Capital Group, Sun Mountain Capital, EPIC Ventures, and CenturyLink. In addition, Silicon Valley Bank has also provided the company with a debt facility. More here.

ScyllaDB, a nearly two-year-old, Palo Alto, Ca.-based startup that produces a NoSQL database that’s compatible with Apache Cassandra but has much faster throughout (it says), has raised $16 million in Series B funding. Investors include Western Digital Capital, Samsung Ventures, Magma Ventures, Qualcomm Ventures, and Bessemer Venture Partners. More here.

TurnKey, a 4.5-year-old, Austin, Tex.-based vacation rental management company, has raised $21 million in Series C funding led by Adams Street Partners, with participation from earlier backers Altos Ventures, Silverton Partners and other unnamed angel investors. The company has now raised $41 million altogether. More here.

Tushy, a new New York-based startup whose attachment turns any toilet into a bidet, has raised $500,000 in seed funding led by Propulsion Capital, with participation from numerous angel investors. More here.

VATBox, a nearly four-year-old, Herzliya, Israel-based company that helps its corporate customers maximize their foreign and domestic VAT (value-added tax) returns and ensure governance, has raised $20 million in funding led by Target Global Fund. Earlier backers Viola Private Equity and others also joined the round. The company has now raised $50 million altogether. Globes has more here.

Vertiflex, a 12-year-old, Carlsbad, Ca.-based company that makes a minimally invasive implant for spinal stenosis, has raised $40 million in funding co-led by Endeavour Vision and H.I.G. BioHealth Partners, with participation from New Enterprise Associates, Thomas, McNerney & Partners, and Alta Partners. More here.

New Funds

Blumberg Capital, a 26-year-old, San Francisco-based venture firm, has raised $200 million for its fourth fund, up from the $150 million the firm raised for its third fund. Most of that capital was secured by early last year. TechCrunch has more here.

Rethink Impact, a six-year-old, San Francisco-based impact investing venture capital fund that looks to fund gender-diverse, tech-enabled companies, has raised $110 million for new fund. It partnered with UBS Wealth Management Americas toward that end, with more than half the capital commitments coming from UBS clients, including high net worth individuals, family offices, private foundations, and universities. More here.

Exits

Pinterest, the San Francisco-based visual discovery tool and social network, has acquired Jelly, a San Francisco question-and-answer app started by Twitter co-founder Biz Stone for undisclosed terms. Jelly had raised an undisclosed amount in  funding from Greylock Partners, Spark Capital, and SV Angel. In a post yesterday, Stone said he didn’t know  details of the acquisition, including whether Jelly will remain a standalone property or be integrated into Pinterest.

People

Dropbox CEO Drew Houston had a birthday party last weekend in San Francisco, and some well-known faces came to celebrate.

Gary Marcus, a research scientist who joined Uber four months ago as director of its AI labs, is leaving the company, according to Axios. More here.

Trevor Oelschig has joined General Catalyst Partners as a managing director working from its Palo Alto and San Francisco offices. Oelschig had spent the last nine years with Bessemer Venture Partners; he’ll initially be focused on application layer technologies.

Mark Zuckerberg and wife Priscilla Chan are having another baby girl, he announced on Facebook this morning. (Babies! Happiness.)

Zuckerberg is also giving the commencement speech at Harvard this year (and getting an honorary degree in the process). Here, he asks another Harvard dropout for some advice on what to say to students.

Essential Reads

Fitbit‘s VCs have paid a price for not selling their shares earlier.

Detours

With Trump, planning has become “virtually impossible,” say late show execs.

Essential Reads

When you can’t stop, won’t stop (playing hoops).